The Western ideologists are out in force. Each school of thought is busy trying to twist and shape the current pandemic crisis to fit in with its own theories, and at each extreme, or polar point, doctrinaire views are being paraded, designed to show that they have the answer and that everyone else is wrong.

Thus we have the nationalists asserting that this is the end of globalization and an interdependent world, while the globalists are saying with equal vehemence that nation-state policies are useless and only the most intense global cooperation, indeed complete global government, can prevail against the march of the new coronavirus.

Alongside these views we have the old-style socialists claiming that the hour of the state has arrived, or has returned, but now backed by algorithms of power without precedent and capable of pinpointing (and controlling) every individual as never before.