51Alexey Portansky gave lecture "The Crisis 2020: from the attempt to predict its beginning to the assessment of its consequences" at the Council of Young Scientists.
Alexey Portansky said: “The crisis, emerged by the pandemic, demonstrated the complete failure of the ruling elites in terms of forecasting and rapid response. If 20 years ago the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on the fight against the AIDS, and 6 years ago - a resolution to combat Ebola, this time the countries of the Security Council failed to coordinate their efforts in combating the pandemic.
Almost all of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council found themselves in a difficult situation. And it remains especially difficult in the United States. In the EU countries there can be stated the failure of the anti-epidemiological policy, although the situation in Greece inspires some optimism. The situation in Russia is largely a consequence of the so-called "Optimization" of the health care system, which reduced the number of the medical facilities and the medical workers. The situation in Brazil is even more difficult. President J. Bolsonaro, who denied the very existence of a pandemic, has also fell ill there. Contrary to this, the policies of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have shown themselves well.
The whole situation was a consequence of the refusal of the political elites to heed the warnings of the epidemiologists, which have been running for several years. The economic consequences of the upcoming crisis became clear when there was a recession on the New York Stock Exchange (the yield on "short securities" was higher than on the "long" ones). But even in the first quarter of 2020, the experts had no clear consensus whether the world crisis is inevitable. Only when the WHO announced the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, it became clear that it was to be the trigger of the global crisis. The increase of the mass unemployment was its key socio-economic consequence. The introduced quarantine measures led to the cessation of production activities, which complicates the supply of financial "fuel" to the economy.
Despite the crisis, it is premature to say that the pandemic has destroyed the agenda of the old world. It has rather become a catalyst for a number of processes. The expectations that the pandemic as a “common enemy” would rally a number of centers of power among themselves haven’t been met: the national egoism turned out to be stronger than the general solidarity. The most evident examples are the EU and the United States. The national egoism of a number of countries and the trade war between the United States and China let down the UN Security Council, the G-20, the IMF and the World Bank.
In general, the consequences of the coronavirus are still observed as negative: the break in the global value chains will lead to the higher prices for goods and services, the small and the medium-sized businesses will not survive everywhere, the staff cuts will exacerbate the social situation.
No comments