Facing Corona’s Economic Fallout: If Not Now, When?

The situation the world is facing now seems unprecedented — a worldwide epidemic that has closed down the world’s economy. However, the same universal interconnectedness that was so instrumental in creating this problem can also supply the means of recovery.

The greatest “achdus” the world has ever experienced — an example of nations working together — is the successful worldwide eradication of smallpox, a disease that had previously killed up to 35 percent of its victims and left others scarred or blind. In 1980, after decades of efforts by the World Health Organization, the World Health Assembly endorsed a statement declaring smallpox eradicated. The last case occurred in Somalia in 1977. This global effort was successful only because every last nation cooperated with the WHO, who tracked every last inoculation of the individuals exposed to the illness.

Just after the successful testing of the first atomic bomb, the physicist Niels Bohr saw an unsettling future. He reasoned that if the US could figure out how to make an atomic bomb, then Russia and other nations would also eventually get there, and when they did, the whole world would be subject to an arm’s race. He proposed an open exchange of information: Let the US share the secrets of the atomic bomb, on the condition that no one would build one. He argued that there should be positive unity — as in the case of the war on smallpox — instead of a negative unity. Because the bottom line is that, with countries caught up in a nuclear arms race, only the threat of mutually assured destruction — a hair-trigger dynamic — would keep the world from blowing itself up.

All very interesting, but why is this important?