The cry of despair grows louder. In the final winter weeks of 2020, an insidious virus seeds itself across an inattentive continent, pitching tens of thousands into a life-and-death battle. Most European states secure their borders, millions of households lock their front doors, while day after day television news programmes tally the dead and honour doctors and nurses as if they were soldiers going off to war. Military columns bearing Lombardy's Covid coffins; abandoned and lifeless Madrid care homes; mobile crematoria in Wuhan: hellish scenes flash by, feeding fears of social contact and infection. In Europe a disaster is unfolding, but there is no joint response. No action.

The loudest cry comes from Italy, hit by the virus early on. Appeals for help go unanswered and bitter reproaches ensue. “If in this hour of truth we receive no support, then we’re better off outside the Union”, is the sentiment, echoed, if less shrilly, in Spain. Elsewhere too, the slow, feeble reaction of the European institutions contrasts starkly with the personal tragedies in hospitals and care homes from Bergamo to Madrid, Mulhouse or Tilburg. The hastily closed internal borders are regarded as another scandal. If the Union cannot guarantee freedom of movement, its biggest boast for so many years, if freedom of movement actually becomes a source of danger, then irrelevance and implosion threaten.

It is striking how quickly the concerns and admonitions are transformed into doubts about the survival of the European Union itself. All over the world the unknowns of the coronavirus are demanding the utmost of leaders and populations. The speed of its spread, epidemiological uncertainty and social confusion put all political systems to the test. In China Covid-19 shines a light on the weaknesses and strengths of an authoritarian state. After an embarrassing phase of denial and censorship, Xi's government deals resolutely with the calamity. In the United States the pandemic makes a fool of the president, an impulsive leader in a time of crisis, as within sight of an election he zigzags between the obscenity of hundreds of thousands of deaths and the price of a lockdown.