Thread. Can the natural disaster management cycle help us in our thinking about the Covid-19 pandemic? The cycle is Prevention, Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, Recovery and Reconstruction. We’re now in Response - right in the midst of the disaster, which is overwhelming. /1

The Response is mainly in two areas - medical and economic. Both have many pluses but also significant gaps e.g. in the UK, on the medical side the NHS response, 700k volunteers, the Nightingale hospitals are pluses; testing and PPE are gaps. On the economic side, government /2

support for businesses, laid off employees and the self-employed are pluses; inadequate support for those who don’t qualify for the new schemes is a significant gap. The pluses and gaps in this Response phases will be different in different countries around the world /3

reflecting the Prevention, Mitigation and Preparedness phases in each country. And while we’re in it the demands of Response understandably take most of our attention. But we also need to give thought to Recovery and Reconstruction, on a personal, organisational and societal /4

level. How are the businesses that survive the pandemic going to recover? How will the SME sector be rebuilt? In fact, what sort of economy do we want on the other side of all this? These are huge questions - and there are others - that have to be addressed first at the /5

macro, state level. The UN Development Programme advises that in the Recovery and Reconstruction phases the aim should be to rebuild to a higher standard than what existed before, so what could that look like in the UK - and everywhere? One thing we could investigate, for /6

example, is how government finance really works - i.e. spending comes before taxation, not vice versa - and the game-changing implications of that. But there are many, many aspects that need to be re-evaluated so that we don’t simply return to the status quo ante. Right now /7

we’re still at the beginning of Response and that must demand most of our attention. But many of us have enforced time on our hands, so some of that could really usefully be invested in thinking about Recovery and Reconstruction. What world do we want to *make* from this? 8/8