It will soon be 3 months since COVID shut down the world.

A lifetime worth of important insights can be gleaned from how countries reacted to it. Here are a few which seemed important to me

Trust in what the government says is very high in East Asia (Japan,SK,Taiwan,SGP,HK), robust in India and signs of severe decline in USA/UK

Lack of trust should be a leading indicator of political instability

Scientists and technical experts need to be trained on how to communicate difficult concepts to the mass public - especially the levels of uncertainty in their models and what that means for decision-making

Public memory is shorter even than initially suspected

Worldwide, the economic shutdown was initiated to allow countries to build up hospital capacity. Slowly the original aim changed to 'Lets wait till cases decline' - Goal post shifting with massive consequences

Just like in the kindergarten playground, even in global politics, bullies like China can get away with much more than one would have guessed - every country wants someone else to be the first to stand-up. End result - China wins.

Ability of humans to adapt to scarcity remains unparalleled. From being voracious consumers, everyone adjusted to having less very quickly

Ability to react to historic events is more competently handled at a local level than a global level

Villages and towns isolating themselves and ending up with zero cases while WHO, EU, UN only made matters much worse

Fear of the unknown remains the all-time greatest tool of governments to make citizens give up on their personal rights

Punch above your weight and the result may surprise you

In spite of the daily chaos, the amount of effort India put in to save lives has been a huge surprise. My view is this is the first time since 1947 when Indians came together to fight a common enemy with such determination