Again about India and the pandemic

Yesterday I wrote a few lines about India’s decision to confine her citizens. It’s a 21 days lockdown for 1,3 billion people. Many, in my part of world, cannot understand the magnitude and the complexity of such a decision. They do not know that hundreds of millions in India have no regular job. They live in cities and struggle, every day, to get some sort of casual work, that will give them enough rupees to buy the daily food their families and themselves need. That is how the informal sector operates, each day being a new beginning. And most of the people survive within the informal, occasional economy. If the economy is brought to a standstill, as it is now the case, that means no means of survival. It is just dramatic. Then, the solution is to try to go back to their ancestral villages and do some very basic farming. That’s what has happened in the last days or so. Millions have travelled back, in crowded buses, lorries and on the few trains that are still operating. As they moved back, one on top of the other, they might have caught the virus from their fellow travellers. If so, that means the virus has been passed on to an incalculable number of people and brought from the cities to the rural areas. That would be mass contagion. We will see. But we can be at the gate of a major public health problem in the largest country on earth. It would give the pandemic crisis a new, terrifying dimension. I can only hope this scenario is not going to happen.

Don't panic and be prepared

The coronavirus is impacting the world economy in an extraordinary manner. Yesterday and today, the financial markets lost trillions of dollars. That’s about real people’s money as well as pension funds and other institutional investors. That’s wealth that simply evaporates. Every time a new person is found sick, here and there, specially in the most developed economies, that sends a shockwave across the markets. There is a massive reaction because the world has become a village and people are constantly on the move. Besides that, what is produced here needs components from afar and a supply chain that crosses half of the planet.

The key point at this stage is to be able to show to the public opinion that the epidemic can be contained. In addition, it is important to underline that most of the cases can be easily treated in the right hospital environment. Panic would bring a major global crisis.