The Brief / By Ben FrankelProper Perspective, and a New, Post-Pandemic Economic Paradigm

Governments around the world have imposed economic and social lockdown in their countries in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus. These decisions were driven by dire predictions of several influential epidemiological models. Three months into the lockdowns and shutdowns, these decisions are subject to renewed examination and criticism.
Ross Clark (also see here) questions the usefulness of variables such as “R”-naught (R0), and the underlying figures used in calculating them. Alistair Haimes and Greg Weiner raise more fundamental questions: were government leaders, facing a complex situation requiring costly decisions, too willing – indeed, eager — to accept the recommendations of scientists and modelers, without subjecting these recommendations to searching critiques and thorough examinations? “[I]t is already clear that there has been an unexampled disregard for the foundational pillars of the scientific method even as governments trumpet that they are ‘following the science’,” Haimes writes. Weiner writes that in tough situations, leaders should not outsource decisions to others. Exercising judgment – seasoned by experience, evenness of temperament, and due regard for expertise – “as the means of making political decisions is not only correct; it is unavoidable.”
And judgment leavened by experience, Dr. Waqar Rashid writes, would help us keep this epidemic in perspective. He tells the story of the 1996 mad cow disease (BSE) scare to show that with a better perspective, an initial panicky reaction to a scary new outbreak is often found to have been unjustified.
On 1 December 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sent a message to Congress, proposing the compensated emancipation of slaves. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” he wrote. “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” This is also Arnold Kling’s argument. The novel virus has created a novel economic predicament. “What is clear, however, is that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the deterioration of the concepts that underpin contemporary macroeconomic-policy thinking in America,” he writes. “The time has come to jettison both the Keynesian and monetarist paradigms that macroeconomic policymakers employ and to pursue an alternative paradigm more suitable to the conditions prevailing in today’s economy.”

Argument: Business survivalWhy Japanese Businesses Are So Good at Surviving Crises

On 11 March 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake triggered a powerful tsunami, launching 125-feet high waves at the coast of the Tohoku region of Honshu, the largest and most populous island in Japan. nearly 16,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and millions left without electricity and water. Railways and roads were destroyed, and 383,000 buildings damaged, including a nuclear power plant at Fukushima. “In lessons for today’s businesses deeply hit by pandemic and seismic culture shifts, it’s important to recognize that many of the Japanese companies in the Tohoku region continue to operate today, despite facing serious financial setbacks from the disaster,” she writes. “How did these businesses manage not only to survive, but thrive?”

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The Brief // By Ben FrankelFundamental Questions about COVID-19 Still to Be Answered

One of the keys to slowing the spread of the coronavirus – and alerting carriers so they do not infect members of vulnerable communities – is testing. Matthew Perrone writes about pool testing, while Kylie Foy describes how MIT engineers can now process vocal recordings of infected but asymptomatic people to reveal potential indicators of COVID-19.

Kevin Hartnett writes that while determining that threshold for COVID-19 herd immunity is critical, a lot of nuance is involved in calculating exactly how much of the population needs to be immune for herd immunity to take effect.

More than six months into the pandemic, the coronavirus has infected more than 11 million people worldwide, killing more than 525,000. But despite the increasing toll, scientists still do not have a definitive answer to several fundamental questions about the virus. Donald G. McNeil Jr.; Peter Fimrite; Ewen Callaway, Heidi Ledford, and Smriti Mallapaty; and Sarah Kaplan and Joel Achenbach analyze some of the mysteries and unanswered questions surrounding COVID-19.

Most antivirals in use today target parts of an invading virus itself. Unfortunately, SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – has proven hard to kill, but Nevan Krogan writes that many drugs show promise in doing just that. One such drug is remdesivir, but Hannah Denham, Yasmeen Abutaleb, and Christopher Rowland write that the company which makes it, Gilead Sciences, will charge U.S. hospitals $3,120 for the typical patient with private insurance.

The number of studies on COVID-19 is increasing just as rapidly as the number of infections. Felicitas Witte writes that today there are more than 2,200 studies under way. “This is more mass than class,” one expert told her. “Many of the ongoing studies are so badly planned that it is already clear that a reliable result will not come out.”

And conspiracy theories are never too far away: Anti-vaxxers have been spreading their lies and misinformation in Africa, using social media in several African countries to accus the World Health Organization (WHO) of mixing poison into “COVID-Organics,” an unproven herbal tonic touted across Africa as a cure for COVID-19, in an attempt to kill Africans.

PERSPECTIVE: Prosecuting domestic terroristsWhite Supremacist Prosecutions Roundup

Since 9/11, national counterterrorism strategies have focused largely on foreign terrorist groups—like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda—and federal prosecutors have used specifically tailored criminal statutes to prosecute individuals affiliated with these groups. Emma Broches and Julia Solomon-Strauss write that over the past few years, however, the domestic terrorism landscape has shifted as a result of a growing threat from individuals and groups with racially motivated violent extremist ideologies—including white supremacist and anti-government views. This means that law enforcement groups face a different, and potentially more challenging, set of obstacles to successfully counter this threat.

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