In this health crisis, nobody is obviously right or obviously wrong and nobody’s stupid. Because nobody really knows. The anxious thoughtfulness with which our politicians, public health experts, doctors and civil servants are taking difficult decisions is beyond doubt, and to be admired.
Prime Minister Robert Abela’s finance team has done a tremendous job devising so quickly compensation schemes for employers, employees and the self-employed. The problems of a crippled economy and dislocated workforce present massive challenges. A wise government will continue to make adjustments to the financial package as events unfold.
Malta’s government has reacted well. The country’s health service has responded admirably. We are fortunate that years of investment in our health infrastructure have paid off. Like most world leaderships, the government deserves sympathy in its decisions (and indecisions) because all the choices are fundamentally difficult and sometimes brutal.
Our political and administrative class deserve support and admiration – rather than the nit-picking small-mindedness of some that typifies blinkered reactions to any government’s efforts to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. I must confess to occasional doubt about people’s intelligence when I read some melodramatic articles in the local press and social media platforms.
How did the world come to this? Four years ago, the Independent Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future – comprisingan independent international, multi-disciplinary group of experts – issued a report on how something like an influenza pandemic could kill millions, cost trillions and derail the global economy.
It recommended governments to set aside annual expenditure on prevention, detection and preparedness for such an eventuality.
Eight months ago, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – a jointly-convened WHO/World Bank independent monitoring and advocacy board – published an expert report warning that “the threat of a pandemic spreading around the globe is a real one. A quick-moving pathogen has the potential to kill tens of millions of people, disrupt economies and destabilise national security.”
There is no simple trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy
The report recommended countries “to prepare for the worst-case scenario of a fast-moving pandemic due to a virulent respiratory pathogen [urging] development of new vaccines and medicines, surge manufacturing capacity and rapid information-sharing systems.”
Two months later, the authoritative Centre for Strategic Studies – a leading non-partisan, independent American think-tank – published a report urging the US government to introduce a “doctrine of continuous prevention, protection and resilience focussed on development of a universal flu vaccine and new antibiotics” and the facilities to deliver them and treat patients.
A month later, the first cases of what we now know as COVID-19 were detected in China.
Since then, it has been a desperate struggle to catch up. On the international stage, scientists have tried to cooperate. National governments (and in the US individual state governors) have pretty much done their own thing. International cooperation and coordination have been notably lacking.
In Malta, a competent government, led by a prime minister and deputy prime minister enjoying unprecedented levels of public trust and underpinned by an excellent medical and public health service, has imposed a lockdown policy to slow the spread of the infection and give the health service a chance to cope.
What comes next? What is the exit strategy? I think many of us imagine that, in a few weeks, when we emerge from house quarantine, it will be over. Business as usual. But I was struck by an interview a few days ago by the WHO’s senior adviser, Bruce Aylward, who has spent time observing the progress of the pandemic in China.
He said that, even as the lockdown is lifted, the Chinese are expecting surges in the virus that will require localised restrictions to be re-imposed. They are expanding hospital provision, still buying ventilators and testing extensively. The only exit strategy for Covid-19 is a vaccine and the capacity to deliver it, together with drugs to treat the patients. And above all, protection for health workers and other essential staff.
World leaders should admit that they have been recklessly complacent about preparedness for a long-foreseen pandemic of this nature. They had received all the warnings. But the health warnings weren’t just about pandemics. It is just as true with the gathering storm of antibiotic resistance. This is a health emergency that world leaders should have been able to see heading towards them for years.
As to the costs of what we are having to do to mitigate the economic, social and health effects of the virus, we are probably witnessing the unfolding of a global tragedy, of which the economic dimension is likely to prove more devastating than the viral one.
The history of previous world pandemics shows that, although economies recover from the initial impact when it is brought under control, significant macroeconomic after-effects persist for some while after.
Already, the huge economic costs of the government’s measures are becoming clear. But as the impending socio-economic tsunami strikes, the diversified Maltese economy has the innate capacity to bounce back – over a reasonable time – to its pre-corona levels of economic activity.
The first task of the government has been to save lives, the second to save livelihoods. There is no simple trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy. We must now begin a calm, rational public debate about Malta’s exit strategy, balancing the medical demands of containing the virus with the inevitable economic and social disruption which will mainly affect the younger generations in society.