Page 11 - Issue 14

Germany and France, too, initially responded in a
way that was similar to the United Kingdom,
ignoring the crisis as long as they could, until they
couldn’t anymore. As commentator Giuliano da
Empoli put it, even China, which has an appalling
human rights record, did not use “economism” as
a yardstick for its fight against the virus as overtly
as European nations did (at least initially and until
it was almost too late).

The choice that has been laid in front of
contemporary societies is unprecedented. Which
do we choose to risk sacrificing: the lives of the
vulnerable or the economic survival of the young?
While the moral questions raised by this dilemma
are genuine and profound (how many lives is the
economy worth?), it also points to the ways in
which public health has been neglected and been
relegated to a place of lower priority than the
health of the economy.

Trust as currency

It is with no small irony that the world of finance,
usually arrogant and so often unaccountable, was
the first to collapse, showing that the continued
and unfathomable circulation of money in the
world relies on a resource we all took for granted:
the health of citizens. Markets feed on trust as a
currency to build the future, and trust, it turns out,
rests on the assumption of health.

Modern states have traditionally guaranteed
citizens’ health: They built hospitals, trained