I’ve never watched Coppola’s famous epic war film, after which I named this blog post.
But I am sure you can understand that the apocalypse that I have in mind isn’t related to war (although Erdogan’s erratic behavior doesn’t make things easy here in the eastern Mediterranean).
My sense of apocalypse has to do with the Coronavirus, which has now been officially branded as an epidemic by the WHO.
The ease with which the virus can be spread means that by now it has reached practically every part of the globe, especially if we consider that there a lot of milder cases that may not even be recorded. As an example, a taxi driver here in Cyprus, was infected without travelling abroad, or coming into contact with any of the known cases. This gives rise to an even greater concern: It appears that asymptomatic people may transmit the virus too.
Even worse, it appears that the virus isn’t even seasonal, as we are technically in a period of time during which seasonal illnesses subside in the northern hemisphere as the temperature increases.
All these mean that our economies are bound to face significant financial difficulties. At the end of the day, there’s no magic money tree out there, we all have to work. I am writing this just an hour after the EU Commission revised its baseline economic outlook scenario for FY20, forecasting a deep recession, with only a partial rebound in FY21.
Meanwhile, other international agencies, estimate a drop in global GDP growth to 2.0% (down from 2.5%) with most of the drop coming from China (4.7% growth compared to the 6% originally forecast).
China is important not only because it’s the nation with the higher fatality rates (although case count is down), but also because it is effectively “the world’s factory.” A shutdown in China means disrupting supply chains throughout the globe.
Optimistic as I may try to be, I cannot but agree with EU’s revised forecast. Which brings me to my final point addressed mostly to those who consider Coronavirus to be just another type of flu: When the world economy is affected that much by this virus, those of us who are still healthy, no matter how many cases we have in our area, have no right to act as if we are doing business as usual. For our recklessness, may mean the death of our more vulnerable co-citizens, that happened to be in our proximity. It is high time we all recognized that our lives are interlinked with what is going on in the world and be (psychologically most of all) prepared to change our routines.