If it’s going to be up to scratch, governance in this country will need to overcome many hurdles. Not least when it’s a matter of regulating economic activity correctly.

Today it is agreed that this activity had best be conducted by the private sector. Whether this has been the right approach, perhaps future generations will decide once and for all.

The consensus has also been that in many cases, there should be some authority to sustain the basic rules by which private economic activity is to be run, like for instance, to ensure that competition between enterprises in the market will not be subject to occult preferences; or to ensure that rules are being followed that guarantee the buyers of any given product are not swindled.

Who should be in charge of such regulation? Through bitter experience, we already know how state agencies charged with the job, were less than on the ball. They allowed “everything” to proceed unchecked.

Then there have been those to claim that it’s best to rely on the private interests already involved in a given sector and expect them to self-regulate, in a way like what professionals do (!).

Yet, current experience shows that this second “option” can end up just as ineffective as the first one.

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PROSPECTS

Prospects for economic growth in the EU and beyond had dimmed in recent weeks to well below what many had hoped for and expected. With the emergence of the corona virus epidemic, prospects have continued to darken.

Worse, regarding the epidemic itself and the consequences it brings in its wake, there is no measure that can be used a priori to really estimate the effects that will pile up on diverse economic agents. To complicate matters, corona virus effects have been multiplying across the world and there is no real knowledge about how they have been spreading from zone to zone.

Clearly, it would be prudent to at least assume there will be no economic growth at all in the short term.

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PRECAUTIONS

In practically all countries, the precautions that one needs to take to keep corona virus infections at bay is being incessantly repeated through all means of communication.

It is instructive to compare the different methods employed to get warnings across.

What I found effective was the way by which these were delivered on UK TV, soon after the news was released that the epidemic had reached the country. There was a strong emphasis on the need for citizens to continually be sure their hands were clean. In order to do so, they were told to use what’s always been used: soap and water.

But then, one needs to make sure that hands are being washed to effect. And this is generally achieved by doing the wash for a sufficiently long period. The recommendation was that when washing, one should take care to continue with the exercise till one has sung the refrain “Happy birthday to you” twice to three times before drying hands.