This paper provides a summary of the recent Standard & Poor’s (S&P) economic forecast for the euro area (assessing the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak); some recent analyses of the macroeconomic effects of the coronavirus; and some policy recommendations made in the public domain to mitigate these negative effects. The S&P summary On Thursday, 26 March, the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) published an economic forecast for the euro area and the UK, assessing
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Jamie Shea identifies potential strategic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. A retreat back to the nation state? Increased geopolitical rivalries, defence budgets under pressure and reduced capacity to deter Russia and China? The end of globalisation? The rise of the western surveillance state?
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The UK’s biological security strategy, published in 2018 to address the threat of pandemics, was not properly implemented, according to a former government chief scientific adviser. Professor Sir Ian Boyd, who advised the environment department for seven years until last August and was involved in writing the strategy, said a lack of resources was to blame. Other experts said there was a gap between pandemic planning and action, and that the strategy had stalled.
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A moral dilemma is a situation in which a person is faced with two mutually exclusive choices and urgent reasons to choose each of them. Choosing between saving human lives and saving business ventures poses no such moral dilemma; lives and money cannot be equated. And yet this kind of zero-sum thinking has never been an impediment to individuals focused on political or financial aspirations no matter the human cost.
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COVID-19 presents a moral crisis – a choice between ethically unpalatable options. Choosing a strategy of mitigation over suppression strikes a particular balance between expected loss of life and maintaining economic activity. Accepting the real possibility of a greater loss of lives than otherwise might occur has a ‘dirty hands’ feel about it. Leaders and institutions will need to prepare themselves for the opprobrium that will come from confronting such moral dilemmas.
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Martin Wolf focuses on the choices decision-makers face, writing that COVID-19 is not just an economic challenge, it is an ethical one. Discussing the debate between suppression and mitigation strategies, he asks ‘Could a health calamity that is unacceptable in China be acceptable in the UK or US?’
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In a Deutsche Welle opinion piece published 23 March 2020, Frank Hofmann calls for recognition by European and international leaders that multilateral crises cannot be resolved unilaterally; for political leaders to realise that they have an obligation to reverse the relapse into unilateral answers to the coronavirus crisis; and for resistance to the pursuit of policies of discrediting the work of international institutions by nationalists and populists throughout the world. He notes that there was
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that before the public allows their governments to use new dragnet location surveillance powers to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, governments must explain to the public how these systems would be effective in stopping the spread of COVID-19.
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Jonathan Freedland reflects on the speed at the which the national life of the United Kingdom has been completely transformed by coronavirus – and on the emerging questions and divisions. Divisions that came down to the government’s preference for the voluntary over the compulsory; a social libertarianism approach that may prove to have been just too cavalier.
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Published by Transparency International on 19 March 2020, this article looks at the importance of transparency as governments around the world face shortages of medical supplies, prioritising of access to medical services, and allocation of relief funds. It is essential that transparency, openness and integrity are maintained and extended across the health sector. It is vital that emergency powers are exercised only for the purposes for which they were granted. Since many normal oversight and
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Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot sees some common threads in the approaches to COVID-19 of the UK, US and Australian governments. The worst possible people are in charge at the worst possible time. In the UK, the US and Australia, the politics of the governing parties have been built on the dismissal and denial of risk. Just as these politics have delayed the necessary responses to climate breakdown, ecological collapse, air and water pollution,
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Seeping faintly through the pronouncements and policies of some government responses to the coronavirus pandemic are the vapours of older belief systems; a whiff of utilitarianism, the scent of social Darwinism, and the fetid reek of eugenics. Examination of the UK government’s ‘herd immunity’ pandemic response suggests that it is not too farfetched to connect contemporary politics with these ostensibly outdated ideas.
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