The pandemic has been one of the most important challenges that the world has faced in recent years. It has had an impact on all areas of people’s lives. The future of the world after the pandemic was the subject of a debate held in the “Rzeczpospolita” Lounge during the Economic Forum in Karpacz. The discussion covered different areas of life and the challenges of the world after the coronavirus. Boguslaw Chrabota, editor-in-chief of Rzeczpospolita, who moderated the discussion, began by recalling a thesis from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s famous book on “black swans” that change reality. – “Covid-19 was the best example of such a swan in Taleb’s sense”, said Boguslaw Chrabota.
Economic impact
One of the issues raised during the discussion was the effects of Covid-19 on the economies. – “This was a phenomenon that had an overwhelming impact on the global economy. From the perspective of economic analysis, all the graphs of fiscal spending, unemployment, in statistical data in the US reverted to 1945. It was a huge shock”, said Piotr Arak, director of the Polish Economic Institute. – “We have had a very rapid rise in unemployment in this super-flexible US labour market. It was slightly different in the EU. There was no such rapid rise in unemployment, but there was an economic collapse. And then a recession smaller than forecast and a fairly rapid return to economic normality”, added Piotr Arak.
As the panellists said, the pandemic had very wide-ranging effects. – “We had to learn to respond to a challenge that no one expected. This taught us how to look for answers more quickly”, pointed out Wiktor Janicki, CEO of AstraZeneca Pharma Poland.
– “There were a lot of new questions. There was also a question that always comes up for us, which is how to deliver solutions to patients that are safe for them. We could not take shortcuts and look for solutions. On the other hand, there were challenges due to the fact that many ongoing clinical trials were stopped because patients could not turn up at hospitals and could not take part in trials”, said the CEO of AstraZeneca Pharma Poland. – “It certainly taught us to be much more flexible in our response. But also thinking about how to make ourselves resilient and how to support the organisation of health systems to be resilient to shocks. It is also a lesson that no one alone can cope with such a sudden change as a pandemic. We, too, need to work with the health system so that when the shock happens, it affects patients as little as possible. An ad hoc event has resulted in much more systemic thinking”, emphasised Wiktor Janicki. – “Never has the AstraZeneca brand been as well-known as it was after the pandemic. But in financial terms it was not a positive outcome for us, our Covid-19 vaccine was made available at cost”.
The question of synergy
One of the major issues raised during the debate was the question of cooperation between different actors, including in the health sphere, and whether the pandemic has changed the situation in terms of cooperation between the state and corporations.
