Is Covid-19 the end of the world as we know it?

I thought the end of the world would look different. There are no horsemen, no mushroom cloud, no alien spacecraft. Just sweatpants and Zoom. As it turns out, rumours of our demise have been exaggerated.

If you live in the developed world, the first 20 years of this century might have resembled the apocalypse in slow motion " from September 11 to Sars, the war on terror, the global financial crisis, technological disruption and Islamic State, to Trumpian anxiety and now Covid-19. Are we reliving the Crusades or fast-forwarding to the dystopian world of Blade Runner?

And yet, for many others, the 21st century has also been a revelation. Money to spend, real-time connections with the world, the Babylonian wonders of urban life and much more.

THE (DEVELOPED) WORLD IN CRISIS

Time and again, data and insights have supported this dichotomy. For years now, polling and analysis have pointed to growing levels of dissatisfaction and malaise in a number of rich countries. This is against the backdrop of people who are not only living better lives, but empowered with opportunities thanks to greater mobility and education, which have transformed their existence.

When my own research company decided to look at global reactions to the Covid-19 crisis, we wanted to know if this contrariety was as evident with the entire world now huddling indoors confronting a different type of international crisis.

Our study, titled "World in Crisis", measured the sentiments of citizens from 23 countries towards their national Covid-19 crisis management efforts. While the focus of the news coverage has predominantly been on our political findings and how our leaders have performed, in many ways these results are less interesting and largely predictable. What really stood out to us were the wider perceptions of how business, media and communities were seen to have responded.

The results, which have been reported in nearly 30 countries to date, show that most countries were rated poorly across the board. The major revelation for me was how people in the majority of the world's most advanced countries " both in the East and the West " were not only shocked and surprised by how quickly the crisis overran their daily lives, but also expressed a wider impression of being let down, giving a sense that they had expected more. Performance ratings for business leaders, health care systems, and even local communities and neighbourhoods all scored more poorly in advanced nations.

Our findings, from the United States to Italy to Japan, all point to one thing " people living in wealthier nations feel isolated and vulnerable in a way they have not felt for generations. Of the 11 developed countries and territories covered in the study, only New Zealand scored above average in our index. Who knew the Kiwis were living in the last well-appointed bungalow in a run-down neighbourhood?

A man wearing a face mask crosses a road near a shopping complex in Beijing, where there has been a new outbreak of Covid-19. Photo: Reuters

A REJECTION OF THE TRUTH

Despite long-standing evidence going back even before our study, we are witnessing a level of denialism, with some commentators suggesting the scores do not reflect on the best route ahead. The wealthier nations, they argue, just needed time to organise their resources in response to such an unprecedented event. Once this happens, they claim, public opinion will soon shift. Yet the most recent polling in nearly all of these countries indicates that perceptions have actually deteriorated further.

Japan and France, for example, scored the lowest in our index, and public opinion in both countries remains anaemic. Yet the responses from these countries hardly feel like outliers. South Korea, which scored fourth lowest on our index, even voted to overwhelmingly re-elect a president during the crisis. So, in all likelihood, the index scores reflect more than simple antagonism towards political leaders. Something else is going on.

On the other end, some have argued that countries which scored well are often authoritarian and have leaned on state-controlled media to the extent that people tell pollsters that everything is hunky dory. While media diet can have some influence in what people tell pollsters, it does not tell the full picture. Singapore, Thailand and even Iran are all dominated by state media, yet none of them recorded stellar results in our study. Barking up the propaganda tree only gets you so far.

Two months on, the vulnerability expressed in our study by people in advanced countries largely remains. It also appears to fit along a continuum that has been developing for some time now " the unravelling of the self-belief and confidence that emerged after World War II and peaked with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, but was still rock solid at the end of the 20th century.

The Dotonbori neighbourhood in Osaka, Japan, which is usually packed with tourists and shoppers, is deserted due to fears over Covid-19. Photo: EPA

TIME TO SET THINGS RIGHT

The rich global disillusionment reflected so obviously in our poll, as well as in others conducted during the current crisis, has not arisen out of nowhere. It demonstrates a real sense that all is not right. The emotional mindset also goes well beyond anger. There is a growing realisation that political and business leaders are short on long-term answers, and "community" is now a term more likely associated with social media than social cohesion.

What this crisis has done more than anything else is expose the real flaws and weaknesses that have been emergent in advanced countries for many years. The scab has been peeled off, and the wound is worse than we thought.

The findings in our study revealed something pertinent: it is time for developed nations to truly reflect on the way forward. The idea that those living in successful, advanced countries can look forward to perpetual advancement is no longer a given. More and more people are coming to comprehend that. This crisis, more than all the other recent ones, has laid this bare.

With that, confidence can only be regained through new ideas and action. Developed countries need to agree on a new approach to managing the future and a fresh compact with the rest of the world. As with a major war, Covid-19 has left everyone with heavy losses, and now is the time to acknowledge that simply trying to paper over long-standing flaws (that are much worse than most have been prepared to concede) is not going to offer either stability or hope.

These could include rethinking the global institutional framework " whether it is for trade, health, finance or even technology. Countries also need to reconstitute and develop new forums to include a more diverse representation of key global stakeholders. In the same way leaders have been forced to address changing attitudes and demands on race and gender in recent years, they now need to expand this change of approach to society itself.

So, it turns out once again that the apocalypse is not nigh. People too often confuse end times with a reshuffling of the order. Those who have enjoyed sitting in the premium seats for a long time will have to pay more for them or give them up altogether.

As Michael Stipe sang, it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

David Black is the founder of Blackbox Research, a Singapore-based research agency and data content specialist, mainly covering national and regional opinion across Asia. David has lived in Singapore for the past 20 years

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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