COVID-19 is resilient. But humans have their own powerful strategies for adaptation.

It’s no secret that I’m a serious fan of epic action movies. (F9 was the first movie I saw in the theater since March 2020.) And I’ll confess that over the past 16 months I’ve found myself thinking of the phases of the COVID-19 pandemic as chapters in a real-life, personal and professional epic. The current chapter? “Resilience: Rise of the Variants.”?

Resilience is commonly defined as the capacity of an individual or system to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the midst of changing circumstances. SARS-CoV-2 has proven to be quite resilient, thwarting efforts to reduce its transmission. The question for us — as individuals, communities and industries — is whether we are up to the challenge of matching this resilience with our own strategies for adaptation.

The resilience of SARS-CoV-2 emerges from the virus’ ability to generate enormous variation, even at the risk of failure. The fast but sloppy replication ensures at least some copies will survive and perhaps thrive even in environments that are changing. This is not a desirable strategy for humans or society. Luckily, we have our own powerful counter-strategy: collaboration and cooperation.?

In the past 16 months, the phrase “we’re all in this together” has become tired and overused. (I should know, since I have contributed to its overuse.) While this statement may have been reduced to a truism, it is also an imperative. Our ability to maintain our integrity in the face of an existential threat depends on our ability to put the needs of the whole system — our local, national and global communities, now and in the future — ahead of our individual needs. Cooperation and collaboration are our strategic superpowers.?

We often point to selfishness as the biggest threat to cooperation, but I’ve come to believe that this is not the case. Cooperation depends on trust: trust that others are as committed to the greater good as you are, trust that others will support you, trust that others will not take unfair advantage of circumstances for their own gain (at the expense of the community). Trust does not require perfection, or ideal behavior at all times, but it does require accountability, empathy and understanding.?

In a system in which cooperation is maintained by accountability alone, trust rapidly degrades to fear and shame, which will in the end undermine cooperation. In a system with empathy and understanding but no accountability, individuals do not have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, and the organization or community will fail in its capacity to grow and strengthen.?

This summer, many of us are looking to recover a sense of stability and normalcy, even as SARS-CoV-2 continues to demonstrate its resiliency around the globe. If we are to emerge from this chapter stronger than we entered it, I believe it will be because we, too, have adapted effectively — drawing on our capacity for collaboration, acting with empathy and accountability, and fostering a renewed sense of trust.?