Futures Studio and journalist Mark Grigorian’s joint “Talk about the future” series held the “COVID-19: Facing global fears” discussion on March 31. Mediamax presents some thoughts  expressed during the discussion.

Ruben Vardanyan, co-founder of IDeA Foundation and Aurora Humanitarian Initiative

As an observer, as a human looking at the issue from a different point of view, I will say this: we are talking about fears. The fears are caused by the fact that institutions and governments are losing public trust.

There are many issues people have raised, which concern fairness of the decisions made, how correct and transparent they are. I think the communication between institutions and public, institutions and communities is extremely important.

If the state and the person do not trust each other because gossip and rumors have stronger impact on people’s minds, the following question arises: how quickly can we find a solution? For instance, Noubar Afeyan found one of the solutions in his company – they developed a vaccine, but it became clear in the process that we have a public crisis, a decision-making crisis.

Ruben Vardanyan

Photo: Mediamax

How long can we wait for the state to be able to take the responsibility and manage the situation? How transparent and accountable is the decision-making process? Does the government do everything we expect it to do? These questions continue to frighten us, even as the vaccination goes on.

We need to find balance between being frightened and staying home, being responsible and following the safety rules. Looking back, we can say that the majority of countries have failed to exercise a pragmatic approach. People in different corners of the world have that impression, and they are more worried about their future than the new virus variant, because they do not understand how governments respond to this challenge.

Lord Ara Darzi, Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at Imperial College London, Chair of Aurora Prize Selection Committee

The only way to fight any pandemic is science.

Moderna did a serious job under Noubar’s management. If we talk about saving lives, we can say this vaccine is able to save thousands of lives worldwide. We have to put it on record that COVID-19 mutates pretty quickly, and the virus is going to plague the humankind. The policy of selective vaccination will not work.

Ara Darzi

Photo: Aurora

That policy will make the pandemic a grave issue, so we need to think of global vaccination. There is another problem – 10% of COVID-19 patients continue experiencing the effects of the virus even after the supposed term of recovery. It is something doctors call “long-term COVID”, and it needs to be studied.

Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Moderna Therapeutics, co-founder of Aurora Humanitarian Initiative

For many months, I have defended this idea to the U.S. government: we need to have the amount of doses, which can secure vaccination of the entire global population.

How to work with different countries that buy the vaccine is a different aspect of the issue, because we do not even have time for that kind of activity now. As a person involved in many humanitarian projects, I think we need to vaccinate globally. It must be done in risk groups first and foremost, and every country should vaccinate its entire adult population.

Noubar Afeyan

Photo: Aurora

However, the reality is that the world is run by elected governments, and they give promises during elections, which they need to keep.

Lusin Mkrtchyan