With the total of confirmed coronavirus infections surpassing 300,000 worldwide, panic has set in. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that humanity may be facing a crisis not seen in 75 years.

It’s time for the world to pull together toward the same goal. Only that will get us through the coronavirus epidemic. Failing to cooperate risks a slide into even deeper crises.

Dismantling supply chains that took years, or even decades, to build is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. Many factors must be taken into account, including product quality, price and the reliability of prospective new channels.

In the midst of the new coronavirus, the world has much to lose from slowed production, closed borders and factories, and less trade.

COVID-19 bodes ill not only for the global economy, but for Donald Trump’s re-election and U.S.-China relations at large.

Cooperation is required if supply chain security is to be assured in the face of a worldwide health threat. No country can afford to be an outsider. Attempts by some to go it alone pose a huge challenge to the spirit needed to resolve the problem.

The world economy has clearly caught a cold. The outbreak of COVID-19 came at a particularly vulnerable point in the global business cycle. World output expanded by just 2.9% in 2019 – the slowest pace since the 2008-09 global financial crisis and just 0.4 percentage points above the 2.5% threshold typically associated with global recession.

In addition to the devastating human toll of the coronavirus outbreak, the economic damage of a manufacturing shutdown in China is likely to be profound.

The coronavirus outbreak that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan has spread across the country and beyond its borders, leaving governments at all levels in China scrambling to limit further person-to-person transmission of the virus, now known as COVID-19.

Low interest rates – both nominal and real – have been a persistent feature of advanced economies since the 1980s. How long, many now wonder, can the trend last?