Opinion | Upbeat post-pandemic forecasts mask the real dangers of political and social instability
- Social scarring from mass tragedies doesn’t usually show up for years, and Covid-19 will be no different
- The pandemic has ripped open economic divides that will disproportionately affect countries where tensions are already high
With vaccinations raising hopes for an end to the pandemic, predictions about the post-Covid-19 world are multiplying fast. From envisioning a reordered economy to forecasting how people will live, work and play, experts are doing their best to extrapolate from developments the coronavirus has put into motion.
Philip Barrett, Sophia Chen and Nan Li point out that the pandemic’s political impact has yet to materialise. As they noted in a blog post in February, “history is replete with examples of disease outbreaks casting long shadows of social repercussions”.
Any intelligence analyst who has struggled with forecasting political events would advise you to follow the IMF economists’ research. Their findings reflect data collected on 569 episodes of social unrest across 130 countries from the 1980s to 2020 and around 11,000 epidemics and natural disasters since 1990.
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