I am deeply distraught reading about the mounting deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic across the world.
Shockingly, the global death toll has touched 102,734. The positive COVID-19 cases will cross 1.7 million in the next couple of hours.
There is no cure to the coronavirus. It is contagious and is spreading rapidly.
Global lockdown is the only preventive measure that can be adopted and must be adhered too until a vaccine is found to treat the virus.
Most cases were are investigating and subsequently reading about are symptomatic cases. It is the asymptomatic cases that need to be assessed by nations on a war-footing. The silent carriers will end up being the sinking sand that many nations would walk into in the days ahead.
Right now the world is focused on the health impact of the virus. It will be unprecedented and uncontrollable until there is a cure.
While we battle with a health crisis, we need to brace ourselves for the economic crisis that will follow undoubtedly.
The coronavirus pandemic will turn global economic growth ‘sharply negative’ this year, Kristalina Georgieva, Head, International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.
“I stress there is tremendous uncertainty about the outlook. It could get worse depending on many variable factors, including the duration of the pandemic,” she further added.
The global economy is already heading towards a tailspin. It will recover over several months but during the period of the economic slump, people in the world will be staring at job loses, business loses and unforeseen hardships. Personal savings will dry up and so will the coffers of the government in time.
International Labour Organisation (A United Nations Agency) stated that the pandemic posed “the most severe crisis” since World War – II.
It said the outbreak was expected to wipe out 6.7 per cent of working hours across the world during the second quarter of 2020 – the equivalent of 195 million full-time workers losing their jobs.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also warned nations that the global economy would take years to recover.
The most scary aspect of the coronavirus pandemic both from the health crisis and economic crisis perspective is that no global health expert can predict when the impact of the coronavirus will see a southward trend until there is a vaccination cure or a remedial cure; and neither can any global economy expert predict when will the economy show signs of a northward trend until the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control.
We live in a time of an unprecedented global crisis with many facets, each facet bringing its own devastating impact on economy and human living.
This could have been avoided.
Lives could have been saved; Economies could have been protected; if the watchdog of health crisis in the world under United Nations did its job with integrity and commitment.
The World Health Organisation under the leadership of its Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus failed in its core responsibility to detect a health crisis and contain the spread of this contagious virus globally.
It instead chose to side with China – the nation from which the coronavirus originates and was the first epicentre of the virus.
It is from Wuhan, China that the China Virus has spread globally to reportedly 180 countries.
We can go pontificating on different theories of the blame game.
The political leaders can continue to play their own political games.
Nothing will ever change the truth.
The truth is that this is a virus that has come out of a lab.
The truth is that China had knowledge about its human-to-human transmission as early as November 2019.
The truth is that Dr Tedros relied on the report of the Chinese Health Authorities in his statement on January 14, 2020, ‘No clear evidence of human-to-human transmission’.
We had exposed Dr Tedros’s dereliction of duty in our article: https://goachronicle.com/open-letter-to-dr-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-are-you-chinas-puppet-in-w-h-o/
The truth is that China has withdrawn the lockdown in Wuhan and city is back to normal business while the rest of the world is under lockdown.
But the most horrific truth is people are dying. They will continue to die. We have crossed 100,000 deaths but the count will not cease, it will only keep on increasing.
We will witness the worst death toll that world would not have seen even in the worst war-like situation.
We can only pray that the power of good conquers the aura of evil around us.
It is my earnest appeal to the leaders of the global nations and the people all around the world that we must raise our voices demanding for the arrest of Dr Tedros.
If Dr Tedros could have warned the world two weeks prior to spread about coronavirus human-to-human transmission, global nations would have been prepared with contingency plans.
The world reacted to preventive after the virus started to spread globally by then, we all know, it was too late.
All I can think of is the sorrow of the families of the over one lakh dead people around the world. They died for nothing, taking their aspirations with them.
Stay Safe. Stay Home!
The failure of WHO under it’s current leadership may not be a mere lapse. It may be a part of the conspiracy that has been hatched by China for its designs of aggrandizement. A demand for resignation and punitive action is perfectly alright.