COVID- A New World Order?

COVID - A New World Order?

SUMMARY: 

We expect the world will soon divide between countries who eliminated SARS-19 and those that didn’t. A permanent quarantine may need to be maintained between the two.

Infection in the USA

There is a witticism attributed to Churchill that, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else”. Once the USA stops waving its arms around and brings the guns to bear – you better step out of the way.

In a massive effort, the USA has tested almost 1% of its population for SARS-2. About 20% of tests show infection - which with such a large sample probably implies that about 20% of the population of the USA is infected.

If this does not seem possible: consider. If 5 infected people arrive in the USA around 15 January, and within 5 days the total number infected increases by 25% a day (typical for COVID-19) then in 65 days there will be 10 million infected. That is 1 April.

It will be even faster than that if you have a couple of superspreaders at the beginning. If they both infect 35 people, you will get 45 million infected by 1 April.

Infected areas in the USA, 14 April. Source: Johns Hopkins site

This is not evenly spread. On the current testing, New York has about 42% infected and New Jersey 50%, while the more rural states currently have less than 10% infected. Only Alaska and Hawaii are relatively untouched. 

The more heavily infected states are already near the ‘herd immunity’ point. That is why the daily new numbers infected have stabilised at a high level only a few days jump from the top, instead of falling away to a low level as has happened in those countries that blocked the virus before it really got started. In the infected places - the virus is running out of hosts to infect.

The same is almost certainly true in Europe. Most of the heavily infected countries have stabilised new cases not because of the lockdown, but because the disease is running out of people to infect. If that is the case, they might as well forget internal lockdowns and just quarantine themselves so they stop infecting the rest of the world, while protecting their elderly and vulnerable if possible.

What does it mean?

Once the epidemic has run its course, countries will divide into two groups:

• Those in which COVID-19 is now endemic. For these countries, which include almost all of Europe and North America. The disease will sink into the seasonal background respiratory disease burden, just another nasty annual bug along with the influenzas and the other coronaviruses and rhinoviruses.

• Those in which COVID-19 has been eliminated. Any well-resourced country that managed to control the virus before it got out of hand can now eliminate it fairly easily. The list includes China, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand, and in Europe, Austria, Greece and a few Balkan countries. Other developing countries such as the Philippines and African countries who stopped the virus with early travel bans and lockdowns may need a lot of assistance to finish the job.  

So we have a clear division between those countries who stopped the disease and those who didn’t. Or from the opposite point of view, between those who have “done COVID” and those that haven’t.

For the situation to be maintained, a permanent quarantine will need to be established between the two groups. Or at least – any traveller from an infected country to a COVID-free country will have to be quarantined for at least two weeks. In these circumstances, with online conferencing and IT, business can probably be maintained, but military co-operation might be difficult and tourism will hardly be worth the effort. Once the short-term recession is over, this division will be the structural legacy of COVID-19.

In the new world order, Australia and New Zealand will be placed in a quandary. Do they want to be within the "COVID free" bubble, in a bloc of countries which carry most of their trade but where they do not owe their allegiance, or in their bloc of traditional allies? 

It seems unlikely Australia would be prepared to throw open its borders, losing something like 20,000 citizens to a horrible disease - plus carrying an ongoing disease burden - to remain in physical contact with a bloc of countries that despite ample warning could not protect their borders from a hitchhiking microbe nor prepare for its arrival.

If a satisfactory vaccine is developed - and so far there have been no vaccines for any coronavirus - it will become much easier to maintain relations. This is something we have done before. Travellers from  certain countries require yellow fever vaccination certificates. When I was a child, you could distinguish post-war British immigrants to Australia by the smallpox scar on their arm. 

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we might see a situation where younger people, tired of distancing and oppressive controls, or wanting to travel, might perversely seek infection so they could travel to and live in zones outside the "COVID-free bubble". We might therefore find that countries within the bubble lose population. On the other hand, we might find older people wishing to avoid coronavirus seeking residency within the bubble. 

From the beginning COVID-19 took no prisoners and tolerated very few mistakes. If you didn’t step up to the plate firmly and decisively, you lost – and all the major Western countries lost. As a result, we have a new world order in which there is no compass and the rules will have to be hammered out painfully. 

NOTE (July): About a month after this piece, former Australian Prime Minister Keven Rudd wrote an article in "Foreign Affairs" on a related topic, saying that China's power and credibility would also take a hit on a number of levels, more than that of the USA. Australia's subsequent unprovoked attack on China bore him out. Rather than China taking leadership in a COVID-free zone, this bristling of opposition meant tiny Australia would now be representing the Free World in the new COVID-free bubble - and that trade and population exchange between the two countries was unlikely to revive in a hurry, no matter how important this was to Australia.