Public affairs in a time of coronavirus

• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Author: Danny Moss,Phil Harris
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2335
• Date: 01 August 2020

EDITORIAL

Public affairs in a time of coronavirus

In our previous editorial for JPA 20:2, we noted the growing concerns

over the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic not only in terms

of the rapidly growing number of cases and associated deaths, partic-

ularly among older segments of the population, but also increasingly

the potentially catastrophic effect of the pandemic on national,

regional and the global business economy. Indeed, at the time of writ-

ing, WHO data suggest there are nearly 13 million cases of covid19

worldwide and approximately 575,000 deaths, with the USA heading

the infamous league table with some 3.2 million cases and over

130,000 deaths. Brazil has the second-highest number of cases at 1.8

million with 72,000 deaths, and the UK lies in the third place with just

over 291,000 cases and almost 45,000 deaths. Moreover, the most

recent update from WHO indicates that worldwide infection rates are

still continuing to rise significantly.

While governments around the world have committed resources

on an unprecedented scale to the effort to combat the coronavirus

and treat those infected; for most governments, it is now the spectre

of potentially one of the worst economic recessions since the Seven-

teenth Century that has become the focus of attention. In the face of

dire economic forecasts and pressure from representative bodies from

many industry sectors as well as individual corporate entities, the UK

government (mirrored by similar measures in the USA and other coun-

tries) has introduced a wide range of measures to address the sharp

economic decline and prop-up failing sectors of business, ranging from

a hugely expensive furlough scheme, and loan guarantee scheme to

support large swathes of businesses at risk of permanent closure, to

the announcements of large infrastructure projects to try to help kick-

start economic growth. Of course, to fund such measures the UK's

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has been forced to increase

government borrowing to over £650 billion with the UKs' Office for

Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasting that public debt could reach

some £2.63 trillion by 2024.

From a public affairs perspective, there have been some fascinat-

ing insights into how governments around the world have sought to

address the challenge of balancing on the one hand concerns over the

health impact of Coronavirus and on the other hand the rapidly wors-

ening economic climate caused by a coronavirus lockdown. There has

been a perceptible shift of emphasis in the UK away from purely

health-related messaging—“stay home—save the NHS”to the preva-

iling more nuanced call to essentially “stay alert”and maintain social

distancing. More recently, the messaging has changed further with

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, encouraging employees to go back

to work if they can do so safely. Indeed, as lockdown measures have

eased in the UK, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer

have both encouraged people to return to spending on the high street

as well in pubs and restaurants, albeit with the caveat of maintaining

the necessary social distancing rules to avoid the threat of a second

wave of coronavirus.

The UK Conservative government has come under increasing

pressure from industry groups, opposition parties and business

employer representative groups throughout this challenging period of

coronavirus over the claimed ambiguity of their messaging strategy,

particularly as they have attempted to move away from the initial

lockdown period. Critics have pointed to the inconsistencies in some

of the messaging, and a failure to articulate a clear overall strategy for

dealing with coronavirus. But in this failing, the UK government argu-

able are not alone. Indeed, a study of how governments around the

world have sought to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, and in

particular, how each have handled the communication with key stake-

holder groups is likely to reveal some fascinating lessons, not the least

in terms of political leadership styles and the messaging stances

adopted. Here some very relevant questions are likely to emerge.

Why, for example, have female political leaders been more successful

in communicating messages and managing governmental systems dur-

ing coronavirus? Equally, how long will the pandemic continue and

what might be its longer term impact on policy-making and govern-

mental processes?

There appears to be little doubt that the coronavirus pan-

demic will have major implications for public affairs professionals

around the world not the least in terms of the lessons learned so

far about how best to communicate health, scientific and well-

being messages in the long term. Moreover, the public affairs pro-

fession itself has come under similar financial pressures to those

that many other industry and service sectors have experienced

during the pandemic, with many professionals being put on fur-

lough schemes, but there also seem to have been significant job

losses across the sector, although much of the evidence to date

is largely anecdotal.

Thus many lessons and questions will undoubtedly arise when a

full “post-mortem”is conducted into how the world responded to

coronavirus both collectively as well as on an individual nation basis.

The absence of any globally coordinated and unified approach to tack-

ling the coronavirus is perhaps an indictment of the failure of our

political systems to unite and overcome their differences even in the

face of a world pandemic as serious as coronavirus. Indeed, it is per-

haps ironic that it is 200 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale

(characterised as “the lady with the lamp”), the great campaigner for

universal access to quality health care, champion of modern nursing

and medical science allied to good statistical evidence, who would

have undoubtedly championed a call for coordinated world leadership

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2335

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2335. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1of2

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2335