10 Leaders The EconomistAugust 29th 2020
2 bet. American actors who once liked to pose with the Dalai Lama
know that a selfie could get them blacklisted by the Chinese au-
thorities. The sanctions are asymmetric: when Liu Yifei, who
plays Mulan, tweeted support for the police who put down pro-
democracy protests in Hong Kong, Disney said nothing.
The trouble is that the proposed cures are often worse than
the disease. Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, wants studios that
agree to censors’ demands to be banned from working with the
Department of Defence, which lends its hardware as props. That
would turn the government into an arbiter of what is politically
acceptable—surely an idea more at home in the Communist
Party than the Republican one. penAmerica, a free-speech body,
says studios should disclose any changes they make to their Chi-
nese releases. A fine idea—but studios have little incentive to do
so, and if forced, they might respond by ensuring the original
cuts of their movies were inoffensive enough to pass without ed-
its, thus subjecting the whole world to China’s censorship.
Fortunately, two factors should limit Hollywood’s kowtow-
ing. First, bending too far for the Chinese market risks losing the
American one. When the National Basketball Association apolo-gised to “our Chinese friends” for the pro-Hong Kong tweet of a
team’s manager, American fans’ indignation forced it to back-
track. Activision Blizzard, an American gaming firm, performed
a similar u-turn after fans decried its punishment of an e-sports
competitor who had spoken out about Hong Kong. Following Ms
Liu’s tweet about the police, #boycottMulan started trending.
Hollywood casting directors have long memories and are as al-
lergic to controversy as any communist censor.
The other factor is the rise of streaming. Whereas the box of-
fice is global, streaming is not. Locked out of China, Netflix can
commission documentaries like “Joshua: Teenager vs Super-
power”, about a Hong Kong activist. The economics of streaming
are all about exploiting niches, making it easier to say different
things to different audiences.
All this calls for a dose of that rarest of Hollywood ingredi-
ents: realism. There is no way to eliminate the Chinese govern-
ment’s influence on the global film industry. But Western policy-
makers should hold back from telling film-makers what they can
say. Upholding freedom of speech starts with leaving them
alone—and leaving the meddling to China. 7I
n ecuador people are still searching for the bodies of rela-
tives who died of covid-19 four months ago. In Italy a boy
begged a priest to forgive the “sin” of lowering his face mask out-
doors. Not since the second world war have so many people in so
many places been traumatised at once (see International sec-
tion). Even after the disease itself is brought under control, the
mental scars will linger.
For many, the pandemic is merely an annoyance. But some
groups face a particular risk of post-traumatic stress disorder
(ptsd), the symptoms of which include nightmares, flashbacks
and feelings of guilt, anxiety or isolation. The most vulnerable
are those who have been very ill, or lost relatives, as well as vic-
tims of previous traumas (such as refugees), and
those with front-line jobs, such as doctors and
nurses. In Spain nearly a sixth of those infected
are health-care workers, and most of them show
signs of ptsd. In Bangladesh, where the in-
comes of poor people briefly fell by 80% when
lockdowns were tight, 86% of people in one poll
reported covid-19-related stress.
Humans are resilient. Those who experience
trauma mostly cope. When their homes are destroyed by earth-
quakes, they rebuild them and carry on. Even the mass bombing
of cities in the second world war did not break civilian morale.
Nonetheless, the world should take the collective mental dam-
age of covid-19 seriously. Steps to reduce it cost little, and can
benefit not only individuals but also society more broadly.
Research into previous disasters suggests that survivors’
long-term mental health depends more on “perceived support”
than “received support”. In other words, donations of money or
food matter less than the feeling that you can turn to your neigh-
bours for help. Such help is typically offered spontaneously, but
governments can also chip in. France, for example, sets up “med-ical and psychological emergency units” after terrorist attacks
and other disasters. These try to minimise the long-term mental-
health consequences of such events by offering immediate
walk-in psychological support near the site of the disaster. Sever-
al cities in France have reactivated this “two-tent model”, one for
medical care and the other for mental care, to help people cope
with the toll of the virus.
Some people draw comfort from the fact that they are not
alone—millions are facing the same tribulations at the same
time. But the pandemic also presents unusual challenges. No
one knows when it will end. Social distancing makes it harder to
reconnect with others, a step in recovering from trauma. And the
economic shock of covid-19 has undermined
mental-health services everywhere, but espe-
cially in poor countries.
The most important measures will be local. A
priority should be bringing people together by,
say, expanding internet access. Mutual-aid net-
works (eg, WhatsApp groups to deliver groceries
to the elderly), which tend to peter out once the
initial disaster subsides, should instead be for-
malised and focused on the most vulnerable. Mental-health pro-
fessionals should connect patients to such services, and train
more lay folk as counsellors. In Zimbabwe, well before the pan-
demic, hundreds of grandmothers were taught how to provide
talk therapy on village benches to depressed neighbours who
could not afford to visit a distant clinic. Such innovations can
work elsewhere, too.
Religious services and sporting events can provide a physical
or virtual space for mourning. The story of the pandemic can be
taught in schools, helping those for whom it was a hassle em-
pathise with those for whom it was life-changing. The mental
trauma of covid-19 cannot be erased, but it can be eased. 7A world of trauma
How to grapple with the psychological scars of the pandemicCovid-19 and mental health