Rui Moreira talks about the after pandemic. What next?

Clear sighted, lucid and rational opinion by Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira to the Expresso newspaper, on 19th March 2020, on these hardship times we are ALL living. "What happens after?" ("E Depois?", the Portuguese original). 

Here follows the english version of the original Portuguese text.

"What happens after?

We know it by now, the crisis we are living will have dramatic and profound consequences, in the coming days, weeks and months. Whatever the containment or resource measures taken, we have a pandemic of a new virus, still unknown, but a lethal one, especially to the elder and to those who suffer from other pathologies.

From now on, that part of the world population, larger in the West, in percentage terms, will have to live under that threat, as it is unlikely that a vaccine or treatment is found to solve their vulnerability.

And it is not possible to build a new World, where people are not exposed to this threat, because isolation would be, in the long run, a more severe punishment than the risks of infection as the result of social interaction.

For the others, the less vulnerable, this will be one of the many diseases with which they have to live with. In some cases, these diseases have consequences, and it is almost certain that, in time, there will be medicines that will mitigate its impact, while the immunological systems adapts.

This analysis may seem crude, but I should declare that I am part of the larger risk group, because of my age and also because I am immunosuppressed, I have undergone a transplant many years ago.

When the crisis climax has been overcome, somewhere in the coming months, we need to restore normality. As we did with the terrorist threat, to which we have become accustomed. We will do the necessary arrangements to our behaviours, but we will still live in a society: that is, in permanent contact.

Many habits and costums will be changed: it is likely that the handshake and the kissing will no longer be usual, and it is almost unavoidable that many of us choose to wear masks outside and in public transportations, which was customary behaviour in the Far East.

Some things that were usual until just a few days ago, and that are now suspended, will be customary again. And surely that we will value them more, after this blunt interruption, which will have a positive impact in our personal happiness and in our sense of belonging and community. There will be anthropological changes that we, at present, can hardly guess.

It will be clear though, that it will be understood by all and it will be the focus of philosophical and sociological treatises that globalization could no longer remain at the level of trade exchanges and financial flows. Eventually, it would hit all of humanity, who did not properly understood it, when it believed this could be a Chinese crisis, that this was their problem, and that it would be contained in that country or in that region of the world.

In the near future, the reduction in production will not be able to offset the resurgence in demand.

What we know for sure today is that this crisis, which afflicts rich, poor, powerful nations, and other more vulnerable nations, has had a devastating effect in the markets.

The economy has tumbled and it will only get worse; but then, it will adjust. Supply and demand will increase again. This is how post war economy works, and this war is not eternal. It is rather likely that, with the production deficits, inflation will trigger; indeed, we can see it happening already due to hoarding that is neither useful for the common good, nor for those who practice it; it is the result of an individual and instinctual urge that we cannot overly reproach.

Tourism will return, but probably in a different way. The cruise industry, for example, will be a thing of the past, as it happened with the transatlantic that crossed the oceans, because no one will want to stay stuck in the ocean, a paradise transformed into hell by some virus.

Aviation will take longer to recover, because many companies in the sector will disappear.

However, with equipment and human resources, it will all be a matter of time. The available hardware, from the touristic bus to the hotel and to the aircraft, as well as all the paraphernalia of services, which are not technically obsolescent, will attract new investors and new concepts.

Still, and in the coming years, there will be further growth in domestic tourism and tourism that favours destinations closer to home, and there will be a higher demand for destinations where heath care is efficient. The fear factor, like the terrorist threat, that has so influenced tourism, will determine the choices according to safety conditions that each destination offers.

If there is sufficient liquidity - which will be the greatest challenge - and if there is public trust and private sector confidence, if there is resolve by our rulers and if they resist to ideological impulses, recovery will be swifter. In any case, the upward curve will not be as pronounced as the downward curve of markets, in these days of crisis. There will be, for sure, new opportunities, new trends and new concepts in distribution.

On the other hand, the crisis will be, and already is, a great test to teleworking if this works, if it demonstrates feasible, it is rather likely that more and more people work from home, and that will have a gigantic impact in the real estate market, in mobility, and in many other social issues. Innovative models as co-housing will develop, because quarantine would have been a harsh test to loneliness.

It is very likely that with fear and after the fear, as in any war, there is a relative demographic spring.

The role of the state will be under huge scrutiny. Because it was unable to help us. Because it was realised, and not just in Portugal, that the social state was frail. Because the welfare state failed. Of the future State, we demand it is the shaper of economic and social life.

It is fair to predict that, safeguarding the role of free enterprise and entrepreneurship of the private sector, citizens will demand that the State should play a fundamental role in the manufacture of essential goods and in the provision of public transport.

With the most likely bankruptcy of the private banking system, citizens - and even small and medium entrepreneurs - will demand that the state, directly or indirectly, acts as a credit agent. Because no one will be able to explain a new redemption. Because it cannot be required that households and small businesses are doomed to insolvency, that depositors lose their savings, and that the intermediary should survive at the expense of public money. The overcost of financial arbitration will not, henceforth, be tolerated.

At the geostrategic level, the balances at the end of the Second World War, which have resisted the Cold War, have collapsed.

China, although it was the genesis of the pandemic, would have been able to reaffirm its resilience by the way it faced the crisis, and not knowing what will happen in North America, which depends on the American elections, it is inevitably to conclude that Europe will be the big loser. Still, more dependent and close to China than to the United States that look to Europe with contempt and only covet the United Kingdom, now exiled and outlawed.

Regardless of the numbers, the big problem is that the European Union's weaknesses, which we already sensed, are exposed and at sight. For breaches of solidarity, lack of coordination, and by the policy of "every man for himself". Because there are no reliable common policies, and no European patriotism that overcomes old nationalisms.

In this crisis, none was truly European.

It is a pity. Because this virus is an enemy that deserved and justified we challenged it together, and that did not happen.

Nationalisms and populisms will continue their path. But that also is a crisis that will go away as well. It is a phase, a trend, a stage for rampant people.

Trotskyism and nihilism of the androgynous Caviar left, the fascism of the nationalist, securitarian and gross right-wing dwadler will eventually cancel out. Even so because, the day we can take to the streets, people will no longer want to waste their time looking at those infected throats on Facebook.

In this war, the far wings did not know what to say or do. Moreover, in many cases, they had to swallow their bravado. Because they said what they should not have said, they were afraid to back down and the cowardice to not moving forward.

The environment is grateful for this crisis, and that should represent the turning of a page. In the choices that we will now make, as citizens, as consumers, we can use this ordeal to avoid another, to which we were heading with great strides.

Each one of us will review his/her consumption patterns, the use and abuse of scarce resources.

The financialisation of the economy might have perished with the debacle of financial markets, but it is inescapable that the world trade will alter completely. From now on, the cost of raw materials will no longer be indexed to the cost of extraction.

It will have to be adjusted to the remaining resources and to the impact on the environment, because that will be the demand of the younger ones, those who having survived the pandemic and its costs, will want to have a say on their future.

In short, this is a tremendous ordeal for human civilization. A turning page. But it is not the end of the world. It will not be of much use pointing the finger to this or that. There is no use in taking up a depressive attitude. We will have a few weeks, some months, to reflect. To programme and prepare the upturn.

This is what I think now. And I share it with you. This is a biblical time, of enormous hardships. We can stay home and cry for what our daily routine was just days ago, and that is now a memory and a longing. Or we can, alas, think that we too, like our great-grandfathers will resist the pneumonic and we will use this ordeal to build a future for the future generations.
"

Rui Moreira, Mayor of Porto, in Expresso, 19-03-2020