But what about everyone else? As the International Monetary Fund highlights in its April World Economic Outlook, there is a dangerous global divergence. The horrific wave of Covid-19 in India is likely a preview of what is still to come across much of the developing world, where poverty has exploded. Most countries are unlikely to return to their pre-pandemic output levels until at least the end of 2022.
Until now, the 21st century had been a story of catch-up for the developing world, far more so than had seemed likely in the 1980s and 1990s. But the Covid-19 crisis has hit poorer countries just as the rich world is waking up to the fact that containing the pandemic and the looming climate catastrophe depends hugely on the efforts of developing economies. That is not to mention the cooperation likely to be needed to contain terrorist groups and rogue-state actors in a world seething about the global inequities that the pandemic has laid bare.