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COVID ‐19 transmission: economy‐boosting investment should target innovation in pandemic containment strategies to minimize restrictions of civil liberties
Author(s) -
Timmis Kenneth
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
environmental microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.954
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1462-2920
pISSN - 1462-2912
DOI - 10.1111/1462-2920.15263
Subject(s) - pandemic , boosting (machine learning) , biology , covid-19 , containment (computer programming) , investment (military) , transmission (telecommunications) , civil liberties , virology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , outbreak , law , disease , computer science , political science , medicine , pathology , politics , programming language , telecommunications , machine learning
Summary Imposition of restrictions on civil liberties in response to epi/pandemic crises provokes collateral health, economic and social crises. Moreover, as a result of the societal distress engendered, they become less effective over time, reflected in reducing acceptability, public protests, lack of compliance and civil disobedience, as evidenced by current events in some countries. There is an urgent need to evolve new containment strategies that minimize civil liberty restrictions. This requires strategic economic policies to invest in what might be termed pandemic containment innovation , particularly in the development of new means of reducing virus concentrations in closed spaces, and of precision exclusion of virus transmitters from public assemblies. Such innovations and their implementation will in turn create significant employment and boost economies. And, because such investments aim at increasing the resilience of society, healthcare and the economy to pandemics (and indeed outbreaks of respiratory infections in general), they are particularly sustainable.