EVEN with our first faltering steps into the new normal, as Nicola Sturgeon has dubbed it, we can safely say it is going to be more abnormal than anything else we have experienced.

OK, it’s nice to see the shops open, and people meeting their near ones and dear ones, and the kids returning to some serious education. But there are also a few apparently normal things that leave me wondering if we have really got to grips with the coronavirus crisis.

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For instance, I share the general admiration our First Minister has earned for her cool and calculated response to the whole business, most readily seen in her daily press conferences. There she gives off an aura of being absolutely competent in the most straightforward way, beyond even what we might expect of a woman who, in an adult life more or less completely devoted to political service, has probably liked running our National Health Service best of all. In fact, she was a better health minister than First Minister.

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Still, the contrast is stark with Blethering Boris, whether he rambles on in his own press conferences or turns evasion into an art form during Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons. Except for a single thing, the whole world might to its profit tune in to watch Sturgeon’s alternative, and to see how a modern woman masters the morass of fine judgments demanded of her.

The single thing wrong with it is this: Scotland is suffering one of the worst rates of infection on the planet. There have been 18,000 cases since March, and probably about 4000 have resulted in death (some uncertainty arises because they had not all been tested). The worst regions are Greater Glasgow, with nearly 5000 cases, and Lothian, with more than 3000.

The fact remains that we just do not know enough about this novel disease to say why it is more virulent in one place than in another. It is the great mystery of the new decade.

This means Glasgow has suffered as many cases as the Netherlands, a kingdom with a population of 17 million, 28 times bigger than the city’s. Several prosperous and liberal European nations have been just as successful in protecting their vulnerable citizens. But why should hot and sweaty Greece, with its 10 million people and only just about solvent government, have suffered fewer than 200 deaths, less than Dumfries and Galloway?

When we look beyond Europe, there are more of such surprises. While China was the original source of the pandemic, it also contains among its 1.3 billion people several striking variations in the distribution of the disease.

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The raw flesh of exotic creatures on sale in the gory market of Wuhan might have offered the pathways for the virus to jump species, but only 500 miles away lies Hong Kong, with dietary habits no less exotic. And the death toll in the former British colony has been just four individuals. This may be owed to restrictions on the border with Red China. But if so, we still owe to ourselves an explanation why these are so efficient, when elsewhere they are not.

The fact remains that we just do not know enough about this novel disease to say why it is more virulent in one place than in another. It is the great mystery of the new decade. While it remains unsolved, Nicola Sturgeon and the rest of Scotland are right to remain on guard, not just against a potentially fatal virus but also against our ignorance about it. In policy, that is to say, it is reasonable to err on the side of pessimism. So this column supports the First Minister in her refusal to trust anything except proven facts about the true course of the contagion.

An economy like the UK’s, with long-term problems of productivity, low investment and a workforce hardly at full stretch, will find it hard to make a quick comeback.

A medical kind of cure might be applied to the appalling condition of the economy too. We have already learned that the Scottish growth rate as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), still rising at the end of 2019, contracted to a rate of minus 2.5% in the first quarter of 2020. This came against the background of the slump in the UK’s economy that is forecast for the rest of the year. In fact the contraction is predicted to reach a record 14% in the current quarter, to give us the worst experience of any leading industrial nation.

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The timescale for surmounting such a setback is also something to worry about. Economic recoveries tend to come in one of two shapes: a U-shape, long and gradual, or a V-shape, sharp and sudden. When recession hits a more prosperous country, it may leave suddenly idle a lot of workers and their factories, which can regain top gear quite quickly. On the other hand, an economy like the UK’s, with long-term problems of productivity, low investment and a workforce hardly at full stretch, will find it hard to make a quick comeback.

In Scotland there is an extra problem even on top of all that. We have a Cabinet, a ruling party and a fairly wide range of public opinion which nowadays seem far from convinced that a good growth rate should be the main aim of economic management. The First Minister herself, in a speech nearly a year ago, sang the praises of something called wellness as the buzzy alternative to boring old conventional measures such as GDP.

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GDP does indeed leave out contentments that are hard to measure – including the pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that may lead to a state of holistic health. Because we cannot quantify them, economic science does not bother about them, and there may be something wrong with that. In present conditions, inside and outside the SNP, many agree.

But I do wonder if coronavirus, in one of its unexpected side effects, might not have dealt a death blow to this and other currents of progressive thinking. Their proponents would prefer to be soothed rather than alarmed by the natural state of the world. They seek a good-natured rationality rather than a choice among unpalatable consequences. The Scottish Government may have come to a comforting conclusion that not every blow struck for efficiency and expansion is worth the collateral damage it may cause. But societies also need to be challenged into achievement, sick societies especially.

I see nothing about the coronavirus crisis to discredit the capitalist system. This system has on the contrary been rather good at supplying the solutions to crises

The 14% contraction is equivalent to about £4000 a head in current conditions. It may fairly be asked if Scots will be content to sacrifice that sort of sum and what it may mean in terms of material possessions, just for the sake of a rather more nebulous wellness.

A great many of us might say instead that, if this is the huge extent of our unused resources, then we should try to put them back into working order and productive use as soon as possible.

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As we do that, we might realistically look at other reforms aiming for a higher growth rate than we have had in the recent past. Let me start with a suggestion for flat taxes, which always bring in more revenue than progressive taxes. And if we achieve this, our environmental and social goals would become easier, rather than harder, to reach.

In short, I see nothing about the coronavirus crisis to discredit the capitalist system. This system has on the contrary been rather good at supplying the solutions to crises, sometimes slowly but always surely. There is no other system, not socialism, not idealism, not environmentalism, not a command economy, that even starts to compete. And after a 14% slump, growth is really the sole sensible option.