COMMENT | My newsfeed on Covid-19 shows a common thread: the new coronavirus may be suppressed, but it will not be eradicated. Looks like Covid-19 is here to stay, its virulent feelers scenting out the weak and the aged with comorbidities, diminishing them while the younger and stronger ones prevail, many with no symptoms.

Yes, that is a grim picture of Covid’s ripple effects on the well-being of individuals and families. Much has since been written on how to cope with the pandemic. The measures seem simple: anticipate, adapt, and act before the next worst possibility.

Despite the long history of pandemics - from the bubonic plague and Spanish flu to SARS and Ebola - governments were generally ill-prepared for this viral outbreak, which Bill Gates foreshadowed in a 2015 TED Talk following the Ebola epidemic in Africa.

Figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute show that a majority of governments, with regional variations, allocate a larger budget to public healthcare as a percentage of their GDP than to defence. (Malaysia’s health budget comes to RM30.6 billion, which is twice the allocation for defence in 2020).

However, regional military exercises were...