The Economist Continental Europe Edition March 21, 2020

Countries imposed strict restrictions on border crossings, including between America and Canada. Stringent curbs on the movement of people were enforced in France, Spain, the San Francisco Bay Area and other places. The number of deaths surged in Italy. For the first time China reported no new daily local infections. The Philippines declared a “state of calamity”. Researchers were concerned about a second wave of infections in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Supermarkets took steps to ration the sale of products and to set aside shopping hours for the vulnerable. In what some saw as a blow, the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled. For our latest coverage of the virus and its consequences please visit economist.com/ coronavirus or download the Economist app.…

Politics Governments around the world took extraordinary measures to curb the novel coronavirus and alleviate its economic consequences. In America the Trump administration proposed giving direct cash transfers to every American as part of an emergency-spending package. Some Republicans balked at the idea, but Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate, said that now was the time for “urgent bipartisan action”. Joe Biden swept the board in the latest Democratic primaries. In Florida, the biggest prize on offer, he won 62% of the vote to 23% for Bernie Sanders. The pair also debated in their first one-on-one clash. Ohio postponed its primary because of the pandemic, as have Georgia and Louisiana. The Justice Department dropped charges against two Russian entities indicted by the Mueller inquiry because it believes a trial would give Russia…

Politics Governments around the world took extraordinary measures to curb the novel coronavirus and alleviate its economic consequences. In America the Trump administration proposed giving direct cash transfers to every American as part of an emergency-spending package. Some Republicans balked at the idea, but Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate, said that now was the time for “urgent bipartisan action”. Joe Biden swept the board in the latest Democratic primaries. In Florida, the biggest prize on offer, he won 62% of the vote to 23% for Bernie Sanders. The pair also debated in their first one-on-one clash. Ohio postponed its primary because of the pandemic, as have Georgia and Louisiana. The Justice Department dropped charges against two Russian entities indicted by the Mueller inquiry because it believes a trial…

PLANET EARTH is shutting down. In the struggle to get a grip on covid-19, one country after another is demanding that its citizens shun society. As that sends economies reeling, desperate governments are trying to tide over companies and consumers by handing out trillions of dollars in aid and loan guarantees. Nobody can be sure how well these rescues will work. But there is worse. Troubling new findings suggest that stopping the pandemic might require repeated shutdowns. And yet it is also now clear that such a strategy would condemn the world economy to grave—perhaps intolerable—harm. Some very hard choices lie ahead. Barely 12 weeks after the first reports of people mysteriously falling ill in Wuhan, in central China, the world is beginning to grasp the pandemic’s true human and economic toll.…

Countries imposed strict restrictions on border crossings, including between America and Canada. Stringent curbs on the movement of people were enforced in France, Spain, the San Francisco Bay Area and other places. The number of deaths surged in Italy. For the first time China reported no new daily local infections. The Philippines declared a “state of calamity”. Researchers were concerned about a second wave of infections in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Supermarkets took steps to ration the sale of products and to set aside shopping hours for the vulnerable. In what some saw as a blow, the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled. For our latest coverage of the virus and its consequences please visit economist.com/ coronavirus or download the Economist app.…

IN JUST TWO months the world economy has been turned upside down. Stockmarkets have collapsed by a third and in many countries factories, airports, offices, schools and shops have been closed to try to contain the virus. Workers are worried about their jobs and investors fear companies will default on their debts. All this points to one of the sharpest economic contractions in modern times. China’s GDP probably shrank by 10-20% in January and February compared with a year earlier. For as long as the virus rages, similar drops are likely in America and Europe, which could trigger a further downward lurch in Asia. Massive government intervention is required to ensure that this shock does not spiral into a depression. But scale alone is not good enough—new financial tools need…