North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, missed another important celebration–the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean military. His absence has spawned a number of reports, none of which can be verified. Some assert that he is dead. Others assert that he is in a vegetative state after a botched heart surgery. There is no way to verify any of these reports and we will have to wait until the government makes an official announcement or Kim appears in public. But the uncertainties have spawned speculation on his possible successor, with some asserting that his sister, Kim Yo-jong, could take Kim’s place. Jieun Baek, writing in The National Interest, outlines some of the possibilities:
“Kim Yo-jong has been being groomed to be a senior political figure, but may lack the necessary preparations to be presented as the first female head of state. If she were to succeed Kim Jong-un as the fourth leader of North Korea, she may face strong hesitation and skepticism from the political male elders who embody a patriarchal system. For North Korea watchers, it may be worth considering the possibility that Kim Pyong-il (Kim Jong-il’s paternal half-brother) may be asked to be a political guardian of Kim Yo-jong, or be the successor himself. Kim Pyong-il, who has been serving as a diplomat abroad for forty years and recently returned to Pyongyang, is within the Baektu Bloodline and may be invited into the inner circle to support Kim Yo-jong to maintain the regime within the Kim Dynasty. He could be part of a larger ‘collective leadership’ that supports and guides Kim Yo-jong as the head of state. If she is not prepared to be immediately presented to the public amidst a sudden death of Kim Jong-un, there may be a transitional period during which a collective leadership reigns.
“While possible, it is difficult to imagine that a collective leadership will take over the state in the long run in the absence of a successor who is from the Kim Family. This is because the political legitimacy of the state is derived from the mythical narrative that North Korea’s founding father Kim Il-sung is essentially a god, and his successors will continue to lead the Socialist revolution and protect the nation. North Korea without a successor from the Kim family is like worshippers going to church without a deity to worship.”
This is not the first time Kim has disappeared from public events: “Kim, believed to be 36, has disappeared from coverage in North Korean state media before. In 2014 he vanished for more than a month and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp. Speculation about his health has been fanned by his heavy smoking, apparent weight gain since taking power and family history of cardiovascular problems.” US President Trump, who has invested a great deal of personal diplomacy with Kim, said yesterday that he believed the reports were incorrect. Reuters reports:
“U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday threw more cold water on reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was gravely ill, but declined to say if he had been in touch with officials there.
“’I think the report was incorrect,’ Trump said at a daily White House briefing, adding that he had heard it was based on ‘old documents.’
“Trump had said on Tuesday that he might contact North Korean officials to inquire about Kim but gave no indication on Thursday he had done so. The two leaders have had regular communications over the past couple of years.
“’We have a good relationship with North Korea, I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un and I hope he’s okay,’ Trump said.
We shall simply have to wait to see what has actually happened. But if there is a new leader in North Korea, it will be difficult for the US to re-establish the dialog about nuclear weapons until the new leader is firmly in power. There are real dangers to personal diplomacy.
Yesterday, US President Trump tweeted that US naval forces will retaliate if Iranian “fast boats” threaten them: “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea” (one should note that gunboats do not fly and therefore cannot be “shot down”). In response, Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, tweeted an equally provocative message: “The US military is hit by over 5000 #covid19 infections. @realdonaldtrump should attend to their needs, not engage in threats cheered on by Saddam’s terrorists. Also, US forces have no business 7,000 miles away from home, provoking our sailors off our OWN Persian Gulf shores.” The exchange comes after Iranian vessels came dangerously close to US naval forces in the Persian Gulf last Wednesday. Iran does not have the ability to confront US naval forces directly and has instead chosen to employ “guerrilla-type” tactics of harassing US vessels with small, but very fast boats. The US vessels cannot know if those Iranian vessels have weapons, such as missiles, which could inflict significant, but not fatal, damage. You can view a video of the confrontation here.
The confrontations come after a relatively quiet period in US-Iranian relations after some tense moments last January. And the Pentagon was quick to note that President Trump’s tweet did not affect the rules of engagement in the Persian Gulf–US naval vessels always operate with the understanding that they have the right of self-defense. The question is why the mood has changed so dramatically so quickly. Both countries are dealing with serious outbreaks of the COVID-19 virus, and Colin P. Clarke and Ariane Tabatabai, writing in Vox, suggest the following:
“So why, in the midst of grappling with an out-of-control pandemic and an economy in free fall, would Tehran devote time and money to fighting the US? The answer, at least in part, is that the Iranian government believes the United States is particularly weak right now, too.
“With Washington’s ineptitude on full display in its domestic response to the coronavirus, few people outside of a select group of Iran hawks — which includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — have much of an appetite for continued clashes with Iranian proxies in Iraq or incidents with the IRGC in the Persian Gulf right now.”
The authors point out how the pandemic has affected US military forces all over the world:
“The coronavirus pandemic sweeping throughout the world has led the United States to draw down its forces, repositioning soldiers within Iraq and consolidating troops to fewer bases. US special forces soldiers have been withdrawn from some of the world’s most dangerous active conflict zones, leaving local host-nation forces to contend with an array of well-equipped and battle-hardened terrorists, insurgents, and militias.
“This has presented Iran with a unique opportunity to expand and consolidate its control in Iraq and push the US entirely out. And the country’s leaders aren’t going to squander their chance.”
Additionally, Iran launched what it described as a “military satellite” which was a demonstration of its ballistic missile capabilities, an issue that the US regards as highly provocative. Jane’s, a highly regarded military journal, quotes a high-ranking US military official:
“The United States did not immediately confirm the launch’s success, but General John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left little doubt that Iran had put a satellite into orbit.
“‘There’s a lot that has to happen before a satellite becomes operational or whether it even works or not and it takes a long time to characterise that because it goes around the world,’ he said during a press conference later that day. ‘By this time tomorrow I imagine, if I was to stand up in front of you, I could explain exactly what was going on, whether it was successful or not. I just don’t have that information yet.’
“‘What I can tell you is that it went a very long way, and if you have a missile that goes a very long way, whether it works or not, puts a satellite into space or not, [it] means it has the ability, once again, to threaten their neighbours, our allies,’ he added.”
There is also President Trump’s concern over the health of the US fossil fuel industry which has been hammered by overproduction by Saudi Arabia which seeks to undermine the production of US shale oil. The threat of open conflict in the Persian Gulf had a dramatic effect on the price of oil in the world. The Maritime Executive notes the effect:
“At the moment of the tweet, the NYMEX West Texas Intermediate (WTI) front-month contract – the benchmark for American crude oil – was trading at about $11.52 per barrel. It began a rally about 20 minutes later, and by 0945 it had risen about 40 percent to peak at $16.12 per barrel. The increase is believed to reflect investor optimism that instability in the Strait of Hormuz could restrict Persian Gulf oil shipments, thereby reducing supply in a glutted market.”
Unfortunately, both Iran and the US have an interest in stoking an international confrontation to distract their populations from the horrors of the pandemic and the damage it is doing to their economies. It is doubtful that either side really wish to go to war under these circumstances, but dialing up the rhetoric always runs the risk of miscalculation and misunderstandings.
Tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. I do not remember the first one very well (I will confess that I was paying far more attention to the Vietnam War at the time). But I was aware of the growing movement to protect the environment, a movement that now seems to be very powerful yet still not centrally involved in the decision-making of most states. The Council on Foreign Relations has produced a very useful timeline of the environmental movement in the proceedings of the United Nations, itself not well represented in national decision-making. The UN only created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1992. That panel has produced five environmental assessments since that time and is currently working on the sixth which is scheduled for release in 2022. Those assessments have become increasingly dire since 1992 and the IPCC has clearly concluded that climate change is caused by human activity.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic will put a damper on the celebrations of the anniversary, but that sad situation also highlights the significance of the climate for human health. Lynda V. Mapes, writing for PhysOrg, explains the link:
“Organizers for Earth Day’s 50th anniversary envisioned a 1-billion-person, global commemoration marked with gatherings, marches, speeches, concerts and more. Years of work in the organizing—now canceled by the coronavirus pandemic. But the global standstill itself is a profound statement of nature’s power, and human vulnerability, not only now in the pandemic but as the planet hurtles toward a warmer future.
“‘COVID is a real warning that when Mother Nature decides to act, we are pretty puny,’ said Gene Duvernoy, who helped organize 50th anniversary events for Earth Day Northwest 2020. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which as of Friday had claimed . Today, humankind faces not only the emergency of the coronavirus pandemic but the catastrophe of global warming. In the scale of geologic time, it is happening just as fast, and already for some species and communities is more destructive.
The stay-in-place orders have reduced economic activity to a substantial degree and it is a very heavy price for many people. But the economic slowdown has also reduced the emission of greenhouse gas emissions which is dramatic and which demonstrates the significance of human activity on climate:
Comparison of air quality based on NO2 in China before and after social distancing measures
Second, the arguments against climate change and the significance of the COIVD-19 virus are all based upon an affirmation of “common sense” as opposed to scientific analysis. That struggle continues (as it has since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century). In the case of COVID-19, however, it does appear that science has the upper hand because of the immediacy of the effects of ignoring it. The protests against the stay-at-home orders have been intense, but small, despite President Trump’s encouragement. Polling evidence indicates that large majorities of the US population support the stay-at-home orders. One can hope that the sentiment supporting science vis-a-vis COVID-19 might ultimately spillover to the climate change debate.
Third, there is accumulating evidence that the degradation of the environment has contributed to the emergence of COVID-19 and perhaps other novel viruses. Air pollution had a definite effect on the seriousness of the COVID-19 infection:
“Because COVID-19 attacks our lungs, air pollution makes us more vulnerable to the virus. It’s no surprise that COVID-19 deaths are high in places with poor air quality. Recent research from Harvard University documents this well. In fact, the study’s findings, the researchers noted, “underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the COVID-19 crisis.”
Additionally, the rapid growth of human populations has infringed upon the natural environment, leading to a closer interaction between humans and wildlife. The Guardian reports:
“Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis, according to the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen.
“Andersen said humanity was placing too many pressures on the natural world with damaging consequences, and warned that failing to take care of the planet meant not taking care of ourselves.
“Leading scientists also said the Covid-19 outbreak was a ‘clear warning shot’, given that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and that today’s civilisation was ‘playing with fire’. They said it was almost always human behaviour that caused diseases to spill over into humans.
“To prevent further outbreaks, the experts said, both global heating and the destruction of the natural world for farming, mining and housing have to end, as both drive wildlife into contact with people.”
The connection between climate change and the coronavirus is not clear to most people. But the pandemic may be tipping the scales back in favor of a more scientific approach to policy issues. More importantly, the breakdown of the petroleum industry, as reflected in the negative price for oil, may weaken the power of the oil and natural gas industry to dominate the discussion about climate change. We will see how much money the Trump Administration uses from the bailout programs to rescue the industry.
According to Reuters, China has “established an administrative district on the Paracel islands and another on the Spratly islands. The two districts are under the control of China’s Sansha city”. The two islands are in the South China Sea which China claims as part of its national territory even though that claim does not rest on any interpretation of international maritime law. Other states in the region, such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia also have made claims on the South China Sea. Vietnam protested the action:
“‘The establishment of the so-called Sansha City and related activities seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty,’ Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said in a statement.
“’Vietnam demands that China respect Vietnam’s sovereignty and abolish its wrongful decisions,’ Hang said in the statement.”
Some analysts believe that China is making these moves now because the world–especially the US–is preoccupied with the COVID-19 crisis:
“Richard Heydarian, an academic and former Philippine government adviser, described the move as China taking advantage of a ‘strategic vacuum’ created by the Covid-19 crisis.
“’On the one hand it’s engaging in face mask diplomacy [providing medical supplies to other countries] … but on the other hand it’s on the offensive,’ he said.
“’All of them should be seen as part of one package in which China seizes the strategic opportunity of not only its neighbouring countries scrambling to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, but also the US Navy’s suspension of overseas appointments.’”
The US has yet to comment on the Chinese moves. I doubt that there will be any response.
And now, for something completely different (apologies to Monty Python)
President Trump held his daily coronavirus briefing yesterday which lasted a very long time. It covered a multitude of issues, although I personally found it difficult to follow the train of thought. But there was an interesting point where Mr. Trump began to talk about his relationship with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un:
“No, I think we’re doing fine. Yeah, sure, it’s — North Korea, I see they’re testing short-range missiles. And, you know, they’ve been doing it a long time. I received a nice note from him recently. It was a nice note. I think we’re doing fine.
“Look, if I wasn’t elected, you would, right now, be at war with North Korea. Okay? I’ll tell you, for your people that don’t understand the world and they don’t understand how life works: If I wasn’t elected, you would, right now — maybe the war would be over, hopefully with a victory.
“But if you remember, when I first came in, we didn’t have ammunition. Not a good way to fight a war. President Obama left us no ammunition. Okay? And he left us virtually no medical and ventilators. He left us — the cupboard was dry, right? The cupboard was dry.
“No, I think, right now, you’d be at war, essentially — in some form — it would be over, it would be raging — with North Korea, if I weren’t President. And we’re doing just fine with North Korea. Just fine. We’ll see how it all ends up.
“You know, in the meantime, they said, ‘Oh, Trump has given up.’ And then they said ‘Oh, really, what’s he given up?’ And they said, ‘I don’t know.’ Then they said, ‘He met.’ Oh, I met. I met.
“No, I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un. That’s not a bad thing to have a good relationship. Obama wanted a relationship; he wouldn’t meet with Obama. Wouldn’t meet with him. Okay? I have a good relationship with him. We met at the line. I stepped over the line. The first time anything like that’s ever — it’s all good. It’s just — it’s good.”
It is difficult to determine exactly what point Mr. Trump was trying to make, but his assertion that he had received a “nice note” from Kim Jong-un elicited a response from North Korea. According to Politico:
“North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there was no letter addressed to Trump recently by “the supreme leadership,” a reference to Kim.
“It said it would examine why the U.S. leadership released ‘the ungrounded story’ to the media.
“’The relations between the top leaders of [North Korea] and the U.S. are not an issue to be taken up just for diversion nor it should be misused for meeting selfish purposes,’ the statement said.”
Kim was not present at the celebrations for the Day of the Sun, an annual event honoring the birthday of Kim Il-sing, the founder of North Korea and Kim’s grandfather. It is difficult to interpret his absence from the event. It may be simply that Kim is avoiding public contact as the COVID-19 virus works its way through the North Korean population. Or it could be something more serious, such as Kim himself being sick. It is difficult to know what is going on in North Korea.
President Trump has characterized himself as a “war president” in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In my lifetime, I have witnessed a number of wartime presidents: Johnson had his war on poverty, Nixon had his war on cancer, Carter termed energy conservation as the “moral equivalent of war”, Reagan had his war on drugs, and W. Bush had his war on terror. On 13 March 2020 Mr. Trump invoked the Stafford Act to declare a national public health emergency. I’ve also been around when the US has fought a number of wars: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And I am concerned that other wars are waiting to be launched against Iran and North Korea. The war analogy is a dangerous one, designed to mobilize public support for actions that undermine the very principles of democratic governance.
“‘Americans know war,’ theologian Stanley Hauerwas notes, and when we ‘are frightened … ironically war makes us feel safe.’ Michael Sherry concurs — building on the work of the late historian Marilyn B. Young — when he calls the United States ‘a nation deeply wedded to and defined by war, though maddeningly reluctant to admit it.’
Still, real war remains distant and abstract for the overwhelming majority of Americans. As scholar Andrew Bacevich indicated in 2011, ‘approximately half of 1 percent of our citizens bear the burden of service and sacrifice’ — meaning 99.5% of Americans are not personally attached to the military or the national security state. The physical and emotional distance separating most Americans from the battlefield allows them to glorify war while knowing nothing of its unspeakable horrors or the sacrifice it entails.”
“Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and resistance to oversight make him more like Orban than like the British. With uncertainties about how this year’s presidential election will be conducted—and with Trump’s friend Bibi Netanyahu showing how to leverage the coronavirus crisis into staying in power despite even an indictment for corruption—political maneuvering by Trump that would undermine electoral democracy seems likely. It becomes all the likelier to the extent he can claim that being at ‘war’ necessitates compromising even democratic principles and practices.
“The issue of how the end of the metaphorical war is complicated when applied to the coronavirus. Given what epidemiologists tell us, a burst of short-term sacrifice in the form of highly restrictive lockdowns and quarantines would be more beneficial than any short-term efforts that might be made in the name of counterterrorism. This kind of anti-viral ‘surge’ would pay more dividends than the military surges in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The fight against covid-19, however, will not have an ending even remotely analogous to the World War II surrender on the deck of a battleship. Even those experts who are optimistic about the development of a vaccine are not talking about eradication of covid-19 in the way smallpox has been eradicated. Shoving aside other principles and priorities for the sake of ‘winning’ a current ‘war’ is inappropriate when what is needed are sustainable, long-term arrangements that accommodate interests of public health, economic prosperity, and political rights and liberties.”
A few days ago, Mr. Trump declared that he had “total authority” over the actions of states, despite the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. An today, he tweeted out to protesters in three states, advocating that the protests should “liberate” citizens from the very strictures his administration had articulated yesterday before the stay at home orders are relaxed. NBC News describes how some citizens interpret the tweets:
“Trump’s tweets, however, pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed ‘the boogaloo,’ for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year.
“There were sharp increases on Twitter in terms associated with conspiracies such as QAnon and the ‘boogaloo’ term immediately following the president’s tweets, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit group of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.
“Posts about the ‘boogaloo’ on Twitter skyrocketed in the hours after the president’s tweets, with more than 1,000 tweets featuring the term, some of which received hundreds of retweets.
A new research article was published in the Journal Cryosphere that documented a highly unusual weather pattern in Greenland in the summer of 2019 that contributed to a very high level of ice melt. According to the abstract:
“The summer of 2019 was characterized by an exceptional persistence of anticyclonic conditions that, in conjunction with low albedo associated with reduced snowfall in summer, enhanced the melt–albedo feedback by promoting the absorption of solar radiation and favored advection of warm, moist air along the western portion of the ice sheet towards the north, where the surface melt has been the highest since 1948. The analysis of the frequency of daily 500 hPa [Hectopascal- A unit of pressure equal to a millibar (1 hPa = 1 mb)] geopotential heights obtained from artificial neural networks shows that the total number of days with the five most frequent atmospheric patterns that characterized the summer of 2019 was 5 standard deviations above the 1981–2010 mean, confirming the exceptional nature of the 2019 season over Greenland.”
The Guardian puts the analysis in less scientific terms: “Crucially, the team note, the high pressure conditions lasted for 63 of the 92 summer days in 2019, compared with an average of just 28 days between 1981 and 2010. A similar situation was seen in 2012, a record bad year for melting of the ice sheet.” The real question is to what extent the summers of 2012 and 2019 were anomalous. If those summers are becoming more of the norm in Greenland, then most of the models used by researchers to predict the degree of ice melt in the future will significantly underestimate the potential for ice melt and, subsequently, sea level rise. The Guardian goes on:
“If such high pressure zones become a regular annual feature, future melting could be twice as high as currently predicted, a result that could have serious consequences for sea level rise.
“’This melt event is a good alarm signal that we urgently need to change our way of living to hold [back] global warming because it is likely that the IPCC projections could be too optimistic for [the] Arctic,’ said Dr Xavier Fettweis, co-author of the research from the University of Liege, adding that the atmospheric conditions were unlikely to be down to natural climatic variability and could be driven by global heating.”
The Trump Administration has announced that it will cut US funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) for alleged lapses in reporting the significance of the COVID-19 virus in China. National Public Radio has published a very informative timeline of WHO’s involvement in publicizing the virus. The evidence suggests that WHO made its first statement about the new virus on 5 January, but that it did not signal the virus as a serious threat to the international community until 30 January. On that day the Director General of WHO made this statement:
“For all of these reasons, I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus.
“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries.
“Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to deal with it.
“Let me be clear: this declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China. On the contrary, WHO continues to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak.”
The statement tried to do two things at once: to warn the world about the possibility of a pandemic but also to express confidence in China’s ability to prevent a pandemic from occurring. It was a singularly unfortunate statement reflecting bureaucratic caution and a strong desire not to alienate China. It was not until 11 March that WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.
It seems clear that both WHO and China bungled the situation and that more effective action was necessary at a much earlier point in time–many lives could have been saved if that had happened. But we should keep in mind that US President Trump was also reluctant to take strong action at that point. On 24 January, President Trump tweeted: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” And on 24 February, Mr. Trump tweeted: “”The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” I think that it is fair to say that all parties did not take the situation seriously enough and we should try to figure out how to make sure that national and international leaders act more promptly in future situations.
I say this not to apportion blame–it is a bootless exercise unless we are prepared to assure that the process of assessing responsibility for the failure leads to protections against such failures in the future. It does appear, however, that the action to defund WHO is an exercise in divesting responsibility for lapses in institutional and personal judgments. Jamie Metzl, a member of the World Health Organization international advisory committee on human genome editing and a former National Security Council official, has written an op-ed for Newsweekwhich makes the point:
“The United States had all the information it needed by January to mount a massive response, but Trump actively undermined the findings of his own intelligence and health officials. Worse, he passed misinformation to the American people that potentially led to many thousands of deaths. We’ve got to ask why this happened.”
The real question we should be asking is how defunding the WHO will lead to better performance by the WHO. Avoiding failures in the future should be our objective, and there is no other international organizations tasked with the problem of protecting global health. Do we really think that the US would have been better prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic if the WHO did not exist? An editorial in The Guardian goes further and considers the act on WHO as an attempt by the US to avoid responsiblity for its own failures:
“The attacks on the WHO and China from the US, the UK and elsewhere reflect not only anger at Beijing’s responsibility for this pandemic, and a belief that coronavirus has exposed the state’s essential nature, but also a wish to divert attention from unpardonable failings by western governments. They, too, must take responsibility.”
The International Monetary Fund has published its annual World Economic Outlook, and its estimates for global economic growth in 2020 are dismal. Those results reflect the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic activity. According to the report:
“The COVID-19 pandemic is inflicting high and rising human costs worldwide, and the necessary protection measures are severely impacting economic activity. As a result of the pandemic, the global economy is projected to contract sharply by –3 percent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008–09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario–which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound—the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalizes, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial.”
My own view is that the IMF is overly optimistic for the prospects for growth in 2021. The projection assumes that the recovery from COVID-19 will mimic recovery from earlier pandemics which almost invariably take what is known as a “V-shaped” recovery–a sharp decline followed by a sharp uptick as things return to normal. I do not think that COVID-19 will follow this pattern because there is a great deal of uncertainty whether infections confer immunity. There are too many examples of people who are asymptomatic as well as people who apparently have been reinfected. This anomalous pattern suggests to me that a vaccine will be more problematic than in earlier viruses.
Second, I think that the IMF was not able to take into account what I believe will be a devastating impact on poor communities. So far, the virus has not been tracked effectively in Latin America and Africa, and we have no idea how it will be transmitted in societies that lack the resources for effective medical equipment as well as infrastructures that will make social distancing virtually impossible. The richer countries have always significantly underestimated the significance of the markets and resources in poor countries for economic health. COVID-19 will deprive the global economy of those important resources for economic activity.
Third, and most importantly, the IMF baseline for recovery relies upon experiences that assume fairly effective policy responses by governments in cases such as H1N1, SARS, and MERS. Those epidemics were addressed by multilateral responses that were, generally speaking, cooperative. What we have witnessed thus far in COVID-19 is essentially a free-for-all response dictated by the activities of the US: outbidding and hijacking supplies, nationalistic rhetoric of blame which has undermined trust, and the hollowing out of international organizations such as the World Health Organization. Politico outlines some of these issues:
“The coronavirus pandemic is pushing countries around the world into a cutthroat competition for medical resources — and the United States is being cast as a leading villain.
“President Donald Trump’s administration stands accused of effectively hijacking shipments of masks and additional crucial supplies meant for other countries, including U.S. allies, and strong-arming private firms to prioritize America over other parts of the world. On Friday, Trump announced he was invoking the Defense Production Act to restrict U.S. exports of key medical gear.
“Developing countries, where Covid-19 has yet to fully wreak havoc, are terrified of being left behind in the race for personal protective equipment, or PPE, and other materials because they cannot match the purchasing power of the U.S. and other wealthy countries.
“Independent aid organizations that cater to the neediest corners of the globe are finding themselves competing for attention from medical goods manufacturers. The Trump administration has even asked aid groups to share those supplies with the U.S. government, in a bizarre reversal of the usual dynamic between the world’s leading power and those it typically helps.
“’It’s ‘Lord of the Flies: PPE Edition’,’ said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former U.S. official who specializes in disaster response. ‘We need some global solidarity, and instead we have global competition.’
“The international scramble mirrors the beggar-thy-neighbor competition among U.S. states for ventilators and other items considered vital to halting the spread of infections. It’s a reflection of the astonishing dearth of coordination among world leaders on the response to the virus, which has appeared in more than 180 countries.
“It also could exacerbate and extend the crisis: If poorer countries are unable to stop the virus, it is even more likely reemerge in more developed parts of the world that thought they had defeated it.
“According to the I.M.F., the global economic contraction from 1929 to 1932 was approximately 10 percent. Advanced economies shrank by 16 percent during that period.
“Barry Eichengreen, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who is a scholar of the Great Depression, said there were several parallels between now and then. He pointed to the jobless rate in the United States, which he expects could top the 25 percent that was reached in 1933, and the global nature of the downturn, which could prolong the crisis as poor countries struggle to combat the virus.
“While the Great Depression started in the financial sector and played out over several years, Mr. Eichengreen notes that the drop in economic activity this year has been sudden and the bottom remains unclear. But some of the spillover effects could be similar, he said, with skittish households increasing their savings and businesses growing wary of large capital investments. And as deficits soar, some countries could push for austerity measures.”
Do not take the Great Depression analogy too seriously. If we have stupid people pushing for deficit reduction (good riddance, Paul Ryan) or for interest rate hikes, then maybe. But I think Pelosi and Schumer will make sure that such steps are avoided.
World Politics News 