Pandemic economics: the global response to COVID-19

Michael Roberts

It is now one year since the COVID virus started to infect humanity and

eventually turn into a pandemic. There have now been over 100 million

cases of COVID-19 infections, with over 2million deaths. That’s a death

rate of 2%. Each year, influenza kills about 0.1% of people who catch it.

By this measure, COVID-19 virus is clearly much more deadly. Of

course, not everybody has been infected yet, but micro-studies suggest

that around 0.5%-1% of those infected with COVID-19 would die; that is

about five to ten times more deadly than annual influenza.1 Quick math

shows that with a world population of about 7.8bn and assuming ‘herd

immunity’ was achieved at 65% of the population, then an uncontained

virus could have killed 35m people.

Governments around the world have been warned for decades that new

pathogens deadly to humans were emerging ever more frequently and

likely to turn into pandemics. From SARS, MERS, Ebola, and now

COVID-19, epidemiologists and health organisations have been warning

of the impending danger. The UN set up a Global Preparedness

Monitoring Board (GPMD) which reported only last September 2019 and

1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309920302437
warned of a viral pandemic and commented: “[P]reparedness is

hampered by the lack of continued political will at all levels … Although

national leaders respond to health crises when fear and panic grow

strong enough, most countries do not devote the consistent energy and

resources needed to keep outbreaks from escalating into disasters.”2

The dangers were ignored. And there are several reasons why. First, it

has become clear that these new pathogens have emerged because of

the relentless expansion of capitalist production and industrialisation into

all parts of the globe, uncontrolled and with inadequate regard for the

environment and nature.3 Fossil fuel, mineral exploration, and timber

logging, plus industrial plantation farming and sprawling urbanisation

have brought pathogens, which for thousands of years have been in wild

life such as bats and other remotely based animals, into contact with

farm animals and then with humans through wildlife food markets and

farming. But governments did not want to know because effective action

would mean the curbing of profitable industrial expansion.

And the lack of preparation was also exhibited in the failure of big

pharmaceutical firms to invest in research and production of effective

vaccines to provide humans with immunity. The technology is there to do

2 https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf
3 https://nyupress.org/9781583675892/big-farms-make-big-flu/
this – as we now see with the mad rush by many pharmaceutical

companies to produce a vaccine. But before the pandemic, 16 out of the

top 20 American pharmaceutical companies did no research at all in

vaccines to deal with such diseases because they were previously

concentrated in the poor parts of world where there was no profit to be

made.4 They preferred to concentrate on anti-depressants, opioids,

diabetes, and cancers; the diseases of the ‘global north’.

And then there was the state of health systems around the world. In the

advanced capitalist countries, public health systems have been starved

of funding, privatised and hollowed out over the last 40 years to the

benefit of private profit and the market. And health spending has not

been directed towards prevention or primary care but mainly to

emergency treatment. A 2015 study of tuberculosis rates in 99 countries

found that cuts in public spending on healthcare and the privatization of

the health sector were related to a higher prevalence of TB.5 This was

set against decades of privatization of health-care systems in developing

countries, often encouraged by the World Bank and IMF.

As a result, most health systems were already stretched to the limit in

dealing with illness and disease before the pandemic broke – indeed, it

4 https://corporateeurope.org/en/in-the-name-of-innovation
5 https://developingeconomics.org/2020/06/21/privatization-and-the-pandemic/
was regarded as ‘efficient’ to run health capacity at 99%, with no room

for major emergencies. Many health systems had no stock of necessary

equipment for virus pandemics like masks, PPE, ventilators, or even

medicines to ameliorate the impact of the virus. When the pandemic hit,

many health systems in Europe were overwhelmed, forcing ‘triaging’ and

ignoring the impact on residential homes. Eventually, governments had

to impose drastic lockdowns. Also, health systems were then forced to

concentrate on the COVID-19 patients to the detriment of other seriously

ill patients, leading to secondary deaths.

Recent studies have shown that a 10% increase in the percentage of

hospital beds per 1,000 people results in a 1.7% decrease in COVID-19

deaths.6 Some of the highest mortality rates are in the USA, Italy, and

Spain (which have around 3 hospital beds per 1,000 people), whereas

less privatized systems have a much higher ratio of hospital beds per

people, e.g. Germany (8.2), South Korea (10.9), and Japan (13.4). In

other words, the more a health system is public and properly funded and

resourced, the more success it has in saving lives. Privatisation kills.

Of course, there was talk among the corporate boardrooms and

government committees in some countries, that as COVID-19 only killed

mostly the old, sick and infirm and did little damage to the young and

6 https://developingeconomics.org/2020/06/21/privatization-and-the-pandemic/
those healthy and of working age, it would be better to go for ‘herd

immunity’. Indeed, wiping out the old and sick would save public money

eventually and boost productivity! But such a ‘Malthusian solution’ was

generally rejected as too dangerous politically to adopt.7

Some governments like Sweden claimed that lockdowns were

unnecessary and social distancing would be enough. That has not

proved to be the case, as Sweden’s death rate has been ten times

higher than its neighbours in ‘locked down’ Denmark, Norway, or Finland

– and indeed Sweden’s death rate is now close to the initially hard-hit

Italy. Other autocratic and right-wing governments like those in Brazil or

the USA have claimed that COVID-19 is a ‘hoax’, or no worse than flu

and so there was no need for any containment. Again, policies based on

that view have proved to be disastrous for the death rates of these

countries.

COVID-19 deaths per million

Source: Worldometers

7 Although it has been recently revived. https://gbdeclaration.org/

 Deaths per million
1600
1431
1400 1311
1215 1172
1200 1134 1100
1026
1000
796
800 700
648
600 487
400

200 111
0
Italy

US

Spain

Mexico

France

Sweden

Brazil

Neth

S Africa

Ger

Russia

India
But lockdowns alone were no answer to containing the pandemic. The

countries that have succeeded most in controlling the virus and saving

lives have been those that had early lockdowns, but also had effective

mass testing and tracing of infections, fully serviced health systems and

massive community cooperation. China, where the virus started, has

had only 5000 deaths or 3 per million. Taiwan, South Korea, New

Zealand, and in Europe, the Scandinavian countries (except Sweden),

have also succeeded to varying degrees.8

8 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
However, in the so-called Global South, lockdowns have not been

successful in containing the virus because it is impossible for most

households to work from home with broadband and millions are casual

informal labourers who have to go to work, come what may. And living in

slums close together is no environment for effective isolation or social

distancing. Moreover, health systems in these countries are inadequate

and mainly private, so there is minimal testing and those infected

severely cannot get treatment. Thus, hundreds of millions in Peru (the

worst affected country in the world), Mexico, India, South Africa, etc. are

still being infected. Cases continue to skyrocket there, even if the

relatively young populations mean that death rates are low.

In the advanced capitalist countries of North America, Europe, and Asia,

the lockdowns have been gradually relaxed. This has now led to a new

wave of localised virus eruptions, which is requiring yet new ‘lite’

lockdowns across Europe. Death rates are not so high as the virus now

mainly affects the young and healthy, with the old self-isolating; and

health systems are better prepared. Even so, the old and the sick are

still forced to stay at home or in residential units with no prospect of

having ‘a life’. And many of those who were severely affected by the

virus have been left with permanent damage to respiratory and heart
systems and other ‘mysterious illnesses’, called ‘long Covid’.9 There is

permanent scarring.

The pandemic slump

And there is permanent scarring to the world economy and people’s

livelihoods. The world capitalist economy is suffering the largest

contraction in output and income in over 100 years (since the ‘Spanish

flu’ epidemic). Over 500m people globally are being driven back into

‘official poverty’ (earning less than $5.50 a day). Millions of people have

lost and will lose their jobs globally, as well as small businesses closing

for good. Government bailouts with cash hand-outs for the unemployed

and loans to companies have been inadequate to save jobs and

incomes and cannot go on for much longer. So bankruptcies will explode

and a new global financial crisis is on the horizon.

Everybody is waiting for the vaccines that will give us immunity. But

experience shows that vaccines are never fully effective (for example

annual flu vaccines are only 60% effective). Moreover, there will be more

pandemics to come, based on new pathogens. Health systems remain

underfunded and inadequate to deal with them. And there is no

international cooperation or plan to control the expansion of fossil fuel

9 https://www.ft.com/content/3387ffe1-f9aa-4751-b6ac-e09f256d7966
exploration (on the contrary) or industrial farming that brought the

viruses in the first place. There is no end in sight.

Around 2.7 billion workers worldwide have been affected by full or partial

lockdown measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, i.e., around

81% of the world’s 3.3 billion workforce. The world economy has seen

nothing like this. Nearly all economic forecasts for global gross domestic

product (GDP) in 2020 are for a contraction much worse than in the

Great Recession of 2008-9.10

Global real GDP growth (percentage)

Source: International Monetary Fund data.

During the lockdowns, output in most economies fell by a quarter

according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD), with the effects felt in sectors amounting to a

10
third of GDP in the major economies. International Monetary Fund (IMF)

chief Kristalina Georgieva projects that “over 170 countries will

experience negative per capita income growth this year.”11 Investment

bank JPMorgan’s economists predict that the pandemic will cost the

world at least $5.5 trillion in lost output, greater than the annual output of

Japan. And that would be lost forever. That is almost 8% of GDP

through to the end of 2021. The cost to developed economies alone will

be greater than that lost in the recessions of 2008-9 and 1974-5

combined.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

reckons the global economy’s real GDP will contract by about 4.3% this

year, leaving global output by year’s end over $6 trillion short (in current

US dollars) of what economists had expected it to be before the COVID-

19 pathogen began to spread. “In short, the world is grappling with the

equivalent of a complete wipe out of the Brazilian, Indian, and Mexican

economies. And as domestic activity contracts, so goes the international

economy; trade will shrink by around one fifth this year, foreign direct

investment flows by up to 40 per cent and remittances will drop by over

$100 billion.”12

11 Georgieva, 2020
12 https://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=2853
World trade was already falling at a 2% annual rate before the pandemic

because of weakening economies and the US-China trade war. Now

trade is expected to contract by over 13% this year, faster than during

the Great Recession.13 The collapse in goods trade is particularly

damaging to the so-called developing or emerging economies of the

‘Global South’. Many are exporters of basic commodities such as fuel,

industrial metals, and agricultural products, whose prices have

plummeted since the end of the Great Recession.

Emerging markets disaster

Many larger economies in the Global South—such as Mexico, Argentina,

and South Africa—were already in a recession when the pandemic hit.

The IMF now reckons that output in the so-called ‘emerging markets’ will

have fallen by 2.4%% in 2020, the first decline since reliable records

began in 1951.14 This figure includes the giant economies of China and

India. It was their growth during the Great Recession that ensured that

there was no average contraction among developing economies then.

This time it is different.

As for the smaller emerging economies, the situation is already

deteriorating fast. The World Bank believes that the pandemic will push

13 World Trade Organisation, 2020.

14 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2021/01/26/2021-world-economic-outlook-update
sub-Saharan Africa into recession in 2020 for the first time in 25 years.

More than 90 ‘emerging’ countries, nearly half the world’s nations, have

enquired about bailouts from the IMF—and at least 60 have sought to

avail themselves of World Bank programmes. These two institutions

together have resources of up to $1.2 trillion available to battle the

economic fallout, but only $50 billion of this can be deployed to

“emerging markets”, and only $10 billion to low-income members. These

figures are tiny compared with the losses in income, GDP, and capital

outflows. In 2020, nearly $100 billion of capital flowed out of emerging

markets, according to data from the Institute of International Finance

(IIF), compared to $26 billion outflow during the global financial crisis of

a decade ago. Moreover, the last thing that distressed economies need

is another loan from the IMF, as the example of Pakistan demonstrates.

The IMF is still demanding austerity measures from the Pakistan

government in the middle of this pandemic in return for previous loans.15

In addition to this government debt crisis, there has been a growth of

private debt since the Great Recession, and this has been taking place

fastest in the so-called developing economies. Much of this debt is

denominated in US dollars, and as that hegemonic currency increases in

15 See Ali Jan, 2020; Roberts, 2018

value as a “safe haven” during the crisis, the burden of repayment will

mount for these economies.

There is little room to boost government spending to alleviate the hit.

The “developing” economies are in a much weaker position than during

the global financial crisis of 2008-9. In 2007, 40 emerging market and

middle-income countries had a combined central government fiscal

surplus of 0.3% of gross domestic product. Last year, the same

economies posted a fiscal deficit of 4.9% of GDP.

Global unemployment is also rocketing. The International Labour

Organisation (ILO) reckons that the income earned by workers round the

world fell 9 per cent in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic — a

loss worth more than $3tn, or 5% of world GDP. This is equivalent to

255 million full-time jobs, approximately four times greater than the

number lost during the 2009 global financial crisis. More than 400

million enterprises—made up of companies and self-employed people—

are in “at risk” sectors such as manufacturing, retail, restaurants and

hotels.16

Underemployment is also expected to increase on a large scale. And, as

witnessed in previous crises, the shock to labour demand is likely to

translate into significant downward adjustments to wages and working

16 ILO, 2020
hours. The strain on incomes resulting from the decline in economic

activity will devastate workers close to or below the poverty line. Under

the “mid and high” economic damage projections from the ILO, there will

be 20-30 million more people in working poverty than before the pre-

COVID-19 estimate for 2020.

The World Bank reckons that the pandemic will push between 88m and

115m people into extreme poverty this year, which the Bank defines as

living on less than $1.90 a day (a ridiculously low threshold). More than

80% of those who will fall into extreme poverty are in middle-income

countries, with south Asia the worst-hit region, followed by sub-Saharan

Africa.

Progress in reducing poverty had been slowing before the pandemic

anyway. About 52m people worldwide rose out of (World Bank) poverty

between 2015 and 2017 but the rate of poverty reduction had slowed to

less than half a percentage point a year during that period, after

reductions of about 1% a year between 1990 and 2015. And all the

reduction in poverty rates have been in Asia, in particular East Asia, and

especially China. Strip China out and there has been little or no

improvement in absolute poverty in 30 years.

A quick recovery?
Nonetheless, mainstream economic forecasters have remained

optimistic for a sharp recovery in the second half of 2020. China is

recovering fast, the argument goes, and the major capitalist economies

will bounce back once the pandemic subsides or the authorities are able

to contain it.

There are two reasons given. The first is the belief that the lockdowns

would soon be over; treatments and vaccines are on their way to stop

the virus and the pandemic would soon be forgotten. That hope has so

far not materialised.

The second reason is that central banks and even the international

agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank have jumped in to inject

credit through the purchases of government bonds, corporate bonds,

student loans, and even more exotic financial assets on a scale never

seen before, even during 2008-9. Also, fiscal spending approved by the

US Congress and other governments far exceeds the spending

programme during the Great Recession. It has reached over 4% of GDP

in fiscal stimulus and another 5% in credit injections and government

guarantees, with more to come this year from the EU and the Biden

administration. That is more than twice the amount in the Great

Recession, with some key countries ploughing in even more to

compensate workers put out of work and small businesses closed down.
Most of this largesse is to keep business, particularly big business, alive,

rather than to help workers and small businesses. If we take the $2

trillion package agreed by the US Congress, two-thirds of it has gone in

the form of outright cash injections and loans that may not be repaid, to

big business (travel companies and so on) and to smaller businesses,

but just one-third to helping the millions of workers and self-employed

people to survive with cash handouts and tax deferrals.

It is the same picture in Europe: first, save big business; second, tide

over working people. Moreover, the payments for workers laid off and

the self-employed are now being phased out and so fall short of

providing sufficient support for the millions that have already been

locked down or have seen their companies lay them off.

The IMF forecasts that the world economy will returni to its 2019 level by

the of end of 2021. Even if it does, it would still leave a $12 trillion

income shortfall in its wake and an engorged debt burden, particularly in

the public sector. But that is not going to happen, says UNCTAD: “Our

own assessment also sees the bounce continuing into next year albeit

with stronger headwinds weakening the pace of global recovery which

will, under the best scenario, struggle to climb above 4 per cent.”

World output projections to 2021

Source: UNCTAD
The tipping-point

One reason not to expect a V-shaped recovery is that Covid-19 was the

tipping-point for the world capitalist economy already in trouble. First, the

profitability of capital in the major economies had been on a downward

trend. Moreover, the mass of global profits was also beginning to

contract before COVID-19 exploded onto the scene. So even if the virus

did not trigger a slump, the conditions for any significant recovery were

just not there.

G7 internal rate of return on capital (weighted by GDP)

Source: Penn World Tables 9.1 IRR series, author’s calculations.

Global corporate profits from six major economies (weighted mean,

percentage year on year, Q4 2019 partially estimated)

Source: National statistics, author’s calculations.

Second, there is debt. Over the past decade, characterised by record

low, or even negative, interest rates, companies have been on a

borrowing binge. Everywhere corporate debt has soared during the long

and weak “expansion” since 2009. Huge debt, particularly in the

corporate sector, is a recipe for a serious crash if the profitability of

capital drops sharply. According to the IIF, the ratio of global debt to

gross domestic product hit an all-time high of over 322%, close to $253

trillion, in the third quarter of 2019. The rise in US non-financial

corporate debt is particularly striking.

A recent OECD report said that, by the end of December 2019, the

global outstanding stock of non-financial corporate bonds had reached

an all-time high of $13.5 trillion, double the level reached in real terms in

December 2008. The rise is most striking in the US, where the Federal

Reserve estimates that corporate debt had risen from $3.3 trillion before

the financial crisis to $6.5 trillion last year. Given that Apple, Facebook,

Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet alone held net cash at the end of

last year of $328 billion, this suggests that much of the debt is

concentrated in old economic sectors where many companies are less

cash generative than big tech. Debt servicing is thus more

burdensome.17

17 Plender, 2020
US non-financial corporate debt to net worth (percentage)

Source: US Federal Reserve.

The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability report amplifies this point with

a simulation showing that a recession half as severe as that in 2009

would result in companies with $19 trillion of outstanding debt having

insufficient profits to service that debt.18 So if sales should collapse,

supply chains be disrupted and profitability fall further, these heavily

indebted companies could keel over. That would hit credit markets and

banks, triggering a financial collapse.

Debt to revenue ratio of US non-financial firms,

Source: WRDS Compustat data

18 IMF, 2020.
Before the lockdowns, there were anything between 10 to 20% of firms

in the US and Europe that were barely making enough profit to cover

running costs and debt servicing -the so-called ‘zombie’ firms. Several

middling retail and leisure chains have already filed for bankruptcy, and

airlines and travel agencies may follow.

The mainstream policy reaction

Cash packages for furloughed or unemployed workers are new. Straight

cash handouts by the government to households and firms are, in effect,

what the infamous monetarist economist Milton Friedman called

“helicopter money”, i.e., dollars to be dropped from the sky. Forget the

banks; get the money directly into the hands of those who need it and

who will spend it. Post-Keynesian economists who have pushed for

helicopter money, or “people’s money” as they would prefer it, are thus

apparently vindicated.19

19 Coppola, 2020.
In addition, an idea long excluded by mainstream policy has now

become acceptable: fiscal spending financed not by the issue of more

debt (government bonds) but by simply “printing money” (that is, by a

central bank depositing money in the government’s account). The

policies of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) have arrived. This “monetary

financing” is supposed to be temporary and limited, but supporters of

MMT are cock-a-hoop, hoping that it could become permanent, as they

advocate. Under this approach, governments simply create money and

spend to take the economy towards full employment and keep it there.

Capitalism will be saved by the state and by MMT.20 The problem with

this approach is that it ignores the crucial factor: the social structure of

capitalism. Under capitalism, production and investment is for profit, not

to meet the needs of people. Profit, in turn, depends on the ability to

exploit the working class sufficiently compared to the costs of investment

in technology and productive assets. It does not depend on whether the

government has provided enough “effective demand”.

Michael Pettis, a well-known “balance sheet” macro-economist based in

Beijing, challenges the optimistic assumption that printing money for

increased government spending can do the trick: “If the government can

spend these additional funds in ways that make GDP grow faster than

20 For a Marxist critique of MMT, see Roberts, 2019b.

debt, politicians don’t have to worry about runaway inflation or the piling

up of debt. But if this money isn’t used productively, the opposite is true.”

He adds: “creating or borrowing money does not increase a country’s

wealth unless doing so results directly or indirectly in an increase in

productive investment … If US companies are reluctant to invest not

because the cost of capital is high but rather because expected

profitability is low, they are unlikely to respond to the trade-off between

cheaper capital and lower demand by investing more”.21 You can lead a

horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

The historical evidence shows that the so-called Keynesian multiplier

has limited effect in restoring growth, mainly because it is not the

consumer who matters in reviving the economy but capitalist

companies.22 There is little reason to believe that it will be more effective

this time round.

But what else can governments do, and what else can mainstream

economists recommend? If the social structure of capitalist economies is

to remain untouched, then all you are left with is printing money and

raising government spending.

A social economy

21 Pettis, 2019
22 Roberts, 2012.
However, there is an alternative. Once the current lockdowns end, what

is needed to revive output, investment, and employment is something

like a “war economy” or, more accurately, a “social economy”. The slump

can only be reversed with massive government investment, public

ownership of strategic sectors, and state direction of the productive

sectors of the economy. Andrew Bossie and J W Mason outline the

experience of the public sector role in the wartime US economy. They

show that all sorts of loan guarantees, tax incentives, and other

measures were initially offered by the Franklin Roosevelt administration

to the capitalist sector. But it soon became clear that the capitalists could

not do the job of delivering on the war effort because they would not

invest or boost capacity without profit guarantees. Direct public

investment took over and government-ordered direction was imposed.

Bossie and Mason find that federal spending rose from about 8-10% of

GDP during the 1930s to an average of around 40% of GDP from 1942

to 1945. Most significantly, contract spending on goods and services

accounted for 23% of GDP on average during the war. Currently in most

capitalist economies public sector investment is about 3% of GDP, while

capitalist sector investment is 15% or more. In the war that ratio was

reversed.23

23 Bossie and Mason, 2020.

What happened was a massive rise in government investment and

spending. In 1940, private sector investment was still below the level of

1929 and actually fell further during the war. So the state sector took

over nearly all investment, as resources (value) were diverted to the

production of arms and other security measures in a war economy. John

Maynard Keynes himself said that the war economy demonstrated that,

“it is, it seems, politically impossible for a capitalistic democracy to

organise expenditure on the scale necessary to make the grand

experiments which would prove my case—except in war conditions”.24

The war economy of 1941-5 did not stimulate the private sector; it

replaced the “free market” and investment for profit. To organise the war

economy and to ensure that it produced the goods needed for war, the

Roosevelt government spawned an array of mobilisation agencies that

not only often purchased goods but closely directed their manufacture

and heavily influenced the operation of private companies and whole

industries. Bossie and Mason conclude that: “The more—and faster—

the economy needs to change, the more planning it needs. More than at

any other period in US history, the wartime economy was a planned

economy. The massive, rapid shift from civilian to military production

required far more conscious direction than the normal process of

24 Cited in Renshaw, 1999

economic growth. The national response to the coronavirus and the

transition away from carbon will also require higher than normal degrees

of economic planning by government.”25

The story of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the war that

followed shows us that, once capitalism is in the grip of a long

depression, there must be a grinding destruction of the capital

accumulated in previous decades before a new era of expansion

becomes possible. There is no policy that can avoid that and preserve

the capitalist sector. If the required capital destruction does not happen

this time, then the Long Depression that the world capitalist economy

has suffered since the Great Recession could enter another decade.

The major economies (let alone the so-called emerging economies) will

struggle to come out of this slump unless the law of the market and of

value is replaced by public ownership, investment, and planning, utilising

all the skills and resources of working people. This pandemic has shown

that.

Michael Roberts is a Marxist economist who blogs at

thenextrecession.wordpress.com. He is the author of The Great

Recession: A Marxist View (Lulu, 2009) and The Long Depression:

25 Bossie and Mason, op cit

Marxism and the Global Crisis of Capitalism (Haymarket, 2016). He is

also co-editor of World in Crisis: A Global Analysis of Marx’s Law of

Profitability (Haymarket,2018) and Marx 200: A Review of Marx’s

Economics (Lulu, 2020)

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