Disease pandemics and change
Disease is the great leveller in history. The Great Plague of 1348-50 swept across Europe strangely also from an Italian landing from the orient much like covid-19. By the time it was finished as much as fifty percent of the population had died. As the fourteenth century went on, labour was always in short supply. Labour remained after the plague still bonded to the land as serfs. Slowly peasants left the estates of their masters for greener pastures. The attraction of leaving traditional lives was the price of their labour was much higher and more valued elsewhere. It also was paid in real cash rather than produce and a cottage. The Peasant’s Revolt in late 14th century England was in part a result of the plague’s horrific economic work on the population. Survivors wanted simply to be more valued by their society.
As Europe began to change due to labour shortages in the 14th Century so we can expect changes yet unrecognized to be the result of the covid-19 pandemic.
Governments are now printing money to ensure social distancing is practiced and to give people who have to stay homes an income. The social dislocation of covid-19 is already apparent. When its over what can we expect? Will everything be quickly forgotten and everyone will return to the pre plague status quo? Perhaps we can learn from the social changes of 14th century peasants or even those who went through the Great Depression followed by World War 2.
Think of the covid-19 experiences as a result of our globalization of industry and multinational entrepreneurial companies some owned by states such as China. Western corporations in search of cheaper labour built incredible connections with China and other low wage oriental countries to manufacture goods. The world becomes integrated in its supply lines creating economic interdependence that can be tested hard when human interactions probably out of a live animal market spread a virus capable of creating a pandemic.
Trump’s USA has been pulling back from globalization using the retro conservative notions that US jobs were lost to lower wages and costs in the orient and Mexico and must now be restored. Meanwhile the alleged lower wage areas of the world have become much more technologically sophisticated and have run with the high technology manufacturing plus lower wage costs. In short they are competitive and qualitatively excellent a double whammy for the West.
What no one saw in all of this globalism was the rise of the unexpected such as covid-19. Warnings in the past with SARS and other infections originating in China were not like this experience and so when they were solved or dissipated the experiences went on the back burner of industrial globalization and the political advantages of getting back to normal.
Covid-19 is not like the previous experiences with oriental infections. It is earth shaking and a wake up call that before it is over can and will have serious economic costs. With global finance and stock markets now in disarray and countries printing money and cheques to their citizens to maintain the economy, the price of this experience is profound. The downturn and the eventual advantages to China as the second biggest world economy are yet to be felt.
It could mean that run away globalization is in the crosshairs of change. It may generate more insular economics across the world and it may be the creation of an economy that doesn’t pollute and create other lurking storms such as climate change. China and the West have been taken back to a new start line. China seems to be recovering from covid-19 and so it could be at the new economic start line first.
On the positive side this experience will generate new applications of super computing and artificial intelligence to analyze and anticipate and quickly conquer viral attacks. This work has already discovered the genetics of covid-19 in record time. At MIT early human trials and tests for a covid-19 vaccine start on 8 April 2020. The new arms race may be information intensive viral counter measures.
A vaccine will still take at least a year and probably more time. The economic cost of this is high as we wait and try to stamp on covid-19 with measures that have a high economic downturn cost to the West.
However artificial intelligence systems at IBM have already found 8000 chemical associations that can be used to create anti-viral medicines for covid-19. This kind of information intensive work needs to be funded to take medicine and pharmaceuticals to new levels of efficiency. It is a new medicine and pharmacology in development.
In this exercise big pharma living in its global business model is going to have to explore how they can make this happen or move out of the way for a new public interest method of creating drug and vaccine solutions. It is very likely that artificial intelligence analysis can lower the start up costs of drugs, vaccines and treatments.
The economic war with China has intensified as globalization ideas drop in the West as counter productive. Less reliance on cheap goods and low wages may be seen as strategically unsound for business and Western states. Countering disasters of climate and germs may now take the centre stage because they create widespread economic chaos that is unacceptable.
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