It may seem like a long time ago, but back at January’s annual gathering of the World Economic Forum, there was little mention of coronavirus. At the time the outbreak was already prevalent across mainland China, and yet, as senior political and business leaders from our biggest economies debated prominent global threats such as climate change and weapons of mass destruction, the virus barely got a look in.
Few people saw the current crisis coming, and what we have on our hands today is akin to a tsunami, sweeping aside everything in its path and leaving a clear-up job that will require years of restoration efforts. Sadly, even the biggest tsunamis are hard to predict and tend to catch their victims unawares.
