[The Soup Nazi]

Zakaria's Global Briefing, April 8:

An Unequal Pandemic

Covid-19 is wreaking havoc in developed countries like the US, UK, Spain, and Italy, but commentators have argued with increasing unanimity that the virus is poised to hit some people and countries harder than others.

Inequality will only exacerbate the harm of Covid-19, according to a recent essay in The Lancet. The authors—Faheem Ahmed of the UK’s NHS, Na’eem Ahmed of a London-based NHS hospital trust, Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics, and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—note that poor people worldwide have more chronic conditions, less access to care, lower life expectancy, and a harder time “navigating complex benefits systems,” all of which puts them at risk. Poverty and Covid-19 will intersect dangerously, both in health and economics, they argue, as “unemployment rates will rise substantially and weakened welfare safety nets further threaten health and social insecurity.”

In a Financial Times essay on how Covid-19 will hit the developing world, David Pilling, Jonathan Wheatley, Andres Schipani, and Amy Kazmin suggest lower-income countries will experience the crisis in “reverse”: While rich countries have suffered outbreaks first, shutting down their economies second, Covid-19 could arrive in developing countries after they’ve already been hampered by a global economic downturn. “As capital is pouring out, remittances—the lifeblood of economies from the Philippines to Nigeria—are dwindling,” they write. “Many foreign workers in western cities, especially those working as hotel staff, chefs or drivers, have lost their jobs.”

And in the US, CNN’s Eric Levenson reports, African-Americans could see disproportionate harm, given aggregate disadvantages in terms of chronic diseases and access to care.


How Conflict Zones May Fare

Conflict zones are at particular risk, Eleanor Gordon and Florence Carrot write for the Lowy Institute’s blog, The Interpreter. War-torn countries lack resources and trust in government (“i[n] Iraq, for instance, a depleted healthcare system that enjoys little public trust will not be able to respond effectively if there is a serious outbreak,” they write), and government measures like lockdowns can stoke fear that those in power will persecute select groups. Warring factions “can make political and economic gains by utilising the opportune moment presented by crises, as occurred during the Ebola outbreak resulting in heightened political tension in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,” they note, while Covid-19 will divert resources away from security and the treatment of other diseases.

Some cracks have already emerged in temporary Covid-19 peace agreements: As Gordon and Carrot note, the crisis initially prompted ceasefires “in Philippines, Cameroon, Yemen and elsewhere. While bigger threats can lead to cessation of hostilities, such as occurred in Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami, such crises of this scale tend to further undermine resilience, increase insecurity, and exacerbate the likelihood and intensity of conflict. Already, commitments to ceasefires have been broken within days and hostilities have escalated in Libya, and Yemen.”


Reexamining Economic Fairness, in Light of Covid-19

The pandemic should prompt a reexamination of social contracts the world over, the Financial Times wrote in a recent editorial, suggesting Covid-19 will reveal or exacerbate economic fissures. “Countries that have allowed the emergence of an irregular and precarious labour market are finding it particularly hard to channel financial help to workers with such insecure employment,” the paper writes. “Meanwhile, vast monetary loosening by central banks will help the asset-rich. Behind it all, underfunded public services are creaking under the burden of applying crisis policies.”


Just How Many Covid-19 Cases Are Asymptomatic?

As David Adam recently noted in the journal Nature, epidemiologists are missing critical data points on Covid-19, largely due to a lack of testing. Top among them: How widespread is the virus, really? What is its real mortality rate? And how many people who get it are asymptomatic? On the last question, there may be some encouraging signs in Chinese data, indicating—if the data are reliable and can be generalized out of context—roughly 70% of infected people show no symptoms. The figure is important, because it suggests many more people could have (or have had) Covid-19 than is known, meaning the disease’s fatality rate could be lower.

On April 2, the British Medical Journal noted that in a limited set of data on new Covid-19 cases released by Beijing—one day’s worth, as China had just begun to release data daily—China’s NHC had found that “130 of 166 new infections (78%) ... were asymptomatic.” The journal notes that China had begun “rigorously” testing new arrivals from overseas, but as epidemiologist Tom Jefferson of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford points out, it’s not entirely clear where the numbers came from, and the sample is small. Still, he told the journal, “even if they are 10% out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If—and I stress, if—the results are representative, then we have to ask, ‘What the hell are we locking down for?’”

At The Spectator, Cindy Yu followed up. Looking at six days’ worth of data, Yu wrote, “Follow the methodology from the BMJ study and it gives 624 new cases, of which 434 of those asymptomatic—giving a ratio of 70pc.” That’s good news for anyone hoping that the virus is less deadly than imagined, and as Jefferson says, it may argue against lockdowns. Then again, scientists lack another key data point: As Hillary Leung noted recently in Time, it’s not known whether those who have had Covid-19 and recovered, or who never showed symptoms, are actually immune—which would suggest that, until we know the answer, even the asymptomatic have a good reason to stay home.


How Covid-19 Could Accelerate a US–China Standoff

Officials from the US and China have already feuded over the origins and nomenclature of Covid-19, but at the Lowy Institute’s blog, The Interpreter, Nick Bisley argues more broadly that the “shock of the virus, seizing the global economy to halt its spread, may be just the kind of trauma that could catalyse a proper separation of the US and the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

Covid-19 could draw a sharper line between American and Chinese models of governance, Bisley argues: “[i]f, in response to the economic carnage, states return to earlier approaches to economic management, of the type before the neo-liberal fashion of recent decades took hold, then a highly politicised restructuring of the global economy may occur,” he writes. A sharper dividing line between liberal capitalism and state-run economics, Bisley suggests, “would provide decoupling the kind of political momentum it needs to make it real.” The crisis could also heighten the importance of a US–China standoff in the region by weakening other countries, he writes; India and Indonesia, for instance, are less developed and could be hit hard. “There is a strong chance that [Covid-19] will scupper their economic growth for many years and thereby further strengthen the grip that US–China relations has on the region as a whole,” Bisley writes.

Regardless, “Asia will be a more dangerous place” after the crisis, he predicts, advising that “the US and its allies will need to dig in for a long-term contest with an emboldened Beijing.”