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Preparing for the Next Pandemic
Will we pass this marshmallow test?
Can you resist temptation? One more Cinnabon? The next TikTok video? The next episode? The next juicy shiny anything staring you in the face?
Me neither, especially Cinnabon.
The Stanford Marshmallow experiment tested if individual children could delay gratification by not eating a marshmallow presented to them and then receive two marshmallows 15 minutes later. Many could not. Those that could later succeeded more in life.
OK, but what has this got to do with pandemics?
We didn’t learn anything from Covid
We got lucky. Covid was bad but not that bad and we received lots of information about what to do and not do in a pandemic. Did we learn anything? No, we haven’t learned anything. A soon as things improved we were just glad it got better and then we forgot how scared we were.
It was a test, a giant marshmellow test and we failed. All the experience and data from the pandemic is the marshmallow. We scarfed down that marshmallow as soon as it was on the plate. We’ll start the next pandemic from almost zero and each one after that, until one wipes us out.
As trauma fades so does preparation urgency.
I live in Kobe, Japan. The Great Hanshin Earthquake in…
