COVID-19 has caused titanic global shifts that are continuing to reverberate across the planet, thrusting our societies into territories unknown and crippling our economies.

There have been few out there who have consistently contributed clear insights into the potential risks of a virus like COVID-19, how it can rapidly propagate across our interconnected world and wreak devastation, and most importantly, how to stop it, than Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam.

Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam is president of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) where they study how interactions within a system lead to its behavioral patterns, and how the system interacts with its environment.

His recent work recent quantitatively analyses the origins and impacts various complex phenomena, including pandemics.

He's published over 200 research papers in professional journals, including Science and Nature, authored of two books: a textbook Dynamics of Complex Systems, and Making Things Work, which applies complex systems science to solving problems in healthcare, education, systems engineering, international development, and ethnic conflict.

His work on the causes of the global food crisis was cited among the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2011 by Wired magazine

He has been a Visiting Scholar at Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He is currently Research Scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory.

In our conversation, we cover:

- Why applying complexity science is the right approach to deal with issues of uncertainty like the pandemic we're facing

- What is the Precautionary Principle

- The structural problems of the World Health Organisation

- The need for global governance, but more importantly, effective decision-making

- What we can learn from biology about ethics

- Most importantly, how we can beat COVID-19, and why it will take all of us to do so.

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Links:

https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam

https://necsi.edu/yaneer-bar-yam

https://www.endcoronavirus.org/

https://necsi.edu/

https://necsi.edu/complexity-rising-from-human-beings-to-human-civilization-a-complexity-profile

https://necsi.edu/ethical-values-a-multiscale-scientific-perspective

Systemic Risk of Pandemic via Novel Pathogens –

Coronavirus: A Note

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b68a4e4a2772c2a206180a1/t/5e2efaa2ff2cf27efbe8fc91/1580137123173/Systemic_Risk_of_Pandemic_via_Novel_Path.pdf

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