Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Factories in the West are being asked, or volunteering, to switch gears and make products to help with the global COVID-19 response.

That same thing has been going on in China for weeks, starting, it seems, with distillers of the powerful spirit Baizhou.

That's just one of the small changes that the coronavirus will wreak on the global economy.

The big picture, who knows?

But our economics columnist looks back at how past pandemics have reshaped economies going all the way back to the black death.

First up, though.

Israel has been through a year of political deadlock, three elections and failure after failure to form a government.

But yesterday there was a setback for longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

now in a caretaker role,

and a fresh opportunity for his rival,

the opposition leader, Benny Gantz.

The country's president gave Mr. Gantz

another chance to put together a governing coalition

after he won just enough support

in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

The law can't be your adorni, 20 and 8 yamimim,

he now has a month to build a government from an unlikely grouping of politicians,

whose only unifying feature is their opposition to Mr. Netanyahu.

The political wrangling is taking place against the backdrop of another crisis, COVID-19.

...