COVID-19 left no choice to editorial teams by becoming the top priority for everyone - disrupting schedules as it has imposed itself upon all areas of life and all social actors. COVID reminds us of many problematics of our interdependencies : the cohabitation between humans, animals, the environment and viruses; the extraordinary dispersion of things and beings induced by globalization ; the (dys)functionings of the governance of world health and health systems ; inequalities of race, class, access to treatment, but also to research infrastructures, etc. These issues, as well as the magnitude of the pandemic and its multidimensional impacts are such that we must humbly seek to understand what has happened in the world and on the African continent since December 2019. It is necessary to situate our questioning in the long run. First of all, in the longer term of history because this pandemic is neither the first nor the last. We have been told that every five years a new pandemic will emerge, especially a zoonosis. If this forecast is true - and it has been true over the period 1976-2019 - then, because of the shock effect of COVID-19, to live will mean to be consciously and constantly negotiating with viruses, and to govern will increasingly require doing so under the threat of pandemics and their consequences.