Our collective actions from here will dictate the outcome.
The Coronavirus Pandemic May End Up Being This Generation’s ‘Finest Hour’
This Can Be All Our Finest Hour—But We Need All of You
You may be healthy, and your kids may be healthy. Your parents may be healthy. Everyone around you seems fine. Although remaining isolated from loved ones be unpleasant, it be relief that these hardships befall us in the twenty-first century, with so many tools at our disposal to remain socially connected. The sudden opportunity to appreciate more traditional pastimes – listening to music, reading, and, indeed, writing – be a gift as well.
But for the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide, this virus is not about you. This is one of those times in life, in history, when your actions are about something bigger. They are about someone else. They are about something greater, a greater good that you may not ever witness. A person you will save who you will never meet.
Whomever-ye-be, wherever-ye-be, all the things you planned and the 2020 spring you thought you were going to have has been completely undone.
You have to work from home.
Your conference is canceled.
Your semester is over.
Your work is canceled.
It all seems fast, and out-of-proportion and disorienting. You look at each action and think—but it would be OK if I did that. It’s not so big. We worked so hard. They would be so disappointed.
Your losses are real.
Your disappointments are real.
Your hardships are real.
I don’t mean to make light or to minimize the difficulty ahead for you, your family or community.
But this isn’t like other illnesses and we don’t get to act like it is.
It’s more contagious, it’s more fatal—and most importantly, even if it can be managed, it can’t be managed at a massive scale—anywhere. We need this thing to move slowly enough for our collective national and worldwide medical systems to hold the very ill so that all of the very ill can get taken care of. Because at this time of severe virus, there are also all of the other things that require care. There is still cancer, there are still heart attacks, there are still car accidents, there are still complicated births.
And we need our medical systems to be able to hold us.
We need to be responsible because our medical systems are made up of people and these amazing healthcare workers are a precious and limited resource.
They will rise to this occasion. They will work to help you heal. They will work to save your mother or father or sister or baby. But in order for that to happen, we have very important work to do. ALL OF US.
So what is our work?
Yes, you need to wash your hands and stay home if you are sick. But the biggest work you can do is expand your heart and your mind to see yourself and see your family as part of a much bigger community that can have a massive—hugely massive—impact on the lives of other people.
I remember the feeling of helplessness after 9/11 and after Hurricane Sandy. I remember how much people wanted to help.
I remember how much generosity of spirit there was about wanting to give, wanting to be helpful, wanting to save lives. And many of you have had experiences since then—whether it was a mass shooting, or the wildfires, or floods. There have been times you have looked on and wondered how you could help. And now we ALL have that chance.
You can help by canceling anything that requires a group gathering.
You can help by not using the medical system unless it is urgent.
You can help by staying home if you are sick.
You can help by cooking or shopping or doing errands for a friend who needs to stay home.
You can help by watching someone’s kid if they need to cover for someone else at work.
You can help by ordering take-out from your local restaurants.
Eat the food yourself or find someone who needs it.
You can help by offering to help bring someone’s college student home or house out-of-town students if you have extra rooms.
You can help by asking yourself, “What can I and my family do to help?” “What can we offer?”
You can help by seeing yourself as part of something bigger than yourself.
When the Apollo 13 oxygen tank failed and the lunar module was in danger of not returning to earth, Gene Kranz, the lead flight director overheard people saying that this could be the worst disaster NASA had ever experienced—to which he responded, “With all due respect, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”
Imagine if we could make our response to this crisis our finest hour.
Imagine if a year or two from now we looked back on this and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our community, in our state, in our nation, and across the world. Your contribution to the finest hour may seem small, invisible, inconsequential—but every small act of not doing what you were going to do, and doing an act of kindness or support will add up exponentially.
These acts can and will save lives.
The Apollo 13 crew made it their finest hour by letting go of the word “I” and embracing the word “we.” And that’s the task required of us. It can only be our finest hour if we work together.
You are all on the team. And we need all of you to shine in whatever way you can.
Over the coming weeks, much will be at stake collectively, and for some of us also individually. Today, uncertainty about what the post-pandemic world will look like is rife, but we do know it will be built upon the words and deeds we choose now.
The global pandemic is pushing the world economy to the brink.
And while public health is surely more important than a healthy GDP, it is GDP growth that keeps people employed, which keeps them housed and fed and educated. Beating back the virus is the only way to get back to a healthy economy.
We have not hit peak coronavirus in Europe. We surely haven’t reached it here at home in the U.S. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo expects another three weeks of this. The stock market has not hit bottom, Wall Street consensus suggests.
In response to the ongoing extraordinary impact of the coronavirus pandemic on economic activity and financial markets, S&P Global Ratings this week marked down global growth to just 0.4% for 2020, their third reduction in three weeks.
Paul Gruenwald, global chief economist for S&P Global Ratings in New York, sayest
“The decline in activity will be very steep. The policy challenges are enormous. The risks remain firmly on the downside,” he says.
This is a “stop the world” moment, literally and figuratively. Some pundits have called on President Trump to stop all international travel as infection rates are rising in Brazil and Mexico.
The new SARS coronavirus pandemic has been compared to a world war by world leaders.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he would treat this like a war, locking people up in their homes to keep them safe, and locking people up in jail who disobeyed orders.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, “We have never lived through anything like this.”
France’s president Emmanuel Macron said his country is “at war” with the coronavirus.
At home, President Trump likens it to an “invisible enemy”.
A military hospital ship not seen in New York since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks pulled into Manhattan on Monday. The city’s hospitals will empty patients out into that ship in order to make room in intensive care units for COVID-19 patients.
The U.S. is fast approaching 200,000 cases. That’s double the number of SARS coronavirus infections reported by China CI, where all of this began in December. Nearly 1,000 people have died in New York City in just two weeks due to COVID-19.
It’s totally understandable to the electorate that when you’re at war with a deadly new pathogen that can shut down your economy, gut the employment of millions, and potentially send you to the poor house, that you are in a struggle for survival.
There is almost no limit to what government’s can do to spend and try to defeat the enemy. Like in a war, they will call on major production to be marshaled to defeat it, whether it’s My Pillow making surgical masks, or General Motors GM making ventilators. The people employed there are the new Rosie the Riveters.
Vladimir Signorelli, head of macro investment research firm Bretton Woods Research in New Jersey, sayest
“As someone from the Tri-State area, I’m thinking that once you get an abundance of masks, probably 9 out of 10 people here would be wearing one. Why risk it? You’re hearing about surgeons that are losing their lives to this. Are they taking every precaution possible? Probably. And they’re still dying? The grim reaper is Mister Johnny One Note right now.”
Bretton Woods estimates that up to 23% of U.S. GDP is tied to retail, travel and tourism, food service, recreation and entertainment, and real estate. That’s all being flatlined.
At the height of World War II, when much of the world was at war with Germany or Japan, attention turned to the isolated U.S. for some hope. After the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, Washington took an “all of country” approach to fighting the enemy. And with it, the full resources and productive capacity of the U.S. economy turned to the war effort.
By 1944, the United States accounted for 40% of the world’s total munitions, with war production reaching a peak of 44% of GDP. The overall productive capacity of the nation’s economy increased by 50%, while industrial output expanded by 60% to build massive weaponry — from warplanes to bombs and battleships. This massive mobilization of resources was contemporarily propagandized as turning the tide of the war and has since been mythologized as allowing the Allies to win World War II.
Now The World Health Organization said the pandemic needs an “all of government, all of society” approach to be defeated.
Some have called for heavy investment and quick development and deployment of genetic therapies, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and basic medical supplies to help combat a disease we still know very little about.
The scientific community, medical profession, and healthcare industry are working closely with government health officials and policymakers. Realities on the ground shift responses, and priorities all the time. As one nurse dealing with this in the U.S. said to me, “it’s a bit like working in quick sand.”
Sam Hendel, a fund manager from Levin Easterly Partners in New York, sayest
“This is like September 11 in my mind. September 11 led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. A whole new industry was created after those terrorist attacks. There’s going to be some massive money moved into diagnostics, into healthcare, into pharmaceuticals…all because of this war with SARS.”
Public health officials will deal with disease containment; finance ministers and central bankers will deal with the economic shocks.
Congress has already passed three separate rescue packages. All told, the fiscal stimulus currently accounts for nearly 10% of U.S. GDP.
In the next phase, President Trump wants an infrastructure bill.
Part of that infrastructure is likely to be pandemic preparedness.
The next viral outbreak should not be allowed to stop a country dead in its tracks again.
The goal posts in the coronavirus end zone keep moving. When does it end? Does it sweep through the southern hemisphere next as winter approaches? Then, when everyone is ready to go back to school, are hundreds of new infections popping up around the country again?
Nobody knows definitively.
The paradox of the novel coronavirus response is that it only works if we take aggressive steps before they seem necessary and, if they work, will not have seemed necessary.
Success will look like we overreacted. This is a unique emergency, but the basics still apply.
For public officials in a crisis, you tell people everything you know and everything you do not know. Acknowledge uncertainty. Don’t over-promise or over-reassure. Share the burden of complex problems and give people something to do.
Don’t make fun of them for how they feel, whether fearful or skeptical, and tell people how you made your decisions. Admit when you could have done better, and most importantly for leaders, explain to people what the future will hold.
Let’s start with what we know and what we do not know.
If we let the coronavirus spread with limited intervention, a lot of people will get sick. If we are more committed and aggressive with our interventions, fewer people will get sick.
Our collective actions from here will dictate the outcome.
Everyone must pitch in.
We cannot know with certainty if the warm weather will help, but we can pray it does. We cannot know how long it will take to move through the worst of it, but it seems possible that the anticipated exponential growth of infection could continue for at least eight or nine weeks, and that might happen in staggered intervals in different cities. This is a large country.
Americans are aware of the urgency of the situation and learning quickly. Each of us is fuel for this virus. The plan is to avoid large densely packed gatherings, schools and churches included, to starve the virus of fuel until we can develop antiviral medications and ultimately a vaccine.
So, how did authorities reach the decision to implement these very costly and inconvenient interventions, and why?
Public health officials and scientists studied the implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions for epidemic mitigation in 43 cities in the United States from Sept. 8, 1918, through Feb. 22, 1919, when an influenza outbreak– one that killed 50 million people worldwide — became the last major pandemic to affect the United States. They did this to determine whether city-to-city variations in death rates were associated with the timing, duration and combination of non-pharmaceutical interventions. They concluded that they were.
The key, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is “early, sustained, and layered application of non-pharmaceutical interventions.” The doctors concluded that “such measures could potentially provide valuable time for production and distribution of pandemic-strain vaccine and antiviral medication. Optimally, appropriate implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions would decrease the burden on health care services and critical infrastructure.”
The biggest misunderstanding about these interventions is they are an à la carte menu of options to be selectively implemented. This is dead wrong. They all must be implemented to achieve a layered effect. Removing any one can defeat them all. The trick is to target the closures and cancellations early and aggressively in communities experiencing human-to-human transmission indicative of need, and not in those communities not yet experiencing evidence of virus transmission.
So, what will the future hold?
Based on the virus’ spread and the assumptions of many doctors and epidemiologists, we could see an infection rate of approximately 20% to 30% of the population. That’s roughly a range between 66 million and 100 million infected Americans.
Remember the paradox of reaction. Let’s act like this is correct and hope for less.
We anticipate something on the order of half of those infected will never feel sick at all. The other half will be a mixed bag.
Up to 30 million of them could get what feels like seasonal flu and be able to stay home and get better. One Seattle woman recently quoted in Women’s Health said, “I’m a 42-year-old woman who got the new coronavirus … the cough and fever weren’t nearly as difficult as calling everyone I’d crossed paths with to tell them I might have infected them.”
For people like this woman, there could be a tendency to think all this was media-generated hype. But, there will be another future as well, one that plays out in hospitals and households who are not as fortunate. In Kirkland, Washington, the EvergreenHealth Hospital, one of the top-ranked hospitals in the country and literally at ground zero in the fight against coronavirus, has been badly affected. Patients are entering the hospital positive for coronavirus and not leaving alive.
They exceeded bed capacity, the operational tempo is high, the medical staff that have not become sick are improvising quarantine rules to meet the emergency demand, staff are exhausted, demoralized, and supplies ran low all last week. The Seattle area has more than 436 cases and at least 35 dead, thus far.
It remains possible that 10 to 20 million people will have something more severe than seasonal flu and will require a trip to the emergency room, or worse, an extended hospitalization. Even if that number is closer to 5 million, at the end of the day, we can expect a very significant strain on our health care system and health care providers. We must brace for large numbers of sick and dead, many of them elderly or otherwise infirm.
Depending on how aggressive we are, this virus could kill 200,000 people and be the third-leading killer of Americans behind cancer and heart disease. Or, believe it or not, it could look like a bad year of seasonal flu, although that result would be due to the ongoing massive galvanization of Americans. The paradox of apparent overreaction.
Let’s acknowledge some fears.
Many of us are scared. That’s OK. But remember, the numbers suggest you will very likely be fine. So will your kids.
In fact, this is an opportunity for us to teach our kids the values of kindness and service to others. We are all making sacrifices — missing fun events, canceling dances and basketball games, missing our friends at school, staying home and pitching in around the house to save and help other people.
We are all denying this virus the fuel it wants to grow, and we are doing it to save nana and pop-pop, the Sunday school teacher or the nice lunch lady, the weakest and most vulnerable among us. The massive response might come at a high cost. But, it’s the right thing to do. And that feels pretty good to me.
Now, let’s admit where we could have done better.
The need to test in a country the size of the United States is staggering. The response has been hindered by an inability to confirm disease with diagnostic testing. Testing capacity with diagnostic test kits has significantly lagged behind the rapidly growing demand. As a result, case ascertainment is exceptionally limited given the size of our population. It is believed that over the next two weeks capacity for testing should greatly improve. However, the demand for testing is anticipated to increase exponentially over the next two weeks.
It did not help that China is not forthcoming in sharing information about the virus.
How do we improve?
It is time to expand the health surveillance net with clinical diagnostics.
As diagnostic testing begins to flow, it is time to track presumptive coronavirus cases. This means a patient that presents with upper respiratory symptoms and fever and tests negative for seasonal influenza be considered presumptively positive for the purposes of bridging the surveillance divide between supply and demand of diagnostic testing capacity. This will increase our health surveillance and allow us to target and stagger our efforts, our hospital supplies, and our economic assistance with greater fidelity and confidence.
As the virus peaks over the coming months, remember that fewer cases is proof that all our efforts have worked. That will not be permission to let down our guard. In fact, China, inclusive Wuhan, is still susceptible to another outbreak; like dry tinder that could reignite.
Wuhan and other controlled areas are only very cautiously reopening. The process is tricky.
The goal is to minimize the economic cost of continued interventions while maximizing the preventive health effects of those interventions. Reaching the optimal point achieves slow spread without wrecking the economy.
This will be a long game. We will get through this together, at stages exasperated and at stages calm. We are almost certainly in a recession. We will almost certainly need increased imports. Massive government bailouts will be required, with care and bipartisan support.
Throughout it all, we will take care of each other, and we will start emerging in the fall with antiviral medications and then later a vaccine. If we work together, this terrible moment could be our finest hour.
…
In recent days, many world leaders have claimed that we are at war against the virus – and, to some extent, they are right. As in any other war, resources need to mobilised, and a host of civic values – such as duty, comradeship, and public service – need to be promoted with renewed conviction. The outstanding health professionals who, in Spain and all over the world, are giving their absolute best to fight the virus and alleviate the suffering of the ill are an example to us all.
…
On March 28, Michael Ryan, Chief Investment Officer Americas, for UBS Financial Services, PNC (PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is an American bank holding company and financial services corporation based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its banking subsidiary, PNC Bank, operates in 19 states and the District of Columbia with 2,459 branches and 9,051 ATMs) circulated a creative note to clients pointing out that those who lived through the war will attest that there was nothing inevitable about the outcome.
“Like World War II, the new SARS coronavirus is a conflict that will be waged across multiple theaters of operation. To casual observers of history here at home, World War II was won because the U.S. joined the fight. Russia, too, played a role when it broke with the Germans, essentially surrounding them. The entry of the U.S. tipped the scales against Germany and Japan, but final victory required careful planning and breaking bread with the Russians, as well. It required an all hands on deck commitment, political unity and an ongoing deployment of resources designated for a single purpose. It’s looking like it will be the same with COVID-19. With the U.S. having now joined the effort with a massive mobilization of resources, the balance of power in this conflict has shifted. At first it was China, then Europe, now the U.S. is next to suffer in battle. We will eventually win out over the virus, but the timeline is still not assured. We are confident that the combined resources and united will of the leading nations of the world will prove successful in containing it, protecting public safety, stabilizing the global economy, and preserving personal prosperity.
Despite the near-term challenges and some dark days ahead, this may well prove to be our generation’s finest moment.”
…
We are facing a crisis of historic proportions. But if what we are going through can indeed be called a war, it is certainly not a typical one. After all, today’s enemy is shared by all of humankind, and the mobilisation of state resources must go hand in hand with the demobilisation of most of the population.
It is important not to lose sight of these and other differences.
Otherwise, the war rhetoric could cloud our judgment, leaving us vulnerable to certain traps.
To avoid these undesirable scenarios, allow me to ring a few alarm bells and raise a few caveats.
(Here The Mister Dietrich Cites the Work ‘o’ NICOLE FROLICK into the subject ‘o’ Inflexibility)
Firstly, we must not mistake strong leadership – which will certainly be needed in these dire circumstances – for inflexible leadership. Our governments should be given enough wiggle room to tackle this emergency properly, but that should not be taken to mean carte blanche – not now and not ever.
Can Democracy Survive Coronavirus?
The pandemic threatens elections, and experts worry Americans’ rights could be curtailed.
STATE PRIMARY ELECTIONS have been delayed, and experts fret about how to hold a credible and accessible general election in November. Congress is out until at least April 20, and many state legislatures have suspended their sessions. Government buildings are closed. The Trump administration wants “emergency” powers to allow suspects to be detained indefinitely, while abroad, world leaders are using the pandemic to seize more power.
The novel coronavirus has already claimed the lives of nigh-70,000 people worldwide. Will democracy be the next casualty?
Crises often lead governments to take extraordinary measures, whether it’s increasing security, expanding surveillance and other government powers or limiting rights citizens had come to take for granted. But the global pandemic presents risks to democratic institutions unprecedented in modern times, experts say, whether it’s unsavory leaders using the virus as an excuse to demand more authority or civically inclined officials struggling to figure out how to keep democratic institutions going without endangering public health.
Jonas Parello-Plesner, executive director of the Alliance for Democracies, which held a webcast Thursday from Copenhagen, Denmark, on the ways different countries were responding to the crisis, did sayest
“We all want to come out of this crisis alive, but we also want our political systems, democracy, to survive.”
Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy center at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, did say
“There are a range of ways in which the pandemic is creating new threats and exacerbating old stresses on our democracy. This is a momentous event that has opportunities and risks. We have the opportunity to reassert not just national unity but national commitment to our democratic systems. Similarly, there is a great risk that people can take advantage of the confusion and fear around the coronavirus to gut or erode our democracy.”
Abroad, democracy-watchers are looking anxiously at Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban – notably, a dissident when Russian communists controlled his country – has been given new powers by parliament that effectively let him rule by decree. Orban now also has the ability to impose harsh penalties for free speech and those who violate quarantine rules.
In the nominally democratic Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered police to shoot dead anyone “who creates trouble” during the lockdown in Luzon, the nation’s most populous island. Israel recently assumed the right to gather personal information, including cellphone location data, of those diagnosed with the virus or suspected to have it.
In the United States, such drastic measures have not occurred, and legal and political experts don’t expect the government to try. But there are other threats to democratic institutions here that could curtail citizens’ rights or undermine public faith in America’s elections, they warn.
Attorney General William Barr has asked Congress to allow the Department of Justice to petition judges to hold people indefinitely during an emergency and to pause the statute of limitations during such times. (The idea, first reported by Politico, was roundly rejected by both Democratic and Republican senators.)
States and cities have imposed stay-at-home orders that allow some exceptions for essential work and errands.
But most at risk is the basic machinery of democracy – the multi-layered process of nominating candidates for office and conducting a general election in November. Several states have already delayed their primaries, not only to protect voters but because poll workers are afraid to staff the polling stations.
“There is a great risk that people can take advantage of the confusion and fear around the coronavirus to gut or erode our democracy.”
The Democratic National Committee on Thursday delayed its national convention, previously scheduled for July in Milwaukee to August. But the state is still going ahead Tuesday with its presidential primary, despite the fact that officials warned earlier this week that they are short nearly 7,000 poll workers. – Noting that up until 1972 the primaries were more advisory than determinative (Hubert Humphrey, for example, got the 1968 Democratic nomination without winning a single primary), John Geer, dean of the College of Art and Science at Vanderbilt University, observest that it’s not unprecedented for primaries not to go off as they have in recent history, he so-saying
“What the real issue is, how are we going to make sure there’s as much participation as possible in the fall, if social distancing is still in place?”
And in the case of next week’s scheduled primary, Weiser so-notes that “Wisconsin is the canary in the coal mine” for the November elections.
President Donald Trump can’t simply cancel the elections (which are run by states), experts note.
But if hardly anyone shows up – or if turnout is minimal because there aren’t enough people to staff them – Americans won’t have faith in the result, they say.
Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, executive chairman and co-founder of The Chertoff Group, sayest that
“We need to start thinking now, in the states, about different ways of allowing people to vote in a secure way. What do you do if the virus continues in November and people have difficulty getting to the polls? It’s not too soon to plan.”
Chertoff agrees with a mounting call for increased vote-by-mail elections. Five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah – conduct elections entirely by mail, while 21 other states allow some mail-in voting.
No-excuses absentee voting (meaning voters don’t have to give an approved reason for not voting in person on Election Day) and curbside voting, whereby voters can drop off a ballot without getting out of the car, are also good options, Chertoff says.
Some states offer curbside voting now, but not always for all voters. Virginia, for example, allows the practice for voters with disabilities or who are 65 and older.
States control their own elections and would have to make the changes, but Congress could offer federal money in exchange for states doing those reforms, he says.
The downside is that Americans might need to lose the expectation of an election night announcement of the next president, since mail ballots can take weeks to count, but it’s an inconvenience made worth it by expanding voter access.
Karen Hobert-Flynn, president of Common Cause, thus sayest that some communities, such as those on Native American tribal lands, aren’t as well-served by the U.S. postal system, and mail-in ballots should include pre-paid postage so citizens don’t have to pay for the right to cast a ballot. But she’s for any idea that “makes sure there’s fair and safe voting for all,” Presidentress Hobert-Flynn so-saying that “Even as we are worried about this public health threat, we need to remember that it can’t distract us from the ways we can fight it. That means we have to come together locally, nationally and internationally to stop the spread (of the virus) and part of that is ensuring our democracy continues to function.”
Hoping, experts say, that the virus doesn’t deliver the lethal blow.
Ensuring maximal preservation of civil liberties and continuing to hold our leaders accountable is not just an ethical imperative; it is also our best line of defence against threats like the one we face today. Doing so does not weaken our societies; on the contrary, it enriches the public debate, thus increasing our chances of identifying the most suitable responses.
…
Secondly, we must not mistake a proper sense of nationalist responsibility – which, no doubt, will be needed and welcome – for exclusive forms of patriotism. This is no time for scapegoating or succumbing to panic and liberating our worst instincts. The ongoing crisis will be resolved only through rationality, compassion, and mutual understanding, both within and beyond our borders. All avenues of international scientific and technological cooperation must be explored, and always in a spirit of solidarity, which today, more than ever, overlaps fully with our own interests. The key to overcoming the current crisis is to ensure that the global spread of best practices outpaces the global spread of the virus.
Globalisation is under strain and whatever comes next will almost certainly adjust the global market-orientated rationale that we’ve seen to date. This crisis will redraw the borders between the state and the market in democracies, probably pushing us towards a certain level of industrial relocation to protect supply and production lines, and emphasising national initiatives to the detriment of international coordination. But could it conversely push us towards greater governance through international institutions, in the face of the obvious risks to humanity as a whole?
The coronavirus has put us on the ropes. However, we must continue advocating for a rules-based, open, and connected world, while preserving multilateralism, pursuing truly supportive and responsible globalisation, and establishing control and compensation mechanisms that create a joint response to emergencies. The way in which we escape this crisis will largely determine our ability to face the next one.
…
Lastly, we must ensure that the socioeconomic landscape that emerges from this metaphorical war is in no way akin to those left behind after a real one. Reconstruction efforts must, in other words, be conceived preventively rather than reactively, and the shock-absorbing machinery must start working at full speed immediately.
European Union institutions and EU member states alike need to commit to do whatever it takes in this respect, to rise to the challenge. Other multilateral organisations and forums will also be indispensable in designing an effective joint response.
Looking further into the future, we will need to make sure not to forget the many virtues of globalisation – which, of course, requires careful re-evaluation, but not outright rejection.
Over the coming weeks, much will be at stake collectively, and for some of us also individually. Today, uncertainty about what the post-pandemic world will look like is rife. But we do know it will be built upon the words and deeds we choose now. We would do well, therefore, to look the evil before us in the eye, while never losing sight of our own future and that of coming generations.If the covid-19 crisis is not remembered as our respective countries’ “finest hour,” to borrow Lead NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz’s words, let it at least be remembered as our own in the most personal sense with which we each as individuals identify w / all Humanity.
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~ THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN EITHER SIDE ‘O’ THE PACIFIC – AMERASIAN AGENT ‘O’ THE PEACOCK ǼNGÆL مَلَك طَاوُوس (“TAWOÛSÊ-MELEIK [‘MELIEK TA’‘OUSI’]”) – HOLDS THE KEY TO BREAKAWAY PERCEPTION
– Renegatus Humanus Arma ab Massa-Eruditio
(THE “Renegade Human Weapon ‘o’ Mass-Instruction”);
The Germanic Surname “Dietrich” – as Transliterated into The Ænglish – means “(The) Master Key, Skeleton Key, (a) Key That Can Open All Doors” :
THE LAST Д‘ТРĂЦКОГОÙЛ‘ВYЕА’c (“D‘TRĂCKOGOÙL‘ŴYEA’s [‘SON-‘O’-DIETRICH’s,’ or ‘SON-‘O’-A’‘DRAGON’s’];” pronounced “Dī Traiykh-Kohk-Goowhll VYāyh’s” and Ænglobastardized “DRACULA’s”) 中國人 (“ƵChuṑnggkGHuóuárén [literally ‘Middle-Kingdom People’s,’ id est ‘Chinese’]”) Lineage-Derived Surname is 「林 (“Lin [the iconographic character for ‘Tree’ represented in plurality – id est ‘Forest’ / ‘Jungle’]”)」; both ‘o’ his First Name Elements 「一 (“yĪ [‘One,’ ‘Singular,’ ‘Throughout’ – id est ‘Totality’]”)」 and 「平 (“Píng [‘Calm,’ ‘Peaceful’ / ‘Flat,’ ‘Level’]”);」 combining as 「一平 (“yĪ-Píng [‘Striving Toward Attainment ‘o’ Peace;’ ‘To Tie,’ as in ‘Even The Score’ / ‘To Draw-Up;’ ‘A-‘leveling’ / ‘An ‘Evening Up’ / ‘A-‘Reckoning’ – id est ‘Cosmic Balance’ / ‘Divine Retribution’]”);」 – Familial and First Name Elements combining yet a’‘gain (in Proper Asian Order) as 「林 一平 (“Lin yĪ-Píng [‘Path ‘o’ Environmental Harmony’ or ‘Law ‘o’ The Jungle;’ something akin to ‘Gǣĩǣn Sustainability’]”)」。
This article was transcribed from the following episode of Critical Omissions: