Thread by @conways_law

The New Man-made International Infection Barrier Is Reorganizing Our World

Our new virus neighbor SARS-CoV-2 is teaching us big lessons about how we will have to live with it. Some countries are learning; some are not.
gzeromedia.com/the-graphic-tr…

1/19

This learning difference will become clarified and stabilized because:
1 of 2: The political units that have paid the price to suppress the virus will protect their prize by closing their borders. This is already happening.
a. nytimes.com/2020/06/23/wor…

2/19

b.

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1278311803114729473

3/19

2 of 2: The political units that have not learned the lessons are losing control of the pandemic within their borders; this will aggravate the differences.
statnews.com/2020/06/30/u-s…

4/19

Consequence: The world will partition itself into two not-contiguous regions:
1. “Low-COVID” countries that continually suppress the pandemic.
2. “High-COVID” countries that do not.

5/19

Between these two regions a man-made
“International Infection Barrier”
will arise.

6/19

It will not be a virtual barrier but real, existing in observable form at the immigration entry points of every Low-COVID country, where the entry of the virus will be blocked through testing, tracing, isolation, and even discriminatory quotas.

7/19

(We are even seeing hints of this partitioning within the US:
1 of 2: nbcnewyork.com/news/local/tri…

8/19

2 of 2: forbes.com/sites/geoffwhi…

9/19

Whether this succeeds politically or legally is beside the point; interstate tensions will increase. (You can view this as some States that understand the systems implications of the pandemic working around the central government’s failure.)

10/19

Right now it looks like the lineup of major countries will start here:
Low-COVID: China, EU.
High-COVID: US, Brazil, Russia, India, Iran.
See endcoronavirus.org/countries for a full list.

11/19

The international Infection Barrier will work its effects through
*greatly increased friction of human travel*
between the two regions.

12/19

The sum of these effects will be a reduction of economic activity between the two regions, particularly those activities such as high-tech engineering and manufacturing that require high-intensity coordination.

13/19

There will thereby be a
*reorganization of international trade*,
particularly as conducted by American multinational corporations, seeking to reduce this new cross-border friction by
*relocating operations*
to minimize inter-region travel.

14/19

Given the preliminary country lineup shown above, as this realignment occurs one can expect:
1 of 2: Disruptions in US employment, and
2 of 2: A generally lower level of economic activity due to many major trading partners being on the other side of the barrier.

15/19

These suggest that we are due for much greater economic impact than is being forecast by people who are looking at domestic effects alone.

This is a global-system phenomenon.
usnews.com/news/business/…

16/19

We can also expect acceleration of the degradation of the reserve-currency status of the US Dollar as the countries in the Low-COVID region develop their own set of trading tools.

17/19

This, in turn, will degrade US Government borrowing power and consequently lower the American standard of living.

18/19

We can expect these effects to persist at least until mass community immunity is ubiquitous. Once that occurs, probably not much will change since the new patterns will be established.

19/19