The pandemic future will likely be far worse than currently stated by government leaders and public health experts unless citizens act as a calming force, according to a new book out this week.
June 2, 2020 —
Boston, MA – In Pandemic Aftermath, published by Atmosphere Press, author Trond Arne Undheim, a futurist with background from MIT, polemicizes against those who choose to see what is to come as a new normal.
The five geopolitical scenarios facing the world are grim.
Many parts of the world might descend into chaos. Africa, the Middle East and all the world’s megacities are the most at risk. Global elites could geographically split off from rest of world, as outlined in several of the five scenarios for the next decade, e.g. borderless world, nation state renewal, two worlds apart, Hobbesian chaos and status quo.
–Vaccines, superspreaders, social distancing, public health, the economy, geopolitics, innovation, and freedom of speech, each is problematic. We haven’t even scratched the surface of coming challenges.
The book outlines how curbing superspread will likely mean some governments regulate mass-event organizers, e.g., sports events, religious worship, and business conferences, as if they were utilities.
–Megacities emerge as a particularly powerful incubators for superspreading events and catalyzing individual superspreaders, enabling veritable outbreaks from a single case alone.
–Considering the 47 megacities spread across the world with over 10 million inhabitants and the one in five people who live in cities with more than 1 million inhabitants, the problem requires major structural change.
New normal is a euphemism — the world will keep changing.
Expect drastic change of power structures, permanent state of high alert throughout the decade, and increased negative fallout from other crises that now become follow-on events, such as hurricanes, famines, terrorism, wars, climate change and other global issues.
–Countries that win the health battle against COVID-19 may lose the economic battle and calamity that ensues. Countries that fared well in the first wave, even in top health systems and with stellar leadership may do worse in waves to follow. The top reasons would be human complacency, lockdown fatigue, country-to-country contagion from tourists and business as society opens up and hard-to-resolve structural factors like existing city infrastructure, health system quality, and economic necessities.
With pandemic’s scope unforeseen — media, experts, governments, citizens all taken by surprise.
The pandemic’s near simultaneous global impact was not widely foreseen as has been claimed by many critics of the government response around the world. Media barely covered new pandemic story over the past decade. The 15 government pandemic exercises analyzed in the book were superficial and failed to involve the right stakeholders. The academic studies in epidemiology misguided the US and UK government pandemic response with unwarranted quantified predictions based on poor data.
As a result, the world was locked into the influenza paradigm and its specific stockpiling requirements. We, collectively, failed to see other viral paths. The book argues, this mistake cannot be allowed to happen again, as other crises will arise.
Despite these worries, the book yields ground for optimism if citizens get proactively involved at an early stage in the decade to actively shape it. For that to happen the forces of disruption outlined in the book need to be better understood.
About the author
Trond Arne Undheim is a futurist, speaker, and entrepreneur who holds a PhD on the future of work, artificial intelligence and cognition. Trond Arne Undheim is the CEO and co-founder of Yegii, Inc. and is the author of Pandemic Aftermath (2020), Disruption Games (2020) and Leadership From Below (2008). His next book is Future Tech (2021). See his author website: TrondUndheim.com
https://bit.ly/TrondYouTube | https://www.linkedin.com/in/undheim/ I https://www.goodreads.com/trondau | http://amazon.com/author/trondundheim
About the book
Pandemic Aftermath, by Trond Arne Undheim, published by Atmosphere Press, May/June, 2020, 450 pages. Paperback, ebook and audiobook available everywhere books are sold, see http://pandemic-aftermath.com/. Currently a Top #15 Amazon Bestseller on Kindle and Top #32 in Paperback in its category.
About Yegii, Inc.
Yegii, the insight network, is a knowledge discovery platform for professionals who want to stay on top of the forces of disruption in tech, policy, business models, and social dynamics. Visit Yegii.com (Saas platform), or Yegii.org (expert blog).
About Atmosphere Press
Atmosphere is an independent publisher based in Austin, Texas, founded by a PhD in Literature who is himself a published author of prose and poetry. For general inquiries contact Christina Garcia, Social Media Manager, Atmosphere Press, marketing@atmospherepress.com, +1 740-416-0443.
Contact Info:
Name: Trond Arne Undheim
Email: Send Email
Organization: Yegii, Inc.
Phone: (617) 939-9171
Website: http://pandemic-aftermath.com
Video URL: https://youtu.be/gapeEvIjtOI
Release ID: 88960018
