A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan “all” and δῆμος demos “people”) is a disease epidemic that has spread across multiple region or even worldwide. Curiously, It seems like every century, the globe faces a unprecedent pandemic: The 1720 Plague, 1820 Cholera, 1920 Spanish Flu & 2020 Covid-19…
History’s books are always brutal about these events, but the 2020 Covid-19 is one-of-a-kind because it also match another event deeply loved by history books: Financial Crisis.
The Covid-19 is a Coronavirus “officialy” originated from Wuhan, China. “Officialy” because China reject this responsibility and lets float some conspiracy theories accusing the US through social media. But Wuhan is a notorious epicenter for zoonotic viruses, this is why one of the world’s 50 P4 lab (biosafety level maximum P4) is in Wuhan thanks to a deeply rooted partnership (Wuhan is the main French investment destination) between China and France after the Coronavirus SARS 2002 outbreak.
So even if precaution were taken with the P4 and even if Bill Gates warned us 5 years ago about our lack of preparation for pandemic, Covid-19 happened. Even if exactly on March 2, 2019, four Chinese scientists, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote in the international journal Viruses: “It is generally accepted that the coronaviruses carried by the bats will re-emerge and cause the next epidemic outbreak.”, Covid-19 happened. Even if a novel “The eyes of darkness”, by Dean Koontz in 1981 evokes in this book a mysterious virus named “Wuhan-400” for 2020. Even if a CIA prospective report was very acurate on pandemic possibilities coming from China in 2020… Covid-19 happened.
Because we cannot change the past we must now focus on the future, and on the short-term future it is not very hopeful. Covid-19 fear paralyzed the entire economy in every countries on the planet step-by-step with quarantine, lockdown and social distancing. According to experts this coronavirus driven financial crisis is probably the worst of all time… The FED is establishing forecast of +30% job losses. Carlos Nordt and colleagues at the University of Zurich, assessed the link in rates of unemployment and suicide. They attribute yearly 1/5 suicides worldwide to unemployment, with 5,000 deaths caused by the 2008 economic crisis. So economic crash are not only matter of numbers and price dive down among investors on stock markets but its more importantly real peoples lives…
But on the long-term we can hope that this event woke consciousness about a large range of dilemma like :
Health safety – Bill Gates was right we are not ready, but now everyone understoods it, so a better measures implementation can begin. Not only in term of infrastructure but also to take more seriously the health conditions of our populations because if like Emmanuel Macron, French President said “We are at War”, nations would like to have the most healthy populations to avoid massive deaths..
Global warming – The big stop from the coronavirus reduces dramastically the worldwide pollution, with less logistics and less transports the earth were able to take a deep breath of fresh air, in China some experts are even saying that the outbreak saves more life than it killed victims
National crowd psychology – We witnesses on a global scale the psychology of many nations in handling this crisis and the specific impact on each nations. From discipline to altruism, we were able to see how an invisible force as the virus influences invisible psychological caracteristics and so on, crowd behaviors.
Digital economy – During this crisis, one sector benefits, and its the e-commerce galaxy “the stay-at-home index” with all the social media, multi-sided platforms from food delivery to streaming and online classroom. The world switched massively to an offline life to a fully online life during the outbreak. This booster benefits many companies and also educated many person to a stronger reliance on digital tools.