First the NBA postponed its season, with no immediate resumption in sight, and then March Madness was canceled. Broadway has been shuttered, along with other public entertainments across the country, Disneyland included. These are prudent if belated steps. Nonetheless a question arises: If every empire needs bread and circuses, where will Americans turn for the latter? Which public spectacles will keep us all distracted? One obvious response is the internet. For younger generations especially,

Viewpoints March 17, 2020

Hospitals often speak of what’s called “surge capacity” -- the ability to absorb a sudden influx of patients because of a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or even, yes, a pandemic. Given the possible influx of patients sickened by the new coronavirus, how much of a surge can U.S. hospitals accommodate? Not as much as you might think. For years, cost-conscious hospitals have emulated the lean, just-in-time principles that have revolutionized manufacturing. The result has b

Viewpoints March 15, 2020

Hong Kong has fewer coronavirus cases than the US, Singapore or Italy. That might seem surprising for a city that sits on the doorstep of mainland China and has intertwining business, tourism and personal connections with the source of the epidemic. The reason can be summed up in one word: SARS. The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 sowed extreme caution in Hong Kong, a former British colony that had returned to Chinese sovereignty six years earlier. The city, which maintain

Viewpoints March 9, 2020

It is the flow of people, as much as money, that keeps the global economy ticking over. It follows that a sudden halt to the movement of workers, shoppers and tourists should worry us just as much as the drying up of credit during the global financial crisis in 2008. With fewer obvious quick fixes, the virus outbreak should perhaps concern us even more. A little over a decade ago, it was the US housing market that soured. Investors lost confidence after years of unbridled lending and poor regul

Viewpoints March 8, 2020

If you’re raining cash on people and want them to spend it, you have to convince them that the benevolence is being financed by printing money. Nobody wants to worry about being taxed more in the future. These things are going to be problematic for Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan. He plans to give away 10,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,285) to every adult permanent resident to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus, but since he can’t conjure money at will, he’s bein

Viewpoints March 5, 2020

About a month ago, I prepared for COVID-19, then just known as the coronavirus, by refilling some essential heart medications I was worried might run out if there were serious supply chain disruptions. The pills were for my cat -- I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. And now that coronavirus has spread to well over 50 countries, more and more people are confronting the question of how much preparation is enough, whether for themselves or those people and pets relying on them. Experts

Viewpoints March 5, 2020

When it comes to infectious disease outbreaks, we just haven’t learned. It’s not as if we weren’t warned. Last year, a report by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a body put together by the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group, said that there was “a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5 percent of the world’s economy.” A pandemic on

Viewpoints March 4, 2020

The Italian government has announced a stimulus package of 3.6 billion euros ($4 billion) to help the economy cope with the Coronavirus outbreak. The response appears timely and proportionate. Rome can always add to the stimulus later -- provided the financial markets allow it. Roberto Gualtieri, minister of finance, said in an interview Sunday that he was looking at a three-step plan to support companies and workers. Italy is the European country most affected country by the COVID-19 epidemic,

Viewpoints March 4, 2020

On the eve of the ceremony to sign an agreement with the US to begin peace negotiations, the Taliban declared it had already won. “This is a day of victory,” said Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, a Taliban negotiator. “Victory has come with the help of God.” In one sense, this crowing seems premature. While it’s true that the US intends to reduce its troop presence from more than 12,000 to 8,600, further withdrawals are conditioned on the Taliban adhering to its co

Viewpoints March 3, 2020

The economic damage from the coronavirus epidemic has prompted calls for Europe to relax its fiscal rules to allow governments to cut taxes and increase spending. The European Commission seems to agree: Paolo Gentiloni, its economy czar, has hinted that affected governments -- such as Italy -- may enjoy some budget “flexibility” to deal with the emergency.　 Granting more leeway is a welcome step, but it’s only a second-best approach. The virus risks affecting some countries mu

Viewpoints March 2, 2020

Pandemics come and pandemics go. In the grip of a new infection spreading around a planet with no natural immunity, it can feel like the sky is falling. Over the coming months, it’s likely that a significant share of the world’s population will experience some of the dread of the COVID-19 coronavirus that people in China have suffered over the past few months. Many will die. Still, the likely end-point of this outbreak will see it settle down as an endemic disease -- one of the sui

Viewpoints March 1, 2020

The coronavirus called COVID-19 has spread beyond its origin in Wuhan, China, and has arrived on U.S. shores. I’m a law professor, not an epidemiologist, so my thoughts immediately turned to how the law would shape America’s collective response to a broader pandemic -- and what the government’s power will mean for individual rights under the Constitution. It’s a question that could soon become an urgent one -- I recently interviewed Marc Lipsitch, the brilliant epidemiol

Viewpoints March 1, 2020

The US has a global military footprint that is second to none, and one of the most visible aspects of that footprint is a worldwide network of bases. From Japan to the UK, America’s overseas installations allow it to shape events thousands of miles from US shores. Critics have long argued that basing troops abroad also creates anti-American sentiment, making Washington’s worldwide presence toxic and self-defeating. A recent study turns this critique on its head, showing that foreign

Viewpoints Feb. 23, 2020

Scientific models show a reasonably high probability that the Wuhan coronavirus will accelerate in its spread outside of China. That’s concerning, to say the least. But even as the news gets darker, the tone of news coverage is swinging the wrong way, offering too much false reassurance. It’s extremely unlikely to turn into a nightmare scenario ripped from movies like “Contagion.” It isn’t an immediate threat to most people’s lives. But if it spreads widely a

Viewpoints Feb. 19, 2020

Beijing is throwing all it’s got at the coronavirus. Less visible than the drama of quarantining communities, however, is the new pressure that the outbreak is bringing on China Inc.’s hard-up borrowers. They face $944 billion of debt maturities onshore and $90 billion offshore this year. Authorities are going back to their old playbook of spewing handouts to get them through. The costs will add billions of dollars of debt and cripple an already weakened financial system. It may be d

Viewpoints Feb. 18, 2020