It is no understatement to claim that the world has dramatically changed since my last editorial. As COVID-19 spread across the globe like wildfire, words like “lockdown”, “social distancing” and “furlough” all entered the lexicon.
Although pandemics are not a new phenomenon — from the Bubonic Plague that killed 200mn people between 1347 and 1351 to the Spanish Flu that had a death toll of between 40mn and 50mn at a time when the world was reeling from the First World War – mass lockdowns certainly are. As of April 3 2020, half of humanity was on lockdown. “Unprecedented” became the adjective of choice.
