Chaiyanne Salmon’s Wuhan Contingency Accord: Our Hope and Guardian Against the Threats of Future Global Crises and Pandemics
COVID-19 has exposed the failings of global government policies.
Lasting change is needed — and fast.
The global health pandemic has brought the relative fragility of our modern ecosystem to light in new and confronting ways. Would the COVID-19 outbreak have happened, had more sustainable food production and distribution methods been in place? Will pandemics of a comparable or larger scale continue to happen if these processes aren’t adjusted?
In this bold and future-focused proposal, Chaiyanne Salmon presents an inclusive model for a global and national restructuring of how we source, produce, market, and consume food in a post-pandemic world.
Here’s an interview with Salmon about his new book and its proposals.
What can the average person around the world do to stay safe and avoid spreading disease?
Staying safe and avoiding spreading diseases such as Covid-19 will require new measures of active engagement by the public and local/national leadership. Developing and enforcing public health and safety guidelines for all individuals is paramount for ensuring people around the world stay safe and avoid spreading disease. This guidance should promote and instill consistent safe social and hygienic practices recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), such as washing hands frequently, wearing masks, avoiding crowds and indoor gatherings, and maintaining a distance of at least six feet from others. Means and tools to generate community alertness, organization, and monitoring should be simple and convenient to make it easy for people to comply.
What should our world’s leaders enact as policy to address Covid-19?
World leaders must exercise solidarity to address Covid-19. It is vital now more than ever for all countries to work together to avoid the spread of Covid-19 worldwide. Superpower nations are undoubtedly crucial in the current fight against SARS-Cov-2. Because Covid-19 is easily spread, it is important for world leaders to establish travel policies to prevent various strains of the disease from spreading throughout the world. These policies should include all WHO recommendations, such as mandatory use of masks in all indoor locations, including while using public transportation, ships, and aircraft. In addition, policies should require Covid-19 testing and quarantining when traveling to other countries as well as cities with high rates of Covid-19 infections.
I believe that world leaders should also be instrumental in establishing policies to provide detection, protection, and solutions concerning future infectious diseases. Policies should address the protection of healthcare workers, availability of healthcare facilities, vaccine distribution challenges, and the threats to citizens’ financial, housing, and food securities.
How can we best prepare now for future pandemics?
There is no straightforward answer to this question because there is no sure-fire way to determine how and when a pandemic will begin. It is important for world leaders to analyze causes of past pandemics, including Covid-19, to determine how they started and put actions into place to avoid them in the future. Covid-19 resulted from the transmission of disease from an animal to a human, so prevention of that occurring again is essential. In addition, we should prepare for future pandemics by establishing a worldwide active stand-by responsive phase that consists of funds, means, and policies to quickly address another pandemic.
Governments should also encourage citizens worldwide to embrace necessary modifications to public transportation, agriculture, food production/management, healthcare facilities, education centers, etc. that could help prevent future pandemics, We have been able to overcome the Spanish flu, smallpox, H1N1/ swine flu, and polio, but we were not adequately prepared for Covid-19. What will be pivotal in enabling citizens worldwide to maintain social and essential activities during a pandemic is developing a global contact tracing framework.
The Electronic Consumer Travel Application (ECTA) described in the Wuhan Contingency Accord stresses the importance of establishing a world-wide method for tracking food production/selling/purchasing, food/drink consumption, modes of travel, healthcare services, technological advancements, and the interconnection for rapid contingency responses for a crisis, outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic, whether on a national, continental, or global scale. The Wuhan Contingency Accord describes in detail the importance of citizens working together and supporting their governments and provides a framework for implementing policies that could prevent future pandemics.
What kinds of public policy best further medical innovation?
Policies that best further science should focus on the betterment of society. It is important for scientific studies to follow established policies that ensure safety and proven results, but policies should also fit the situations.
For example, FDA policies concerning scientific studies were revised to allow Covid-19 vaccines to be administered to humans as quickly as possible. Many scientific studies on Covid-19 vaccines were, and still are, being performed worldwide to determine the effectivity and results of different types of vaccines, but the effects the vaccines will have on people in the future remains to be seen. Policies should allow enough leniency for proper testing while requiring scientists to thoroughly document their procedures and results to share with the public and promote future scientific studies.
Scientists should be allowed to test their theories and vaccines on humans so they can get beneficial results out to the public quickly. Some FDA policies drag out drug testing and distribution, which can allow diseases to spread unnecessarily.
You may order Chaiyanne Salmon’s Wuhan Contingency Accord here.
