Blog Post 1 Poster Under Account, Klein

 Reed Klein 

Professor Shirk

International Politics 

2/2/22

The concepts I would like to compare today are the idea of international politics being continuous and changing to the evolution of protocols throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. While in international politics over the past 100 years there has been a large shift in European colonization to independent states governed by the natives of the nation, the dominance of these European nations since then has not completely gone away. Even though a place like South Africa is fairly successful in running an independent government, this does not change the fact that the nation has large ties to Great Britain and remains one of the nation's close allies and a crucial trade partner. This compares pretty nicely to Covid. Even though most still regard covid as a deadly disease that should be taken seriously, we went from complete stay-at-home orders to moderate autonomy to go out and enjoy the world. At one point public health officials were fairly adamant that wearing face masks would not be an effective way to stop the spread of the virus, but just a few months on from these statements and masking recommendations and requirements became a cornerstone of public health guidance. Another aspect of this disease that relates to the idea of some things changing while others are constant is the wisdom around symptomatic versus asymptomatic people being the ones to spread the disease. This knowledge has very much been up in the air for a long time with knowledge eventually shifting toward asymptomatic people not spreading the disease. Another idea that comes right off the back of this is the quarantining periods there are for people who contract the virus. While the initial quarantine period was up to 14 days in the modern-day it is only 5 days for people that have received the covid vaccine. Although there have been all these aforementioned changes, covid as a disease despite variations has maintained a fairly similar context. Despite the world being much better at dealing with the virus now nearly 2 years into the pandemic even outside of creating a life-saving vaccine, the hysteria around covid remains the same mostly. Everything around covid has changed, but the virus is still the virus and it is going to continue to impact our lives until we can somehow get it to go away. This is where I can circle back to the larger context of International Politics. Even though there are very few colonies left and states have gained larger autonomy, the influence of being colonized for decades to centuries makes it that many of these nations are still behested to the culture that dominated them for longer than they could remember. These nations have undergone much change, but at the end of the day, they still hold onto many parts that connect them to their makers. Overall though whether it is contemporary covid policy or international relations we hope that when change happens it can progress society. Making our world safe, prosperous, and happy is the goal of the majority and through changing policy in either regard we hope to get to a point where all of this could happen at the same time.