EMNES Working Paper 033
The resilience of States is put to a severe test in times of major crises, particularly in the face of a pandemic which places a drastic strain on economic activities, disrupts the lifestyles of citizens, weakens social systems and puts pressure on sanitation structures, to mention just a few directly negative effects. So, therefore, what is the best approach to adopt in such a scenario?
In the first part of this paper we attempt to underline the epidemiological fundamentals of SARS-CoV-2 before proposing a general model to be applied to the Moroccan case that, whilst highlighting the confinement policy measure adopted by Morocco, temporally and dynamically outlines the spread of COVID-19 through multiple simulations.
In the second part, after the first part has covered the hallmarks of the coronavirus in terms of the spread of the COVID-19 disease, the paper tackles the additional contribution of technology, alongside other measures being used (diagnosis, confinement etc), to curb the pandemic.
Several approaches , notably based on Bluetooth and GPS geolocation, are emphasised, e.g. contact tracing or proximity tracing with the aim of protecting the population on a voluntary basis, whilst guaranteeing relative or complete anonymity. This naturally leads us to the third part of the paper where we deal with social acceptability, the ratchet effect, and ethics as the underlying conditions for the use of personal data.
In short, the structured nature of this article offers original thinking on the capability of coping with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic under a multi-disciplinary prism, avoiding the usual segmented thinking model, where only one component is processed at a time, ignoring the links between different levels and perceptions, thereby reducing the chances of solving any given problem in its entirety, regardless of its complexity.
