Saturday, March 28th, 2020
A rainy Saturday – perfect for a long lie-in, which means I read through pretty much every news source on my phone. Starting with Apple Newsfeed which covers CNN, FOX, Vox, Times, Newsweek, People, Vanity Fair, Politico, ProPublica, People, Washington Post, USA Today and the Food Network. From there on to BBC, Huffington Post, New York Times, FT, the Guardian and finally Der Spiegel before checking in on FB. That keeps me busy for a few hours.
As always I find a lot of scary, some comforting and interesting reads. I liked a piece by Prime Minister Abiy in the FT.
His thoughts are repeated by other world leaders. The gist of all of them is, to not leave less developed economies alone in the fight. Overall, this is a global crisis and it will take a global response to combat it sustainably. While individual nation-states may now take measures to protect their citizens (and in the USA it is the States, not the nation) now in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, it is not a long term solution.
The world has become too small, to interdependent for small individual solutions is the tenor of all I read that is not related to rising numbers and death tolls. I tend to agree. We will need to come to a shared understanding of rebuilding the economies and closely tied to this global protocols on travel.
Currently, everyone is still too much in crisis mode, too busy trying to cope with the worst to think ahead, but think ahead we must. Given that due to climate change, but also our connected world pandemics are likely to occur again and again, the world will need a global response team, which Bill Gates has been advocating for for over 5 years, to enable humanity to act fast and coordinated.
Closely entwined with active response should also be policy recommendations has to stop spreads and reemergence once a crisis has been contained. Maybe that is something that will come out of this disaster, given that simulations clearly did not have the desired effect. What is certain to happen is a number of economic stimulus packages to mitigate the impact of the economic fall outs we are seeing all around us.
This is where Abyi’s call comes in. And people like the president of the World Bank David Malpass or the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Greorgieva are pledging and asking the G20 for support of emerging markets to deal with the aftermath of COVID19.
Already the economic damage to poor countries like Ethiopia is immense. Tourism and agricultural exports are key sources of foreign currency and income. Both breaking away as people stay home and have less need for key exports from these countries such as flowers.
While the predominantly young economies of Africa need jobs for their predominantly young populations, millions of jobs will now be lost instead. This is where, once the immediate battle is fought, Abyi and others are calling to the world community to step in as none of these countries can make the kind of stimulus packages available to their economie's we see Europe and the US now do.
History shows disaster may also offer opportunities, opportunities to innovate. As more traditional forms of employment may not be available, people become creative and entrepreneurial. The best we can do is devise policy responses (let them experiment, regulate later, do away with bureaucratic requirements for new, businesses, etc.) and financing mechanism supporting creativity and start-ups. People like me in jobs like mine should start developing concepts for this now.
On the local front news continues to be dim if one looks at the FT infection tracking. There is an obvious correlation between taking measures late and spiraling infection (and death) rates. The numbers for the UK and the US seem to corroborate this. Italy on the other hand, while still having significant death numbers, shows stagnation, even reduction, in newly reported infections. Praying that this trend continues. This would give hope to Spain, France, Germany.