Dear Colleagues,

I know, I know, it’s Valentine today, so I probably shouldn’t talk about the eerily sounding “Covid-19”  in this short intro, let alone about the even more dreaded “P word”  but WHO and dr. Tedros were clearly in no mood for Valentine earlier this week, when describing the virus as “a global threat, potentially worse than terrorism”. “The world must wake up and consider this enemy virus as public enemy number one,”  Tedros said.  With world media and public opinion going berserk all around the world for a few weeks now, I think that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The other part of his message, however, that it’s about  “solidarity, solidarity and solidarity”, might prove much harder in the weeks and months to come, given how Sapiens is wired.

When thinking of pandemics, in this visual culture of ours, we probably all have (subconsciously or not) a particular movie in mind when considering some of the most dire scenarios. For some of you, that might be...