Our common enemy is too strong to be defeated alone. Covid-19 is a highly infectious virus that triggers symptoms in ca. 10% of infected people that are so serious that they require hospitalisation. Currently, no country on Earth has enough medical supplies, staff or locations to deal with such a high rate of hospitalisation. Hundreds of millions of lives are at risk. The severity and death toll of this global crisis will be a direct result of our ability to keep the number of people in need of medical support at the levels of existing medical resources. These “flattening of the curve”-measures will be intrusive and force all of us to sacrifice and change behaviour. All 27 Member States plus the United Kingdom must fight this crisis as one. Once the situation in the European Union has stabilised all resources and efforts must be turned to the rest of the world.

A global disease exposes the weaknesses of the world’s dueling powers.

102 years ago the last global pandemic killed about 50 million people. World War II, the deadliest military conflict in history, saw an estimated total of 85 million deaths, about 3% of the 1940 world population. Corona or Covid-19, with a similar death rate of about 2%, is predicted to ‘likely’ become a global pandemic in the next 30 days according to the US Defense Department. The difference between the current Coronavirus and similar outbreaks in the recent past (such as SARS or MERS) is that symptoms kick in typically later and are milder. The incubation time is also longer and some carriers for the virus are infectious, yet are reported to show hardly any symptoms. The death rate is also lower, particularly high with mostly older people and those with weakened immune systems. All of these factors lead to a very infectious virus, if left unchecked. Why does the virus spread so fast both in authoritarian China and increasingly fast in the democratic United States?

The United Kingdom is going its own way and leaving the European Union. On thefirst sight, this is not surprising for the world’s formerly largest empire and formerly strongest super power. However, the times since the British global empire have changed dramatically and besides a worldwide web of financial centers, the United Kingdom will be barely able to assert its influence on other countries and country blocks such as the EU-27.

Though I am a fairly young and newly elected member of the European Parliament, I didn’t arrive with naive ideas about the legislative work, negotiations and politics. I was prepared to compromise, re-think and prioritize - as long as it was in line with my values. Yet it has still been hard to watch one of the first political steps involving the Parliament: the Council wiping its… with the Spitzenkandidat system and consequently with the Parliament. Whoever Ursula von der Leyen is and how well she will do - none of that mattered during the narrow vote for me. Not in the light of the fact that she found out she is going to be the single most important political person in the EU a week before the election; without ever aspiring to it. It perplexes me even now how few people (in power) were perplexed.