Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield during his update to the media on the response to the coronavirus. Photo / File
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield during his update to the media on the response to the coronavirus. Photo / File
Comment
Like many readers I've been looking for information and advice in coping with the coronavirus epidemic, both in terms of public health and economic consequences.
The best I've found was on the front page of the manual given to Arthur Dent in Richard Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.It was a simple slogan, "Don't Panic". That's good advice. Along with maintaining respect and trust.
There is good reason to respect the seriousness of the threat posed by Covid-19.
We've all seen the statistics, worldwide 100,000 infected, 3400 dead.
As this pandemic develops, it's the respect among citizens and the government and the mutuality of trust that provides the best framework for safety in the midst of uncertainty.
The coronavirus, the share market and the economy, and the effort to mitigate climate change all have in common that successful coping will depend upon shared effort and trust in each other and trust in government.
We've seen how Chinese authorities placing their need for an appearance of omnipotence above the duty to safeguard the population failed to respect the warnings of Dr Li Wenliang of the first case (Dec 8, 2019) in Wuhan, shut out the truth, and enabled the virus' success, with Dr Li Wenliang one of its fatalities.
The same authoritarian self-serving impulse seems to have played out in Iran, another epicentre of inadequate response and thus enhanced infection.
Unfortunately, the US is extremely vulnerable despite the administration's claim of having the world's best medical system.
On the leadership side, President Trump, aware his electoral chances may diminish as did a predecessor's popularity, plummeting after Hurricane Katrina, minimises the gravity of the threat, diverts from scientific sources of good information and offers false hopes of a vaccine while taking funds away from the Centers of Disease Control.
Trump has politicised coronavirus. It's all about him.
US citizens for their part are intensely polarised politically, which does not bode well for the cooperative effort that may well be required in emergency.
New Zealand, despite a medical system that is more modest, both in its claims and in fact, is nonetheless in a better position as to public safety.
We've been tested by disasters, both from nature and from human failings.
We've seen our capability to respond in communities pulling together with empathy, solidarity and moral clarity.
The Government has acquitted itself well in such past circumstance and its effort to remain transparent and truthful without giving over either to fear or complacency is reassuring.
One other area of obvious concern is the immediacy of economic challenge. Faced with US share market declines, Trump, who has politicised the previously non-partisan Federal Reserve, has seen its chairman, Jerome Powell, cut the Fed rate by a dramatic 0.5 per cent.
Whether in response or not, our own Reserve Bank is floating the idea of a cut in the OCR (official cash rate).
My own expertise in economics is limited, but two Nobel Laureates in Economics, Paul Krugman and Robert Shiller, have asserted that rate cuts now are counterproductive.
Cuts were justified in 2007 because of a world liquidity crisis, when credit simply froze up.
Currently the world economy is facing a supply problem.
Having put too many eggs in China's basket, supply declines translate to declines in manufactured goods. More money chasing after fewer goods is simply inflationary.
Here, a cut to the OCR would do little for the economy as Brian Fallow of the NZ Herald writes.
Banks would get richer. Mom and Pop investors, reliant on interest from term investments, would suffer and house prices rise, hurting first time buyers.
We need to stop falling in line with every impulse generated by the genius of Donald Trump.
When it comes to the health and wealth of Americans he's in it for him.
His track record of concern for allies and friends is not a good one.
Just ask the Kurds.
•Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
