What changed with the epidemic?
Since December 31, 2019 the world has gone from predictions of declining economic growth/recession to being faced with the first global economic contraction since the 1930s.
Never before in peacetime has a country closed its factories and not shipped its finished products. This time manufacturing and foreign trade were frozen in China. Nor had it ever been seen that all services in all countries, some more than others, closed simultaneously, except for the United States, Great Britain and Mexico which closed later or did not close at all.
The contemporary societal lesson will be to have new forms of human contact, new forms of life. Global value chains must be rethought and industrialization policies must be rethought. Public health as a public good must return.
