Post the 2008 crash, there’s not much central banks can do to limit the impact of coronavirus | Tony Yates

A widespread halt in economic activity could put the viability of banks in question and spread financial disruption further

The first cases of coronavirus were recorded in China's landlocked Hubei province, which has a population of about 59 million. Despite the Covid-19 virus and the respiratory disease it causes starting out as a local healthcare problem, it has become a global and an economic one because of the ways in which humans are profoundly interconnected through the world's economy.

The first kind of interconnectedness is the one epidemiologists study: the human travel network. How a disease spreads depends on the number of physical encounters, and the probability of the virus jumping from carrier to new host. These encounters, caused mostly by global air and sea travel, are the ones policymakers have been trying to stop, albeit belatedly.

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The World Health Organization is recommending that people take simple precautions to reduce exposure to and transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus, for which there is no specific cure or vaccine.

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