As a near-universal experience, the coronavirus pandemic concentrated minds across the world on a single issue, inducing identification, comparison, and sympathy across borders—Chen’s convergence, linkage, induction, and amplification effects. European public opinion had been deeply stirred by the nightmarish images from Lombardy of exhausted nurses, overflowing morgues, and lonely funerals. Polls in Germany showed a groundswell of public opinion calling for those countries who were relatively well placed to do more to help.25 This extended to financial issues as well.
