Editorial | Pains of pandemic to shape world in new year that promises both change and hope

Our dearest wish for the new year is shaped by the old one. With Covid-19 still raging around the world, amid the worst economic downturn since World War II, we must pin our hopes on a successful roll-out of mass vaccinations. That said, it is not just 2021 that will come to be defined by the plague of the preceding year, but the entire decade of the 2020s. Everything has changed. The closest parallel is to be found a century ago, after World War I and the end of the Spanish flu pandemic. Euphoric relief ushered in the Roaring Twenties of life in the fast lane in America. When the coronavirus is brought under control, we can expect a 21st-century repeat of sorts. But the narrative is different, strewn with unknowns.

The pandemic has served a warning that more animal organisms can be expected to evolve into lethal human pathogens with greater frequency. The World Health Organization says it is a wake-up call that worse pandemics lie ahead. It has shown that home is already the new office, and new classroom if necessary, with all its social, economic and planning implications. A sharp fall in world economic output has hit the job prospects of youngsters already clouded by technology and automation and not helped by the disruption of classes. Experts fear the pandemic could widen extreme poverty. The International Monetary Fund has found that civil unrest surges after the onset of disease. But Covid-19 has also hastened innovation, exemplified by e-commerce’s accelerating share of retail sales.

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Coronavirus lockdowns around the world in 2020

Coronavirus lockdowns around the world in 2020

National security law

A year ago today the Post sounded the alarm about a mysterious virus in Wuhan, central China, which had caused pneumonia symptoms in 27 people with links to a local seafood market. No one could have foreseen then that this would be the harbinger of the worst pandemic in a century. The painful lessons of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) epidemic in 2003 had left Hongkongers better aware of the risks of an unknown virus although, after nearly a year, the city is suffering its fourth wave of coronavirus infections due to a lack of comprehensive and strategic anti-pandemic measures. But psychologically it was already shell-shocked by more than six months of often violent, anti-government social unrest and ugly clashes between protesters and police, initially sparked by the now-shelved extradition bill.

Ultimately this is what set the city apart as contagion went global and the WHO declared a pandemic. Unrest quietened as anti-infection measures took effect, but this did not change Beijing’s resolve to impose a national security law. For this reason alone as well as the effect of the pandemic, Hong Kong will never be the same. The impact of the security law on the city’s international image as a financial and business centre under “one country, two systems” is subject to different views. Some anti-government figures accused of breaking the national security law have been arrested. Others have taken refuge overseas. How differently the city is perceived as a result, if at all, remains to be seen. Much hinges on the perception of continued respect for judicial independence and the rule of law.

While infection and mortality rates may not appear too bad compared with those overseas, the city is the worst performer in the country in pandemic control, which has blocked the return of mainland tourists and prevented the city tapping into the mainland market. Its economy has fared badly from slumps in domestic demand and tourism. Only government relief measures totalling hundreds of billions of dollars have averted more serious hardship and unemployment. Hong Kong’s economy, especially tourism, is mired in recession and it is not clear when it will be revived. The pandemic worsened the damage from the civil unrest, with unemployment in the tourism sector now at around 13 to 14 per cent.