Is the Coronavirus Ushering in an Era of Eurosceptic Leaders? The pandemic could very well be a watershed moment in European politics. by Spencer Wong

Euroscepticism’s a brewin’…or at least it seems that way. 

The European Union (EU) in the era of coronavirus appears to be facing challenges to its existence not experienced since the fallout of the 2008–09 financial crisis. Indeed, the coronavirus pandemic could very well be a watershed moment in European politics. 

Why is this the case? Well, one can only look at how the European Union and its member states have responded to the pandemic. Unlike what would be expected in a union, Brussels and member states’ capitals have largely gone their own way, pursuing ad hoc, national approaches. Politico reporters David M. Herszenhorn and Sarah Wheaton note “EU nations, despite their pledge to an ever-closer union, reacted selfishly and chaotically once the threat became evident.” 

During the early stages of the pandemic in Europe, EU leaders and heads of government did not take the virus seriously, even as it was spreading beyond China. The European Commission, led by Ursula von der Leyen, was slow to respond to the unfolding health crisis and belatedly expressed solidarity with and provided assistance to Italy. In President von der Leyen’s March 9 press conference on her first one hundred days in office, the coronavirus was barely discussed. Understandably, however, the EU was simultaneously focused on coronavirus and the recent migrant crisis along the Turkey-Greece border. 

Nevertheless, the actions of both the EU and its member states have brought into question whether aspirations of unity and solidarity can truly bind together the twenty-seven countries. While the pandemic has necessitated that countries develop their own solutions, appropriate for their specific national and local conditions, the EU-27 could have done more to coordinate their efforts. 

Today, Europe stands as one of the epicenters of the pandemic, with around a million cases just among the five most populous countries. They have been among the hardest-hit countries, although in certain countries, the number of cases is beginning to plateau.

Prior to the outbreak of coronavirus, Euroscepticism was a major political force in European politics. Euroscepticism is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as a “European political doctrine that advocates disengagement from the European Union (EU). Political parties that espouse a Eurosceptic viewpoint tend to be broadly populist and generally support tighter immigration controls in addition to the dismantling or streamlining of the EU bureaucratic structure.”

This political force comes in a variety of flavors, depending on the country in question. But the underlying factor behind it is a dissatisfaction with what the European Union is and how it functions. The most recent manifestations of Euroscepticism have emerged out of the 2008–09 financial crisis and the 2015 migrant crisis.

The 2008–09 financial crisis, among other issues, brought once-fringe political parties, such as Britain’s UKIP and Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) to the political spotlight. Europe’s South was particularly hit hard, with Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain facing their worst economic performances in decades. Unemployment rose sharply and the European Union imposed a fiscal policy of austerity. These conditions fomented the rise of Eurosceptic parties across the continent, but particularly in the South, leading to a North-South divide.

Meanwhile, the 2015 migrant crisis opened up additional cracks among EU member states. While Germany, France, and Sweden were among the more receptive countries to migrants and refugees, other countries were not. Among the post-communist EU states, Euroscepticism rose to new heights. In Poland and Hungary, the Law and Justice (PiS) and Fidesz parties, respectively, utilized anti-migrant rhetoric to gain political appeal and refused to comply with the EU’s migrant quotas. At the same time, Italy and Greece—where most migrants and refugees first arrived on European soil—were overburdened. This then helped fuel the rise of far-right parties, such as Italy’s Lega (Lega Nord) and Greece’s Golden Dawn.

The North-South Divide 

This Euroscepticism is likely to be amplified by the coronavirus. The political fissures of the past decade are likely to become more defined as the coronavirus crisis continues to impact the continent’s politics, economy, and social cohesion.

In this crisis, European solidarity has been belated and will leave its mark. Like the previous two crises, the North-South divide has become ever more apparent. Anger and tensions have bubbled up to the surface. Spain and Italy, the two hardest-hit European countries, have accused their northern neighbors of not doing enough to assist them. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, a usually pro-EU politician, has even warned that the bloc could “fall apart.” Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte has expressed the same concerns. 

In March, both Germany and France announced bans on the export of personal protective equipment, moves that EU officials said could harm collective efforts to combat the virus. Other EU countries also prohibited the export of medical supplies. This resulted in Italy and Spain procuring these supplies from outside the EU. What happened next was that China and Russia sent medical supplies to Italy and Spain, among other EU countries. 

The political significance of these countries receiving medical supplies from what are de facto adversarial and rival states like China and Russia is quite profound. While the EU’s North was slow to assist their southern neighbors, outside powers came to their aid.

As a result, Euroscepticism has reemerged onto the European political scene. Although Euroscepticism had begun to subside as the continent’s economies began to recover from the financial crisis, coronavirus may just reverse that trend. 

Politico’s Jacopo Barigazzi has reported that “There’s a widespread perception among the Italian public that the country has been left by the rest of the EU to fend for itself.” If this perception of inaction by the EU increases then, support for populism will increase in Italy, if not the rest of Southern Europe. As one of the founding members of the European Union, if Italy were to hold an EU membership referendum, then it would be catastrophic for the EU’s credibility and legitimacy. 

In terms of the EU’s economy, there has been a sharp divide over how to provide economic assistance. While France, Spain, and Italy have called for EU member states to share the burden of economic relief—in the form a “eurobond”—countries in the richer North, like Germany and the Netherlands, have been reluctant. Only in the past two weeks have EU finance ministers agreed on a financial support package worth half-a-trillion euros. Yet disputes continue, as the most recent meeting has shown. 

What Can Berlin and Paris Do? 

As the two leading EU states, Germany and France are looked up to and burdened with the responsibility of guiding the Union through crises. German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron are tasked with leading the EU out of this new crisis. 

Unlike the response to the financial crisis, the current one should be more robust and forward-thinking. Politically, Berlin and Paris must win the public relations war against Eurosceptics across the continent, not just in the South. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has said that “Half of the Italian public opinion is anti-European because it believes it is abandoned when something goes wrong.” The lackluster response thus far has also provided opportunities for Eurosceptic leaders, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban. A rise in authoritarianism could occur. 

To counter this, Merkel, Macron, and EU officials should show EU citizens the extensive work that the EU is doing to provide medical and financial assistance. A widely publicized media (both traditional and social media) and communications campaign displaying the EU’s accomplishments would be a good start.

Economically, lending an ear (and a hand) to the bloc’s Southern European countries is vital. Given the apparent insolvency of these countries, both Germany and France should push for shared debt. This would signify that they, and the EU as a whole, are serious about solidarity. 

In terms of public health, Germany and France should spearhead an initiative to establish an EU consortium of biopharmaceutical companies and universities focused on collaborative vaccine research and testing kit development. The uncoordinated approach taken by the EU-27 towards these needs has slowed progress in these efforts. If this were established, then governments and public health officials could properly assess the spread of the coronavirus and lay down the necessary containment and mitigation infrastructure for future pandemics.

If the European Union is to survive this crisis intact, then there must be proactive action. Indeed, if the EU is to fulfill one of its key roles of bringing peace, prosperity, and unity to a once war-ravaged continent, it must rise to the occasion. The lives of hundreds of millions depend on it.

Coronavirus In Italy: Lessons From the Frontlines It was the first European country to impose a lockdown. How is it doing now? by Martin J. Bull

Italy has been on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic since it exploded there in late February, and it was the first European country to impose lockdown on its citizens. 

Now the peak of the pandemic has passed, with the total number of positive coronavirus cases in decline since April 21. The “R0” figure (infection rate) has been brought down to below 1. Intensive care beds are being freed up, and 50,000-60,000 coronavirus tests carried out per day.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, moreover, is coming out of the crisis with his reputation enhanced. Despite Italy having the third highest number of coronavirus cases in the world; the highest number of deaths save for the United States; a significant loss of medical personnel; and a veritable capacity crisis early on, Conte’s personal approval ratings are at an unprecedented 71%.

The far-right opposition League, although still the largest party in opinion polls, is disoriented. It has been left shouting largely redundant anti-immigration and anti-EU messages from the sidelines while its ratings decline.

Yet Conte’s real problems could be just about to begin. The economic impact of the continued lockdown is on a scale that has no precedents outside wartime. The projected figures for 2020 of the ministry of the economy, largely in line with those of the IMF, forecast big trouble ahead. GDP is projected to contract by 8% (against a pre-COVID predicted rise of 0.6%), the public deficit to rise from 2.2% to 10.4%, public debt to GDP to rise to an astronomical 155.7% (from a pre-COVID forecast of 135.2%) and the rate of unemployment to 11.6%. Forecasters estimate that 10 million Italians, a fifth of the total number of adults, will be thrown into poverty, unable to meet essential expenditure on food, medicines and a roof over their heads.

The south of the country is predicted to be especially hard hit, which is ironic since the pandemic has hit mainly the north and especially the industrial heartlands of Lombardy. Cases have been far fewer in the south, yet regional leaders there are aware that it is the lockdown that has kept those numbers low and their fragile health systems intact. The northern regions, spurred on by the Confederation of Italian Industry, are leading calls to reopen the economy. The challenge for Conte is how to achieve this without provoking further spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Phase 2

Exiting “phase 1” (lockdown) and going into “phase 2” (living with the virus) will be gradual. Although some industries such as automobiles, components, clothing may be given special permission to start early, May 4 will mark the reopening of the manufacturing sector, including textiles, construction and wholesale commerce.

From May 4 people will be free to travel beyond their municipality for limited reasons and with a self-certification document, but not their region unless visiting a second home. Parks and gardens will reopen. Exercise with other people will be possible, but not team sports, recreational activities or sunbathing.

Bars and restaurants will be permitted to sell takeaways, if ordered online. Funerals will restart but will be limited to a maximum of 15 people. The wearing of masks will be compulsory inside public places, on public transport or wherever social distancing cannot be guaranteed. Public transport will be adjusted to carrying fewer people at any one time.

On May 18, it will be the turn of retail shopping, museums, libraries and cultural centres to reopen; and on June 1 bars, restaurants, hairdressers and wellness centres, as long as they all meet stringent requirements regarding regular disinfecting and social distancing.

Excluded from the list for now are schools, which are not expected to reopen before September; religious services (to the open fury of the Catholic church), cinemas, theatres and nightclubs.

Phase 2 will be accompanied by extensive testing and contact tracing of the virus, and restrictions will be quickly reimposed on a zonal basis if necessary.

The formulation of phase 2 has, inevitably, been a severe test for Conte. His government has been split between those advocating extreme caution in line with the scientific advice, and those wanting a more rapid reopening of the economy. There has been criticism of the lack of clarity in several of the measures.

Surprising Survey in Sweden: Elderly More Likely To Support Government's Herd Immunity Strategy While 40% of 15-29 year olds state that the Swedish response has been sufficient, the corresponding figure is 61% for those above 70. by Erik Wengström

Sweden’s approach to managing the coronavirus outbreak has received considerable attention. In contrast to other countries, Sweden has relied on recommendations about social distancing rather than restricting people’s movements, trusting citizens to follow the official advice. 

While other countries have closed businesses, much remains up and running in Sweden, including cafes and bars. People are advised to limit their movements but not required to stay at home.

Within Sweden, the strategy has spurred a heated debate in the scientific community and drawn scepticism for being high risk.

Critics say making social distancing optional preserves the freedom of the young at the expense of the old, who are more seriously affected by COVID-19. But our new study shows that older people are more supportive of the approach taken by the government than their younger counterparts.

In a survey of more than 1,600 Swedes, opinions were certainly divided, with 31% of respondents rating the nation’s response to the outbreak as not forceful enough. Another 18% were neutral and the remaining 51% considered the response forceful enough. But, despite the argument that the strategy comes at the expense of the old, actually increased with age. Those aged 50 and above – those with elevated risk for severe complications from an infection – are most supportive of the Swedish response. While 40% of 15-29 year olds state that the Swedish response has been sufficient, the corresponding figure is 61% for those above 70.

The age gap in the approval rate of the Swedish strategy persists even after accounting for a range of other background variables – including income and education – that could potentially explain the observed pattern. Importantly, the higher approval rating among the elderly is not a mere reflection of higher trust in the government among this group. So, the striking generational divide does indeed seem to be real and reflect age differences in the perception of the government’s coronavirus strategy.

Another concern raised about the relaxed approach in Sweden is that it puts the economy ahead of the health of citizens.

It’s perhaps therefore not surprising that people who worry about the virus outbreak’s effects on the economy are more satisfied with the Swedish response than those who worry about the impact on the public health system.

This also suggests that even though many experts now reject the idea that a forceful response must be seen as a trade-off between economic and health concerns, the pattern clearly lives on in the minds of the public.

Another critical driver of the perception is a person’s own taste for taking health risks. Respondents with high health-risk tolerance are more likely to approve of Sweden’s response to the pandemic. This indicates that those who can tolerate the risks are more likely to be satisfied with the current – comparatively soft – policy adopted in Sweden.

An international example?

As countries scale down or consider scaling down restrictions, a natural question to ask is how governments should proceed and whether Sweden’s strategy provides a way forward. But there is an important matter to consider here. Trust stands out as a fundamental driver when it comes to whether people approve of the Swedish response. And since Sweden has among the highest levels of trust in the world, the strong relationship between trust and approval of the strategy might suggest its approach would be less successful elsewhere.

To measure trust, respondents had to state to what degree they agreed to the statement: “I assume that people have only the best intentions.” Among those with the lowest level of trust, only around 30% feel that the Swedish reaction has been sufficient. But for those with the highest level of trust, the corresponding figure is above 70%.

Coronavirus Can Affect the Heart of Those Without a Heart Disease People with existing heart disease are worse affected by COVID-19, but the virus can also affect the heart in people without heart disease. by David C Gaze

People with the most severe forms of COVID-19 are often older and have existing health problems. About 10% of COVID-19 patients have heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Yet surprisingly, people with lung disease, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) account for only 6% of severe COVID-19 cases. These statistics are similar in patient reports from China, Italy,the UK and the US. 

People with existing heart disease are worse affected by COVID-19, but the virus can also affect the heart in people without heart disease.

In both cases, when there is a severe COVID-19 infection, the heart undergoes a massive inflammatory response called myocarditis. The virus infects the cells of the heart causing the muscle tissue (myocardium) to undergo severe inflammation. This can alter the electrical conduction in the heart, affecting its ability to pump blood around the body. The result of which is less oxygen getting to organs, including the lungs. How this happens is unclear, but there are several possible mechanisms.

First, heart damage may be associated with the way the virus enters the cells. A spike-shaped protein on the surface of the virus locks on to a receptor on the cell surface called ACE2. In patients with underlying heart disease, there are a greater number of ACE2 receptors on the cell surface, which may result in a greater number of virus particles entering the cell causing significantly more inflammation than in people without heart disease.

Second, as with any infection, the body mounts a war against the invading pathogen. This requires more energy and an increased metabolism to fight a systemic viral infection, which is why our temperature goes up during an infection.

The immune system in a relatively healthy person is able to mount an adequate response to the infection and produce antibodies to combat the virus. People with much weaker immune systems, such as the elderly or those with underlying health problems, cannot sufficiently mount this response and fight the viral infection. The infection rages in the body and attacks vital organs especially the lungs and the heart.

Doctors are able to monitor the severity of the myocarditis using a blood test called troponin. This protein is usually found in the heart. It is released into the bloodstream when there is significant heart injury, such as during a heart attack.

Patients in Wuhan who were severely ill were more likely to have a greater concentration of troponin in their bloodstream than those less severely infected. This is also repeated in data from the Italian outbreak.

Cytokine storm

Some COVID-19 patients experience a sudden and severe onset of myocarditis known as fulminant myocarditis. It has been described in dead COVID-19 patients at post mortem (autopsy) or in living patients by a small surgical biopsy of the heart tissue (enodmyocardial biopsy).

The rapid inflammatory response to the virus in fulminant myocarditis is thought to be due to chemical signal burst called a cytokine storm. Cytokines are chemical messengers that are released from immune cells. They attract a great number of the inflammatory cells called T-helper cells to the site of infection.

When patients undergo a cytokine storm there is an unregulated response causing excessive inflammation, which can kill the patient. These patients not only have increased troponin but also increased concentrations of inflammatory markers showing signs of significant viral infection. Drugs to help control the immune system may be of use in controlling the sudden inflammatory response and trials are underway in COVID-19 patients.

Many viral diseases put such a huge strain on the body that the heart often cannot cope so more people die from heart problems than they do from the lung disease. COVID-19 is, in fact, similar to other respiratory pandemics. In 2009 there was a flu pandemic caused by the H1N1 virus – the so-called swine flu pandemic. Patients infected with H1N1 had a greater number of heart-related complications than is normally seen in typical seasonal flu infections with 62% demonstrating fulminant myocarditis.

The good news is that the vast majority of people (98%) with COVID-19 recover with no significant health problems.

The ‘Terrible Moral Choice’ of Reopening European leaders have set out plans for restarting their societies. But the choice isn’t theirs; it belongs to individual citizens. by RACHEL DONADIO

Ever since Emmanuel Macron declared France “at war” with the coronavirus, the entire country has been under home confinement, with residents allowed outside only for urgent needs. So when the government announced a gradual reopening of some businesses and schools starting in May, a deep confusion set in.

Le Monde, the country’s leading daily newspaper, captured some of the anxieties in a live blog taking a flood of reader questions. My neighbors invited people for a barbecue and they’re totally disregarding the confinement measures; what should I do? one asked. If I don’t want to send my children back to school, will I face sanctions? another said. (The answer to the second question is no—a major development in a country where schools are a pillar of the republic and essential to reopening the economy.)

Ever since they imposed lockdowns weeks ago, governments across Europe have taken away individual liberties and kept citizens in their homes to save lives. Now a subtle shift is happening, in which confinement orders are giving way to a reopening that ultimately places more responsibility on individuals. Governments will still communicate public-health directives and decide how and when to reopen businesses and schools, but millions of people will have to make millions of small and large decisions about how to go about their daily life—balancing their own risk tolerance, mental health, and need for income.

Negotiating between lives and livelihoods is not only a political and economic issue; it’s a philosophical one, with consequences that will resonate for years to come. “It’s really a terrible moral choice,” Boris Cyrulnik, a French psychologist and neurologist, told me. “Freedom will lead to death, while constriction and denying people their freedom will stave off death but will bring economic ruin.”

Cyrulnik, who survived the Second World War as an enfant caché—one of thousands of Jewish children sent away by their families to be hidden with foster parents—is an expert in the field of psychological resilience. He views the coronavirus pandemic in a broad context. Pandemics have been with us since the Neolithic period, he said, but the coronavirus interrupts an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity in the West since World War II.

How will we navigate this moment, when we will have to have confidence in ourselves, our governments, and our fellow citizens as we begin to emerge from our homes? Already, levels of trust in leadership vary across Europe and certainly across the United States. Compounding that, we’re reaching the stage in the crisis when our impending freedom can produce even greater anxiety, because the impetus will now be on us as individuals, not just the state, to do the right thing.

Some people—and sometimes I place myself in this category—are grappling with a kind of Stockholm syndrome, in which we’ve grown accustomed to the safe confines of home. But there’s a more vexing element to this new freedom too. For those who have been holed up at home for so long that they’re wary of venturing outside, strangers become threats. How can we trust that others are staying home if they’re sick? How can we know for sure that the person next to us on public transportation isn’t going to infect us? How can we be certain that local businesses are disinfecting surfaces often enough? How can large offices practice social distancing?

In Paris, where I live, some friends tell me they are going crazy working and homeschooling, and are eager to send their children back to school. Others are wary and would rather keep their kids at home. Some I’ve spoken with believe they shouldn’t in good conscience get on a plane this summer; others are eager to jet off to the Mediterranean for summer holidays they planned before the world changed. Coming to terms with the new normal is hard. Our actions will reshape relationships, as we’ll no doubt be more inclined toward quick judgments if we think our friends and relations are acting out of self-interest rather than the greater good. We’re all living in a science experiment—and a political and social-science experiment as well.

Much of Europe is ahead of the United States on the infection curve and offers lessons from the near future. (The state of Georgia is something of an exception, ahead of the rest of the country in reopening some businesses.) Some areas of Europe have been affected more than others, and the bloc is not at all unified in its response to the pandemic. In France, where more than 23,000 people have died of COVID-19, businesses and schools (but not universities) will begin reopening on May 11—if the infection rate stays low enough—but class sizes will be limited, social distancing will be required, and so will wearing masks on transport and in school. Only later will the government decide when cafés and restaurants might reopen.

In Italy, where more than 26,000 people have died of COVID-19, and which went on total lockdown before France, some businesses will begin reopening on May 4 and people will be able to see their family members, but group gatherings will remain banned. Restaurants and hair salons aren’t expected to reopen until June, and then only with social-distancing measures in place. Schools won’t reopen until the fall—a decision intended to protect older people, many of whom live in close proximity to their grandchildren (though in a country where grandparents are more often than not the primary source of child care for working parents, this raises the question of who exactly will look after kids if parents have to go back to work).

Elsewhere in Europe, Austria shut down quickly and has now allowed many businesses to resume, with plans to send students back to school next month with alternating classes. Denmark has already reopened its schools. Sweden never fully went on lockdown, resulting in less economic distress but a significantly higher death toll than those of its Scandinavian neighbors. In Germany, though schools remain closed, some businesses have been operating throughout the confinement period—putting intense pressure on their competitors in countries such as Italy where nonessential industry has been stopped for weeks.

Across the continent, people are unsure of what’s next. “Phase one was a lockdown. Everybody bought it. Now we’re opening up but no one really knows how and when,” says Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who lives in Berlin. “What should be the priority? Kids going to school or day care? Or should it be shops opening?”

Governments did not impose lockdowns during the 1918 influenza pandemic, but that crisis still offers lessons. “When there’s a kind of external threat, people band together because they come to redefine the self, in a sense,” says Laura Spinney, the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World. “It’s still selfish behavior, but the self is defined as the group that’s victimized by the threat. The idea is, we’re all in this together.” But, she told me, “when the threat starts to recede, the collective self starts to fragment. That’s when you see what we might call bad behavior, more selfish behavior in the traditional sense, rather than in the new sense created by the pandemic.”

During the 1918 pandemic in the United States, people were compliant with health directives at first, but as time went on, “you saw the vaccines weren’t working, the doctors weren’t necessarily in control of the situation, trust kind of seeped away, and people’s compliance fell away,” Spinney said. Respecting measures that will prevent the spread of infection is “not a given by any means,” she said, “and governments have to work hard with their messaging and so on to keep it up.” Again, the shift here is one from government-mandated rules to a greater sense of individual responsibility.

Europe, a patchwork of countries with different time frames for reopening, is facing some of the same challenges as the United States. The European Union, though not a federal entity, has 27 member states whose citizens can, in theory, move freely across borders from one country to another. What one government decides will have implications for its neighbors—as with states in the U.S.—just as each of our individual decisions will affect our communities. European leaders can attempt to issue edicts from on high, but decisions will be made by politicians, and individuals, at the national and local levels. (The EU, for its part, has issued a road map to member countries, but it has no power to set policy across the bloc.)

Cyrulnik said that even if we regain the ability to make important decisions in our daily lives, the pandemic is a reminder of the limits of our liberty. “We have degrees of freedom, which are very important, but I think that we are much more constrained by our environments than we believe,” he said. For the foreseeable future, we will have to make “lots of little decisions—to go to school or not, to go on a trip or not.” Our choices will affect infection rates and government policies. How we navigate between trust and fear will reshape us not only as citizens, but as friends, families, and neighbors.

States Are Using the Pandemic to Roll Back Americans’ Rights Some state governments are criminalizing and censoring lawful speech under the guise of protecting public health. by Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr.

The coronavirus pandemic has led governments around the world to adopt draconian measures. Some of these, such as social-distancing mandates, are, quite obviously, bona fide and necessary efforts to control the rate of virus spread. Others, however, pretty clearly constitute a form of pandemic political opportunism, such as in Hungary, where the national Parliament dissolved itself after granting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the power to rule (indefinitely) directly and by decree.
To date, U.S. President Donald Trump has not used the crisis to seize power and establish autocracy in the United States. To be sure, Trump is doing plenty to undermine American institutions—repeatedly attacking the press and individual journalists, actively weakening essential forms of oversight and accountability (even as the federal government has committed more than $2 trillion in direct spending to combat the pandemic), and firing or reassigning government employees, including scientists who publicly contradict his error-laden daily talking points—but the president has not (yet) attempted to use law to directly stifle voices that criticize him and his administration’s policies.

Unfortunately, that we do not see efforts to censor speech coming from the White House does not mean that such efforts are not actually happening in America. One need merely look to the statehouses for examples of this public-health crisis being used to implement measures that criminalize or impose civil liability on otherwise lawful forms of public dissent. A cynical political aphorism posits that one should “never let a good crisis go to waste,” and some state governments appear to be taking this maxim to heart. Invoking the need to protect “essential” or “critical” fossil-fuel infrastructure, several states recently have adopted laws that threaten environmental-protest organizers with various forms of vicarious civil and criminal liability.

Last month, Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia all adopted statutes that criminalize protests of fossil-fuel development and also enable energy companies to seek damages from protest organizers. The newly enacted laws designate “natural gas or petroleum pipelines” as “key infrastructure assets” and criminalize “tampering with, impeding, or inhibiting operations of a key infrastructure asset.” The Kentucky law, passed by a GOP-controlled legislature and signed into law by the state’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, provides both criminal and civil penalties for anyone who damages property or for any person or organization that “directs or causes a person to violate” the law.

West Virginia’s new law is substantially similar. The West Virginia Critical Infrastructure Protection Act threatens environmental protesters with both fines and criminal sanctions. At a state legislative committee’s public hearing on the bill, Reverend Jim Lewis, an Episcopal minister, correctly observed, “This bill is designed to chill protesters.” Like Kentucky’s new law, the West Virginia statute makes “conspiring” to cause or inciting trespass or damage to fossil-fuel facilities a legal basis for imposing civil and criminal liability on protest organizers (including mainstream public-interest organizations). Accordingly, this law, like Kentucky’s, will have a profound chilling effect on perfectly lawful speech.

South Dakota enacted two laws: S.B. 151, which mirrors the Kentucky and West Virginia laws by declaring oil and natural-gas facilities to be “critical infrastructure,” and H.B. 1117, which creates civil and criminal penalties for incitement to riot as well as civil liability for both “riot” and “riot boosting” (which applies when a person “does not personally participate in any riot but directs, advises, encourages, or solicits other persons” to riot). H.B. 1117 does provide that the law should not be used “to prevent the peaceable assembly of persons for lawful purposes of protest or petition” or “to include the oral or written advocacy of ideas or expression of belief that does not urge the commission of an act or conduct of imminent force or violence.” However, if a speaker at a protest issues a general call “to stop this pipeline project now!,” and someone attending the rally subsequently trespasses on a pipeline work site, the terms of the South Dakota laws are sufficiently open-ended regarding joint and several liability that the pipeline company might be able to pursue a civil claim against the rally organizers for either “riot boosting” or conspiracy.

All three of these laws could easily be used to create vicarious liability for environmental groups that organize otherwise-lawful protests of carbon-based fuels. Going forward, speakers at completely peaceful environmental protests will need to choose their words with great care—lest they find themselves hauled into court to answer for criminal mischief committed by someone who happened to attend one of the organization’s events.

For example, if someone who attends a protest rally later commits an unlawful act that affects a natural-gas or oil facility, the protest organizer could face liability for “directing” or “causing” the damage. An organization such as Greenpeace, which advocates for renewable sources of energy and opposes continued reliance on fossil fuels, could be charged criminally or face a civil action if one of its members trespasses on or otherwise causes damage to an energy production site. Under criminal law, environmental organizations would face the risk of conspiracy charges; under civil law, energy companies could seek potentially bankrupting compensatory and punitive damages from such organizations. (The Fifth Circuit recently sustained exactly this kind of ersatz respondeat superior liability on a civil-rights protest organizer, despite the fact that taking this approach will have an astonishingly broad chilling effect on collective-protest activities; the decision is currently on appeal to the Supreme Court.)

These state laws are simply part of a broad, ongoing effort to squelch public forms of dissent in the United States. Since the Warren and Burger Courts, the speech rights of ordinary Americans have been shrinking. Salient examples include the National Park Service closing off access to government property that is perfectly suitable for public-protest activity (including the Jefferson Memorial and virtually all of the St. Louis Arch and Gateway Arch park); federal, state, and local government employers alike retaliating against whistleblowers (including demoting or even firing them); and the Department of State issuing total bans on transborder speech and free association by U.S. citizens with persons or organizations located abroad. In all three of these examples, the federal courts have upheld the government’s censorial actions against First Amendment challenges.

The country has seen the kind of government opportunism now on display in Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia before. Just over 100 years ago, during the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson set about banning any and all public criticism of the federal government and the war effort. Congress passed laws such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which effectively criminalized public expressions of dissent, and many states adopted “criminal syndicalism” acts that criminalized the expression of certain political and ideological opinions. The Supreme Court sustained these enactments and permitted U.S. citizens to be imprisoned for their public opposition to the war (perhaps the most famous being the labor leader Eugene Debs).

America must not permit its past to serve as prologue. Americans must not permit a public-health crisis to be turned into a crisis of democracy as well.

It is possible to promote public health without squelching dissent. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s measured response to anti-lockdown protests in the state capital earlier this month provides a worthy example in this regard. Part of the protest, named “Operation Gridlock” by its sponsors, the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, complied with social-distancing orders: Drivers came to the state capitol in their vehicles to petition the government for an end to the restrictions. Other aspects of the protest, however, involved open civil disobedience of those orders‚ including in-person collective protest at the state capitol building that created a nontrivial risk of virus spread.

Whitmer did not move to arrest the protesters or end the in-person rally (although doing so would have been perfectly constitutional). Instead, she wisely used the event as a teaching moment for Michigan residents. The governor characterized “Operation Gridlock” as a “a political rally” that “endanger[ed] people’s lives, because this is precisely how COVID-19 spreads.” She added that the protesters were “not just endangering their own lives” but also “all of our first responders and our ability to meet the needs of the people of the state who are all trying to do the right thing.” Whitmer’s measured, calibrated response reflects both admirable restraint and obvious respect for the First Amendment. Arresting the protesters would have wasted scarce public-safety resources, endangered the health of the arresting officers and jail staff, and could easily have backfired by inciting others to engage in mass public protests without observing social-distancing rules.

A deliberative democracy that uses elections to hold the government accountable simply cannot function in the absence of free and open debate. As George Washington explained in his farewell address, “in proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." Public discourse and engagement are essential means of ensuring that the electorate has the information required to render prudent electoral verdicts.

Some years ago, Vincent Blasi, a professor at Columbia Law School, wrote a seminal law-review article entitled “The Pathological Perspective and the First Amendment.” In it, Blasi calls on federal and state courts to vigilantly protect the process of democratic deliberation in times of national stress and tumult—in times like the present. Blasi explains, “The overriding objective at all times should be to equip the first amendment to do maximum service in those historical periods when intolerance of unorthodox ideas is most prevalent and when governments are most able and most likely to stifle dissent systematically.” Why? Because such times are precisely when the process of democratic deliberation is most needed to ensure that the government adopts and enforces wise policies and, paradoxically, also when the government will be most tempted to censor speech critical of its actions. Accordingly, and as Blasi argues, the First Amendment “should be targeted for the worst of times”—which is to say: now.

Efficiency Is Biting Back Decades of streamlining everything made the U.S. more vulnerable. by Edward Tenner

The global quarantine, an optimist might argue, is pushing us toward a more web-mediated world. Millions of people who had seldom, if ever, used videoconferencing before March are now doing their jobs without a long commute, taking classes without getting on a school bus, or consulting a doctor without first sitting in a waiting room full of sick people. These changes are, by some standards, a form of efficiency. Yet the pandemic has forced them on us even as their benefits have yet to be firmly established. Who can predict not just test scores but long-term outcomes of remote learning? And who can say whether a physician’s physical presence and touch are truly irrelevant to protecting a patient’s health?
If the coronavirus pandemic does ultimately make our lives more efficient, it will be ironic. For decades, even before Silicon Valley championed the “disruptive technologies” of the web, leaders in business and government alike have declared war on allegedly wasteful spending. Overlooked is the fact that too much zeal for lean operation has pitfalls of its own. In practice, the pursuit of efficiency has often resulted in the consolidation of smaller companies and facilities into larger ones; in greater congestion as more people are packed into smaller spaces, whether in office towers or aboard commercial airliners; and in the tight coupling of deliveries and other business processes in ways that, at least when all goes well, speed up production and reduce warehouse inventories. But consolidation, congestion, and tight coupling may also make our economy less efficient in the long run—and our society more vulnerable to outside shocks such as the coronavirus. Efficiency, in fact, can be hazardous to our well-being, and a strategic amount of inefficiency is crucial in keeping society healthy.

Consolidation has long been a feature of American economic life, and corporate mergers and acquisitions are routinely justified as saving money and creating other efficiencies. Unsurprisingly, mergers have reshaped even nonprofit health care, as formerly independent hospitals have joined into larger systems. Writing in The New York Times in February 2019, the health-care economist Austin Frakt disputed hospital chains’ claims that consolidation had lowered costs and improved health outcomes.

As costs of health care have escalated, doing more with less has become a universal goal. Over the past two decades, the state of New York pressed for the elimination of 20,000 hospital beds. The pursuit of efficiency in the state’s health system was a bipartisan effort, originating in a 2006 report from a commission convened by Republican Governor George Pataki and continued by his Democratic successors, including Andrew Cuomo. The commission urged an occupancy rate of 85 percent, up from an allegedly wasteful 65 percent in 2004. Many of the hospitals closed during this wave of consolidation served the most economically troubled neighborhoods of New York City—neighborhoods that, in March and April, were disproportionately struck by the pandemic. Once COVID-19 threatened to overwhelm the New York hospital system, Cuomo was pleading with Washington, D.C., for additional beds.

Fortunately, because of public compliance with social-distancing measures, the need for hospital beds has proved less dire than authorities feared. But New York’s experience illustrates the difficulty of adding useful hospital space from scratch at moments of crisis; the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, which came to New York’s assistance, was ill-equipped for treating coronavirus cases and was of little help in absorbing patients with other ailments. The ship is now slated to depart.

In theory, efforts to make American health systems more efficient could have made them nimbler. In New York, the expansion of preventive and primary care was supposed to accompany the closure of hospitals. But that did not occur in many poor areas. Meanwhile, cutbacks in hospitalization nationwide have simply pushed unwell people into other forms of care. “Nursing home facilities,” The New York Times reported earlier this month, “have borne the brunt of a structural shift: Hospitals, seeking to keep costs down, send more vulnerable patients into a growing industry of nursing homes.” About a fifth of COVID-19 fatalities in the United States, the Times noted, have been linked to nursing-home and long-term care facilities.

The pandemic also exposed weaknesses not just in the extension of human life but in the provision of food that sustains it—specifically in the giant slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants of rural America. According to a 2000 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, new technology in the previous 20 years had revolutionized meat processing, increasing production in fewer plants through economies of scale. This evolution, which benefited shareholders far more than workers, produced today’s highly consolidated industry. While the early-20th-century horrors depicted in Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle are gone, meat cutting remains one of the most hazardous jobs, with workers often crowded together. Viral infections can spread at small plants, but at larger ones they can strike far more people more quickly. While the risk to consumers may be relatively small, a single asymptomatic infected worker could transmit the virus from the community to hundreds of fellow workers, or vice versa. At a Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, more than 700 workers have tested positive for the coronavirus. That plant alone handles up to 5 percent of the entire nation’s pork production, and its shutdown forced the closure of other Smithfield plants that use raw materials from Sioux Falls. The closure of a single plant can devastate the meat supply and agriculture of an entire region. The Tyson Foods plant in Pasco, Washington, that closed on Thursday for COVID-19 testing processes 2,300 head of cattle a day, reportedly supplying enough beef to feed 4 million people. The Trump administration announced yesterday it would designate meat plants as essential infrastructure and require them to remain open. This short-term move will not reverse the trends that brought about the current problem.

Concentration of industries does not necessarily imply that the physical facilities they operate will be jam-packed with people. Yet organizations small and large—in manufacturing, in white-collar industries, and in the transportation world—have been methodically congesting more people in fewer square feet as a way of cutting costs. Until governments decreed social distancing, executives and investment analysts spent years praising tighter occupancy as rational and efficient. Grumbling away, passengers on commercial airlines chose cheaper fares over legroom. Seat pitches—the distances between rows on jets—have contracted. Empty middle seats have grown rare. From 2002 to 2018, occupancy on U.S. domestic flights grew from about 68 percent to 86 percent. While modern planes filter microbes and pollutants effectively from circulating cabin air, crowded flights increase opportunities for infection from the breath of nearby passengers. As far into the pandemic as April 23, the New York Post reported, an American Airlines flight from Miami to New York was almost full, with only half of the passengers wearing face coverings. (The airline has since announced measures to reduce density.)

Travelers can sometimes pay extra to mitigate overcrowding. Office workers, like meatpackers, generally cannot. The open-plan office is a paradise for microbes, not people. Mark Zuckerberg described Facebook’s planned new headquarters in 2012 as “the perfect engineering space: one giant room that fits thousands of people, all close enough to collaborate together.” Yet studies of Swedish open-plan offices from several years earlier had found that density correlated with more frequent sick leave. Repeated moves of seats and laptops allow viruses to linger for hours on surfaces; much-vaunted snack bars in common spaces may encourage more hand-to-mouth contact. Nonetheless, in a single year, 2018 to 2019, per capita office space declined by more than 14 percent, to 195.6 square feet, according to a report by the real-estate brokerage JLL cited by The Wall Street Journal. Reporting on Amazon’s office leases in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, the Puget Sound Business Journal noted last year that 150 square feet of office space per worker was the standard in the area, and that some technology companies provided as little as 100. The troubled co-working giant WeWork tried to present itself as a tech company, but perhaps a more significant innovation was this: “It jams more people into its spaces,” Bloomberg News reported last year, “than just about any other commercial landlord.” The company offers about 55 square feet per workstation on average, and one London branch offers only 44, Bloomberg calculated. (Other analysts have cited similar estimates.) So far, no cases of COVID-19 have been conclusively tied to office environments like these, but the danger of community spread is obvious.   

A further consequence of the relentless drive for efficiency is what Charles Perrow, a sociologist of technological risk, has described as “tight coupling.” It happens when a system is so dependent on a series of linkages that the collapse of one of them can lead to a cascade of failure. This occurs most notoriously in conventional nuclear-power plants, but Perrow’s warning applies to other situations. Global networks of vendors, coordinated by the web and tapping overnight air-freight services, have long replaced the early-20th-century ideal of Henry Ford’s River Rouge, Michigan, plant, which united as much production as possible from raw materials on-site. From the now-forgotten Japanese productivity scare of the 1980s—during which many in the United States feared that the island nation’s hyperefficient manufacturing industries would crush our economy—American business learned just-in-time production, reducing inventories and storage costs. But in the absence of excess capacity, even around-the-clock operation has not produced enough masks and disinfecting wipes for health-care workers, let alone average citizens. Efficient in normal conditions, just-in-time techniques have been disastrous in the global fight against COVID-19, pitting nations—and even U.S. states—against one another.

The pain, grief, and economic ruin brought by the pandemic should teach us that efficiency—though still a worthy goal—must be tempered by what can only be called “strategic inefficiency.” We must make room for an optimum amount of waste. Strategic inefficiency does not mean simply going back to old ways. It does mean recognizing and paying for redundancy and flexibility—larger stocks of essential materials, spaces designed to be reconfigured as hospital rooms, just as the SS United States was designed to be readily converted to a troop ship in wartime. Likewise, calculations about the minimum square footage that office workers need will have to take into account the threat of contagion. We have all seen signs warning about occupancy levels that are “dangerous and unlawful.” We need to rethink office plans and co-working spaces; higher rents can be less expensive than insurance bills and sick days. We also need to look more skeptically at industry trends that may make society more vulnerable by concentrating production in a small number of giant plants.

But I fear that the many economic and social upheavals caused by the pandemic will lead not to greater caution, but to a redoubled search for efficiency through the same old methods of consolidation, congestion (at least once the urgency of social distancing fades), and tight coupling—along with more recent trends such as distance learning, telecommuting, and telemedicine. These internet-driven ideas, at least, may prove to have considerable merits.

But one caveat is worth keeping in mind: Arrangements that initially appear beneficial may turn out to have hidden flaws that reveal themselves only slowly. Even when experts conscientiously vet a proposed intervention for unwanted side effects, they cannot always find them. The medical field offers a cautionary example: The screening of new medicines by the FDA is time-consuming and costly, and that process sets a world standard of rigor. Yet according to the Harvard Health Blog, a study of all drugs the agency approved from 2001 to 2010 revealed that the FDA had issued alerts, warnings, or even recalls for a third of them.

A technological wonder such as free teleconferencing can gain widespread adoption without undergoing any such scrutiny. During the pandemic, the drawbacks of life on Zoom have become obvious in real time. One might think that showing the facial expressions of all participants in a meeting at once would promote better communication. In fact, these videoconferences force everyone to work harder in processing nonverbal cues. “Our minds are together when our bodies feel we’re not,” Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor at the business school INSEAD, told the BBC. “That dissonance, which causes people to have conflicting feelings, is exhausting. You cannot relax into the conversation naturally.” In other words, videoconferencing is less efficient than a regular meeting.

Even failed experiments can be good for efficiency in the long run—if society can learn from them. The basic lesson is that innovations should be correctable and even reversible with experience. But whichever paths we choose, we need to remember that the greater fragility of society is too high a price to pay to save a little money and time.