The current, combined public health, economic, and political emergencies around the world seem designed to encourage a distinctly “end of days” feeling. Just perhaps we are more sophisticated and better educated than the Millerites in mid-19th century America. Their leader convinced them the end of the world was imminent. They should shuck off all their worldly possessions, and then gather together in upstate New York to await the end of the world and their ascension heavenward in 1844.

His followers did just as they were commanded — but, not surprisingly, the world continued, a fate that tends to befall prophets of a literal doom or, alternatively, instant deus ex machina-style group salvation. (Think Sabbatai Zevi or Nongqawuse, perhaps.) Speaking generally, prophecies of an apocalypse never seem to play out, even if this has never stopped any of them, before or after William Miller.

Frequently, such prophets arise in times of trouble among a people desperate to escape from political or military oppression, terrible squeezes by those implacable gears of economics, or in response to the pressures of a time of great social upheaval. Among the columnists, commentators and social critics, you can begin to hear them wonder whether we have reached just such a moment.

Once it became clear the Covid-19 pandemic was real and that medicine had no real tools to deal with it, other than recommending the world set up seven billion individual Coventrys, religious zealots around the globe have begun to preach this new plague is divine retribution for somebody’s sins. Concurrently, leftist social and economic critics have taken to the internet and print to argue Covid-19 and the consequent economic chaos are the inevitable last kicks of the dying horse of capitalism and that a new system must be built in its place.

On the other side of the ledger, opportunist conservative political figures have leapt on to this messy business to strengthen their claim to be the best hope for their respective societies. While those who idealise China (or at least those who believe its sui generis “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” will be the best bet for the future) point to the way the Chinese government dealt decisively with the initial outbreak in Wuhan as proof a centrally controlled political society, harnessed with an increasingly robust but highly regulated economic sector, is the real path to the future.

This must be the right way, they argue, rather than the shabby examples across much of Europe and now, of course, in America as well. That Chinese path can be instructive, of course, but it also requires ignoring how the doctor who first called attention to the disease’s outbreak was shamed and harassed unto death, until the government was finally forced to recognise the threat and posthumously called him a national hero.

From more conservative writers, meanwhile, absorbing the early lessons of the combined Covid-19/economic collapse, a near-end times warning tocsin is being sounded. In a recent issue of The Spectator, the former Financial Times editor Lionel Barber argued the world as we have known it has come to a halt, even beyond Covid-19, saying:

“We have a supply chain crisis, a demand crisis, a labour market crisis and an oil price crisis. Emerging markets have been left dreadfully exposed. Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, among other developing countries, are under pressure from capital outflows as the dollar has strengthened, commodity exports fall in value and the easy money of the past decade takes flight. These countries will have to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for dollar liquidity or secure swap lines from the Fed.”

Meanwhile, Adam Tooze, a professor of history at Columbia University, wrote in Foreign Policy that the coronavirus is the biggest health and economic crisis developing countries have ever seen. And closer to home, here in Africa, Tooze says:

“At the head of the list of vulnerable countries is South Africa. The virus count is heading rapidly towards a tipping point. Its health system is stretched at the best of times with a population of 7.7 million living with HIV. A lockdown has been declared. The military has been called out. Meanwhile, the rand is collapsing, and South Africa’s foreign debt has been cut by the rating agencies to junk status.” Other than that, things are fine?

And in Fareed Zakaria’s newest column:

“Even as we are just beginning to confront the magnitude of the shock caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, we need to wrap our minds around a painful truth. We are in the early stages of what is going to become a series of cascading crises, reverberating throughout the world. And we will not be able to get back to anything resembling normal life unless the major powers can find some way to co-operate and manage these problems together.

“The first phase has been the healthcare crisis in the worldʼs major economies. The next phase is the economic paralysis, the magnitude of which we are only just beginning to comprehend. In just the past two weeks, the United States lost some 10 million jobs, exceeding the 8.8 million total jobs lost over 106 weeks during the 2008-2010 recession. But this is only the beginning.

“Next up will surely be the danger of countries defaulting. Italy entered the crisis with the highest level of the public debt of the eurozone countries, and the third-highest in the world… but it is only one of many European countries that will face a fiscal breakdown. And this will happen at a time when Europeʼs most dynamic economies, which often provide the money and guarantees for bailouts and support mechanisms, are themselves underwater…

“Next come the explosions in the developing world. So far, the numbers of infected have been low in countries such as India, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia… All of them are cash-strapped, and the loss of tax revenue, combined with the need for large new subsidies, could easily tip them into their own versions of the Great Depression.

“And then there are the oil states. Even if the quarrel between Saudi Arabia and Russia gets resolved, at this point, demand for oil has collapsed and will not soon recover. An industry insider told me his firm is forecasting that oil will likely drop to $10 per barrel and stay there. Consider what this means for countries such as Libya, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq or Venezuela, where oil revenue makes up the vast majority of government revenue (often of the entire economy)… Expect political turmoil, refugees, even revolutions, on a scale we have not seen for decades…” For Zakaria, it seems, everybody is in the soup, or will be there shortly.

Meanwhile, the usually centrist, pro-well regulated but free-market economy supporter, The Economist, argued in a recent editorial, provocatively titled “The Next Calamity”:

“The new coronavirus is causing havoc in rich countries. Often overlooked is the damage it will cause in poor ones, which could even be worse. Official data do not begin to tell the story. As of March 25th Africa had reported only 2,800 infection so far; India, only 650. But the virus is in nearly every country and will surely spread. There is no vaccine. There is no cure. A very rough guess is that, without a campaign of social distancing, between 25% and 80% of a typical population will be infected. Of these, perhaps 4.4% will be seriously sick and a third of those will need intensive care. For poor places, this implies calamity.”

Historian and futurist Yuval Noah Harari wrote in the Financial Times:

“Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. When choosing between alternatives, we should ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive — but we will inhabit a different world.”

About the only figure of “consequence” who has chosen to disagree with these grim forecasts has been American President Donald Trump, or at least that was his position until the past weekend when he suddenly agreed with the potential for virus-caused death in the US being predicted by top public health officials.

Trump, of course, remains deeply reluctant to accept the idea of any deep and damaging, systemic threats — Mr Micawber-like — preferring instead to argue that any temporary economic problems (such as the 10 million newly unemployed individuals and the net destruction of more than 700,000 jobs in the past month) will quickly evaporate as soon as the starting bell rings again. Something will turn up, maybe a magic bullet like chloroquine, or perhaps garlic cloves worn around the neck. Who really knows what he thinks.

But in the meantime, the inability of democratic regimes to do enough to address the looming disease/public health crisis, before large numbers of people perish, or to find a way around the deepening economic calamity that is threatening to shutter much of the globe’s business, is leading commentators, more and more, to contemplate the possible alternatives. Four key ones seem to be in competition.

One, as noted earlier, is the idea that China, with a political power monopoly held by a party that embodies both political and social control and its effectiveness, must be the appropriate model for our times — especially when something like the sudden eruption of a viral pandemic such as Covid-19 erupts on the world stage.

The second version could be termed the modern Confucian alternative. Within the confines of a strict, rules-based legal and political system, places such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore with their deeply Sinic cultural roots, are offered as examples of firmly capitalist economies, but ones that also have a strong sense of cultural deference towards authority and hierarchy. Crucially, in this model, those in authority have an equally deep sense of responsibility down the slope.

A third model is a rise of what we should call corporatism — capitalist in form, yes, but where the state increasingly limits freedom of political expression and similarly often allocates where business will place its bets and how business will support the government’s plans.

The final variant, the American model, has assumed a flexible interplay between the several layers of separate governmental authority, an open market economy and a vigorous civic society and free media (albeit with the hidden hand of corporate interests there as well sometimes). But the crucial element here is the quality of managerial competence, an attribute that is largely left to the vagaries of the nation’s electoral landscape and the interplay of interest groups in the day-to-day acts of governance.

But, in a circumstance where that political leadership is incoherent, bizarrely erratic, or just plain vanilla, missing-in-action, the whole structure comes unglued. This is, of course, what we have been living through during the past several months (or three-and-a-half years, perhaps). But, of course, such a calamity is not simply a problem for America’s domestic circumstances. Given the country’s economic weight and military capabilities, when it is hobbled by incompetent efforts to restrain the spread of a dire disease or to reignite a near-collapsed economy, the impact of this dysfunction spreads to the rest of the world.

In trying to tease out the long-term results of this multiple-faceted crisis, one might turn to the mechanism offered by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — using a look “back” from 2025 as to how our current challenges will have played out. As Stephens wrote:

“When Covid-19 first emerged as a health crisis in China five years ago, observers noted that authoritarian regimes — with their hostility toward whistle-blowers, their manipulation of data, their fear of the free flow of information — facilitate the spread of disease. Within a few months, it became clear that the flip side of that proposition was also true: Disease facilitates the spread of authoritarianism.

“In Hungary, the virus was the pretext for Prime Minister Viktor Orban to establish a dictatorship on the model of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte used the pandemic to issue shoot-to-kill orders against political protesters. In Israel, the government’s decision to use cellphone data to track the movements of infected individuals quickly became a model and alibi for other states to pick up the practice, with no scruples about the data they collected.”

“…Remarkably, the tactics met with comparatively little resistance, partly because they were advertised as only temporary, and partly because the concerns of civil libertarians paled next to calls to ‘flatten the curve.’

“As civil liberties receded, big government grew. Unprecedented unemployment meant unprecedented increases in Medicaid rolls, jobless benefits, housing assistance and food stamps. It was left to Trump to preside over an expansion of the welfare state the likes of which Bernie Sanders could only have dreamed about a year earlier.

“Nor did things change much after the lockdowns were lifted… Millions of business failures and personal bankruptcies translated to tens of millions of loan and mortgage delinquencies, which in turn caused a financial crisis. Dozens of banks had to be nationalized outright, while the government took stakes in every industry it rescued. By the time a safe vaccine was finally available, the damage had been done.

“The developing world experienced the crisis far more severely. ‘Flattening the curve’ made little sense in countries whose medical systems were already overwhelmed and under-equipped long before Covid-19 came around.

 “A bellicose spirit also took hold. Economically damaged regimes — China, Russia and Iran especially — looked to offset domestic discontents with foreign adventures. Military enlistments rose everywhere, partly as a form of employment, partly out of a sense of fear. Among the paradoxes of the Covid-19 crisis was that it brought the world together as never before in a common experience of lockdowns and self-isolations — while fragmenting it as never before into wary states and nervous neighbors….”

We obviously don’t know how our response to our current challenges will be seen from the vantage point of five or 10 years from now. But it is not a foregone conclusion that things, as Mr Micawber would like to see it, always work out for the best. Or, as the musical Hamilton has it, “Oceans rise and empires fall,” after all. DM