Expert: We need a global coordinated response to COVID-19

Without coordination within and across countries, the novel coronavirus will endlessly re-emerge, with devastating consequences for public health and the global economy, an economist warns.

Just like you can’t treat a termite infestation by fumigating only one room in a house, you can’t control the coronavirus pandemic by targeting interventions to a specific region or country, says Matthew Jackson, professor of economics at Stanford University’s Humanities of Sciences and author of The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors (PenguinRandomHouse, 2020).

Instead, managing the crisis requires a comprehensive and coordinated response between states within the US and across countries and continents, otherwise, the problem will continue to surge at a greater cost to the global economy and public health.

Here, Jackson, whose scholarship examines disease contagion and production networks, as well as financial contagion—the spread of economic crises across regions—and systemic risk, describes how the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates how each of these areas are central and intertwined. He also explains how, in an era of global networks, addressing the outbreak requires a proactive response that considers these distinct and dependent areas:

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