The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global High-Tech Challenge at the Interface of Science, Politics, and Illusions

The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global High-Tech Challenge at the Interface of Science, Politics, and Illusions discusses COVID-19 as the first pandemic in the Internet era and our current reality of continuous reports, news, and updates. Since its beginning, we were daily bombarded with news of what was happening around the world. There was no global political leadership. The United States was politically partially paralyzed. Russia and China hoped to gain diplomatic profile worldwide, but their vaccines are of limited efficacy, and trust in their clinical data is rightly low. The European Union did not order enough vaccines in time, but sued a large manufacturer for delivery delays. Now it is setting up yet another bureaucratic institution. At least the pharmaceutical or life science industry paved the way out, but is not enthusiastically praised for it. It would be too easy and superficial to blame mistakes of governments and leaders on stupidity. Idiocy exists, but we have to go deeper to understand how illusions and blind spots in today’s common perception and science, inertia, arrogance, conflicts of interest, competition of individuals, and states and institutions for public recognition have contributed to a multitude of flawed assessments and direct mistakes. Healthcare professionals and anyone interested in an in-depth understanding of humankind’s response to the COVID-19 challenge will not get around the key conclusions of this book.