Although it may not yet feel like it, the Covid crisis will soon be over. A combination of weakening effect, vaccine take-up, partial herd immunity and better treatments for those who are ill means the acute phase of the pandemic in the UK is drawing to a close. Think days and weeks not months. Hopefully the politicians will keep up and our full freedoms are rapidly restored.

What will not quickly fade – and some may never fade – are the effects of the pandemic; social caution, changes in patterns of work, where we want to live, the rise of certain industries and the fall of others, the pressure on the NHS, debt.

What must not fade – and in fact should be grasped as an opportunity – are the lessons we can learn and the actions we should take.

A key lesson – which informs all others – is that Covid-19 will not be a one-off. There may be specific differences next time but all of us; citizens, businesses and governments would be unwise to assume that another event which disrupts our lives and economies won’t happen again – our planning should assume that it will. Better planning is key because we were not as ready for Covid -19 as we should have been.

The first specific lesson is a very positive one. If financial resources, government policy and entrepreneurial ingenuity are combined it is amazing what we can do. The vaccines and growing list of treatments for Covid-19 are a near miracle. We must not let research into treatments and vaccines for viruses slip back to their former level, we must build on what has been achieved.

What if we turned at least a decent part of the intellectual and financial firepower we have spent on Covid-19 on to other things? Cancer, Parkinson’s, diabetes; we may not be able to eliminate them but over a 10-year period we could transform the outcomes for those who suffer from them.

The health service. Rather oddly the restrictions we are enduring now are actually less about Covid-19 itself but a need to protect the NHS so we can get treatment if we have a heart attack or stroke.

The NHS needs to have more resilience, more reserve capacity built into it. Not more of the same because that capacity will be used as a matter of routine. Can we make arrangements for the NHS to take over chains of hotels if required and to have a hand in the design of those hotels? Can we create a reserve of personnel, trained with specific skills, who can be mobilised to support the core NHS workforce through the next crisis?

For businesses, planning needs to shift from “what will we do if?” to “what will we do when?”. More diversified and more local sourcing, keeping in touch with those who have recently retired so that they could return, spreading key support centres geographically, upgrading information technology, reviewing capital structures. This sort of thinking needs to advance from something you do perfunctorily and stick in a drawer to being a real part of corporate strategic plans. Investors need to play their part in this by rewarding resilience rather than encouraging apparent capital and asset “efficiency”.

For governments there must be the same focus on planning for “when” not “if” but there needs also to be a dramatic improvement in financial resilience. The UK Government has actually done well, having like most governments initially been caught off guard, in developing policies such as the furlough scheme to protect the economy.

The reason the UK was able to implement these policies is that it had the financial credibility to be able to borrow the money to pay for them. National debt is now around £2.2 trillion. This is too high and the reason it is too high is not that we can’t cope with it – the UK has the muscle to do that – but because we might not have the ability to pay for another crisis without deep and long-lasting economic damage. Credibility is not a linear thing, you have it until you suddenly don’t. We need to get the level of debt down – and quite quickly – so that when the next big challenge hits us we are ready and have the strength to overcome it.

Guy Stenhouse is a Scottish financial sector veteran who wrote formerly as Pinstripe