Tag: munk debates

• Niall Ferguson discusses life with COVID-19

  Last night I watched this Munk Dialogue with historian Niall Ferguson. (Some of you may remember that I wrote about a previous dialogue with Malcolm Gladwell a few weeks ago.) One of the sobering lessons of history is that, without a vaccine, we’re probably not yet in a position to talk about life after COVID-19. At least in the short-term, this is going to be life with COVID-19.

  Here is an excerpt from an article Niall wrote talking about how “a second wave could capsize Trump.”

  In history, all the great pandemics have come in waves, including the Black Death of bubonic and pneumonic plague in the 14th century and smallpox in the 18th century. The first recorded plague outbreak — in Athens in the 5th century BC — had three waves: in 430BC, 429BC and 427 to 426BC.

  In some cases, the second wave was worse than the first. Take the great influenza of 1918-19. The first official recorded outbreak was at a Kansas army base, Camp Funston, in March 1918. But the global peak of mortality was in the second wave of October and November. A third wave affected some areas of the world in early 1919, principally England and Wales and Australia.

  The 1957-58 influenza pandemic hit Hong Kong in mid-April 1957. It reached America in June and produced a surge of deaths among teenagers that autumn. But there was a second wave in January-March 1958. There were further spikes of excess mortality in early 1960 and early 1963.

  The other topic I was left thinking about from the dialogue is what all of this does to US-China relations, and more broadly relations between the West and China. Even before this pandemic, Niall had been arguing that Cold War II had already begun. Today’s news that China is planning new national security laws for Hong Kong certainly doesn’t help.

  2020.05.21

• Malcolm Gladwell on the world after COVID19

  [facebook url=”https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/videos/785234722004262/” /]

  I am a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell (and not just because he is Canadian and also went to the University of Toronto). Last week he kicked off a new Munk Dialogues series focused on the world after COVID19. (The next Munk Dialogue will be with Fareed Zakaria on Wednesday, April 15 from 8 PM to 9PM Toronto time.)

  In case you’re not familiar with the Munk Debates, they are normally a biannual event held here in Toronto. Their mission is to help people rediscover the “art of public debate” and they do that by convening some of the world’s brightest and most creative thinkers. Right now they are doing that online.

  In this Q&A with Gladwell, they touch on a lot of the topics that we are all debating right now on Zoom calls with our colleagues and friends. When will we get back to “normal?” What will change forever? Is working from home the new normal? Will people still want to go for Mandarin buffet? I won’t spoil it for all of you, but I did want to mention three points that I found myself agreeing with (I guess that is partially spoiling it).

  The first is his analogy to weak link sports such as soccer. Here you’re only as good as your weakest player. This is in contrast to strong link sports such as basketball. In this case, you’re only as good as your best player. If you want to win a championship, you get someone like Kawhi Leonard. Gladwell argues that this pandemic has further exposed us as a complex weak link society. We don’t even have the basic PPE and testing in place to fight this virus.

  The second is about whether this will create a more permanent shift to working from home. I have said before on the blog that I think it’s easy to overreach at a time like this. We might think that everything will change, but we also have short memories. Gladwell takes it a step further and argues that the exact opposite will happen. This pandemic will actually set working from home back a generation. We are going to be so sick of isolating that we will race back to what we had before.

  Finally, I like the point that right now is an opportunity for experimentation. This is true of all crises. It’s a lot easier to question the status quo when the status quo has already been disrupted. And we are seeing this happen at all scales, from people experimenting and learning new things at home to new companies being formed. Hopefully there will also be lasting benefits to our public health systems.

  Anyway, I would encourage to watch the video. If you can’t see it embedded at the top of this post, click here.

  2020.04.12