The Big Question: Can the World Learn to Live With Covid?
A Q&A with Charles Kenny, author of “The Plague Cycle,” on what history teaches about how societies overcome infectious diseases.
Better days ahead.
Photographer: David Gray/AFP via Getty Images
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve today’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been condensed and edited.
Romesh Ratnesar: It’s been nearly a year since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. At least 2.4 million people have died from the disease worldwide and an estimated 120 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty. You’re the author of a new book, “The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease.” Judged by the length of this pandemic and its severity, how does Covid compare with other plagues over the course of human history?
Charles Kenny, senior fellow, Center for Global Development: In grand historical perspective, Covid-19 is not nearly as bad as say, the Black Death, where a third to a half of the European population died, or the afflictions that hit the Americas after Columbus arrived, where up to 80% or more of the population died. But it’s still awful. And it’s so much more awful than it needed to be.