Overview

Alberto Alemanno analyses the current COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of risk governance, highlighting the great similarity of the current measures taken by most governments and those applied in the 1918-19 flu. And, among several questions raised by the author, one stands out: why refusing to cooperate at international level did countries converge to similar measures adopted in an uncoordinated way and exacerbating a nationalism never seen before?

In a post-COVID-19 context, will governance prevail based on a logic of permanent or intermittent emergency? The interesting thing, for the author, is to verify that if this pandemic is qualitatively different from the previous ones, there is nothing new in terms of risk regulation.

Alberto Allemano in the final part of the article asks about the lessons learned from this pandemic and whether they will allow assessing the responsibility of Governments and their duty to report to citizens.