The corona catastrophe has taken us back to 14th century when the Black Death, the most notorious pandemic devastated Europe and wiped out one half of its population. If history is to be believed, it was mammals such as mice and rats that caused the deadly pandemic in Central Asia and that eventually arrived Europe through Italy.
The tragic tale does not end here. The human civilization has witnessed series of deadliest pandemics from Antonine Pandemic in the 2nd century to Swine Pandemic in 21st century leaving millions of people dead. COVID-19 is the latest series of Pandemics that has sent shivers across the world. The greatest paradox is that it united the contradictory world but divided people at large. It does not see if I am king or a slave, believer or atheist, white or black. It is unseen yet powerful, living yet unseen, far yet close. It is an untold story of everything from Science to God, Medicine to Economics, and Culture to Religion.
The Wuhan born pandemic has pushed human civilization into the world where there is no temple for devotees, no school for students, no market for investors, no transport for passengers, no place for workers, no stadium for athletes and no beach for lovers. The world was largely unprepared for the pandemic explosion and the world is still dangerously incompetent to accept the inevitable as if the contemporary generation lived through non-pandemic years.
From virologists to pharmacologists to biologists, everyone is clueless. Some take it as divine punishment from God while others blame Chinese for their eating practices and other nomads who turned back to their respective countries from the Republic of China. The bad news is that the mortality rate may involve a huge chunk of population but the good news is that modern civilization is much more sophisticated and advanced to fight the fatal blow than ancient civilization although the bloody wave is causing huge amount of stress in doctors.
The greatest challenge however is to fight the financial and economic impact of the pandemics because it is the markets that bring people together irrespective of race, religion or cast. They are the places of the opportunity, feed trillions and buy our services, ideas and patents. Sadly, the corona outbreak has caused disruption in the global economy leaving financial markets devastated and broken. From Dow Jones in United States to FTSE in London to other major markets in the world, each one has registered a serious and significant decline. While the financial markets did not panic at the elementary stage of the corona-virus outbreak in China but fell briskly when WHO declared the corona-virus as global pandemic.
The declaration triggered a massive slump in stock markets across the world resulting the radical fall down of Dow Jones, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq in US. The stocks declined to the extent that both S&P 500 and Dow Jones had its worst drop since the 1987 market crash and as a result both dipped into the bear market. Following the debacle and downfall from Wall Street, most of the stock markets from Europe to Asia-Pacific crashed and wiped out years of growth. Indian SENSEX tumbled in tandem.
Unlike the financial crises 2008, the crises now are quite different where central banks need to look beyond open market operations and other tactics because filling of pockets with money would not really generate demand when markets are not accessible to people and people are not accessible to markets. The broken demand-supply chain is ruining markets but the actual economic shock could be even much bigger.
I am not a medical doctor, nor a politician nor a policy maker yet I am objectively compelled to ask few questions as a global citizen like how the dented confidence of the investors twiddling thumbs would be rebuilt? What kind of game plan is really needed to get through this deep pothole? How about the survival of the industries dependent on global supply chain? The globalization has twisted supply chain so deeply that if there are issues specifically in an exporting like country like China or US, It would be felt massively across the globe. How the impact on workforce particularly for hourly and daily wagers would be dealt with? Will Italy need a Euro-zone bailout?
The harsh fact is that the Italy has already suffered from sovereign debt crises in 2011 and Italian economy is intensely struggling to post a decent growth. Again with this calamity, would there be a paradigm shift in US-Iran proxy war? Is China really turning a corner to bounce back? How the gulf economies would respond to China and US, the two largest importing countries by oil? Where does India stand in this global crisis and how shall it meet the $5 trillion economy by 2024 amid the corona disaster?
Precisely, it may be another worst economic nightmare of 21st century that would not only test the competence of doctors and scientists but would also assess the endeavors of the political and corporate leadership to deal with the crises. The downturn in spending and investment would drive businesses to slow down production and eventually adopt fire policy for workers. Markets would turn out to be the deserted places and suicides may radically increase. It does not matter if the country is in early or later stages of the epidemic but what matters is how differently and intelligently a country is responding?
The worst pandemic in the history caused by rats and mice has given an opportunity 600 years back to each country to re-imagine their food culture and obsession to consume snakes, rats, bats, dogs or make soup out of them.
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Christianity and Islam consider rats as harmful creatures so does the US centre for food safety and disease control. The world is investing billions of dollars to prevent effect of the pandemic but again the question to be asked is how the virus was born in Wuhan causing global disarray? Let’s give it a serious thought before a new black swan will stretch the world mercilessly.
