'Business as usual' is being transformed by pandemic

ONE of the consequences of the coronavirus crisis has been that a number of previously unthinkable political and economic outcomes have rocked the globe. Even a few weeks ago, few would have predicted the scale of change that has ensued from massive government intervention in many economies, to the fact that late last month at least a quarter of the global population was in some form of lockdown.

The list of unthinkables is growing by the day with one of US President Donald Trump's economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, predicting on Monday that the United States will suffer its worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, with perhaps a fall of as much as 30 per cent in the second quarter. Add to this the already massive spike in US jobless figures with some 26.45 million people filing for unemployment over the last five weeks - remarkably exceeding the 22.442 million jobs added to payrolls in the more than decade since November 2009, when the economy began to add jobs back after the peak of the financial crisis.

What this growing list of unthinkables shows is, by and large, how ill prepared the world was for the pandemic. And the continuing gaps in our knowledge of the coronavirus are regularly exposed.