Wednesday8 April 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 17

Opinion

Martin Wolf Economics

what’s going on. The testing process

generatesahugeamountofinformation

and the idea of the moonshot is to put it

in the public domain. That allows

chemists everywhere to look at the data

andcomeupwithideas.”

This is where the crowdsourcing

comes in. Chemists are being invited to

design compounds using those frag-

ments as a starting point, a challenge

akin to playing chemical Lego. Good

computationalandexperimentalchem-

ists, Prof Stuart says, might be able to

spot common characteristics of binding

hotspots in the Diamond data, which

mayleadtobetterdesignedmolecules.

More than 3,500 designs have already

poured in. Pharmaceutical companies

have thrown in suggestions. Submis-

sions are being “triaged” to prioritise

those with simple structures, which are

easier to manufacture at speed and

researchers contacted theDiamond

Light Source n Oxfordshirei , another

synchrotron radiation facility. Diamond

has now built a testing pipeline around

theproteasetarget.

The first step was to identify “frag-

ments”, or simple molecules, that might

attach to the protease. Many of these

candidate fragments were proposed by

the Weizmann Institute of Science ni

Israel. When one is added to the pro-

tease, synchrotron radiation can reveal

distinctive“binding”signals.Thesehint

that the fragment has managed to latch

onandthereforecouldbeausefulbuild-

ingblockinanyantiviral.

“We found about 80 fragments that

showed strong signals of binding to the

protease,” says David Stuart, director of

life sciences at Diamond and professor

of structural biology at Oxford univer-

sity. “But these are just the first hints of

protease: his enzyme is critical to thet

virus being able to make new copies of

itself. In other viruses, it is regarded as

an Achilles heel. Protease inhibitors are

known to be effective against HIV, for

example. In January, researchers at

Shanghai Tech University wereable to

find out xactly what the Sars-CoV-2e

main protease looks like structurally,

using a pure form of light called

synchrotronradiation.

When that radiation source was

temporarily unavailable, the Shanghai

crowdsource designs for a molecule in

the hope of shortcutting a process that

usually takes years. The non-profit

endeavour has yielded more than3,

designs, with one compound already

beinghailedasatherapeuticpossibility.

Covid Moonshot is managed by

PostEra, a start-up company linked to

Cambridge university that specialises in

sifting through large data sets. It is also

running acrowdfunding campaignto

raise $2m for the research. The project,

hosted at one the UK’s top science facili-

ties and using crucial input from China

and Israel, shows how scientists are

finding fresh ways to raise their collec-

tivegameagainstthisglobalenemy.

The first step to sourcing an antiviral

istoknowtheshapeofthefoe,andespe-

ciallythatofanyweakspot.Onecompo-

nent of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which

causes Covid-19, is calledthe main

A

nti-viral compounds offer

the chemical equivalent of

a rugby tackle to the

ground. They are designed

to intercept a virus before

that hostile invader can hijack cell

machinerytostartreplicating.

Now the global race is on to design a

compound that can tackleCovid-19 ntoi

submission. One notable effort is the

Covid Moonshot project: scientists

working in universities and industry

across the world have joined forces to

How to launch a moonshot against Covid-

To source an antiviral, we

need to know the shape

of the foe, especially

that of any weak spot

vulnerable developing countries. Also

crucialwillbeahalttodebt-servicepay-

mentsforthedurationofthecrisis.

Second, do no harm. The deepest

wound would come from destroying the

trading system completely. That would

make it vastly more difficult to restore

globalprosperityafterthecrisisisover.

Third, abandon outworn shibboleths.

Already governments have given up old

fiscalrules,andrightlyso.Centralbanks

must also do whatever it takes. This

meansmonetary financing f govern-o

ments. Central banks pretend that what

they are doing is reversible and so is not

monetary financing. If that helps them

act, that is fine, even if it is probably

untrue. In the eurozone, they talk much

of eurobonds. But the support that mat-

ters will have to come from the

European Central Bank. There is no

if there is to be a future worth having.

In considering what is to be done to

manage the devastating economic

impact,beyondreopeningeconomiesas

swiftly as it is reasonably safe to do so,

therearethreeessentialconsiderations.

First, protect the weak, both within

countries and among them. A disease

threatens all. How one responds is a

measure of ourethical standards. It is

essential to ensure basic economic secu-

rity for everybody if they are unable to

work. A temporary universal basic

income is one obvious option. Similarly

and crucially, ways must be found to

support vulnerable economies. There

are many radical possibilities. One is a

huge new issuance f the IMF’s Specialo

Drawing Rights, with donation by

high-income countries of their share

into a trust for the benefit of the most

to avoid having to employ such heavy-

handed interventions again. They do

not have much time to do so: a few

months, no more. Otherwise, they may

havenochoicebuttoimitateSweden.

Making the lockdowns pay, to allow

us to live without them, is the essential

first step. The second step is minimising

economic damage. Here the focus must

be on today, not on the high public debt

and other burdens of the future. Suffi-

cient unto the day is the evil thereof. As

in war, one must survive the present

globally, either. Many emerging and

developing countries are being hit by

collapsing external demand, falling

commodity prices and unprecedented

capital flight, while also having to man-

age the pandemic with highly inade-

quate health systems. Lockdowns are

especially brutal in countries with lim-

ited or no welfare states and vast num-

bersofpeoplewhosubsistondailyearn-

ingsfromafragileinformaleconomy.

It is right to ask whether such eco-

nomic carnage can be justified. Among

high-income countries,Sweden ash

taken the least restrictive approach. A

comparison with Norway makes the

trade-offclear:unemploymenthasrisen

in Sweden, too, but by far less than in its

neighbour; yet the number of deaths is

also higherin Sweden. We should be

gratefulfortheSwedishexperiment.We

canlearnfromit,onewayortheother.

My view, however, in line with that of

health expertsandleading economists,

is that the lockdowns are necessary to

save health systems from collapse and

get the disease under control. But they

have to be brief. It is impossible to keep

people locked up indefinitely, without

huge personal suffering and social and

economic damage. This is obviously

true where governments are unable to

offer the costly social protection meas-

uresfeasibleinhigh-incomecountries.

Lockdowns must be a short breathing

space before we move to what a group of

German experts alls a “risk-adaptedc

strategy”. During the lockdowns, gov-

ernments must dowhatever is needed

A

journeyofathousandmiles

begins with a single step.

The journey through this

pandemic is going to be

long and hard. We cannot

know where it will end, although it is

hard not tospeculate. What we must do

instead is focus on the steps right ahead

if we are to avoid falling off our narrow

path into mass deaths on one side, or

economicdevastationontheother.Ifwe

do not avoid these calamities in the near

future, we riskchaos head. Even if wea

domanagetodoso,wewillnotreturnto

the normality we took for granted until

recently. For that, we must at least wait

for a cure or vaccine. The economic and

socialdamagewilllastevenlonger.

Analysis by theOECD lluminates thei

economic disruption ahead. This is no

ordinary recession or even depression,

caused by a collapse in demand. Eco-

nomic activity is being switched off,

partly because people fear contact and

partly because governments have told

them to stay at home. The immediate

impact of these actions could be a

reduction in gross domestic product in

the Group of Seven leading high-income

countriesofbetween20and30percent.

Every month that large parts of our

economies stay closed, annual growth

mightfallby2percentagepoints.

Moreover, the costs are unequally

shared. Unskilled workers suffer worst

from loss of jobs. People and businesses

abletoworkonline,stayworking.Those

thatcannotdoso,donot.(Seecharts.)

The costs are not evenly shared

We must focus

attention on

our next steps

Making the quarantines

pay, to allow us to live

without them, is the

essential first move

Source: OECD Source: FT analysis of official figures Source: Deutsche Bank Research

Closure of services drives collapse

in output

Potential initial impact on activity of shutdowns

(by sector,  of GDP)

Coronavirus hits US middle and

low-skilled jobs harder

Cumulative change in jobs since Jan  (millions)

Sweden’s more relaxed approach means

fewer are unemployed

Cumulative unemployment benefit claims

( of working age population)

-

-

-

-

-

-

Canada

US

France

Italy

UK

Germany

Japan













Jan  Apr  -

-







  

High-skilled

Middle-skilled

Low-skilled

Mar 

Norwegian

national

lockdown

Norway

Sweden

Other personal

services

Professional & real

estate services

Hotels, restaurants

& air travel

Retail & wholesale

trade

Construction

Transport

manufacturing

alternative. Nobody should care. There

are ways to manage the consequences.

Even“helicopter money” ight well bem

fullyjustifiableinsuchadeepcrisis.

More painful choices than these arise.

An emergency like this will be used by

would-be tyrants to strengthen their

grip. At the same time, some freedoms

will have to be given up, temporarily.

Managing such painful trade-offs

depends on high levels of trust and

trustworthiness, hardly salient charac-

teristics of today’s democracies. But the

test is now. Governments that fail to

confront these challenges risk collapse.

Political systems that produce such gov-

ernments risk losing their legitimacy.

We have to get these next steps right.

Everythingdependsonourdoingso.

[email protected]

The lockdowns are necessary

to get the disease under control,

but they must be brief

people infected and dying from the

virus. Diverse responses in that case

could bring about a collapse in confi-

dence. So it is easy to see why govern-

ments in Europe had a strong incentive

to copy the policies adopted by the

countrieshitfirstbythepandemic,even

while they remained unconvinced that

theywerethebestapproachespossible.

Sweden is now the only EU govern-

ment that has decided to reject the pol-

icy of “social distancing” and economic

lockdown. As such, it is the best demon-

stration of the risks for contrarians.

“People are starting to ask: ‘Are others

stupid and paranoid? Or is Sweden

doing wrong?’” Orla Vigso, a professor

of crisis communications at the Gothen-

burg university,told The Guardian. If

Swedishhospitalsnowbecomeoverbur-

dened and the number of deaths starts

rising, the government in Stockholm

will pay a higher political price than its

peers in the EU, as a dissenter from the

acceptedview.

must show readiness to take extraordi-

nary measures, even if they are not cer-

tain to work. At the same time, they

want to avoid taking a course of action

that could, in retrospect, be questioned

by citizens who are well aware of what is

beingdoneinothercountries.

Doing as others do becomes critically

important to reassure the public that

the situation is under control — and to

persuade them of the necessity of tay-s

ing home, wearing masks, closing busi-

nesses and patiently complying with

whateverotherpoliciesareinplace.

Imagine for a moment that half the

countries in Europe had decided to go

intolockdown,whiletheotherschoseto

avoid strict measures. The political

pressure on governments on both sides

to change course would have been

almost unbearable. Imagine then that

some of the democratic governments

had introduced a state of emergency

and others had not, while declaring

comparable figures for numbers of

the other hand, deals with outcomes we

cannotpredictorneversawcoming.

TheCovid-19pandemichasbeensuch

a moment of unmeasurable uncer-

tainty. In the early stages of the crisis,

when mass testing was not possible,

governments could not weigh the costs

and benefits of policies such as social

distancing or economic shutdowns. In

this scenario, the most responsible

course of action is to assume the worst

and take the most risk-averse position.

Managing risk is the usual business of

democratic governments.Dealing with

uncertaintyisaverydifferentgame.

Amid such uncertainty, governments

paradox of the European response to

thecoronavirusoutbreak.Thecrisishas

forcedsocietiestoretreattonationalism

rather than co-operate with each other.

Yet, at the same time, governments

show unlimited enthusiasm for copying

basically the same package of policies to

halt the disease transmission — despite

the fact that social traditions and the

state of public health systems are very

differentineachEUmemberstate.

Why are governments that were

unwilling to co-operate in the initial

stages of the crisis so eager to adopt the

same policy approaches now? heT

answermightbeinthesharpdistinction

between politics in a moment of uncer-

tainty and the politics of risk, made by

the American economist Frank Knight

in his 1921 work,Risk, Uncertainty and

Profit. Knight posited that, while the

futureisinprincipleunknowable,riskis

still measurable. It can be estimated

using data, provided similar situations

have happened before. Uncertainty, on

D

oing as others do can save

your life. In 2015, gunmen

from the al-Shabaab mili-

tant groupstormed a col-

lege in Kenya. They took

students hostage, showing mercy only

to those who could prove they were

Muslims by reciting a key tract from the

Koran.Thosewhocouldnotwereshot.

One Christian student watched what

was happening to her fellow students

and quickly memorised the tract. As

Michelle Baddeleyargues inCopycats

and Contrarians, the girl “saved her own

life through social learning, by gather-

ing information about others’ choices

andtheirconsequences”.

Thiscopycatlogicexplainsthecentral

Copycat action on coronavirus will only take countries so far

A variety of timings and

approaches when deciding

to end restrictions will be a

sign of policy health

Yetalthoughcopycatlogichasworked

reasonably well while national govern-

ments have lacked reliable information

about the coronavirus crisis and its

effects on economies, the situation may

soon change. Continuing to follow the

herd while policymakers start to com-

pile more information about the spread

of Covid-19 in their own countries (in

other words, in a situation where

unmeasurable uncertainty is replaced

byordinaryrisk)willbeamistake.

When it comes to deciding when and

how nations should start to loosen strict

restrictions and how they will compen-

sate businesses and workers — France,

Spain and Italy are beginning to

consider those options now, as their

infection curves plateau — a variety of

timings and approaches will be a sign of

policyhealth.

The writer is chairman of the Centre for

Liberal Strategies in Sofia and fellow at the

Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna

Ivan

Krastev

scale.Enamine, a chemical company in

Kyiv, is on standby to make candidate

compoundsformoreadvancedtesting.

Prof Stuart, whose usual research

relates to the picornaviruses that cause

diseasesincludingfoot-and-mouth,says

Diamond has suspended all non-Covid

researchatitsfacility.“You’vejustgotto

try and hope you can do something that

turns out to be useful.”He says: “This

moonshot is allowing people to come

togetherinaveryopenway.”

The ambition is to have several

candidatecompoundswithinmonths.A

suite of potential antivirals — in case the

virus develops resistance to a single

treatment — would buy time for a

vaccine, which is expected to take at

least a year. Covid-19 may yet succumb

tothechemicalwisdomofcrowds.

The writer is a science commentator

SCIENCE

Anjana

Ahuja

APRIL 8 2020 Section:Features Time: 7/4/2020- 18:30 User:alistair.hayes Page Name:COMMENT USA, Part,Page,Edition:EUR, 17, 1