As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic into 2021 the Director of the Centre of Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba Arthur Schafer says it’s not too early to learn from this pandemic.  He says it should teach us how to be better prepared should a similar situation arise in the future.  He explains we live in a globalized world where there’s a hell of a lot of mobility and people are travelling and every country is vulnerable and new viruses can move from remote parts of the world and they’re going to be here.  He adds we’re living now in an age where the threat of pandemics and all the deaths and harm they do is going to be ever present and ever with us so we’ve got to be prepared and in Manitoba the emergency preparedness committee was shut down over the summer to save money and that makes no sense as we’ve all got to have such committees in place.

Schafer says another lesson to learn from this is for countries to work with the World Health Organization to better monitor and act quickly when a new virus is discovered.