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The Pandemic and Our Broken Social Contracts
Many of the norms and institutions underpinning contemporary society were forged in and for a bygone era, and now have created a mismatch between people's expectations and their reality. It is little wonder that the pandemic has highlighted the erosion of people's sense of mutual obligation and social trust.
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LONDON – The emergence of the Omicron variant just before the holiday season has led to another surge of infections and hospitalizations in the world’s rich economies, renewing the focus on the issue of vaccine hesitancy (or, in many cases, outright refusal, such as with the Serb tennis player Novak Djokovic). The unvaccinated remain unnecessarily vulnerable, and the exasperated double- and triple-dosed are wondering when enough will be enough. Worse, billions of people in developing countries still do not have access to vaccines, representing a catastrophic, ongoing failure of the international system.