Does ‘post-COVID’ make any sense at all? Here’s a different perspective

The popular narrative as of today is that when pushed, societies have prioritised health first and foremost, and only then looked to deal with the economic consequences, or so it seems. But actually, we have prized immediate ‘survival’. We have looked the other way as critical medical care has been deferred, as those with heart conditions are too frightened to go to a hospital and miss their check-ups and prematurely die. We have averted our gaze to domestic abuse and child abuse. We have no idea of the suicides germinating, of depression spikes. We have glorified our personal biologic survival, as individuals, even when most of us weren’t at risk, and couldn’t manage to selectively protect those who were at real risk, without shutting everyone else’s life down – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

I am now running into people wanting everything to be ‘post-COVID’ – economic recoveries, strategies, you name it. This worries me tremendously, as I would argue it is a largely incoherent concept. As a verbal shorthand it’s fine, I use it too. But we mustn’t let it infiltrate our thinking or planning.

National response

What’s wrong with it? Well COVID-19 is a coronavirus we are told, there have been others before, they are frequently circulating. There are too many unknowns. 

First, with the lockdowns, what will be the post-lockdown spikes as we may not have developed adequate immunity? And if the virus fizzles out over summer (due in part to a cocktail of fresh air and sunlight as well as prudent distancing and hygiene for some time), how could we possibly predict it won’t flare back up next Fall or Winter? 

And if we have now gotten ‘hooked’ on reporting ‘cases’ and ‘deaths’ and if a briefly decommissioned ‘hysteria industry’ comes raging back, we could yet again in a few months, be sitting mortified by graphs and cases and debating degrees of lockdown. 

To avoid that, we need a serious debate of what the evidence actually reveals and to define ‘acceptable risk’ against other recurring causes of mortality (60 million die each year from recurring causes) as well the ‘cost’ of again taking extreme action: to lives, livelihood, other forms of treatment, mental well-being, to entire industries and ways of life (and said extreme action will likely at that time also be literally unaffordable). 

And if we can really have that dialogue, without hysteria or complacency, then we could turn the corner, whatever ‘next wave’ or ‘next viral strain’ comes our way. Close to 500k deaths did not shut down the planet re the 2009-2010 swine flu epidemic, nor do the annual 1.5 million deaths from tuberculosis for which we have a vaccine. 

So medically, in terms of public response and national policy, until this debate happens and until we align on fact-based thresholds, scenarios with different game-plans, and learn to do a basic Pareto analysis (almost all the risk is >65 with pre-existing conditions) and learn to differentiate how we safeguard different people (those whose lives are far more at risk economically than via the virus for example), there will be ‘no post-COVID’ on that front.

A smattering of medical opinion

If you haven’t seen my earlier pieces trying to showcase some of the medical viewpoints that challenge the ‘panic’ orthodoxy that is not borne out by objective data to date anyway, here are a few to highlight what I mean about ‘risks’ and cost-benefit assessments:

Dr. Karin Molling, German Virologist, Professor and Director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich until 2008:

“This winter, the flu, is not severe, but around 80,000 are infected. You don’t get these numbers at all.” 

“Every week a person dies in Berlin from multi-resistant germs. That adds up to 35,000 a year in Germany. This is not mentioned at all.”

“I am of the opinion that maybe one should not do so much against young people having parties together and infecting each other. We have to build immunity somehow. How can that be possible without contacts? The younger ones handle the infection much better. But we have to protect the elderly, and protect them in a way that can be scrutinised: is it reasonable what we are doing now to stretch out the epidemic in a way that almost paralyses the entire world economy?”

Dr. Pablo Goldschmidt, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris:

“The ill-founded opinions expressed by international experts, replicated by the media and social networks repeat the unnecessary panic that we have previously experienced. The coronavirus identified in China in 2019 caused nothing less than a strong cold or flu, with no difference so far with cold or flu as we know.”

“Respiratory viral conditions are numerous and are caused by several viral families and species…striking that earlier this year health alerts have been triggered as a result of infections by a coronavirus detected in China, COVID-19, knowing that each year there are three million newborns who die in the world of pneumonia and 50,000 adults in the United States for the same cause, without alarms being raised.”

“Our planet is the victim of a new sociological phenomenon, scientific-media harassment, triggered by experts only on the basis of laboratory molecular diagnostic analysis results.”

German Network for Evidence-Based Science, 100-member strong association of German scientists, researchers and medical professionals:

“In the majority of cases, COVID-19 takes the form of a mild cold or is even symptom-free. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that all cases of infection are recorded, in contrast with deaths which are almost completely recorded. This leads to an overestimation of the CFR (Case Fatality Rate).”

“According to a study of 565 Japanese people evacuated from Wuhan, all of whom were tested (regardless of symptoms), only 9.2% of infected people were detected with currently used symptom-oriented COVID-19 monitoring. This would mean the number of infected people is likely to be 10 times greater than the number of registered cases. The CFR would then be only about one-tenth of that currently measured…”

“The CFR of 0.2% currently measured for Germany is below the Robert Koch-Institute’s (RKI) calculated influenza CFR of 0.5% in 2017/18and 0.4% in 2018/19.”

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Specialist in Microbiology, former Professor at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and Head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene:

“We are afraid that one million infections with the new virus will lead to 30 deaths per day over the next 100 days. But we do not realise that 20, 30, 40 or 100 patients positive for normal coronaviruses are already dying each day.”

“The Government’s anti COVID-19 measures are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous…the life expectancy of millions is being shortened. The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless people. The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling.” 

Prof. Hendrik Streeck, German HIV Researcher, Epidemiologist Professor of Virology and Director of the Institute of Virology and HIV Research, Bonn University:

“The new pathogen is not that dangerous; it is even less dangerous than Sars-1. The special thing is that Sars-Cov-2 replicates in the upper throat area and is therefore much more infectious because the virus jumps from throat to throat, so to speak. But that is also an advantage: Because Sars-1 replicates in the deep lungs, it is not so infectious, but it definitely gets on the lungs, which makes it more dangerous.” 

The economic landscape

In these terms, we will be dealing with a slew of unknowns, among them the depth of the economic ‘downturn’ globally, the ‘shock absorbers’ that exist or don’t economically for different regions, and the ramifications of the seeming lack of widescale ‘economic immunity’ of any major economic market. 

‘Post-COVID’ would also suggest no more economic shockwaves from any major region or country over-reacting to a post-lockdown spike, or a recurrence, to some extent. But it would also mean clarity on a number of the fronts below, which could be some time in coming.

Value will change in the post-COVID world. On one level, that’s obvious: valuations in global financial markets have imploded, with many suffering their sharpest declines in decades. More fundamentally, the traditional drivers of value have been shaken, new ones will gain prominence, and there’s a possibility that the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close. This will not be ‘intellectual’ it may simply be how people overwhelmingly behave…and potentially vote.

Current financial-market valuations reflect profound uncertainty over the path of the virus and the length of time that the global economy will remain at least partially shuttered. How many quarters of earnings will be lost? How quick will the recovery be once it comes? Some of this is psychological. 

Will ‘locked down’ or ‘curfewed’ people immediately rebound and revert to full scale economic and social engagement? Or will they cautiously ‘tip-toe’ lest the contagion (of either a viral outbreak or national over-reaction) return? The tentativeness of people’s engagement and trust and openness to travel and to interact, unfortunately can’t be forecasted. It won’t be ‘post-COVID’ until we know and have turned that corner.

Deeper concerns include the extent to which economies are experiencing supply destruction not mere disruption. How many once-viable companies will be permanently impaired? And how many people will lose their job and possibly their short-term or even medium-term participation in the labour force as currently understood? 

The answers to these questions—more than the scale of any short-term plunge in GDP—will be the true measures of the effectiveness of the responses of governments, companies and banks. And until various sectors identify and target the ‘new normal’ for them in the foreseeable future in terms of emerging profit pools or different strategic levers or new capabilities, we won’t be ‘post-COVID’ there either. 

If these were the only issues, classic value mantras would apply (‘when to catch the falling knife’ or buying when ‘there’s blood on the streets’) and attention would turn, as it already has for some, to the very real opportunities the crisis has revealed: in teleworking, e-health, distance learning, regional or local niche industries, ‘value’ over glitz in buying patterns, reassurance over swagger in ‘experience led’ markets like tourism, and the acceleration across our economies from moving atoms to shifting ‘bits’ at the macro level, and perhaps the desire to be less globally homogenous and more locally artisanal on the micro level. 

As our digital and local lives expand and our physical and global ones potentially contract or become far more selective, this sea change will create and destroy value. Creativity and dynamism will still be highly prized, but new vectors will shape value: economic, financial, psychological and societal. In ascending order, consider:

First, the crisis is likely to accelerate the fragmentation of the global economy. Until a vaccine has been found and widely applied, travel restrictions will remain, and may be magnified by personal reluctance. Even afterwards, local resilience will likely be prized over global efficiency. And there are new coronaviruses out there, new pathogens. And frankly, economies will likely shift, towards less ‘magical thinking’ re the consequences of climate change, having experienced global shutdown once, and perhaps realising in that instance there will be nowhere to ‘hunker down’ or ‘shelter in place’ to duck the consequences. 

There will be economic dividends clearly for investments, industries, regions and nations who develop capability and resilience related to that imperative, for sustainable options. Will we immediately head there ‘post-COVID’ as a thought through strategy, or just find that is where over time, social priorities and in time demand, coalesces?

Second, much of the enterprise value of companies will be taken up by extraordinary financial support and destroyed by lost cashflow. Their higher debt will increase the riskiness of the underlying equity and weigh on the capacity for growth. And so the ‘bets’ they place will have to be more granular, closer to customers and employees and market, and less based on the heady allure of free cash and increasing corporate debt willingly taken on, as opposed to that which is being undertaken here to survive and to aim to recover.

The financial relationship between the state and the private sector has already deepened dramatically. What will the exit look like and how long will it take? Will the state remain enmeshed in commerce, and so restrain private dynamism? Relative to South Asia, the World Bank has already sounded the warning trumpet re the virtues and vices of public banks. They will be crucial now, but their governance and transparency will matter more than ever.

Third, the searing experience of the simultaneous health and economic crises will change how companies balance risk and that recurring ‘catch-phrase’ already famous pre-COVID, ‘resilience.’ We are entering a world in which firms will be expected to prepare for Nassim Taleb’s touted Black Swans by being, as he recommends, ‘Anti-Fragile.’ Are there corporate antibodies for potential catastrophe? They will need to be located and developed.

The financial sector learned these lessons the hard way during the global financial crisis, which is why banks still have enough capital to be part of the solution. However old habits die hard, and these banks were still bailed out by taxpayers, so the level of ‘learning’ may have been incomplete. No one can bail out the whole global economic landscape. However, which companies will dare to operate now with minimal liquidity, stretched supply chains and token contingency plans? Which governments will dare rely primarily on global markets to address local crises?

Fourth, people’s economic narratives will change. As one UK economic expert put it, “After decades of risk being downloaded onto individuals, the bill has arrived, and people do not know how to pay it.” Unemployment is skyrocketing and in parts of the world there is palpable anxiety that comes with inadequate or inaccessible health care. 

These lessons will not soon be forgotten. They will have lasting repercussions for sectors that rely on aggressive borrowing by households, carrying ballooning credit card debt to pay for ‘lifestyles’ we’ve at least had to practice doing without to some extent, a booming housing market which we may reconsider and redefine ‘value’ regarding and a vibrant ‘freelancer’ or ‘gig’ economy that may be less or at least differently viable. Some of these may be over-reactions, some of this may be real and necessary evolution. Post-COVID is murky, and may be years in the making, not so much the virus, but the fissures it has revealed or possibly highlighted.

This points to a final, deeper issue. As the philosopher Michael Sandel has argued, in recent decades, incrementally but relentlessly, we have been moving from a market economy to a market society. Our ‘lives’ have been about our brands and our consumer experiences. Yet, for example, we put no real value on a rainforest, despite all it does for us, or the mangroves that serve to shelter us from some of the effects of nature’s wrath as when tsunamis strike. But cut all that down and offer it as ‘property’ or build something on it, and it’s something we can put on a ledger. 

What is the ‘value’ of the 800 plus acres of Central Park in New York lovingly preserved by the Conservancy, a private initiative in partnership with New York City? It is improbable, remarkable. One can imagine what that could be ‘sold’ for. And yet the ‘value’ it confers is immeasurable. And we can all understand ‘tree hugging’ after this!

This crisis could help reverse that relationship, so that public values help shape private value. Social cost and social value may increasingly become more than theoretical. 

The popular narrative as of today is that when pushed, societies have prioritised health first and foremost, and only then looked to deal with the economic consequences, or so it seems. But actually, we have prized immediate ‘survival’.

We have looked the other way as critical medical care has been deferred, as those with heart conditions are too frightened to go to a hospital and miss their check-ups and prematurely die. Poorer countries have delayed vaccinating for polio and measles, and we expect a spike of these killers this same Fall. We have averted our gaze to domestic abuse and child abuse. We have no idea of the suicides germinating, of depression spikes. We have glorified our personal biologic survival, as individuals, even when most of us weren’t at risk, and couldn’t manage to selectively protect those who were at real risk, without shutting everyone else’s life down. 

When we see the community consequences, I wonder if we will cheer for that. Will we salute mass starvation, destruction of businesses built over a working lifetime, for what we are now learning, was deadly, but not really more so, and in some cases much less, than other annual recurring causes of mortality? Perhaps a new, more expansive, more measured sense of ‘value of life’ will have to emerge.

In this crisis, we may learn practically we need to act as an interdependent community not independent individuals, so the values of economic dynamism and efficiency have been balanced by those of solidarity, fairness, responsibility and compassion.

All this amounts to a test of stakeholder capitalism. When it’s over, companies will be judged by ‘what they did during the war’, how they treated their employees, suppliers and customers, by who shared and who hoarded. If you sat on your huge bank account, and earlier crazy market frenzy bonuses, while firing front-line people with no means of survival, that will have an impact on standing. Those that took the pain, humanely dealt with colleagues, kept the commitments they could, retained, or rehired people, will deserve the brand advantages that accrue.

The new normal

After ‘COVID-19 the crisis,’ it’s reasonable to expect people to demand better quality, and better coverage of social support and medical care, greater attention to be paid to managing risks, especially those contingent on factors outside our immediate influence and control, and more heed to be given to the advice of scientific experts, and perhaps less slavish self-absorbed commercial narcissism. 

The next great test will be on multiple levels, the ‘post-COVID’ world order. Will China and the US manage to work together? Will the EU and parts of Asia step into the breach, bridging between the two current economic superpowers, both of which are also economically besieged? 

And as has been observed, if one of the tests of mental and emotional health is our ability to meet a crisis early, before we have to, this will become most evident in two ways.

First, will we make teaching the skills of human collaboration and building the aptitudes of emotional resilience and health a priority (among our recent largest ‘killers’ were coming from opioid addiction, teenage suicides and more) so we can create the capabilities and partnerships and leadership the future requires? 

And the other is the upcoming crisis point as best we know it, earlier referenced, of climate change. If we are outraged by countries denying the real dangers of a new highly contagious coronavirus capable of human to human transmission, and then slow action and inadequate testing and all the rest, what will we say about this seismic and perhaps undoable crisis that is a) predicted as a central risk in the coming years by overwhelming scientific consensus, that b) will disrupt so much of the world as we know it and perhaps lead to shortages, ravages, war, pandemics and more…impacts so pervasive we won’t be able to self-isolate and gorge on Netflix alas to cope with if so and c) is arguably still solvable, but requires our creativity, our solidarity and our concerted proactivity. It needs leadership, from everyone, in concert and individually.

People often ask post-crisis, and doubtless ‘post-COVID’ too: ‘What was it all for?’ At some level, it’s futile. Life happens. But humans seek meaning. And emotionally and spiritually, it’s a question that must be answered. And to that extent, the answer is up to all of us, and has to be created together.