In our holiday/new year’s letter from 2020, we reflected on the effects of the pandemic of COVID-19 on our lives – adjusting to the initial shock in March, adapting to a longer than expected lockdown, experiencing a cautious opening up in the summer before going through a second wave in late October, and closing the year with the good news of a Biden victory in the US. That was in 2020! At the close of our 2020 letter, we wrote: “We’re OK, after all. We expect that 2021 will be better for all of us – as long as we stay safe and healthy. So that is our wish to all for 2021 – safety and health!” And here we are with another holiday and end of year reflections! Before rattling on about this strange year of 2021, let us repeat that our wish to all for 2022 is the same as it was last year: We wish you “safety and health” – and hope, once again, that we will achieve a world in which there is “safety and health” for all! Continue reading “Holiday Greetings in December 2021, Wishing Safety and Health for All in 2022!”
Proposals and Commentaries for a Global Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Compendium (updated 17.03.2022
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to feature a lively debate on the balancing of scientific and policy perspectives. From the beginning of the pandemic, I have been writing commentaries on the importance of applying both a political lens and a scientific lens to the management of the pandemic. At the time, we were all understandably concerned about the risk of political actions that were clearly contrary to the scientific evidence. But that should not have led us away from the value of incorporating the science into a workable political framework for collaborative action. I still embrace the need for balance – combining the scientific guidance on who needs to wear a mask, for example, with political guidance on how this should be implemented in specific circumstances.
A second interest of mine has been to write about the remarkable flowering of global and multi-stakeholder collaboration that the pandemic has inspired – in vaccine development most strikingly but also in the efforts to ensure global sharing of vaccines and therapeutic needs. In fact, the multi-stakeholder nature of this collaboration has been a particular focus of my ongoing commentaries.
With these themes in mind, I started a compendium here of the proposals and actions since January 2021 that continue to inspire me to write about the global and multi-stakeholder response to the pandemic. This list had been regularly updated until March of this year (2022). It seems that I lost interest at that time – recognizing, perhaps, that the promise of better things to come just didn’t deliver the transformation in global collaboration that I believed was in the offing. So I stopped adding items to the list – even as new promises were dangled before us so temptingly – at the Second Global Pandemic Summit, at the World Health Assembly, at the G7 Elmau Summit, at the 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization….The list goes on. But the enthusiasm does not. So I have put a pause to the exercise and am preparing a wrapping-up commentary to boot. Stay tuned.
Returning to the Pandemic with Renewed Inspiration for a Global Response
Moving beyond the “subterranean machinations” of Franco-American rivalries, I revert back to my preoccupations with the prospects for global and multi-stakeholder collaboration on the COVID-19 pandemic. And I do so with renewed inspiration, perhaps reinforced by the very sudden global panic about the Omicron variant, which the World Health Organization has identified as a new “variant of concern”. My inspiration, however, had already been reviving as a result of my personal tracking of the interviews and personal appearances of key “pandemic players” in the past couple of months. Most strikingly, we all saw the signs in October of more collaboration between the WHO and WTO Directors-General but also their further collaboration with the heads of the IMF and World Bank, I was also encouraged anew by the opportunity also in October to sit in on interviews with two major American figures, Dr. Rochelle Wilensky at the US Centers for Disease Control and Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And then, through the past few weeks, I have found additional hopefulness in the health-related outcomes of both the G20 Leaders Summit in Rome and and the Conference of the Parties (i.e. “COP 26”) in Glasgow – yes, even there!
Continue reading “Returning to the Pandemic with Renewed Inspiration for a Global Response”
Subterranean Machinations and Franco-American Relations
Living through the latest “bump in the road” in Franco-American relations has stirred me to venture into writing a commentary with a different twist than has been my usual pattern. I don’t mean to ignore my ongoing preoccupation with advocating vaccine equity. – nor my longer lasting and well established preoccupation in support of multi-stakeholder collaboration. In the context of this latest “bump”, however, the commentary has to start with some wishful thinking about broader geopolitical issues like military alliances or trade agreements or peace treaties – issues that are less conducive to a multi-stakeholder approach. That is to say, they are more in the realm of traditional inter-governmental relations in the control of national governments, whether the policy deliberations are conducted multilaterally or unilaterally. And thus, we start here, not so coincidentally, with the commemoration of a military battle and segue from that to a commentary on the strategic positioning of major countries – nation-states, governments and all that – before it gets back to vaccine equity or multi-stakeholderism. Bear with me on this journey in search of renewed hope for these two preoccupations of mine. Continue reading “Subterranean Machinations and Franco-American Relations”
The Importance of the Battle of the Capes to the Sharing of a Franco-American History in Grasse
As Americans living in France since the 1990s, we have long had an interest in observing where the parallel histories of the two countries converge, and especially where they have a distinctly local connection. We have become acquainted with two annual events – one of which occurs just down the street from Villa Ndio in August, and the other of which is a September event called “Grasse Naval Day”. This is a photo essay on the September event, but first a few words about the August event. Continue reading “The Importance of the Battle of the Capes to the Sharing of a Franco-American History in Grasse”
Pandemic Musings: Chapter 7 on the First Trip Back to the USA Since Before the Pandemic (combining a series of progress reports)
Chapter 7 on Pandemic Living started with travel anxieties in anticipation of my first trans-Atlantic flight since the pandemic began. The draft was initially written on 30 and 31 July 2021. Progress reports on 10, 20 27 and 31 August have continued the saga with various mid-travel reflections, and a final piece dated 12 September incorporates my post-travel reflections. During this same period, the delta variant was rampant but quixotic in its own travels around the world. We are still living with bated breath even as we try to go about a return to “normal” living, but this chapter tracks the ups and downs of uncertainty as we try to understand and adjust to a pandemic that keeps changing.
Whither COVAX? A Progress Report on the Vision of Global and Multi-stakeholder Collaboration
The fluidity in the ebb and flow of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take us through uncharted waters as we gradually absorb the signs urging us to just “live with it” somehow. Even the modified springtime message from the epidemiologists that we might at least manage to get past the “acute” phase of this pandemic by the end of 2021 seems to have lost its resonance. Here we are in mid-July 2021 with a global death toll passing the 4 million mark, and alarming reports about the highly contagious delta variant, the looming epsilon variant, urgent pleas (and even mandates) from the French president and the Italian prime minister to get vaccinated, crazy mixed messages in the UK, confusion about mask-wearing in the US, and dramatic upsurges in countries (like Indonesia this time) with low vaccination rates and limited access to available vaccine doses. At least there is a renewed effort to work things through the COVAX Facility, both with regard to the more equitable distribution of available vaccine doses and, quite encouragingly, to increasing and diversifying the manufacturing capacity for vaccines but also for therapeutics and diagnostics. Here are my personal impressions of what this means for global and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Continue reading “Whither COVAX? A Progress Report on the Vision of Global and Multi-stakeholder Collaboration”
Pandemic Musings: 6. Entering (Early) the Fourth Wave in France (July 2021)
As of today, 21 July 2021, France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that we have entered the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in France. Less than two months ago we were eagerly phasing out of the lockdown measures of the third wave -ending the curfews, lifting the face mask requirements and mandatory forms and time limits for activities outside the home, gradually opening up the restaurants (outdoor dining only), fitness centers, museums, theaters, shopping centers and non-essential retail establishments. Although we are no longer being called upon to reinstate any of these lockdown measures (at least not yet), the Prime Minister has described this fourth wave as worse than any of the previous three waves, with a “faster and steeper slope” in the spread of the virus than any of the previous waves. Who expected this? How is it affecting us personally here at Villa Ndio? Continue reading “Pandemic Musings: 6. Entering (Early) the Fourth Wave in France (July 2021)”
Democracy in Jeopardy: French Regional and Departmental Elections, Round Two
In this series of reflections on “Democracy in Jeopardy”, I have chosen to focus initially on a number of “sub-national” elections in 2021, in part because there are several of them happening in 2021 that have attracted my personal interest – in France, India and the US. The series starts with an introduction (available here) to the concerns that I share with so many others on the growing threats to democracy, even in countries with a strong democratic heritage like these three. The French case study is the first of the three case studies in the series, and this is the second essay on the French 2021 elections. Other case studies will follow on the US and India. This analysis will eventually link up with essays on what is happening in these countries and on democratic trends generally, but here the focus is on France. Continue reading “Democracy in Jeopardy: French Regional and Departmental Elections, Round Two”
Democracy in Jeopardy: French Regional and Departmental Elections
What follows here is my first commentary on electoral politics in France for this series on “Democracy in Jeopardy”. It is part of an ongoing series of commentaries to explore a number of specific settings – I have chosen France, India and the US. I write these commentaries from my personal perspective as someone who has lived in all three countries but also as an interested observer who has studied and written about electoral politics academically. All three have long been identified as strong democracies that are all, nonetheless, being confronted with particularly serious challenges today. I started this series with a general commentary on democracy in jeopardy (available here), and I will be linking these specific case studies to this overall perspective from time to time. Continue reading “Democracy in Jeopardy: French Regional and Departmental Elections”