Life after the pandemic

Book review of 'Ten lessons for a post-pandemic world'

Oh, no, not a book about the pandemic. Not another series of snapshots overtaken by tomorrow’s events. Fareed Zakaria, a CNN host with a Ph.D. from Harvard, does not fall into this trap.

Instead Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World employs a wide lens, drawing on governance, economics and culture. Call it “applied history.” What insights does it offer during a catastrophe that evokes the Spanish flu after World War I, which claimed 50 million — some reckon 100 million — lives?

That story comes with a word of caution about historical analogies. Mr Zakaria ascribes “seismic effects” to such