The COVID-19 Tower of Babel
In his most recent blog my friend and colleague Francesco Paparella does what he is very good at: looking at hard data and cutting through the noise. And he makes a very simple claim: different countries gather and communicate COVID-19 data in different ways, hampering a proper analysis of the COVID-19 epidemics, and thus also an effective common struggle by humankind. I strongly suggest you read his blog.
Francesco’s blog is fun to read. Unfortunately, his message is not funny at all. And media are not always providing a helping hand either. He refers specifically to a New York Times article comparing Germany’s low COVID-19 death rate with that of other countries, cooking up all sorts of fancy explanations (partly true of course), but never raising the basic question any serious journalist should start with: are we are talking apples and apples, or apples and oranges? In other words, is the data comparable?
Why is nobody putting an end to this Tower of Babel? The answer is simple: we live in an era of de-globalization. De-globalization goes hand in hand with governments going their own way, and multilateral organizations losing power. Sadly, COVID-19 is proving a catalyst for more, rather than less, de-globalization. How come the EU does not have common standards for measuring recovery and death rates? Why is the WHO not creating common guidelines, and asking governments to report the degree to which they deviate from such guidelines? Fear to irritate their most powerful member-states? I doubt we will get any answer to this question. What we can expect - once this is all over - is a vitriolic debate between countries, together with totally non constructive poisonous accusations.
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4 年The data is indeed all messed up. As for the journalists, we don’t breed those anymore. We have PR guys but no longer any journalists. No one questions authority so the FED is now the largest long only asset manager in town with unlimited AUMs
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4 年Well said, Luciano!! It’s a shame how the world got here.
Managing Partner at South Pointe Capital LLC. Executive-In-Residence in Business Technology and Lecturer in Finance at Miami Herbert Business School at the University of Miami.
4 年Excellent. The Tower of Babel is a great metaphor to explain how much like God created different languages to stop the tower from reaching the heavens, the pandemic also has highlighted the different cultural mores that inevitably will push nation states apart and towards de-globalization. Fear brings people to back into their safety zone. Having an invisible enemy adds to the level of uncertainty. The EU has had many crisis to contend with but they have been socio-economic in nature. This time is different and when it matters most leadership has been deferred to each individual country. It has turned into a darwinian struggle. No other crisis has exposed the EU for what it has become - bloated, inefficient and ruder less. It seems each country is using its own standard way of coping with the invisible enemy and recording the size of the problem using their own unique measurement systems.