Laura Wellesley
Hi, everyone, and welcome to his live broadcast Webinar event from Chatham House. We’re really pleased that you can join us today and that you’re giving up your Friday evening for what, I think, is going to be an interesting and important discussion. This is a new format for us. We’re trialling this, for obvious reasons, but we’re hoping that we’ll be able to bring you the same range of diverse events, over the next few months, and via this format and Robin Niblett, our Director, will say a little bit more about that in just a moment.
We’re joined this evening by three panellists. Our first speaker is Creon Butler. Creon is the Global Economy and Finance Programme at Chatham House and prior to joining Chatham House, he worked in the Cabinet Office, where he was Director for International Economic Affairs in the National Security Secretariat. He also served as Sous Sherpa to the G7 and the G20, advising on global policy issues, including global health threats. Before the Cabinet Office, Creon worked for HM Treasury, for the Foreign Office and for the Bank of England and he was also Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi from 2006 to 2009.
We have Emma Ross. Emma is a Senior Consulting Fellow in the Centre for Universal Health here at Chatham House. She’s also Managing Editor of The Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, a reference book on infectious disease for public health experts and Epidemiologists. She’s a Strategic Communications Specialist, working for a number of NGOs, who work in the public health and medical research areas. While working for the Associated Press, Emma reported on outbreaks, including SARS and Avian Flu, and she also served as the News Team Leader for the World Health Organization in Geneva, where she advised the Director-General.
Our final panellist is Dr Robin Niblett. Robin is Director and Chief Executive of Chatham House and has been for the past 13 years. Previously, Robin was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. So, a pretty well-placed panel to talk to us today.
Before we open the discussion, before Emma Ross opens the discussion on COVID-19 and the situation we’re facing, Robin is just going to say a few words about Chatham House, Chatham House’s position and its plans for the next few months. Over to you, Robin.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thanks very much, Laura, and thanks for chairing the session on Friday afternoon and thank you to all of our members who’ve joined the session. I can see we’ve got some 240 people or so online. Let’s see if we can get this conversation done in 45 minutes. I don’t want to say much more other than that.
Chatham House is in full flow and full action at the moment, but remotely and behind the scenes. As you know, we’ve had to, in essence, close our building to all of our members and guests during this period. We only have a skeleton staff in, a couple of days a week, to keep things ticking over there. But we are upgrading things we were doing already, to try to make sure that we could be much more interactive in the way that we engaged with all of our different members and different guests. And this meeting, I suppose, is one of the first that’s really at scale for our members, now that we’re all having to work on a much more social distancing basis.
But I don’t want to say more than this, ‘cause I’m going to use up a lot of time. What I do want to say is, my colleagues and I are just thrilled and grateful a) that you’ll be joining us; b) that you will be sustaining hopefully your membership through this difficult time. But it is also a time to really think the way – and rethink the way we all do our business and our work, not just the governments, but the companies we’ll be talking about today, but obviously, all institutions. And I’m hoping that we’ll come out of this actually more agile, probably a bit more carbon sensitive and carbon sustainable in the types of way that we work and, despite the terrible tragedies and the loss of life that’s coming with this crisis, that we can all come through it together in a much stronger position in the future. So, thank you for bearing with us. Hopefully it’ll work well today, and I’m glad I’m going last.
Laura Wellesley
Thanks, Robin, and over to Emma, who’s got the privilege of going first.
Emma Ross
Yes, thank you, Laura. Good evening, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I’m going to start with where we are with the outbreak. So, as of last night, the number of confirmed cases worldwide has now exceeded 200,000 and it took more than three months to reach the first 100,000 and only 12 days to reach the next 100,000. And, with that, we’re nearing 9,000 deaths, we’re at 8,778, and basically, the pandemic is on the rise and, although countries are at different places in their epidemic curves, the forecast is that we have a way to go with it in this first wave and that we should expect a second wave.
The strategy for most is to dampen down the impact of this, to relieve the pressure on the health services until technology, maybe a vaccine, brings us new tools. And while countries have to base their response strategies on what stage of the outbreak they’re in and that will look different in different countries at any one time, international co-operation is critical, if each country is to get the best result.
I think we’ve seen a lot of international co-operation on the scientific front. We had practice with this during the SARS outbreak and it’s been refined since then. For instance, the World Health Organization is co-ordinating four virtual networks of experts participating from around the world for this pandemic, to track the outbreak and inform the response, from the perspectives of the epidemiology, that’s what’s happening with the spread of the disease, the virology, how best to manage patients, and predictive modelling. The modelling is something that’s been added since SARS. And this international co-operation is informing the global recommendations and the national responses around the world. Data and experiences are being shared. It’s also – WHO is also sending teams of international experts to countries who request it to support the control efforts, and this kind of international co-operation has provided us with the understanding that we have today of this disease.
The WHO Director has repeatedly urged global solidarity is needed to control this outbreak. Not just scientific, but also political and financial, and we’ll hear a little bit about that, both of those, later in this session. But on the scientific level, we’re talking about the sharing of data, knowledge, supplies, expertise and more. A good example of that is there’s a global genetic sequencing bank, hundreds of genetic sequences have bene submitted, and that’s shown so far that the virus has not mutated to a significant strain difference. Changes in sequence, you know, have been minimal, and it’s this kind of co-operation that helps everyone do a better job of responding.
It also means providing technical and financial support to those low and middle income countries that need it to successfully respond. And something that’s going on there is huge efforts have been made to provide support to countries in Africa and elsewhere, to build the capacity of their laboratories to diagnose the disease, which of course, is critical for detecting and tracking the outbreak spread and for working out how best to respond. Early in the outbreak, reportedly, there were only two labs in Africa that had the ability to test for the infection and after a really concerted effort to rollout test kits and training, now the coverage has been bolstered significantly.
It’s also about experts worldwide working together on addressing the research gaps, so that we can better understand and control the disease. Effective international co-operation basically achieves quicker and better control of outbreaks and it helps target resources and energy, where it’s needed most. Global co-ordination is also an important aspect and it does look, from some angles, that there is a lack of global co-ordination in the response and in certain aspects, that’s true, given that every country is not following a global plan. There is no one plan for everybody to follow, but there needs to be a differentiated approach, as each country is facing a slightly different dynamics and not all at the same stage in their outbreak as each other. But actually, there is a level of global co-ordination. So – and WHO is at the centre of this, as is its mandate, firstly, in the way I just described with its corralling of leading international experts in these virtual groups and disseminating the insights that come out of them, as well as guidance and recommendations.
Also, on global co-ordination, there is a common goal. Basically, everybody is looking for a combination of response measures that aim to delay the onset of this surge in cases, if it’s feasible, level the demand for hospital beds, protect the vulnerable, and contain the outbreak in countries where there are only a few cases that can be traced and the chain of transmission broken. Many of those are the classic outbreak control measures we’re all hearing about: handwashing, social distancing, cancellation of mass gatherings, etc. So, what we are seeing, I think, is a bit of a disconnect at the political level. There is some criticism that WHO is not able to ensure that what needs to be done is done. Whatever WHO is trying to do or get countries to do, including things for the global good, the reality is that national sovereignty and national interest is sometimes overriding that.
Crises like these are always an opportunity to shift towards a more resilient and sustainable healthcare architecture and to protect global health security. It means making sure all countries have a resilient and sustainable system, as infectious disease threats do not respect borders, and many times, there is commitment, in the heat of the moment, as we know, and there’s investment. But when the memory of the threat fades away, so does some of the will and the resources that are invested don’t build the resilience or sustainability we were hoping for.
Improvements have been made after outbreaks, for sure. For instance, after the SARS outbreak, the International Health Regulations were updated to require all countries to put in certain capacities that would bolster their preparedness and ability to respond. Then, after the Ebola outbreak, further efforts on that were made by introducing joint external evaluations and support for some low and middle income countries in building that capacity, after it became apparent that even though they were required by the International Health Regulations to develop those capacities, they weren’t, and even though they were self-reporting that they had the capacities, it turned out they didn’t.
So, in another aspect, these crises have clearly shown that you can’t separate the health security issue from a health system strengthening issue. They are intertwined. The SARS outbreak was instrumental in leading China to reform its health system and move towards Universal Health Coverage, mostly publicly financed, and that means everyone has access, theoretically, to the health services they need, without financial hardship. And recently the goal of Universal Health Coverage has risen up the global political agenda to become one of the Sustainable Development Goals. And even in countries that don’t have Universal Health Coverage yet, what we’re seeing, in this pandemic response, is UHC style responses. People are basically looking to their governments to take care of this. The responses are, in effect, state governed and financed public health responses, which is what you see in Universal Health Coverage. So, in some aspects, these crises have led to improvements, but much more can be done, and that’s mostly capacities to detect and respond are still inadequate, in many countries, and health systems still need to be strengthened.
So, that’s really kind of my introduction for where we stand, from a – in the health space on this. Thanks.
Laura Wellesley
Thanks, Emma, and I’m going to pass straight over to Creon.
Creon Butler
Well, thanks very much, and good evening, everyone. So, I’ll add a few comments, from the economic perspective. I think what is really clear now is we’ve never before seen an economic shock like the present one. It’s very unclear how long it’s going to last and also, how it’s going to end.
In terms of the current status, it’s very clear that strict social distancing is the only way in which you can prevent your public health system from being overloaded. And so, that is the set of measures that many advanced countries in Europe and North America have been putting in place. These do have enormous economic costs, but it’s clear that, at present at least, there is no alternative to taking these kind of measures.
At the same time, there is some evidence, from what we’ve seen in China, that if these measures are applied for a sufficient period of time and sufficiently rigorously, you do then see a point at which the virus is halted or the progress of the virus is halted. But the problem is, you know, what comes next? What is the next phase? Because China hasn’t yet removed those strict measures and it’s not clear how you can restart your economy without, if you like, reigniting the virus.
In the initial response, economic authorities did the things that you would expect: they cut interest rates, they ensured that there was sufficient public expenditure for health systems, and they provided liquidity for companies to enable them to get through the crisis. As those strict measures were put in place and it became clear how much more severe the crisis was going to be, we’ve also seen a move towards providing government guarantees for lending to companies and increasingly, wage subsidies to ensure that those who are most directly affected by the crisis are unable to maintain jobs and to maintain their businesses, and this is a way of ensuring that the long-term economic damage is kept to a minimum. I haven’t seen yet, but I think the expectation is the Chancellor in the UK will be announcing measures of this kind later on today.
The further thing that we have seen is, I think, at best what you would describe in the economic space as a patchy degree of economic co-ordination and this, I think, contrasts with what Emma was saying about the health response. I think, in the last week, one has seen central banks produce a much more co-ordinated response, and we could see that in the last day or so, with co-ordinated interest rate cuts and quantitative easing. But we haven’t yet seen, if you like, the co-ordinated response from governments that we did see during the global financial crisis. And this is needed, not least because when governments act together, the effects are stronger for confidence, but also, they can be more effective. If you have a number of governments acting together in taking fiscal measures, then that is less likely to lead to disrupted financial market conditions, than if each one is acting separately in a way that appears to be unco-ordinated. So, I think it is very important that we do see further steps, in terms of co-ordinated government action. This, I think, essentially needs the US administration to realise that this is important and to show more leadership in taking the necessary steps to produce that kind of co-ordination.
I think at some point people obviously will begin to start thinking about what the long-term effects on our economy are going to be from this crisis and that will, to some degree, depend on how long it lasts. It will also depend on how much of, if you like, an adjustment takes place during this extraordinary period of strict social distancing. But I think you can expect to see that, if you like, the health sector within our economies is likely to be larger still in the future. There may be a shift towards public provision of health from private sector provision in some countries.
One can also expect to see an internet – a more internet-enabled economy, with particularly perhaps SMEs having more internet facilities, which then enables them, once the crisis is over, to continue working in a manner that they didn’t work before. So, there are going to be a number of effects in the long-term, which we will explore as they develop. So, I think perhaps if I stop there and hand over to Robin.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thank you very much indeed and, as I said a minute ago, happy to be going last, not least ‘cause we’re in such a complicated environment. Obviously, this is probably the hardest time for us to assess what the implications are going to be of COVID-19. I would argue, we’re kind of at the fulcrum right now of the crisis, given that we have some slight signs of recovery in China, two days without any notification of new cases in Wuhan. Europe now the epicentre, America may be on the way up, and who knows how it’s going to play in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, opening signs cropping up here and there.
I think the way I would put it is that there’s going to be an enormous difference between the world losing 15-20% of GDP over a three month period and losing 15-20% of GDP over a 12 month period. We know China’s already counting a 15% decline in GDP since December. And if that gets stretched out globally and gets stretched out over several months, it’s going to have a completely different implication to one where we’re able to capture and try to limit the implications of this crisis.
So, I wanted to just rattle through four issues that are kind of framing the way I think about this crisis, I suppose from a Chatham House standpoint. The first is, what are the immediate risks? Who’s resilient? A little bit about immediate responses, something about longer-term risks, and I’ll finish up with a couple of the breakthroughs.
On immediate risks, I would simply say we’re not just talking about the numbers here. Yes, Italy has had a dreadful number of deaths, high number of cases, but if you look at the politics of it right now, a country that we thought was heading towards populism was split, is seeing huge social solidarity and support for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a real social solidarity that seems to be existing across the country, and it’s a country that has also, despite its high debt levels, some still pretty significant levels of household savings and deeper protective levels economically. So, when you look at a country like Italy, you have to separate out the different levels of its vulnerability.
You look at the UK, which seems to be earlier in the – is earlier in the pathway of this crisis, which has a fantastic NHS, which is ratcheting up its policy of pooling some of the best health advice in the world, that’s great. But this crisis is happening at a moment of ultimate Brexit vulnerability, where people were already calling into question the strength of its economic model and its survivability and, guess what? We’ve seen the pound, and maybe not will surprise many people, we’re down at the lowest level against the dollar in 35 years. It’s bumping around somewhere 1.17 to the dollar right now. Why? Not just Brexit, but the UK goes into this crisis with a 5% current account deficit. How is it going to be able to afford its economic livelihood at the same time as it closes itself down?
And if I were to take the US, there’s a crisis that, you know, is going to be very hard to measure, one of the most advanced countries in the world, but obviously, huge vulnerabilities in its healthcare system and a national strategic stockpile for an emergency of this sort that appears not to be ready as one might want. 10% of the ventilators likely to be necessary, only 1% of the masks and respirators, according to some assessments I’ve read, and, let’s not forget, China apparently accounts for 95% of the US antibiotics market.
So, as you look under the surface each time, each country looks a little bit different and we’re going to have to apply that same level of very specific country-by-country analysis, as we look at emerging markets in particular, ‘cause this is one of the big worries is maybe just as China comes out, if Europe is able to get to grips with the crisis, could we see a spill over into emerging markets? And there what I would be particularly worried about at the moment is those countries that are hugely vulnerable now to a strengthening dollar, and maybe Creon might come back on this later on. But we’ve seen large increase in dollar denominated debt amongst Sub-Saharan countries, which have almost doubled their dollar denominated debt, in the last ten years, and as a country like South Africa, which was already struggling as it went into this crisis, sees the cost of its debt go up, its global markets collapse, will it be able to handle the crisis? Even India, which at the moment seems to be handling the epidemic well, which has not hit India hard, but its growth rate was already way below par, as it went into this crisis. So, something we’re looking at a lot, I think, is the country-by-country implications of this crisis, which are resilient and what constitutes resilience, is going to be a critical thing to assess.
In terms of responses, the second part, I want to say something about quickly, yeah, it’s been pretty terrible, from a global response standpoint, and I don’t need to go in too much ‘cause you’ve read a lot of this in newspapers. Germany closing borders with France without co-ordinating, US closing borders with the Schengen area without co-ordinating, a kind of ‘me first’ approach to some of the main kneejerk political reactions.
Creon mentioned that there has been some nascent co-ordination amongst central banks, swap lines, the IMF has put forward a big loan package. But what I see completely missing, and this is not an original point, other than it’s one that Jim O’Neill, Creon and I made about a week ago and Gordon Brown and many others, Yuval Harari, have all come in behind on this, there has been no high level political statement that we’re in this together and we will do whatever it takes together to fix it. Not that we’ll do whatever it takes each individual country closing its borders, and the contrast with 2008 is striking on this front. And if you call this, as President Trump does now and again, a ‘China virus’, obviously it plays well and it did start in China, but all it does is drive all of those protective elements and lead to a dangerous backlash in reply. What you’re seeing therefore, at the moment, and this is something we’ll be tracking very carefully, how does the corona crisis play through into broader US/China competition? And I did spot a couple of questions coming in on this, so I’ll just say one thing about it right now. I think the Chinese leadership, who feel threatened by the United States already, see this as a second opportunity to re-establish their own credentials for global leadership.
When the US had the global financial crisis, or at least kicked it off, China saw an opportunity to demonstrate it had a different economic model, and they seem to be doing the same thing again with this crisis, not least as we’ve seen them providing all sorts of medical help to African countries. In Italy, they’re doing online co-ordination, and lessons learned messages with groups of countries from Africa, the Pacific islands, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and with the 18+1 European countries. Nothing wrong with this in principle, but some real risks for the future.
So, to try to wrap this up, so I don’t go off too much more time, and I want to leave time for Q&A, what I would say first is, there is a real risk that this coronavirus crisis, depending on whether it lasts for 12 weeks or 12 months, could be the straw on the camel’s back that breaks up globalisation. It comes on the back of a US/China strategic decoupling. It’s made a lot of companies in countries very suspicious about globalisation and global supply chains. It comes on the back of the big push to try to make ourselves more sustainable, from a carbon standpoint, and therefore, companies already thinking about the vulnerability of their supply chains.
So, you know, is it bad that we move away from a heavily globalised, just in time global economy? Maybe not. It’s been good for some countries around the world, for some people, for some classes, and for those at the top end of the income ladder, and obviously, it’s not been good for the whole planet. But if we lose that sense of being in a shared process of globalisation, from which at least most of us think we can get some types of gains, if you do not have that benefit, then you’re going to think about totally changing the architecture of the global economy. Because what will happen is that you no longer have the kind of structure in place to commit to the architecture of the Bretton Woods Institutions, the UN, that was built up in the past.
So, I hope, number one, that governments succeed in dealing with the crisis, ‘cause if they succeed, they’ll have the political capital to manage then better international co-operation. Any government that fails is going to put up its borders even more strongly. At that point, hopefully, we can get, maybe in the summer, some more G20 co-ordination on the back of the G7, on the back of the EU/China Summit later in the year. And let’s prepare for the risk of a spread of this pandemic to the Global South, either as a health crisis or as an economic crisis. And, finally, let’s make sure that we’re thinking now about how, when we rebuild global economic growth, we don’t throw away the opportunity to build that growth around a much more sustainable way, from a carbon intensity standpoint. We’re going to be less carbon intensive through these next three to 12 months, how can we make sure we sustain that for the longer term? I’ll stop there, thank you.
Laura Wellesley
Thanks, Robin, and thanks for all the questions that have come in. I mean, a lot of them are around the role of, you know, a normal – an existing erosion of multilateralism and how that’s played into the response. We’ve also got the response tells us about the future of multilateralism and I think Robin’s touched on many of those. So, I just wanted to leap back to Emma actually, and put a slightly different spin on that question, what do you think has been the impact on the nature of national responses of that lack of co-ordination, and there’s a question here around WHO advice to test, test, test. Has a lack of, you know, global leadership and global co-operation led to some of the divergence from that advice that we’ve seen at a national level?
Emma Ross
That is a very interesting question and it’s hard to tell exactly whether capacity is the only thing at play, but in general, limited capacity is the answer in most countries, including the UK. So, what they’re trying to do is focus on the priority areas, the intensive care units, people in hospital with pneumonia, and then the frontline NHS workers. But they’re ramping up capacity hugely and they’re also in negotiation to procure new serological tests as well, and the aim would be to test more people to reduce the pressures on the health system. So, a lot of it is lack of capacity and I don’t think it’s a disregard for expert advice from WHO. Each country is facing different realities and in different stages of their outbreak. So, the earlier in the outbreak it is, the easier it is to find the cases, trace the contacts and follow these chains, in order to contain them and that the later in the outbreak, where it’s proliferating everywhere, it is much harder to justify that when you have limited supplies of tests.
Laura Wellesley
I mean, a question to all of you, in different respects, but there’s a couple of questions around perhaps the communities and the settings that we haven’t heard so much about, you know, in mainstream media particularly, than the rest of Europe, what does this mean for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where critical health infrastructure is lacking and where economic resilience may not be what it is in other countries? And also for, you know, for the especially vulnerable groups, so a question about refugees and displaced communities, what – how can they possibly begin to cope with this and what advice is coming out from the WHO and others on how best to do that?
Emma Ross
Well, the advice is that all groups – this goes back to the universality question that universal means everyone and that includes refugees and migrants and that nobody should be left behind. Of course, in reality, when you don’t have systems that take them into account, it is very much more difficult to have systems that do include them, but the advice and recommendations is that they should not be left behind.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
As a quick observation, we have colleagues at Chatham House who would be more knowledgeable of the vulnerabilities of particular countries, let’s say in Sub-Saharan Africa. But, number one, some of them have had to deal with severe, you know, severe and serious health crises in recent years, not least Ebola, and have demonstrated, including in large urban areas, the capacity to organise incredibly well when they have to. I think we sometimes assume somehow we’re better prepared for these things in Western countries, but it’s more of a shock, in many cases, to us, than maybe it is to others and we don’t always have the systems in place.
What worries me, I don’t know if more is the right word, but what worries me deeply, which is why I emphasised this in my remarks, is the danger of a collapse of economic opportunity, a closing of markets and, to your other point, Laura, and the point of some of our questions, a closing of the capacity for migrant routes, or at least for legal migration as well as illegal migration, at this moment where people are closing borders and closing economic opportunity. We have to think constantly about the long-term effects, ‘cause many of these African countries were in the process of really upgrading their healthcare capability, as Emma said, to more universal healthcare models. We need to be thinking about long-term resilience, not just the short-term crisis.
Creon Butler
Perhaps I can just follow on briefly. I mean, I think one question is to what extent, in many of these countries, because they have a younger population, that they may not actually face the same level of impact that some of the advanced with older – advanced countries, with older populations have felt. I think also the extent that the crisis hits them later, they will get the benefit of the experience that both China and some of the advanced countries have had.
But just going back to Robin’s earlier point about particularly those countries with dollar denominated debt, I mean, I think it is a reason for concern and, in a sense, it’s why it’s so important that the international financial institutions, particularly the IMF and the World Bank, should have the necessary resources to provide those countries with the assistance, should they need it. And this was a major part of the response to the global financial crisis, ensuring that the IMF resources were sufficiently strong, and it’s yet another reason why co-ordination among governments and particularly finance ministries, to ensure that those resources are there is so important
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
And, Laura, if I can jump in on the back of Creon’s comment, one other point on this, I think that one area where central banks quietly, and certainly the US Central Bank, whatever President Trump may or may not be saying, has proved itself effective is in getting these swap lines set up with, I think, it’s six or seven central banks around the world, including Brazil and a number of – Mexico, a number of countries, not just in the traditional group of London and, you know, the other more traditional kind of financial centres. So, we’re seeing some capacity there.
Second point to make, certainly in the United States and Europe, we’ve gone into this crisis, okay, yes, with government debt much higher, but at least you’ve got a lot of banks with much larger capital buffers than they had before imposed on them after the global financial crisis. And central banks have eased the reserve requirements and the quality of the reserve requirements in a lot of those financial institutions, so they can lend money to SMEs and so on. So, at least you can see central banks trying to use that agility, even if interest rates can’t make a big difference right now, they’re finding other ways to make a difference. I don’t know if Creon would agree with that.
Creon Butler
The swap lines – I think one of the concerns, after the last global financial crisis, is that next time round the Fed wouldn’t be able to create swap lines with this broader range of countries, as it did the first time round, and, indeed, that’s why there was a lot of discussion in the IMF around whether there should be, if you like, multilateral liquidity, some more instruments. Now the interesting thing is that they’ve just gone ahead and done it, which is obviously very positive. Whether – and that includes not just the G7 countries, but a number of emerging economies as well, whether that will extend to the poorer countries remains to be seen, and I think that’s why the IFIs are so important, in relation to any needs that they may have.
Laura Wellesley
We’ve got another five minutes. Emma, there’s a specific question on the role of models and their – the way in which they fit into the policy response and whether that’s been – had a good effect or a bad effect on the nature of the response, I guess in the context of the UK and other European countries first off.
Emma Ross
Yeah, I see the question is questioning whether models are actually useful, whether they work. Models are made on assumptions that are revised as more accurate information becomes available. They’re really for public health purposes, for planning, and are modified regularly as more information comes out, especially about the transmissibility that we don’t really understand completely at the moment. They’re not really meant for the public, but since they’re published in medical journals, they are often the focus of Journalists and though models are usually presenting a best and a worst case scenario, the best case is often not mentioned. But models have developed greatly and they are recognised as providing important tools for decision-makers, but they do depend on good quality inputs to get the best outputs and we’re still learning about the virus and the disease, but they’re still very important tools for us. I hope that answers the question.
Laura Wellesley
Yeah, Robin, is that you waving?
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
No, I wasn’t waving, but I did – I was reading a couple of questions, which I’m happy to answer at some point if you want me to, but…
Laura Wellesley
Go for it. Go for it.
Robin Niblett CMG
Sometimes it’s me moving my hands around. But I saw a question from Matt Goodwin about, if I understood it rightly, about Southern Europe and the – I think he said geopolitical implications, at least certainly the political implications of Italians feeling they’ve been left to their own devices. It’s always been a fractious relationship between Germany and Italy, but I think the comments obviously regretted and quickly retracted by Christine Lagarde about the European Central Bank not being there to narrow spreads between Eurozone government bonds.
At the time when that was delivered, you know, really had a big and negative impact and is going to carry some implications potentially, politically, of the future, depending on how this plays out. But I think more broadly, you know, my experience of the European Union is that things look terrible at the beginning of every crisis and then slowly, over time, people are forced to rally back together because they have no option but to do that. And ultimately, the way the European stability mechanism and the European Central Bank are sitting there as backstops, of which Germany and the other northern members of the Eurozone are a central part, means that in a way they can’t split from each other. And I’m hoping that this health crisis, which has so much more of a human crisis and less of a kind of winners and losers of some big economic competition, that this will leave room for this not to be a further deep split into Europe.
And as I – we had – I saw one question from an Italian member, who I know, Carlo Musso, asking about whether – “Why the Brits have taken so long, when they’d seen how Italy have had to jump on its extreme social distancing?” I’m not going to seek to explain why the government did it, because I honestly I don’t know and I’m not privy to their step-by-step decisions. The one thing I would say is that I think this government is concerned about how long these social distancing measures are going to have to be carried out and there was a report today by the scientific advisory group to the government that talked about social distancing measures having to continue for at least six months. And if they’re going to have to continue for that long, maybe even up to a year, but they said at least six months, then you’re going to want to bring them in, in a way, as late as you can, for economic as well as just pure credibility reasons, otherwise people just won’t obey them, and it’s a very dangerous dance, or difficult dance, for governments to undertake for a crisis of this sort, which is sneaky, because it has a 1% mortality rate, people think, or 1-2% mortality rate.
Laura Wellesley
Creon, I wonder if I could put the final question to you, someone’s asked, “How do we restart the economy without restarting the virus?” And I think that that encapsulates quite, well, a lot of the questions that have been asked here. So, if you could just answer that one in the last minute for us.
Creon Butler
Thank you very much. Yes, I mean, it’s, if you like, the $64,000 question. I think the problem really is that it depends a great deal on things about the nature of the virus that we don’t yet know. So, you know, is it – and, you know, I speak under the control of Emma here, but is it the case that, for example, if the virus is brought to a halt and there are no new infections for a significant period of time, does that mean, in some sense, it sort of disappears or will it always be there and therefore, be restarted as soon as you start social interaction again, or, as we’ve seen, there’s a big debate about the possibility of immunity developing naturally in the population.
So, all of those things, in a sense, will depend – will determine what is the optimum way of restarting the economy. I mean, my guess is that there will be ways to restart the economy, in a cautious way, and we may well see this happening in China shortly, where you do maintain measures to minimise the degree of social interaction. But restart, if you like, all parts of the economy that are less dependant on that and then you progressively move forward from there. Clearly, once a vaccine is available, then it’s a wholly different ballgame, but I think what you will see is a gradual and cautious response, and it depends an awful lot about what we learn about the virus. I mean, a crucial thing actually, I think, will be around testing and once – as soon as you have very high volumes testing arrange – availability, that will also enable you to deploy more people, with less concern about the impact on their wellbeing, and so on.
But, I mean, Emma will perhaps have some views on those particular medical questions that I think are crucial to that next stage.
Emma Ross
Yes.
Laura Wellesley
Quick reflections.
Emma Ross
Oh, okay, do you want me to weigh in on this or do you want to move on?
Laura Wellesley
Well, we’re due to finish two minutes ago, actually.
Emma Ross
Oh okay. Well, the quick answer is that you can’t really answer that question, as we don’t understand the potential of the virus, so a second wave is possible, but that’s the short answer.
Laura Wellesley
Yeah, and, I mean, I’m sorry to everyone who posted an excellent question that we haven’t managed to answer, but I think I can say on behalf of all colleagues at Chatham House, that we’ll certainly be taking stock of the questions and hope to be able to give our answers to many of them, in different formats and outputs over the coming weeks and months. So, we really appreciate those. And thanks also for bearing with us and for joining us online and I hope that you’ve found this useful.
Finally, thank you to the panellists. I think, for me, it’s been a fascinating discussion and I’m sure I’m not alone. So, we look forward to seeing you again in some webinar format. Many thanks.
Creon Butler
Thank you very much.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thank you. Thanks. Buy guys.
