 March 11 marked four years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The world has never been the same. All of us have stories of COVID, many of them drenched in sorrow. The pandemic was also an eye-opener as millions realized how policies enacted over decades had destroyed the abilities of health systems to deal with the pandemic of this scale. Across the world, health workers emerged as heroes, but it is evident that they had been and continue to be starved of resources necessary for their work. Four years later, what is happening with COVID? What are the lessons we learned from those difficult years? Rather, did we learn those lessons at all? We go to Anna to find out. Anna, thanks so much for joining us. Four years after COVID-19 was officially announced, of course, the crisis had begun much before that and in the months after the 11th of March, we saw, of course, something that took over the entire world, became a part of our consciousness in so many ways, changed life drastically for many, many millions of people. But four years into this official announcement, what is the situation with COVID-19 now? We know that, of course, while it does not occupy the same space in the media, nonetheless, a number of cases are, there are a number of cases being recorded across the world. Yes, so I'd say that right now we're in a weird space where we do know and we are getting the information that while the disease continues to spread, although, of course, in much lesser amounts than before, at the same time, there is a notable fall in the attention it's getting. But of course, if we look at news from only a couple of weeks back, we know that in the past four years, COVID-19 has killed over 7 million people. This is something that cannot be ignored and that's definitely something that's going to stay with the global health community for a very long time. Right now, we are also still in the midst of the discussions on the pandemic treaty, of course, something that Jotsna has talked about in previous occasions. And this is something that's kind of a constant reminder that many of the questions that COVID-19 has raised remain unresolved. And without the commitment of the whole world, it's very difficult to imagine that they will get addressed in an adequate way anytime soon. So this is something that it's definitely going to stay. What we are also seeing is that as the attention falters, we are also seeing many countries changing their vaccine regimes. So if we look back to only a couple of years back, there was a very big hype. If we can put it that way about people getting vaccinated, about getting all the follow-up doses that are required. And many high-income countries are now reverting on those steps. So they're reconsidering the policies that they have been pushing at the beginning of the pandemic. And of course, this is also something to consider in the light of the fact that many of the people in the global south are still unvaccinated. So it's not like we have vaccinated the world and now we have achieved what we wanted to achieve at the first place. So minimizing the risk of COVID-19 spreading and killing people. But essentially, we have, I would say, come to a point where high-income countries feel more comfortable about the position that they're in right now and are again not thinking about what people in other parts of the world are living through. And the risks that this might bring to them. Right. And I think a key question everyone still has right now is that four years down the line, what are the kind of lessons that we should have learned? I mean, have we learned them is a different question. But just maybe, say, bring back some of those key arguments from that time. What were some of the key lessons that we learned from this pandemic regarding how our health systems were structured? Okay. So the list is very long, I would say. We're looking at the number of lessons that the world could have learned from COVID-19. It would be an amazing thing if we would have implemented all of those lessons. But of course, we are still struggling with kind of the unwillingness of one big part of those playing a role in global health governance about addressing those. So it also should be said that the lessons that COVID-19 has brought up, it's not like they were unexpected. It's not like we didn't have any science that things like this could happen. It's just that the big pharma companies, that the high-income countries, governments, were unwilling to take steps of precaution and to support the world in addressing and meeting such pandemics in an adequate way. Instead, what we have seen is essentially what I think many scientists, many health activists in the world had read it for a very long time. And that's that the low-income countries, even the middle-income countries, they did not have enough resources to meet the pandemic. And that was because they were the World Bank, the IMF, many of the other philanthropic capitalists, organizations, they had forced measures upon them that essentially weakened their public health systems and that made it impossible for them to respond to the pandemic in a good way. Of course, this is also true for some parts of the global north, but the impacts of this are much, much larger in the global south if we look at it in the broader sense. This is something that definitely is one of the major lessons of the pandemic. So instead of devaluing the public health systems, we need to see more money coming into them. We need to see the public health budgets increase, not to decrease as we're seeing still in many countries, including Kenya, which is now struggling with really aftermath of such austerity and neoliberal policies. The second major thing I think we have learned from the pandemic or at least we hope we have learned from the pandemic is that the pharmaceutical model that we have in place does not work. So bringing in the intellectual property, as again, many people have warned from before, it does not work. It does not allow for access to essential medical products to the people who need them. And this is something I think that the COVID-19 highlighted through positive examples of how things can be done differently. So from my point of view, what Cuba did during the COVID-19 pandemic is a major lesson. So this is how things can be done and how things should be done. It's not necessary to give billions of dollars to big pharma companies instead of investing in public research and development. So public research and development of medical products does work. It can be rooted in solidarity, things can be shared, they do not have to be sold. So this kind of mix of both positive and negative lessons is, I guess, what marks the 40th year of COVID-19 now. But thank you so much Anna for the update. European Union countries have agreed on a set of rules that seek to regulate the conditions of gig workers among the most exploited of workers today. The rules seek to determine when gig workers would be considered employees and establish criteria for the same. Now the discussions around these rules have been quite controversial and there are allegations that the latest draft was diluted. We go to Anish to understand what is at stake. Anish, thanks so much for joining us. An interesting law and an important one considering that this is an issue that is being faced by workers across the world. There's hardly a single country where what are called gig workers are not exploited. Many places protest have been staged massively as well. So first of all, what is this proposed legislation? What does it seek to do? Yes, so it essentially seeks to regularize and recognize gig workers as regular employees and it kind of like one of the key aspects of it is that it kind of puts the owners of moving whether or not they are employees or not on the online platforms or on the digital platforms that employ them essentially speaking. It also kind of set out a couple of criteria, a set of five criteria actually of which if two of them are valid then there is an automatic recognition of the said employee or the said worker to be recognized as an employee of the company rather than as a contractor which is what many of these people are currently recognized as under different kinds of laws, national laws across Europe. This is quite significant in one way is that the fact that millions of workers right now will receive the kind of recognition that they need to raise the kind of struggle that they have been waging for years now to gain the same kind of benefits that other workers have in their own respective countries putting in same amount of work actually. So in retrospect they might be entitled to say minimum wage laws, pensions, other kind of work safety protections. So once you are deemed as akin to be an employee you are actually deemed as to be eligible of various sorts of protection that labour laws of Europe which are generally far more advanced than say much of North America or many other western or OECD countries. It kind of gives them that sort of a set of rights that they have been denied for so far. But on the other hand there are some technical ambiguity that is that still exist, the kind of compromise that has gone through to actually get this thing happen and still creates a lot of ambiguity on how this bill is going to be enforced in the next after two years which is what the timeline that they have given once all countries start enacting a similar kind of laws once the EU enacts it in its own level. So we have to wait and see how these technicalities are going to pan out right now but definitely it is at least one step forward whether or not it's two step backwards is a different question at this point in time. And Anish just wanted to ask you about what are some of the criticisms that are being levelled against it. For instance the argument that it has been diluted as well. Yes, so the earlier logs sort of set out to enforce a sort of uniform legal framework for gig workers across Europe. Now that has been diluted, that has been one of the biggest contentions from countries like France and Germany both of whom were not in favor of have governments that are not in favor of recognizing gig workers as regular workers or employees to begin with and you know pretty much beholden to the digital platforms that they have they're protecting. So many of them want a sort of national level laws to be legislated first for these laws to for these protections to be enacted and that is where the ambiguity comes in how you know because it is just a set of framework we are looking at right now. It is not a legal set of and which is something common for EU legislations but it is not the same kind of thing that like it is more diluted more vague more broad. So a whole host of things can be added in the manner in which you know each country's would enact it. Even right now what we are looking at by the estimates given by the European Commission itself is that of the 28 million it will only affect about five million of the gig workers. So clearly showing that a large number of gig workers are still going to be excluded under different technicalities. Again the criteria the fact that like it has an auto triggered criteria but definitely the fact that the employees can actually raise these things in national courts and get the employees deregognized as workers as employees is something that still concerns a lot of people and pretty much can have its own set of negative impact in the long run for the struggle for gig workers. Thank you so much Anish for that update and that's all we have in today's daily debrief. We'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. Meanwhile do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org follow us on all the social media platforms and if you're watching this on YouTube please hit the subscribe button.