COVID-19 PANDEMIC – SECURITY CHALLENGES, RISKS, AND THREATS

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic exposed all the shortcomings of global and national societies. The world was taken by insecurity, isolation, and confusion, which consequentially carry certain security challenges, in a combination the world has not previously seen. Some of these challenges are a consequence of the pandemic itself, but another part of challenges arose from the reaction of countries to the pandemic and changes in the everyday lives of individuals. COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected every segment of society. Because of closures and isolation, there are vestiges of a large economic crisis which would be a problem for itself, but it may come while the health crisis is still yet to pass. On the other side, we saw dysfunctions in media, in a sense that we had a flood of false information, controversies, and confusion, which combined with too few true and relevant information caused individuals to poorly get by in an otherwise complicated situation, as well as the crisis of authority and credibility in public discourse. The fact that we are facing an event with a magnitude hardly comparable to any precedent can in a certain measure justify poor pandemic management, but it remains questionable why society, global and local ones, in a time of such development and achievements of every kind couldn’t react better, at least in a sense to prevent that changed everyday life from becoming a changed reality and the way of living. If that happens, it will bring new challenges, risks, and threats, some of which we probably cannot predict yet, because this is an unprecedented event which is still underway.