EDITORIAL - The nightmare scenario
When this health crisis abates, we will be in a new world. – Suzy Taherin , Forbes Magazine
Much of contemporary journalistic commentary is replete with imagining the nature of the human condition post COVID-19. While most agree that it will not be the normal we know now, this future is usually projected in rather dystopian terms. Forecasts abound of economic hardship, recession and even depression bringing increased bankruptcies, job losses and widespread penury. And, above all, the precise commencement of this period remains an enigma wrapped inside a mystery; even its mode of determination is uncertain.
In the UK Guardian at the end of March, Peter Baker noted that global crises may sometimes serve to improve the human condition, as with the establishment of national health services in Europe after the influenza pandemic of 1918 and the origin of the modern welfare state, owed to the combined effects of the Great Depression and World War II. Indeed,we may also recall that one consequence of the 1937 protests was the formation of workers’ organisations to improve the employment status of their members.
However, he notes further that crises can also send societies down darker paths, relating the exponential increase in government surveillance of private citizens after 9/11 and the imbalanced resolution of the 2008 financial crisis, whereby banks and financial institutions were restored to normality at great public cost, while, globally, government spending on public services was slashed.
And in a piece published in Caribbean Post in early April, Dr Kari Grenade, a regional economist, predicts, “the use of technology will become even more important… because all facets of our lives will be different. Countries would have to operate in more resilient and sustainable ways; possibly with shorter supply chains, higher-energy-efficiency production, increased digitisation of sales and financial services, new modes of work (working remotely), greater use of technology in the education system (more online teaching) and in the agriculture sector to ensure food security…”
Of even more immediate concern to Barbados is the likely consequence of the pandemic upon the future of tourism, for decades our main revenue source. The sequelae of COVID-19 should give some pause as to the sustainability of this industry, dependent as it is on factors that may all be negatively impacted by the effects of the current scourge.
First, it relies on the movement of people from their domicile to these shores. But both the airlines and cruise vessels will have to recover soon much of the trust lost in the last four months through fear of the virus. It will be recalled that both of these modes of transportation ground to a halt, given their high propensity for contagion. Indeed, the very notion of global travel will come to be viewed with some degree of trepidation, contingent on the popular perception of a destination’s freedom from infection, however that may be assessed.
This perception carries some personal mutuality as well, since arrivals from “suspect” destinations may have to undergo a period of isolation until the danger of infection is unlikely. This would, of course, place the host destination in a much less attractive light, yet any relaxation may serve to endanger the health of its own citizenry. As obtains now in other contexts, this may necessitate reciprocal arrangements being made between jurisdictions to assure each other’s citizens of unrestricted entry into their countries.
Finally, tourism requires some interpersonal contact. While this is not substantial, its probable incidence will conduce to holiday institutions having to take even greater care to be seen as adequately sanitised environments.
This matter clearly merits further thought. The real possibility of the tourist industry’s demise is awful to contemplate.