Figures and previews from the forthcoming IPCC AR6 (due out in July) are starting to come out. They're not looking great. Limiting warming to 2 degrees C or less is now virtually impossible, as even the most optimistic net carbon zero projections put us at 2.1 degrees of warming by 2100. More realistic target is now in the 2.5-3.5 degrees of warming range, which is likely to be extremely bad for a lot of people.
The authors of the IPCC report suggest that only an "immediate and radical transformation" of the global economy and governance would allow us to avoid the worst of the oncoming climate catastrophe. This kind of language is a marked difference from earlier IPCC reports, and reflects a growing sense of urgency and impending doom within the climatology community broadly.
Some countries handled covid fairly decently: Taiwan, Iceland, New Zealand, Vietnam, China, Cuba. Now take smaller island polities off the list (they have an advantage in that they can much more easily control entry and are, geographically, much smaller in area) and you get two stand outs; China and Vietnam.
What do these two have in common? A belief in the common good and a country not run and organized around principles of profit but around principles of human need and well-being. You can get people to believe in the common good very easily, in my experience it's actually the default amongst non-PMC or small business tyrants, it takes a lot of wrong-education and propaganda to get people to shake off their inherent drive towards solidarity and protection of their communities. You can't get people to care and wear masks when their leaders, at first, tell them not to wear masks like Fauci did or like the Vox explainers did back in March and April. You can't direct a society of well-being if it's oriented around profit and the accumulation of capital. You can't catch the people that want to flout principles of communal protection and care (by not wearing a mask or going out when their sick) when policing is centered on protection of property or the continued marginalization of racial minorities. It's hard in countries where the healthcare system is under attack by austerity for multiple decades to manage a pandemic - I'm sure you don't need to be told but nurses and doctors and healthcare staff were already out of PPE before December 2019, they were already re-using masks and using trash bags as PPE because of chronic underfunding.
These systems seem invulnerable. But it's just a glamour. "All" it takes is a conscious working class that is organized and willing to be militant in its demands for control over the political-economy. It's a tall order, but it's the fate we've been handed by history. I think we can take this challenge and further I think we can win the struggle and reorganize our society around principles of health and communal care, so that if another pandemic comes around what were once called the countries of the West can handle it just as well as Vietnam and China have handled it today.