Toward a big picture of COVID-19

The paper aims to illustrate and explain the problems and opportunities for improvement in Covid management that become evident when taking a systems perspective. Critical time delays occurred in the regulation of the pandemic that the management cycle of political cybernetics makes explicit. In general, the executive management of the pandemic in global, regional, and national organizations was unprepared in detecting and responding to the onset of the waves and making appropriate decisions towards differential instead of general lockdowns based on available data. This was further complicated by the mutants of SARS-CoV2 that perpetuated the high dynamics of the pandemic. In addition, the diversity of medical specialisms, without appropriate big picture thinking, led to an imbalanced response that failed to appreciate the role of virology and epidemiology compared to clinical and public health-related issues. In consequence, laboratory experts suggested everyday regulations for the citizens without taking into account wider considerations for empirical research. There was an insufficient effort made for proposed treatment studies using existing agents based on the established understanding of essential physiology and the role of local and systemic chronic inflammation. In contrast, driven by media popularization, drugs that later proved beneficial were put in doubt and other drugs that lacked benefit and potentially caused harm were driven to clinical trials and utilization. Person-centered systems view backed by scientific knowledge and established data would have set better priorities. Finally, we need to take a step back and consider the Corona crisis pandemic in the context of the unidimensional utility-driven handling of natural ecosystems by the culture of industrialized countries. This ever-accelerating destruction of life spaces for species drives adaptations are the basis of zoonoses. There is strong evidence that future pandemics should be faced with a more systemic socio-ecological conceptual framework that also reflects the fatal impact of human civilization on natural ecosystems, no matter if SARS CoV2 is a zoonosis or a laboratory accident. It is critical for the future of our species that we collectively learn from this experience, address limitations in our perspectives, enhance our system-based science and bolster global, regional, and national crisis management. The impact of climate change and biodiversity loss has crossed the horizon and is now clearly in full sight.