Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) ran a two-day pandemic preparedness exercise dubbed Exercise Polaris. The exercise was the first test for a new global coordination mechanism to tackle health emergencies and simulated an outbreak of a fictional viral disease. When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic five years ago, it sometimes felt like we’d been caught on the back foot. Amid the scrambling over lockdowns, masks, and quarantine orders, those of us not working at the highest levels of government could be forgiven for thinking it all looked a bit… chaotic. And in many ways, it was – …

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