Bad news travels. Good news doesn’t. When Afghanistan’s government collapsed recently, the whole world watched. But when Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country, produces the world’s most effective democratically elected leader today – President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi – almost no one outside the archipelago knows the story. That story is all the more remarkable because Jokowi has succeeded in one of the world’s most difficult countries to govern.

It is probably premature to offer an assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic’s possible consequences, not least because there may well be many more twists and turns to come. And once we defeat the coronavirus, some of the pandemic-induced changes to our lives might turn out to have been temporary.

In December 1862, in the throes of the American Civil War, which pitted the norms of slavery against the norms of freedom, United States (US) President Abraham Lincoln presented his emancipation plan to Congress. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” he declared. “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.

COVID-19 stormed across the planet in 2020, striking first in Asia and then surging throughout Europe and the Americas in what seemed like an endless tidal wave of grief. With each passing milestone – the first 100 deaths in January, followed by the first 1,000 in February, 10,000 in March, 100,000 in April, and one million as of September – the question always has been when it will it end. Despite its virulence, many simply assume that the pandemic will end sometime in 2021.

As the world moves into the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0, governance at regional and global levels will become a key issue.