[The coronavirus pandemic-a politically explosive catastropheLa pandémie de coronavirus - une catastrophe explosive]

The corona pandemic is a medical catastrophe that is intricately intertwined with an epochal economic-ecological double or "pincer-grip" crisis - thus goes the central thesis of this contribution. COVID-19 is defined as an "external shock" followed by a deep recession. Leaving aside the natural process of viral mutation, the pandemic, recession and pincer-grip crisis can be understood as distinct repulsions of an hyperglobalization that is gradually undermining its own conditions of existence. Meanwhile, the recent rupture cannot be adequately grasped without taking into account the financial crash of 2007 to 2009, the political interregnum of the post-crisis years and the tendency towards bonapartistic democracy. By itself, the corona crisis will not lead to a "build back better"; the emergency state is hardly capable of such a setting of the course. Instead, there is a rising danger that fierce conflicts over distribution, increasing inequality and desolidarization will make a turn to sustainability even harder.