What have you discovered – about yourself and about others – in Global Perspectives?
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Global PerspectivesExploring Cultural Values at Regent’s and Beyond
Global Perspectives
Welcome to Lead Event III Our aims today are to:- • Expand the debate from the
interpersonal and social to the truly global level
• Get you thinking about risk and responsibility
• Prepare you for this week’s discussion group activity
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What are your concerns?
What stories are important to you?
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Global Perspectives
Which of the following is the most urgent issue? Here are some of the challenges we face as a global community. Vote for the item you feel is the most urgent, the one we have to put most effort into resolving!
A. Nuclear weapons B. Pandemics, like influenza C. Artificial intelligence D. Climate change (global warming) E. Water security F. None of the above
Global Perspectives
Debate: “The End of the World?”
Robert Johnson: When ‘Disease X’ strikes: pandemics
Angels Trias I Valls: Artificial intelligence (AI)
Lucia Debernardini: Climate change
Isabel Canto de Loura: Water security
Kit Barton: Nuclear weapons
Global Perspectives
The dangers of a pandemic
What is a pandemic?
A highly infectious outbreak caused by a virus or bacteria, such as influenza, SARS, swine flu, Ebola or Zika.
Haven’t we got this covered?
A vaccine for a new flu strain can take up to 6 months to develop. Promised funding for research is not being delivered, due to politicians prioritising other initiatives. Furthermore, 3.5 billion people still lack access to essential health services. Almost 100 million are pushed into extreme poverty because of the cost of paying for care out of their own pockets.
What’s the estimated cost?
A new study by a team of economists—including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers—shows the staggering economic costs of a future pandemic. They estimate the annual losses from a moderate to severe pandemic would be about $500 billion, or 0.6 percent of global income. That’s similar to the annual costs of global warming, double the cost of natural disasters and five times the cost of terrorism.
“A serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to
cause human disease” (WHO, 2018)
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Global Perspectives
1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak
Half a billion people contracted the disease
Up to 100 million people died
The sickness targeted young, healthy people
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Doctors have a cure for that, don’t they?
Our last line of defence against infection and disease is already failing. There have been no new classes of antibiotics for 25 years. Heavy use in agriculture has meant that widely used antibiotics are no longer effective against diseases and infections that would have been eliminated easily in the past. This means more people will die when they contract certain illnesses.
It only affects old people, right?
The Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918 affected half a billion people and killed between 50 and 100 million across the world, the majority of whom were young men and women in their prime. It killed more people in two years than died in the four years of the Great War.
“A devastating epidemic could start in any country at any time and kill millions of people because we are still not prepared.
The world remains vulnerable.” (WHO, 2018)
Global Perspectives
Which of the following is the most urgent issue? Over the last few weeks, we have discussed many issues that are causes of concern in our global community. Vote for the item that you feel is the most urgent, the one we have to put most effort into resolving!
A. Nuclear weapons B. Pandemics, like influenza C. Artificial intelligence D. Climate change (global warming) E. Water security F. None of the above
Global Perspectives