Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has repeatedly noted that the central bank will begin tapering its asset purchases by the end of 2021.

The implications of this contractionary policy and those that will ultimately follow — direct action on interest rates, for example — are naturally significant for the US macroeconomy, foreign currency valuations and, ultimately, for oil-producing nations.

Given the current global macroeconomic and epidemiological contexts, it seems the central bank policies are premature and that we have seen this scenario before under circumstances that were, in fact, much less dire.

The consequences of previous policy missteps were significant for oil prices, in particular, and could be again.

Our most recent experience in this sphere, and following half a decade of US central bank asset purchases along with parallel low interest rates, is to be found in May 2013.

At the mere mention of asset purchase tapering in front of the US Congress, the-then chair of the US Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke caused what has come to be called a “taper tantrum.”

This was characterized by a quick rise in interest rates with the US 10-year yield spiking 42 percent in the coming seven months and peaking at 3.04 percent on Dec. 31 that year. It also brought an obvious rise in the value of the dollar, a 5.6 percent decrease in the S&P index, and palpable damage to emerging markets as their currencies depreciated.

It seems that we are here again, just over eight years later, but in a situation that is much more worrying and that many seem to be underestimating.

Quite simply, this is not a scenario in which we can calculate risks. It is not one in which we have measurable probability distributions and many historical data points on which to base our present behavior. This is a situation in which daily COVID-19 cases in the US are again periodically spiking over 250,000 as we last saw at the pandemic peak last January.

The US unemployment and inflation rates also both sit at roughly 5.2 percent (both notably outside of long term US central bank targets) and the labor force participation rate is below 62 percent when, even in the wake of the 2008 crisis, it remained near 64 percent.

The US central bank is routinely optimistic about the unemployment rate declining to pre-pandemic levels of around 4 percent and has repeatedly noted that the inflation rate above 5 percent is merely a short-term phenomenon. It is, of course, fine to hope that we are trending in the right directions, but these hopes coming to fruition are dependent on several things.

First, increasing vaccination rates are necessary, and somehow countering the anti-vaccination and anti-mask narrative that seems to have gained traction in many parts of America.

Second, existing vaccines must be capable of preventing serious disease and death in numbers sufficient to justify keeping the economy open.

Third, no new, more virulent, or perhaps deadlier, mutations of COVID-19 must appear. These are things about which we know very little and, what is more disturbing, we absolutely know that these unknowns exist.

It is one thing to base policy on the world we see and be surprised by “unknown unknowns” and therefore miss our policy targets, but quite another thing to move forward with contractionary policy in an environment of “known unknowns” and then perhaps be surprised when and if the world fails to conform to our expectations.

Should this happen, the US Federal Reserve would then hypothetically have to dramatically reverse itself and suffer a loss of credibility at the very moment when both it and the economy can least endure such an indignity.

Naturally, there exist serious implications if the US central bank policy proves misguided. If the expectations currently guiding the US Federal Reserve are not met, the issues of domestically rising unemployment and stagnant prices could emerge again. Simultaneously, currency depreciation abroad might again generate instability for many economies outside the US.

Finally, there are severe implications for energy markets. While a significant portion of the decline in oil prices between 2014 and 2016 can be explained by oversupply, the other side of that equation was clearly an overestimation on the part of oil producers regarding demand. It seems few considered that the US economy and those smaller nations directly, and perhaps severely, affected by its policy might not recover well in an environment of rising rates, particularly in the wake of the worst economic downturn since 1929.

The result, of course, was a decline in the price of Brent crude from $113 per barrel in June 2014 to just under $30 per barrel in January 2016.

Given the above, OPEC should adopt a much more cautious approach to increasing or even maintaining oil production levels. Indeed, it should likely embrace a worldview opposing the optimism currently embraced by the Federal Reserve. It should accept that what we are seeing with COVID-19’s impact upon the global economy most probably represents the “end of the beginning” rather than the “beginning of the end.”

• John W. Salevurakis is an associate professor of economics at the American University in Cairo and an author.