"we need to prevent a pandemic like this from ever happening again."

[X-Files]

"Before the talks, Mr Johnson said: "In the last year the world has developed several effective coronavirus vaccines, licensed and manufactured them at pace and is now getting them into the arms of the people who need them.

"But to truly defeat coronavirus and recover we need to prevent a pandemic like this from ever happening again. That means learning lessons from the last 18 months and doing it differently next time around."

G7: Leaders to unveil global anti-pandemic action plan

They will pledge all their resources to ensure a global pandemic like Covid-19 is never repeated.

www.bbc.com

 

[mr merlin]

Poor Boris, totally out of touch.

If he really thought he needed to learn form the past he would have changed course, he didn't.

 

[X-Files]

Yes and no. We do shift things over time, but you are right in that it isn't a simple linear "oh - now we fixed it" kind of thing.
There were pandemic preparations made on a world-wide scale after SARS and MERS. A lot of them were then neglected if not completely abandoned over time when a new big pandemic didn't come right away.
Some of that can be rebuilt. People noted how Southeast Asia, where SARS hit much more strongly, tended to react better than the rest of the world. Their memory of the last one was stronger and they hadn't slipped down the preparation ladder as far.

In some ways, the next pandemic is guaranteed to be worse no matter what. If we don't learn any lessons and improve, it will be worse because of course it will in that case. If we do then there will be small outbreaks that won't ever become pandemics (and will be pointed to as proof we don't need all these preparations and are overreacting) and the one that presents a new obstacle we didn't expect will be worse because we won't have prepared for it and it had to be nasty to get past the defenses in the first place.

Overall I think we will make progress for about a decade of putting in some better plans and preparations, but if nothing nasty happens by then to "justify this kind of spending" the programs will be cut and neglected and it will be the same story all over again.