Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Patrick Lane,

filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on events shaping

your world. At the weekend, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson was sent to hospital

with the coronavirus. In these uneasy times, the opposition Labour Party has just chosen

a new leader. We assess the task facing Sir Keir's style.

Often climate change is associated with extremes, floods, forest fires and hurricanes. But there

is also evidence of much milder but no less profound effects. We report on the northern

hemispheres of missing winter. But first, to slow the spread of Covid-19, maybe half the

world's population is now in some form of lockdown. The measures have already been effective

in places like mainland China and South Korea, where the number of confirmed new cases has dropped

around 100 a day or fewer, while countries like the United States are still struggling

to come to grips with the pandemic. As the transmission curve flattens, governments

will face the same challenge. How to prevent another wave of cases once social distancing

measures are relaxed. Some are turning to apps and data networks. Never before in a pandemic

has there been so much technology to help keep tabs on its cause. But this raises other

concerns about effectiveness and privacy. If we're building a panopticon, shouldn't we

keep an eye on it? All over the world, different countries are going in and out of their initial

spike of Covid infections as the pandemic spreads. And in the first wave of that explosive

growth of the infection, digital surveillance is a bit less useful. Mostly you just need

to shut people inside and quarantine anybody who you know is infected. The extent to which

it's used is to enforce that quarantine. Sometimes if those people are asked to stay at home,

you can ask them to send a selfie to prove they're there or report their location.

...