China’s Swan Song
After emerging in Wuhan the Covid-19 virus has turned global trade on its head by disrupting critical supply chains from China to international markets in a classic example of ‘force majeure’ which the Oxford Dictionary defines as a legal term for “Unforeseeable circumstances that prevent the fulfilment of a contract or disrupts business as usual”. The health emergencies Covid-19 has caused across the globe are accurately described by Oxford’s alternate definition of “Irresistible compulsion or…
Covid-19 offers an odd glimpse of a new future
Covid-19 is certainly not going to change the world forever, but it is going to change quite a few things, in some cases for a very long time. Here is some of them. 1. The clean air over China’s cities in the past month, thanks to an almost total shutdown of the big sources of pollution, has saved twenty times as many Chinese lives as Covid-19 has taken. (Air pollution kills about 1.1 million people in China every year.) People will remember this when the filthy air comes back and will want something done…
