UN Climate Change News, 22 May 2020 – There is a lot of talk about getting back to normal after the Covid-19 crisis is over. And yet normal – business as usual – is what has made our planet and our societies vulnerable to crises in the first place.

There is a growing acceptance that the prospect of a V-shaped recovery is unrealistic. “A couple months ago I was optimistic, I was hopeful, that maybe we would have a ‘V’-shaped recovery - shut things down, clamp down on the virus, and then have a quick recovery,” Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said in an interview on the PBS Newshour. But Kashkari now says that “we are in for unfortunately a slow, long recovery,” characterized by “devastating” job losses.

​Ms Melinda Eng, 50, left her general manager job in mid-2016, when the business environment turned sour and her company, which produces advertising accessories, could no longer afford to pay her monthly salary of $5,000.
Over the next four years, she applied for well over 100 jobs but met with little success. The few prospective employers who met her would not believe she would accept markedly lower remuneration packages.

The COVID-19 pandemic, involving a novel strain of coronavirus, has claimed over 3,000 lives in China and worldwide. China, vulnerable and ever more attentive to its international prestige, has identified friends and adversaries in this time of crisis, as revealed by its official rhetoric and media narratives.

​China has shown an affinity for using diplomatic protocols to signal to other states where their official relations stand with China. In regards to the coronavirus,