"If there’s one thing that 2020 taught us it’s that if we prepare for a health crisis as if it were only a health crisis, then we miss the boat. We learned that when a shock hits, as important as a strong economy might be; or even a good health system, or infrastructure, a necessary precondition for resilience is a stock of social capital. A country that cannot take collective action, a population that cannot make shared sacrifices, a country where there’s no collective buy-in to a national strategy, cannot be resilient, no matter how good the economy is or how many doctors or ventilators you might have."

The country which experienced the largest improvement in its total score on the 2021 FSI is Timor-Leste. One of the youngest countries in the world, Timor-Leste has seen a steady long-term trend of improvement for over a decade and in 2020 the country demonstrated its increased resilience, recording no confirmed deaths from COVID-19 over the entire year. While the country, which is heavily dependent on oil revenues, did see a sharp economic contraction, proactive unified political action together with broad social solidarity have produced impressive results in containing the pandemic. The second most improved country was The Gambia, which has also continued a sustained trend of improvement beginning with FSI 2018.