A long-term strategy for learning to live with coronavirus

Last year, Professor of Sociology Tanja van der Lippe co-authored an advisory report in which she outlined pandemic scenarios. In January of this year, Van der Lippe was invited to discuss and work on a long-term strategy to contain the corona crisis with, among others, OMT members Marion Koopmans and Diederik Gommers. The meeting led to the recently published report: From Fighting a Pandemic to Living in an Endemic (report in Dutch).

The Utrecht professor stresses the importance of looking at the corona crisis through more than just the lens of medicine: "It is important that OMT members themselves now signal that the long-term strategy team should also include sociologists, psychologists, economists, ethicists, management experts and other social scientists and humanities experts."

A crisis like this is inextricably linked to other long-term issues. Think about climate.

Transition team

The current report presents four future scenarios: from a cold virus to a worst case scenario. The authors of the report also advise the short-term establishment of a broad-based scientific transition team, a team that can advise the government to better prepare society for a life with the virus. Van der Lippe makes it clear that a crisis like the coronapandemic does not happen in isolation. "A crisis like this is inextricably linked to other long-term issues. Think about climate, energy transition and inequality."

Media

The report 'From fighting a pandemic to living in an endemic' received a great deal of media attention. Scientists were interviewed by de Volkskrant and nu.nl wrote about the publication.