Exactly when or how the pandemic will end is just one of numerous known unknowns.
A wide range of timescales are being cited for the emergence of an effective vaccine.
Broadly speaking, Covid-19 has wreaked considerably more devastation among the richer
nations of the global north than in the geographical south.
Among the numerous conjectures is the proposition that the virus fails to thrive in warmer
climes. One can only hope that is indeed the case, although it could be a long time before anyone
knows for sure.
By and large, countries that were quick to clamp down have fared better than others. It has also
been observed that governments led by women — from Finland to Taiwan and New Zealand to
Germany — have generally proved more effective in coping with the crisis than many others.
In an eloquent essay in the Financial Times last month, Arundhati Roy described the pandemic
as “a portal, a gateway between one world and the next”, which we can walk through
“dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead
ideas, or dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little
luggage, ready to imagine another world. And to fight for it.”