. That's actually not true. The overwhelming consensus of serious economists is that if you want to wait, better to err on the side of staying shut down longer rather than to err by starting up too soon.
who are not getting incomes, and that makes it tolerable. And we can go on for -- we need to go on as long as it takes. Trying to get things started because you want -- you know, everybody wants a return to the life we had. But trying to do that prematurely is a recipe not just for a lot more people dying but also a recipe for actually a much longer economic slump.
ZAKARIA: Ian, what we are seeing in China -- I think we lost Ian now.
Let me ask you, Zanny. What we're seeing in China is the return of the economy after a period of a very drastic and dramatic lockdown. Yes. Is that a hopeful sign? Because if you look at the way China is reopening its economy, it does seem to suggest that once you get this under control and the numbers of new cases are very small, you can start up again.
BEDDOES: It is, although I would caution that it's quite early days in China. And there are a -- you know, there was an increase in infections that came from people returning from abroad and so they shut the country to foreigners in particular. And I would point to Singapore, which has really handled this in an exemplary manner but Singapore has actually on Friday increased its lockdown or has actually broaden their lockdown which it hadn't really had before, but it was seeing cases increasing.
And I don't think it's going to be binary. I think at some point we are going to have to weigh the costs of keeping the economy shut down with the impact on lives saved and the pandemic. And of course right now I completely agree with Paul, it's absolutely clear that the right thing do is to lock down. But over time, the costs of the lockdown are going to increase. And for some countries it won't be possible to do this. They won't have the resources to carry on doing this.
And then I think we're going to have to figure out ways to start bringing the economy back to life. And I think one of the big differences between now and 1918 -- and I read that very interesting study about the U.S. then -- is that we have technology in a way that we didn't then. And I think one of the kind of under-focused on areas of this is how we can harness technology. Not just technology to get as fast as possible to a vaccine, to a treatment, but technology to trace people, technology to see where people are.
Let's use this huge infrastructure we got in terms of, you know, everybody having a cell phone in their hand. There are big issues with this, you know. Are we going to be heading towards a surveillance state? Do we need to worry about invasions of privacy? But I think right now that stuff is outweighed by people's desire to know whether they -- you know, how far the virus has spread, to know whether they have had it, to know whether they have been near people who've had it.
And I think we'll see businesses reorganize themselves so that you can have production lines with social distancing. We will see service sector firms reorganize themselves. Restaurants will have much bigger space between tables, and we'll, I hope, use technology in a much, much more dramatic way than we've used it now to know kind of who's had the virus, where there are hot spots and where there's much less of it.
ZAKARIA: Ian, let me ask you about a bigger picture about this. And I'm sorry, we had a little technical difficulty getting you on, which is China is now donating ventilators to New York. Talk about the competition for leadership that is coming out of this with China appearing to be at least more confident than the United States essentially uninterested.
IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: Well, of course. On a couple of levels. I mean, even though the Chinese are responsible for the original outbreak with all the travel and the cover-up, the fact is that their economy is going to be back to pretty much 100 percent, at least on the supply side, within the coming weeks, while the Americans and Europeans are still shut down. They've got the medical supply chain. They have the excess medical personnel.
They have the ability to learn some lessons from when the Americans gave humanitarian aid after previous crisis, some lessons that the Americans appear to have forgotten. And, you know, I certainly believe that the Americans are capable of implementing real lockdowns and listening to authority. We're clearly capable of putting a lot of money into our economy for relief and restart as we need it. But we have completely abdicated leadership internationally.
For the developing world that will most need it, for our allies like in Europe that we're not coordinating with. And the Chinese smell opportunity here. They recognize that the global order will look very different coming out of this crisis than it did going in. And we really need to be paying attention to what Beijing is doing right now.
ZAKARIA: Paul, let me ask you a quick question. We only have a few -- we have about 45 seconds. One thing that worries me, all of us on this battle line have been to graduate school and social science. The data is very bad that is coming out.
ZAKARIA: Countries are testing differently. Is there a danger that we are making predictions on the basis of very incomplete data here?
KRUGMAN: Yes. Especially because everything moves so fast. I mean, we knew that the exponential growth in the disease but also even on the economic thing. We're now at a point where, you know, monthly economic data are already so far out of date that they're useless. And so even the -- we really are -- weekly figures which are not the right numbers, but we're doing what we can. So, look, just three weeks ago people -- I was in contact with people who were debating whether we needed any sort of major economic response.
Do we really have an economic emergency to justify a large package? Unbelievable now, right? Now we're probably 15 million jobs down while we were just getting this thing together. So we are -- yes, turns out that we have a -- we're not prepared not just for something of this magnitude but we're not prepared for something of this speed. And this is a big problem.
ZAKARIA: Thank you all. We will come back to you because this isn't going away. And thanks, Ian, in particular.
Next on GPS, Hungary's leader, Viktor Orban, has used the coronavirus crises to grab all but absolute power. He was given the power this week to rule by presidential decree. I'll tell you all about it when we come back.
ZAKARIA: Donald Trump's usual complaints no matter what he terms fake news which is really news he doesn't like have not gone away during the Coronavirus crisis. But one leader has taken it further, much further.
A new law in Hungary calls for up to five years in jail for publishing so-called fake news related to the Coronavirus. That is just a minor part of a major measure that will give Prime Minister Viktor Orban ultimate power the ability to rule by decree.
His personal whims will have no checks no balances. What will this mean for Hungary, Michael Ignatieff is the President of the Central European University; a George Soros funded institution founded in Hungary that was expelled by Orban last year.
And Valerie Hopkins is a Budapest based Correspondent for "The Financial Times. Michael, let me ask you how did we get here? This is a European country that is essentially slid from what looked like a functioning liberal democracy to something very different?
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF, PRESIDENT AND RECTOR, CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY: Fareed, this began ten years ago when he won power in 2010. He muzzled the press, he cut back on the autonomy of the courts and he came after our free institution, Central European University and now this just seems to be a culmination of a pattern that developed over ten years.
And it's developed frankly because the European Union didn't stop him because successive American administrations didn't stop him and because China, Russia and the authoritarian states were only too happy to welcome another authoritarian into their camp.
So it's a story of him getting away with stuff but it is also a story of him being simply continuous with what he's been doing since 2010.
ZAKARIA: Fascinating. 2010 of course he wins a big election because his opponent, the Prime Minister, said something - he made a gaffe on TV. Valerie, let me ask you about this. The judiciary in Hungary seemed independent. The press seemed to be a thriving free press. What did he do in both cases to neuter them? VALERIE HOPKINS, SOUTH-EAST EUROPE CORRESPONDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES: Wow. Well, thank you very much for having me, first of all. I think it's important to know that if anybody knows how dangerous an economic crisis is, it is Viktor Orban. So he, as Michael said, he swept into power in 2010 after an economic crash, and I think now this law is geared towards preventing a similar loss of power.
And over the course of the last decade he's really focused on first rewriting the constitution, amending it several times and then stacking institutions like the constitutional court and also regulatory bodies with people loyal to