How will the world be changed by the war against coronavirus?

The world as we have known it for the past 40 years has come to a stop. We have a supply chain crisis, a demand crisis, a labour market crisis and an oil price crisis. The second crash that people were long predicting has arrived — but against the backdrop of the Covid-19 threat, it seems like a second-order story. The pound has already hit its lowest rate for decades, and more shocks may occur in the bond and currency markets. How long the disaster will last — or how much worse it will get — is anyone’s guess.

Thanks to the virus, events which earlier this year would have been scarcely conceivable have come to pass. A Conservative chancellor calmly pledged hundreds of billions of pounds to support working people — sums on a scale that would make even John McDonnell gulp. California is in lockdown, as is the Indian subcontinent.