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Vocabulary to learn for the 22nd of february_Oliver Twist

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Vocabulary to learn for the 22nd of february_Oliver Twist

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Slides projetés en classe
Exercices à faire

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Proposition de version ici

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Distant relationships versus face to face ones - Recap

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Distant relationships versus face to face ones - Recap

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2DES040506
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Exercice Adj/Adv à faire donné le 26.11.20 à faire pour le 1er décembre

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Exercice Adj/Adv à faire donné le 26.11.20 à faire pour le 1er décembre

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Correction exercice present simple / present progressif

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Correction exercice present simple / present progressif

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About gentrification

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Rendre sa poésie d'ici le 25/11 en anglais en présentiel sur papier libre avec votre nom prénom ou par mail à l'adresse Simon.Arnold@ac-poitiers.fr

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Rendre sa poésie d'ici le 25/11 en anglais en présentiel sur papier libre avec votre nom prénom ou par mail à l'adresse Simon.Arnold@ac-poitiers.fr

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Voir instructions pour aide à la rédaction de son poème en anglais ci-joint

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Correction GRETA ICI

CORRECTION PERSO DISPONIBLE SUR QUIZINIERE

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Créez simplement des activités numériques pour vos élèves. Accédez directement à l'activité sans créer de compte et sans installation. Correction personnalisée.

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People tend to think gentrification goes like this: rich, educated white people move into a low-income minority neighborhood and drive out its original residents, who can no longer afford to live there. As it turns out, that's not typically true.

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Pittsburgh and Duke University, examined Census data from more than 15,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. in 1990 and 2000, and found that low-income non-white households did not disproportionately leave gentrifying areas. In fact, researchers found that at least one group of residents, high school–educated blacks, were actually more likely to remain in gentrifying neighborhoods than in similar neighborhoods that didn't gentrify — even increasing as a fraction of the neighborhood population, and seeing larger-than-expected gains in income.

Those findings may seem counterintuitive, given that the term "gentrification," particularly in cities like New York and San Francisco, has become synonymous with soaring rents, wealthier neighbors and the dislocation of low-income residents. But overall, the new study suggests, the popular notion of the yuppie invasion is exaggerated. "We're not saying there aren't communities where displacement isn't happening," says Randall Walsh, an associate professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the study's authors. "But in general, across all neighborhoods in the urbanized parts of the U.S., it looks like gentrification is a pretty good thing."

The researchers found, for example, that income gains in gentrifying neighborhoods — usually defined as low-income urban areas that undergo rises in income and housing prices — were more widely dispersed than one might expect. Though college-educated whites accounted for 20% of the total income gain in gentrifying neighborhoods, black householders with high school degrees contributed even more: 33% of the neighborhood's total rise. In other words, a broad demographic of people in the neighborhood benefited financially. According to the study's findings, only one group — black residents who never finished high school — saw their income grow at a slower rate than predicted. But the study also suggests that these residents weren't moving out of their neighborhoods at a disproportionately higher rate than from similar neighborhoods that didn't gentrify.

This study isn't the first to come to that conclusion. A 2005 paper published in Urban Affairs Review by Lance Freeman, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, looked at a nationwide sample of neighborhoods between 1986 and 1989 and found that low-income residents tended to move out of gentrifying areas at essentially the same frequency they left other neighborhoods. The real force behind the changing face of a gentrifying community, Freeman concluded, isn't displacement but succession. When people move away as part of normal neighborhood turnover, the people who move in are generally more affluent. Community advocates may argue that succession is just another form of exclusion — if low-income people can't afford to move in — but, still, it doesn't exactly fit the popular perception of individuals being forced from their homes.

The new study found that while gentrification did not necessarily push out original residents, it did create neighborhoods that middle-class minorities moved to. The addition of white college graduates, especially those under 40 without children, was a hallmark of gentrifying neighborhoods — that much fit the conventional wisdom — but so was the influx of college-educated blacks and Hispanics, who moved to gentrifying neighborhoods more often than they to did similar, more static areas. Two other groups tended to move more often into upwardly mobile neighborhoods as well: 40-to-60-year-old Hispanics without a high-school degree, and similarly uneducated Hispanics aged 20 to 40 with children — a counterpoint to the common conception of gentrification, if there ever was one. The only group that was less likely to move to a gentrifying area was high school–educated whites aged 20 to 40 with kids.

The study is under review for publication, but is being circulated early by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The findings, while unexpected, are notable for the depth of data on which they're based. Walsh and his colleagues, Terra McKinnish, an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Kirk White, an economist at Duke University's Triangle Census Research Data Center, compared confidential Census figures from 1990 and 2000 from 15,040 neighborhoods, with an average of about 4,000 residents each, in 64 metropolitan areas, such as Phoenix, Boston, Ft. Lauderdale, Columbus, New York, Atlanta and San Diego. The researchers identified gentrifying neighborhoods as those in which the average family earned less than $30,079 in 1990 — the poorest one-fifth of the country — and at least $10,000 more 10 years later. Taken all together, the study paints a more nuanced picture of gentrification than exists in the popular imagination. But the authors acknowledge that it leaves plenty of unanswered questions, such as why certain demographic groups are more likely to stay in — or move to — gentrifying neighborhoods, and why certain groups, such as blacks without high school degrees, don't see the same income gains as others.

Then there is that most fundamental of questions: does gentrification lead to greater wealth for people in a neighborhood, or are the people who choose to live in such a place otherwise predisposed to make more money? "This study shows us a lot more about gentrification," says Walsh, "but there's still a lot we don't know."

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Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com

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People tend to think gentrification goes like this: rich, educated white people move into a low-income minority neighborhood and drive out its original residents, who can no longer afford to live there. As it turns out, that's not typically true.

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hristine de Pizan was a remarkable woman. Despite the odds stacked against her by her gender, this daughter of a Venetian physician at the French royal court became one of the most distinguished writers of the later middle ages. In 1418, after a long career during which she had defended the cause of women against literary misogyny in a scholarly debate known as the querelle des femmes, she retreated into religious seclusion, horrified by the civil war and English invasion that, between them, were tearing her beloved France apart. But in the summer of 1429, by then in her 60s, she emerged one last time from a decade of literary silence to celebrate in effervescent verse the achievements of a yet more extraordinary woman: Joan of Arc.

That February, a peasant girl from a village named Domrémy had arrived at the court of the Dauphin Charles, leader of the Armagnac French, the anti-English faction in France's brutal civil war. The girl was bizarrely dressed - in men's clothes, with her hair cut short - and she brought a startling message: she was sent by God to drive the English out of France. Her utter conviction - and the desperate straits in which the Armagnacs found themselves - persuaded the Dauphin's theological advisers that she should be put to the test, and, in May, dressed in shining armour, she led his troops to astonishing victory at the besieged town of Orléans.

For Christine, a staunch partisan of the Armagnacs, the sun had come out after years of darkness. This was heaven's doing, she declared - a vindication of the Dauphin's God-given right to the French throne. And not only that: "Oh! What honour for the female sex!" No one, she wrote, could doubt God's regard for womankind, now that he had chosen as an instrument of his will a simple young girl and given her "a heart greater than any man's".

This "protofeminist" writer had made of Joan a protofeminist icon, comparing her to the biblical heroines Esther, Judith and Deborah, through whom, she said, God had delivered his people from oppression. As the years passed, Joan was figured, too, as an Amazon - one of the virginal warriors of Greek mythology - or as a personification of heroic Virtue: chastity, justice and fortitude in one ideal exemplar.

But it wasn't until the development of feminism proper that Joan of Arc became a properly feminist icon. For the suffragettes, she was - literally - a poster girl. She wore suffragette colours and brandished a banner of the Women's Social and Political Union on a poster promoting the Suffragette newspaper, and, in 1909, and again in 1911, members of the WSPU marched through London with an armour-clad "Joan" riding at their head. (In 1911, as if to emphasise her mythical status, her white charger was led by a fellow protester dressed as Robin Hood.)

Behind the iconic dazzle, however, there is incongruity in the idea that a medieval visionary who fought for the God-given rights of her king should become, half a millennium later, an inspiration to campaigners for women's right to vote in democratic elections. It isn't the only incongruity in Joan of Arc's afterlife; instead, it's a symptom of her endlessly protean capacity to be all things to all people. She is a Catholic saint who was condemned as a heretic by the Catholic church; a hero to republicans and monarchists, Vichy and the Resistance, the right and the left. (And, indeed, by 2014 a conservative Catholic newspaper in the US would run an article under the headline "Joan of Arc: Scourge of Modern Feminists".)

Somehow, the unique has become the universal - and that's partly because the real Joan is such a complex and elusive figure. Unlike De Pizan, Joan didn't see her mission as a demonstration of God's approval of womankind. Her messages from heaven could not have been more individual and particular: she, and only she, could save France from the English and lead the rightful king to his coronation. We know her as Joan of Arc, but that was a name she never used: she called herself "Jeanne la Pucelle", "Joan the Maid". The word meant an unmarried girl, older than a child and not yet a woman; but, just as there were virgins and the Virgin, so it seemed that, for Joan, there were maids and the Maid - the daughter of God, "Fille Dé", as she said her voices called her.

Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc in the 1957 film Saint Joan. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Her virginity played a crucial part in staking her claim to divinely inspired authority. She was examined by her own side, twice, and by her enemies when she was captured, to check the physical embodiment of the spiritual purity she claimed. Yet she defied the Old Testament prescription that a woman in men's clothing was "an abomination unto the Lord". And she did so not to hide herself from danger by passing as a man, as several female saints had done, but openly, so that she, a young woman, could lead an army of men.

Her enemies knew what that made her: she was, they said, the "whore of the Armagnacs". Even once that slur had been disproved, they denounced her insistence on wearing men's clothes as a crime against nature, God and the authority of the church. Nor did the armour of her virginity unsex Joan for her supporters, or make her body any less an object of fascination. Two of her military companions caught glimpses of her beautiful breasts and her bare legs while they were on campaign, they later declared, but felt no carnal impulses whatsoever in the presence of one so holy. It was left to a female witness to suggest they might be protesting too much; men around Joan had lusted after her, she remembered, but never dared say so.

Contemporary responses to Joan's femaleness were therefore complex and profoundly conflicted - as were Joan's responses to the females around her. She would beat camp followers with the flat of her sword and angrily drive them away, witnesses said, unless soldiers came forward to marry them. And she went to great lengths to discredit another woman, Catherine de la Rochelle, who came forward claiming to bring messages from heaven. Joan sat up all night waiting to witness Catherine's "visions", only to declare them foolish nonsense - as, of course, her own voices had already told her. Catherine, Joan said, should go back to her housework.

The real Joan of Arc is an uncomfortable fit as an icon of female solidarity or democratic rights. She achieved what should have been impossible for someone of her gender and class in 15th-century France. But for Joan's contemporaries, both her friends and her enemies, her achievement proved not that barriers of sex and class were wrong, but that her inspiration came from beyond this world, whether from heaven or from hell. And perhaps, amid the crises of the early 21st century, that medieval response resonates even more strongly than the suffragette Joan of 100 years ago: her remarkable life as a story of uncompromising faith, its extraordinary power in war and the bloody violence it can bring.

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hristine de Pizan was a remarkable woman. Despite the odds stacked against her by her gender, this daughter of a Venetian physician at the French royal court became one of the most distinguished writers of the later middle ages.

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It was a moment of chilling clarity. On 26 February, with the numbers of Italians known to be infected by coronavirus tripling every 48 hours, the country's prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, appealed to fellow EU member states for help.

His hospitals were overwhelmed. Italian doctors and nurses had run out of the masks, gloves and aprons they needed to keep themselves safe, and medics were being forced to play God with the lives of the critically-ill due to an acute lack of ventilators.

An urgent message was passed from Rome to the European commission's Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels. The specifications of Italy's needs were uploaded into the EU's Common Emergency Communication and Information System (CECIS).

But what happened next came as a shock. The distress call was met with silence.

"No member state responded to Italy's request and to the commission's call for help," said Janez Lenarčič, the European commissioner responsible for crisis management. "Which meant that not only is Italy is not prepared ... Nobody is prepared ... The lack of response to the Italian request was not so much a lack of solidarity. It was a lack of equipment."

Some 180,000 European citizens, across the European economic area and the UK, have died from coronavirus and 1.6 million have been infected since the disease crept on to the continent in December last year courtesy of a mystery patient zero.

The true number of deaths is almost certainly higher than so far recorded. The recent rise in infections in Serbia and the Balkans are cause for great concern. The continent is now on an unalterable course to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, largely as a result of the lockdowns required to shield its many under-funded healthcare systems.

Leaders have been asked fundamental questions about the purpose of the European project when states fail to come to each other's aid at the darkest times. This weekend the EU's 27 heads of state and government will meet in Brussels for the first time in person for five months to try to plot a way forward.

Today, through both analysis of internal records and interviews with dozens of EU officials and experts in both Brussels and the bloc's capitals, the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can tell the full story of how Europe emerged to be the WHO-designated "epicentre" of a global pandemic and what key lessons might be learned.

It is a story of well-meaning officials in Brussels speaking in urgent tones of an impending disaster to empty press conference rooms. Of increasingly desperate health ministers unable to convince their heads of government and finance ministries of the scale of what was coming and the imperative to act. Of governments belatedly recognising the speed at which the virus was spreading, only to rush into uncoordinated acts of protectionism in moments of ill-concealed panic. And of EU institutions and agencies in which central figures either lacked the experience or powers to get capitals to act together in the face of a disease with respect for neither borders nor the glacial pace of Brussels' bureaucracy. It is the story of an EU caught ill-equipped and institutionally incapable of mounting an adequate response to the crisis that so swiftly engulfed it.

New year alert

It was as millions of Europeans prepared for their New Year's Eve celebrations that officials in the Stockholm office of the EU public health agency, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), first received notice of a cluster of pneumonia cases in China of unknown origin.

Just 12 of the 27 member states, plus the UK, phoned in to the 17 January conference call

Established in 2005 in reaction to the Sars outbreak two years before, the ECDC offers scientific advice. It can do no more. Responsibility for health remains entirely with the national governments of the EU, and not in the European commission or its agencies. Despite its limitations, the ECDC's job is to look to the full European horizon, and call the alarm whether capitals listen or not.

The agency gave its first threat assessment on 9 January, the body's director Dr Andrea Ammon recalled. "At that time, the notion [was] most of the cases were linked to this live animal market [in the Chinese city of Wuhan]", she told the Guardian. "Roughly two weeks later it turned out it is human to human transmission which of course changes what you need to do".

The initial concern was how to keep the disease outside the EU's borders. On 17 January a first coronavirus conference call was held by another EU body born out of previous health crises - but again lacking the powers retained by the national governments.

The European commission's health security committee comprises health ministry representatives from each member state and has had responsibility for coordinating cross-border health threat responses in Europe since the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009.

But on 17 January, just 12 of the 27 member states, plus the UK, phoned in.

Wolfgang Philipp, the head of a small team within the commission's health department in Luxembourg, chaired the meeting. He told those present that a few dozen people in Wuhan had been infected with a new strain of coronavirus.

With 300,000 people expected to travel to Europe from China that month, many to celebrate Chinese New Year on 25 January, the question was what to do about direct flights from Wuhan to London, Paris and Rome.

Screening all airport arrivals with symptom checkers and thermometers was believed to be largely ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus, an official from the ECDC told the committee. They instead recommended targeting passengers on the 12 weekly flights arriving in Europe from Wuhan.

The UK and France shared information about what they were doing at airports. But there was no update from the Italian government, one of the many absentees. The Italian representative hadn't noticed the email inviting him to the meeting.

The committee had planned to release recommendations on border measures. But those who did attend couldn't agree. It was an ominous sign of the difficulties the commission would face.

Although governments are required to inform the health security committee before implementing measures, unilateral action would repeatedly be taken in the subsequent weeks. The format and short duration of the meetings - typically only an hour with about 100 people attending - would also limit the communication and cooperation possible, sources said.

There would be frustration among attendees that some countries were not giving the committee the "weight that it deserves". Its ability to coordinate effectively was questioned. "There was no time to catch up on events during the timespan of one week," the source said. "Events happened at a tremendous speed."

And at the helm of the commission was Ursula von der Leyen, just a few weeks into her job as commission president.

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Ursula von der Leyen, European commission president who seemed unsure of the levers at her disposal. Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

Distracted by Brexit

The pandemic was a crisis that could have been tailor-made for Von der Leyen, a medical doctor before embarking on a political career that would take her to the German defence ministry. She moved to the EU's executive branch in December.

A significant intellect with steel, according to sources who worked with her during the crisis, but some within the system would come to wonder whether she might have done more in those first weeks. Her first steps were said by some to be tentative. She appeared unsure of the levers she had at her disposal.

"The commission should have taken a grip earlier," said one EU official. "Von der Leyen is clever. But she is new to Brussels and relies on a couple of people from Berlin who also don't have experience of the commission and what is possible. You don't ask the member states if they want coordination, you just coordinate. Health is a national competence but you can push things."

If it was a stuttering start by a Brussels novice, the seriousness of what was happening in China was at least understood early in some parts of the commission.

"We convened the first meeting of the so called crisis coordination committee on 28th of January," Lenarčič said. "The commission did take this threat seriously. And we did not change course in our serious approach. Even when voices multiplied out there that 'all this will just die out'. We even didn't change the course when some others were toying with the concepts of herd immunity."

A swift decision was taken by the commission to ban its staff from non-essential travel to China and a press conference was called for 29 January to communicate a clear message: get ready.

But if the alarm bells were sounding in Berlaymont, the media had other interests. The UK was about to leave the EU after 47 years of membership.

"We went to the press conference and the press room was almost empty," recalled Lenarčič. "We called for preparedness - for all member states to take this seriously and prepare. There was a lot of echo because of the empty room. But we were still hoping that there would be some echo in the media next day. We didn't find much of that because all the media attention in Brussels was, at that time, devoted to the last session of the European parliament plenary where the UK members participated."

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British MEPs mark the 29 January vote on Brexit, the same day the ECDC issued its coronavirus alarm. Photograph: Francisco Seco/AP

"So a lot of footage of people singing holding hands in the plenary," Lenarčič said. "I understand that it was a historic moment, it was a sad moment it was emotional moment. But that all does not change the fact that we had something to say on that same day. And we said it, and not many people were interested."

It was not only the newspapers and broadcasters failing to listen to the siren voices from the EU's executive branch and agencies.

Threat underestimated

The ECDC in the same week advised governments to strengthen the capacities of their hospitals and, in particular, the intensive care units.

The urgency of the warning did not hit home in the capitals. "I think what turned out is that they underestimated, in my view, the speed of how this increase came", said Ammon, a former head of department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin who took over the ECDC in 2017. "Because it is a different situation if you have to look for an increase in capacity of beds within two weeks or two days."

Meanwhile, the virus was continuing to quietly seed. On 30 January, two Chinese tourists in Rome tested positive for coronavirus. The Italian government immediately banned all flights to and from China and sought a meeting of EU health ministers to push for stricter entry screening measures across Europe.

But the meeting took three weeks to organise. The Croatian government, responsible for convening it as holder of the rolling EU council presidency, had become embroiled in a financial scandal during which the prime minister, Andrej Plenković, had been forced to fire his health minister, Milan Kujundžić. By the time health ministers did finally meet on 13 February, pockets of cases were sprouting.

The response to the coronavirus threat had been "prompt and effective" declared the new Croatian minister of health, chairing the council meeting.

But an internal ECDC report dated the day after the meeting gave a rather different account, listing a litany of things that were still unknown about the virus and its risks to Europe. The "preparedness status in different member states" was "uncertain", it read.

Mask stocks destroyed

The stark reality was that in the months and years before coronavirus arrived in Europe, stocks of personal protective equipment (PPE) had dwindled. Emergency supplies of masks had expired, been destroyed and never replaced. Pandemic preparedness plans were out of date.

"Several European countries had a strategic stock of masks that were outdated ... Most of them were just destroyed," said one scientific adviser.

France held 1.7bn protective masks in 2011, but now had only 117m. Between January and March this year it incinerated 1.5m. In 2017, Belgium ordered the destruction of 38m masks and they were never replaced.

No one, it appeared, had a hold on what was out there. Up until 23 February, flights carrying donations of PPE were leaving Europe for China in the hope of containing the virus there. But the unpalatable truth was that Europe itself was exposed.

"My colleague [the health commissioner] Stella Kyriakides was asking for data all along," said Lenarčič, a former Slovenian ambassador to the EU. "They started early on and and according to my information they never received the full data that would allow the commission to have a fully clear picture about the stockpiles of equipment and capacities of intensive care units. And in many cases it transpired that the member states themselves did not have a clear picture of their capacity of this sort."

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Trucks queuing at the German-Polish border on 18 March 2020, after both countries unilaterally imposed checks despite a Brussels plea for unity Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

Red-hot anger

By the weekend of 29 February and 1 March, more than 2,000 people were infected in Europe. In Italy, 35 people had died. Von der Leyen decided to put herself at the forefront of the crisis.

She informed Lenarčič that the scale of the crisis required a coronavirus crisis response team of commissioners covering everything from health to the economy and borders.

The new team was presented to the public on the Monday. As Von der Leyen walked to the lectern to the click of camera shutters she gestured to the commissioners. "Come on" she was heard to say.

Yet within hours, Europeans witnessed one of the biggest failings of the entire pandemic. Now each in full-blown crisis mode, European countries individually acted to impose restrictions on the export of key medical supplies to neighbours.

15 member states that placed restrictions on the movement of equipment or drugs

On 3 March, France's president, Emmanuel Macron, announced that he was requisitioning "all stocks and the production of protective masks". The next day, the German government banned the export of PPE.

A total of 15 member states placed restrictions on the movement of equipment or drugs within the EU during the outbreak. Trucks of masks, gloves and protective gowns were stopped at some borders. European leaders accused each other of undermining EU solidarity and the single market.

PPE shipments destined for EU countries that arrived in ports in Germany and France were "very simply stolen", said a source. The Belgian and Dutch governments meanwhile were buying up the ingredients to make key drugs and delivering them to hospitals to be produced on-site.

With a limited supply of these ingredients in Europe, the move hamstrung efforts by the pharmaceutical industry to increase the manufacture of medicines needed to treat the most severe coronavirus cases.

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European commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarčič Photograph: Julien Warnand/EPA

By the time European health ministers attended a second council meeting on 6 March, the health commissioner Stella Kyriakides, flanked by Lenarcic and Thierry Breton, commissioner for the internal market, felt the need to stress the importance of European unity. "I ask you all today to commit to us all working together, openly and transparently, in a spirit of solidarity to ensure a coherent political response," Kyriakides said.

Yet just a few days later Germany unilaterally closed its borders, bringing the continent to a halt, with footage of 50km (31 miles) traffic queues on the German-Polish border dominating the news. The divisions of old Europe appeared to be back.

"It is not a problem to close the border but you have to talk to your neighbour on the other side of it and some didn't," said Lenarčič. "That was wrong and created a lot of problems. First it hampered the flow of goods which is dangerous not only for the functioning of the single market but also for the Covid response because some of those goods are essential like medical equipment, not to talk about food."

There was red-hot anger in the commission's headquarters. "The commission acted forcefully and immediately in order to persuade all those member states that indulged in such selfish measures," Lenarčič said.

To placate those claiming that there were "people running around Europe with big bags of cash buying everything they could at any price", the commission agreed to an export authorisation scheme to control what equipment left the bloc, Lenarčič said. But it had been a sobering moment for those with faith in the union. "Things were not done properly."

No PPE on the market

It was a scenario surely unimaginable even just a few weeks earlier. From 9 March, starting with Italy, and ending on 23 March when Boris Johnson finally followed suit, Europe's governments shut down their economies one-by-one. Only Sweden went its own way.

For some, it was all too late. "If Italy could have done it 10 or 14 days before it would have been better. The ministry of health wanted to do that but it took time to convince the government," prof Walter Ricciardi, a senior adviser to the Italian health ministry said. "But they [the other member states] had the Italian experience and they didn't follow it ... It was very difficult for ministers of health to convince ministries of finance and prime ministers that this was a serious situation"

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Revealed: Italy's call for urgent help was ignored as coronavirus swept through Europe

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It was a moment of chilling clarity. On 26 February, with the numbers of Italians known to be infected by coronavirus tripling every 48 hours, the country's prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, appealed to fellow EU member states for help. His hospitals were overwhelmed.

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Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. When choosing between alternatives, we should ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive - but we will inhabit a different world.

Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren't normal times.

In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.

Under-the-skin surveillance

In order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines. There are two main ways of achieving this. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the rules. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time. Fifty years ago, the KGB couldn't follow 240m Soviet citizens 24 hours a day, nor could the KGB hope to effectively process all the information gathered. The KGB relied on human agents and analysts, and it just couldn't place a human agent to follow every citizen. But now governments can rely on ubiquitous sensors and powerful algorithms instead of flesh-and-blood spooks.

In their battle against the coronavirus epidemic several governments have already deployed the new surveillance tools. The most notable case is China. By closely monitoring people's smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognising cameras, and obliging people to check and report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with. A range of mobile apps warn citizens about their proximity to infected patients.

This kind of technology is not limited to east Asia. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel recently authorised the Israel Security Agency to deploy surveillance technology normally reserved for battling terrorists to track coronavirus patients. When the relevant parliamentary subcommittee refused to authorise the measure, Netanyahu rammed it through with an "emergency decree".

You might argue that there is nothing new about all this. In recent years both governments and corporations have been using ever more sophisticated technologies to track, monitor and manipulate people. Yet if we are not careful, the epidemic might nevertheless mark an important watershed in the history of surveillance. Not only because it might normalise the deployment of mass surveillance tools in countries that have so far rejected them, but even more so because it signifies a dramatic transition from "over the skin" to "under the skin" surveillance.

Hitherto, when your finger touched the screen of your smartphone and clicked on a link, the government wanted to know what exactly your finger was clicking on. But with coronavirus, the focus of interest shifts. Now the government wants to know the temperature of your finger and the blood-pressure under its skin.

The emergency pudding

One of the problems we face in working out where we stand on surveillance is that none of us know exactly how we are being surveilled, and what the coming years might bring. Surveillance technology is developing at breakneck speed, and what seemed science-fiction 10 years ago is today old news. As a thought experiment, consider a hypothetical government that demands that every citizen wears a biometric bracelet that monitors body temperature and heart-rate 24 hours a day. The resulting data is hoarded and analysed by government algorithms. The algorithms will know that you are sick even before you know it, and they will also know where you have been, and who you have met. The chains of infection could be drastically shortened, and even cut altogether. Such a system could arguably stop the epidemic in its tracks within days. Sounds wonderful, right?

The downside is, of course, that this would give legitimacy to a terrifying new surveillance system. If you know, for example, that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than a CNN link, that can teach you something about my political views and perhaps even my personality. But if you can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart-rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really, really angry.

It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough. The same technology that identifies coughs could also identify laughs. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want - be it a product or a politician. Biometric monitoring would make Cambridge Analytica's data hacking tactics look like something from the Stone Age. Imagine North Korea in 2030, when every citizen has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day. If you listen to a speech by the Great Leader and the bracelet picks up the tell-tale signs of anger, you are done for.

You could, of course, make the case for biometric surveillance as a temporary measure taken during a state of emergency. It would go away once the emergency is over. But temporary measures have a nasty habit of outlasting emergencies, especially as there is always a new emergency lurking on the horizon. My home country of Israel, for example, declared a state of emergency during its 1948 War of Independence, which justified a range of temporary measures from press censorship and land confiscation to special regulations for making pudding (I kid you not). The War of Independence has long been won, but Israel never declared the emergency over, and has failed to abolish many of the "temporary" measures of 1948 (the emergency pudding decree was mercifully abolished in 2011).

Even when infections from coronavirus are down to zero, some data-hungry governments could argue they needed to keep the biometric surveillance systems in place because they fear a second wave of coronavirus, or because there is a new Ebola strain evolving in central Africa, or because . . . you get the idea. A big battle has been raging in recent years over our privacy. The coronavirus crisis could be the battle's tipping point. For when people are given a choice between privacy and health, they will usually choose health.

The soap police

Asking people to choose between privacy and health is, in fact, the very root of the problem. Because this is a false choice. We can and should enjoy both privacy and health. We can choose to protect our health and stop the coronavirus epidemic not by instituting totalitarian surveillance regimes, but rather by empowering citizens. In recent weeks, some of the most successful efforts to contain the coronavirus epidemic were orchestrated by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. While these countries have made some use of tracking applications, they have relied far more on extensive testing, on honest reporting, and on the willing co-operation of a well-informed public.

Centralised monitoring and harsh punishments aren't the only way to make people comply with beneficial guidelines. When people are told the scientific facts, and when people trust public authorities to tell them these facts, citizens can do the right thing even without a Big Brother watching over their shoulders. A self-motivated and well-informed population is usually far more powerful and effective than a policed, ignorant population.

Consider, for example, washing your hands with soap. This has been one of the greatest advances ever in human hygiene. This simple action saves millions of lives every year. While we take it for granted, it was only in the 19th century that scientists discovered the importance of washing hands with soap. Previously, even doctors and nurses proceeded from one surgical operation to the next without washing their hands. Today billions of people daily wash their hands, not because they are afraid of the soap police, but rather because they understand the facts. I wash my hands with soap because I have heard of viruses and bacteria, I understand that these tiny organisms cause diseases, and I know that soap can remove them.

But to achieve such a level of compliance and co-operation, you need trust. People need to trust science, to trust public authorities, and to trust the media. Over the past few years, irresponsible politicians have deliberately undermined trust in science, in public authorities and in the media. Now these same irresponsible politicians might be tempted to take the high road to authoritarianism, arguing that you just cannot trust the public to do the right thing.

Normally, trust that has been eroded for years cannot be rebuilt overnight. But these are not normal times. In a moment of crisis, minds too can change quickly. You can have bitter arguments with your siblings for years, but when some emergency occurs, you suddenly discover a hidden reservoir of trust and amity, and you rush to help one another. Instead of building a surveillance regime, it is not too late to rebuild people's trust in science, in public authorities and in the media. We should definitely make use of new technologies too, but these technologies should empower citizens. I am all in favour of monitoring my body temperature and blood pressure, but that data should not be used to create an all-powerful government. Rather, that data should enable me to make more informed personal choices, and also to hold government accountable for its decisions.

If I could track my own medical condition 24 hours a day, I would learn not only whether I have become a health hazard to other people, but also which habits contribute to my health. And if I could access and analyse reliable statistics on the spread of coronavirus, I would be able to judge whether the government is telling me the truth and whether it is adopting the right policies to combat the epidemic. Whenever people talk about surveillance, remember that the same surveillance technology can usually be used not only by governments to monitor individuals - but also by individuals to monitor governments.

The coronavirus epidemic is thus a major test of citizenship. In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians. If we fail to make the right choice, we might find ourselves signing away our most precious freedoms, thinking that this is the only way to safeguard our health.

We need a global plan

The second important choice we confront is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. Both the epidemic itself and the resulting economic crisis are global problems. They can be solved effectively only by global co-operation.

First and foremost, in order to defeat the virus we need to share information globally. That's the big advantage of humans over viruses. A coronavirus in China and a coronavirus in the US cannot swap tips about how to infect humans. But China can teach the US many valuable lessons about coronavirus and how to deal with it. What an Italian doctor discovers in Milan in the early morning might well save lives in Tehran by evening. When the UK government hesitates between several policies, it can get advice from the Koreans who have already faced a similar dilemma a month ago. But for this to happen, we need a spirit of global co-operation and trust.

In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians

Countries should be willing to share information openly and humbly seek advice, and should be able to trust the data and the insights they receive. We also need a global effort to produce and distribute medical equipment, most notably testing kits and respiratory machines. Instead of every country trying to do it locally and hoarding whatever equipment it can get, a co-ordinated global effort could greatly accelerate production and make sure life-saving equipment is distributed more fairly. Just as countries nationalise key industries during a war, the human war against coronavirus may require us to "humanise" the crucial production lines. A rich country with few coronavirus cases should be willing to send precious equipment to a poorer country with many cases, trusting that if and when it subsequently needs help, other countries will come to its assistance.

We might consider a similar global effort to pool medical personnel. Countries currently less affected could send medical staff to the worst-hit regions of the world, both in order to help them in their hour of need, and in order to gain valuable experience. If later on the focus of the epidemic shifts, help could start flowing in the opposite direction.

Global co-operation is vitally needed on the economic front too. Given the global nature of the economy and of supply chains, if each government does its own thing in complete disregard of the others, the result will be chaos and a deepening crisis. We need a global plan of action, and we need it fast.

Another requirement is reaching a global agreement on travel. Suspending all international travel for months will cause tremendous hardships, and hamper the war against coronavirus. Countries need to co-operate in order to allow at least a trickle of essential travellers to continue crossing borders: scientists, doctors, journalists, politicians, businesspeople. This can be done by reaching a global agreement on the pre-screening of travellers by their home country. If you know that only carefully screened travellers were allowed on a plane, you would be more willing to accept them into your country.

Unfortunately, at present countries hardly do any of these things. A collective paralysis has gripped the international community. There seem to be no adults in the room. One would have expected to see already weeks ago an emergency meeting of global leaders to come up with a common plan of action. The G7 leaders managed to organise a videoconference only this week, and it did not result in any such plan.

In previous global crises - such as the 2008 financial crisis and the 2014 Ebola epidemic - the US assumed the role of global leader. But the current US administration has abdicated the job of leader. It has made it very clear that it cares about the greatness of America far more than about the future of humanity.

This administration has abandoned even its closest allies. When it banned all travel from the EU, it didn't bother to give the EU so much as an advance notice - let alone consult with the EU about that drastic measure. It has scandalised Germany by allegedly offering $1bn to a German pharmaceutical company to buy monopoly rights to a new Covid-19 vaccine. Even if the current administration eventually changes tack and comes up with a global plan of action, few would follow a leader who never takes responsibility, who never admits mistakes, and who routinely takes all the credit for himself while leaving all the blame to others.

If the void left by the US isn't filled by other countries, not only will it be much harder to stop the current epidemic, but its legacy will continue to poison international relations for years to come. Yet every crisis is also an opportunity. We must hope that the current epidemic will help humankind realise the acute danger posed by global disunity.

Humanity needs to make a choice. Will we travel down the route of disunity, or will we adopt the path of global solidarity? If we choose disunity, this will not only prolong the crisis, but will probably result in even worse catastrophes in the future. If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future epidemics and crises that might assail humankind in the 21st century.
Yuval Noah Harari is author of 'Sapiens', 'Homo Deus' and '21 Lessons for the 21st Century' Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2020 Follow @FTLifeArts on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first. Listen to our culture podcast, Culture Call, where editors Gris and Lilah dig into the trends shaping life in the 2020s, interview the people breaking new ground and bring you behind the scenes of FT Life & Arts journalism. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
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Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus | Free to read

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Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture.