"We reached the first 100,000 cases of coronavirus infection in 67 days. 11 days later we reached another 100,000, while the third group of 100,000 infected only took 4 days to occur. Then, in two days we accumulated another 100,000 more." This was said by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization, to the leaders who participated in a summit meeting on COVID-19.
The next day, the United States Congress managed to overcome its paralysis and approved the largest package of economic aid measures in human history. More than two trillion dollars will be given to individuals, local governments and private companies to alleviate the economic devastation caused by the measures necessary to face the pandemic. How many are two trillion? Antony Bugg-Levine explains it this way: "If you add a dollar bill for 24 hours a day, for seven days, every second, in approximately two weeks you will have a package with a million dollars. Reaching the billion dollars will take 40 years and reaching two trillion dollars would take 80,000 years. "
The magnitude of this economic initiative is surprising. But even more surprising is that even this unusual injection of money is not enough to revive the United States economy. Most experts anticipate that this year there will be an economic recession. This recession will cause unprecedented numbers of layoffs of workers, bankruptcies of companies and evictions of homes and commercial premises for non-payment.
The pessimism of the specialists is due, primarily, to the inevitable lags and problems in the distribution of funds approved by the government, as well as to the continuing health catastrophe. As long as there is no vaccine and coronavirus treatment, the economy will remain weak. In addition, for many of the beneficiaries, financial relief may be late. The fear is that a large number of small and medium-sized businesses whose customers have vanished will be forced to close before financial aid arrives.
These customers, who are no longer buying, are now lining up to collect their unemployment insurance. Three weeks ago, there were 200,000 financial aid applications in the United States from people who lost their jobs. The highest number of these requests occurred in 1982 when 650,000 workers came to collect this insurance. Last week the number was three million three hundred thousand people, or sixteen times more than the week before.
The American economy is not the only one in trouble. China, for example, is experiencing the second most severe economic contraction that country has had since the 1970s. Its economy is highly dependent on its exports to the rest of the world, and that demand has fallen dramatically. A large number of countries are already, or will soon be, facing unprecedented economic crises.
The fight against the coronavirus is very expensive and will produce unprecedented increases in public spending and debt levels. This impact is even more severe in countries with large populations, precarious economies and weak health systems. India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Brazil, South Africa, Bangladesh or Mexico are examples of poor and populated countries that will suffer from severe fiscal crises.
This is why a pandemic that must be faced with local actions such as the isolation of individuals and social solidarity, also urgently requires international coordination. Countries should help each other and act in concert regarding their economic policies, their financial and monetary coordination, indebtedness as well as the elimination of barriers to trade in medicines, materials and hospital equipment, for example.
It is necessary to act both locally at the most individual level possible and globally at the most multilateral level possible.
This is possible and the world has done it before. In the serious world economic crisis of 2007/2009, the Group of 20 (G20) was reactivated, an organization formed in 1999 by two dozen countries and which until then had been of little relevance. The heads of government of the member countries rotate the leadership of the Group and during the financial crisis that erupted in 2007 the then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had to act as leader of the G20. Brown and other colleagues decided to make the G20 the world's economic focal point. Although mistakes were made in the responses to the great recession, it is also true that the reactivated and activist G20 contributed to the damage of the huge crash not being even more serious.
In the crisis we are experiencing, individual isolation saves lives. But, between countries, isolation will make the costs of the crisis even higher.
In this unprecedented pandemic there are precedents that can be very useful to us.
Twitter @moisesnaim
You can follow EL PAÍS Opinion on Facebook, Twitter or subscribe here to the Newsletter.