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Coronavirus: Globalization is here to stay

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QZ
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Hello Quartz readers,

Between the death projections in the US, harrowing migrant journeys in India, and a sobering report from the United Nations, this week is a tough one.

How to find strength in such a moment? In each other. In signs of progress, however slow-moving. In the knowledge that while many questions remain, smart people are focused on finding answers. Perhaps even in a certain economy of anxieties. As reader Philippe A. wrote to us, “It’s like sweeping all problems under the carpet, but on a global scale.”

Another place to find fortitude is in the information you consume, and the frame of mind it puts you in. At Quartz, we’re focused on staying calm, helping you make decisions, explaining the impact on the global economy, and figuring out how to live and work in a new way. How are we doing?

✉️ Tell us why we’re great.

✉️ Tell us what we can do better.

✉️ Send us your kids’ art. (We can explain*.)

Okay, let’s get started.

Thinking globally, acting globally

The Black Death was not understood by its victims, but they did employ the bluntest form of pre-modern disease fighting—the quarantine. Italian city-states figured out that shutting off travel was the key to halting the advance of the disease. At the same time, these polities depended on trade for their very existence. Merchants cut off from their customers had to choose between their lives and their livelihoods.

The original function of the first public health agencies, which emerged in renaissance Italy, “was to deal with merchants’ dissatisfaction with the lack of international coordination of health measures,” the economist Angus Deaton wrote in a survey of global development effects on health. “International public health has always been as much concerned with facilitating trade as with protecting health and, as many writers have noted, when the two come into conflict…trade tends to trump health.”

So it was with the slow responses to this current epidemic. In China and the US, administrations of very different stripes each perceived political pain in heavy-handed restrictions. Governments all over the world faced a grim version of the marshmallow test psychologists use to explore delayed gratification: They can maintain economic production for now, risking further devastation, or take harsh measures in the near term in an effort to avoid overwhelming their healthcare systems. Now, public health realities have forced skeptics to slow the pace of the virus with social distancing.

But politicians are also imposing new trade barriers and doubling down on nationalist rhetoric. Trade boosters see this as ironic: The world has built an exquisite machine to deliver both goods and viruses, but when we get the virus, we shut off the machine that brings us the products that could defeat it. “If we have a shut down world economy, then the earlier recovery of certain economies doesn’t do anyone else very much good,” says Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Take for example US president Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, which tax Americans who buy hand sanitizer, ventilators, medical masks, and other key products to fight disease. We haven’t seen supply chains switch to other sources, according to data analyzed by Chad Bown, a former White House trade adviser. Instead, American buyers have just paid more, in part because medical supply chains are highly regulated to ensure the safety of their products, making it difficult to get a new producer off the ground quickly.

The return of nationalist politics may have left the impression that an interconnected world is a preference, something that can be shut off with the right border policies and tariff levels. But a thousand years of human history tells us that disease will find a way to spread. The good news is that alongside the vectors for accelerated spread of disease, interconnection has also given us the tools to fight it.

“What is required is not less globalization, but more, or at least more globalization of a different kind,” Deaton wrote in 2004. “Deaths that can be prevented should be prevented, and they will be prevented if we can find faster ways of diffusing first-world health technologies, including the creation of the economic, educational, and political conditions that would permit their more rapid diffusion.”

Having a field day

☝️That little apéritif came from this week’s field guide for Quartz members: World vs. Coronavirus, which we’re also pitching as the name of the next Avengers movie. The big idea behind the guide: Fighting this pandemic will cause nearly every corner of the global economy to change. (But spoiler: Not every change is bad, or has to be.)

Here’s how it all ties together:

1️⃣ As factories in China reopen, the biggest threat to global industries like consumer electronics is shifting from supply chain disruption to the coming recession. 2️⃣ That recession will be particularly hard on the fossil fuel industry, but that may or may not accelerate the world’s transition to renewable energy. 3️⃣ Industries seeking bailouts, such as US airlines, also face the prospect of increased regulation. 4️⃣ Across business, the current crisis will transform the way we work, changing much more than the number of people who work from home. 5️⃣ But it will not make us less connected. Globalization is here to stay.

Here’s what else we’ve been turning up:

  • Coronavirus is reshaping education. “It’s a great moment” for learning, says Andreas Schleicher, head of education at the OECD.  “All the red tape that keeps things away is gone and people are looking for solutions that in the past they did not want to see.”
  • China is leveraging the crisis for diplomatic gains. “China’s ability to step up and provide public goods may very well become a watershed moment in the perception of China around the world,” wrote Filip Šebok, an analyst from CHOICE. “Especially if the Western democracies underperform.”
  • Will democracy be the next victim? Fear “creates an opportunity for unscrupulous leaders” to seize power, says Chris Edelson, author of Power Without Constraint.

Quartz members can read the whole field guide here. If you’re interested in becoming a member, go ahead and take 40% off. You deserve it.

You asked

I have heard that ibuprofen has commonly been found to have been taken by Covid-19 victims and that acetaminophen is a safer choice to take. True or not?

Thanks for asking, John T. The concern over ibuprofen, the active ingredient in Advil, comes from one of its cellular side effects: It may raise the number of so-called ACE2 receptors throughout the body, which the novel coronavirus uses to sneak into our cells. In theory, more ACE2 receptors could lead to more entry points for the virus, leading to a more severe infection.

Researchers floated this idea in the journal The Lancet in mid-March. After that, anxiety about ibuprofen went, well, viral, despite a lack of concrete evidence that the drug worsens infections. The WHO and the European Medicines Agency have stated that ibuprofen is still an acceptable way to treat fevers and aches related to Covid-19 (or any illness) at home. So is acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, which doesn’t lead to higher levels of ACE2.

Do you have your own burning coronavirus question?
✉️ Send it our way.

Drop ’til you shop

At many malls and retail stores around the US, foot traffic has been in decline for some time. But they’ve never seen anything like this.

In a research note sent to clients this week, investment firm Cowen and Company estimated total foot traffic to US retailers was down 97.6% for the week through March 27 compared to the same time last year. It has come to a “near complete halt,” Cowen said.

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Essential reading:

*PS: About that art request. We’ve been featuring art by our tiny work-from-home colleagues on the Quartz homepage and app, and would love to show off the great works coming out of your home. Please include the child’s name, age, and title of work (if any).

Our best wishes for a healthy day. Get in touch with us at needtoknow@qz.com, and live your best Quartz life by downloading our app and becoming a member. Today’s newsletter was brought to you by Tim Fernholz, Michael J. Coren, Jenny Anderson, Annabelle Timsit, Dan Kopf, Katie Palmer, Katherine Foley, Marc Bain, and Kira Bindrim.