The post-COVID-19 world

Policymakers and pharma companies will have to work together to speed up trials of new vaccines and legislate to ensure essential drugs and tests are affordable and available

A popular sub-genre of science fiction is the “post-apocalyptic” novel. In these, the author assumes a disaster and imagines how the world will cope in the aftermath. It could be nuclear war; it could be climate change; it could be an alien attack; it could be a killer disease.
 
COVID-19 doesn’t qualify as a killer disease like the flu described in Stephen King’s The Stand or the alien disease Michael Crichton dreamt up in The Andromeda Strain.  Covid-19 has a relatively low mortality rate. It is far less lethal than real-life Ebola, Nipah and SARS. 
 
Despite the lower