International cooperation is crucial in solving Covid-19

ONE symptom of the coronavirus pandemic has been an explosion of economic nationalism around the world. Many countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, have erected export controls to prevent scarce goods like protective masks, gowns, gloves, ventilators and testing kits from being sold abroad.

And global competition to purchase these goods is playing out like the plot of a bad action movie, with accusations that planes full of Europe-bound masks have been diverted at the last minute to the US. A German official has accused the US of "modern piracy".

This competition threatens to raise the prices of these goods to dangerous levels - or make it impossible to procure them at all. In early February, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that prices for some protective equipment had risen to 20 times their normal amount. As the coronavirus continues to spread, this situation will become particularly dire for countries that cannot afford to keep pace.