Tara Shine

So I guess that's a bigger question about, you know, the future and the present, if you like, of multilateralism.

So multilateralism exists, and that's part of like the world order of things, which, you know, leaders like Trump are very willing to break that world order and break those common rules.

But the problem is,

that in something like a global pandemic, same as with climate change, things like this, no one country can make themselves safe completely in a globalized world.

So even the countries that shut themselves down completely during the COVID-19 pandemic, they still needed other countries for goods and services.

They still needed other countries because they perhaps created the vaccine.

So no country is an island in this sense, in that no country can actually exist on its own.

They can try for a while and try and look after themselves.

But as every country needs another country for something, I imagine it would break down over time.

That's why we have the multilateral systems.

But is the multilateral system under threat at the moment because of the actions of bad actors?

Yes.

But I think, you know, good reason to double down on these shared rules.

Exactly, and imagine if those developing countries were at the heart of the next pandemic and they refused to share the genetic material or information around how that virus was affecting their people.

Then it would slow down the process of understanding that virus, of developed countries being able to be prepared and ready for it, of being able to slow down global travel systems.

So unless everybody cooperates in this,

it can't work.

We can't all be safe.

So again, this is another one of those things where it's in everybody's best interest, actually, to get this global customer online.

Yeah, so this study from the University of Helsinki is going on about 20 years.