COVID-19 A Socio Economic Crisis

The outbreak of the new corona virus infection, COVID-19 was initiated from the Hunan
seafood market in Wuhan city of China in December 2019, and within a couple of months it has
turned out to be a global health emergency.

More than 200 countries/regions have reported confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The emergence of COVID-19 in China at the end of 2019 has caused a large global outbreak and
is a major public health issue. This virus is highly infectious and can be transmitted through
droplets and close contact. The human to the human spreading of the virus occurs due to close
contact with an infected person exposed to coughing, sneezing, respiratory droplets or
aerosols.

Prevalence of infectious diseases has increased globally as humans have spread across the
world. Outbreaks have been occurring frequently, but every outbreak does not reach a global
pandemic level as the Novel Corona virus (COVID-19) has. Pandemics are large-scale outbreaks
of infectious disease with high burden of morbidity and mortality over a wide geographic area
and cause significant economic, social, and political disruption. Globalization, with increased
 COVID-19 A Socio Economic Crisis

global integration and travel, urbanization, and greater exploitation of the natural environment,
has led to pandemics spreading quickly, with COVID-19 being deadliest of all witnessed in our
lifetimes thus far.

Loss of lives due to any

pandemic causes definite
irretrievable damage to the
society. But apart from this,
COVID-19 has severely
demobilized the global
economy. In order to restrict
further transmission of the
disease in the community,
many of the affected countries
have decided to undergo
complete lock down. Major
international flights and also all
types of business transports
have been deferred amid
different countries. Due to In almost all the COVID-19 stricken countries, entire
lockdown all domestic flights, educational, commercial, sports and spiritual institutions are
railway service (except goods closed. Industries are suffering a lot as many of these
trains), bus, truck, and vehicles excepting those related to essential amenities, are closed for
transports are suspended with a long time in many countries.
special exemption to those
associated with essential
commodities.

People belonging to the tourism and transportation industry are also facing utmost difficulties.
Production level has gone very low. Economy of many so called powerful countries are now
facing the threat of high inflation and increasing unemployment as a result of lack of
productivity and excessive expenditure for the treatment and rehabilitation of the COVID-19
victims and their families.
 COVID-19 A Socio Economic Crisis

Lockdown has directly affected the GDP of each country in the major economics. For each
month there has been an approximate loss of 2% points in annual GDP growth. The tourism
sector alone faces an output decrease as high as 50% to 70%.

According to World Trade Organization (WTO)

and Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) have indicated COVID-19
pandemic as the largest threat to global economy
since the financial emergency of 2008–2009.
Some of the experts are even saying that human
civilization has not faced such an unprecedented
emergency after the World War-II. So, COVID-19
has undoubtedly put forth a remarkably bad
effect on the day to day life of the entire human
society and also on the world economy.

COVID-19 Pandemic has stretched healthcare infrastructure of even the most developed
countries, and is expected to cause economic recession unparalleled in the recent history

The COVID-19 pandemic is straining health systems

worldwide. The rapidly increasing demand on health
facilities and health care workers threatens to leave
some health systems overstretched and unable to
operate effectively.

The economics of collapse are fairly straight forward.

Businesses exist to make a profit. If they can’t
produce, they can’t sell things. This means they won’t
make profits, which means they are less able to
employ you. Businesses can and do (over short time
periods) hold on to workers that they don’t need So, more people lose their jobs or fear
immediately: they want to be able to meet demand losing their jobs. So they buy less. And
when the economy picks back up again. But, if things the whole cycle starts again, and we
start to look really bad, then they won’t. spiral into an economic depression.
 COVID-19 A Socio Economic Crisis

AS the economic experts quote - the correct

Covid-19 response isn’t a wartime economy
– with massive upscaling of production.
Rather, we need an “anti-wartime”
economy and a massive scaling back of
production. And if we want to be more
resilient to pandemics in the future (and to
avoid the worst of climate change) we need
a system capable of scaling back production
in a way that doesn't mean loss of
livelihood.

So what we need is a different economic mindset.

We tend to think of the economy as the way we
buy and sell things, mainly consumer goods. But
this is not what an economy is or needs to be. At its
core, the economy is the way we take our
resources and turn them into the things we need to
live. Looked at this way, we can start to see more
opportunities for living differently that allow us to
produce less stuff without increasing misery.

With all businesses and industries

throughout the globe in massive
chaos, there has been grave economic
impact of corona virus across the
sectors from tourism to airline; from
entertainment to education; from
cruises to cars; from food to fashion
and so on. Marketers across industries
are trying to redesign their business
models to cope up with need of hour.
 COVID-19 A Socio Economic Crisis

This crisis has resulted in a paradigm shift in consumer behavior. From being reluctant to using
masks and sanitizers to buying them at any cost; from loving to shop in-store to going digital;
from enjoying classroom learnings to attending online sessions; from doing physical meetings to
making decisions through videoconferencing and from attending glamorous fashion events to
viewing live streaming at digital platforms. This change in behavior may become the 'way of life'
and 'new normal' for consumers.
 COVID-19 A Socio Economic Crisis

It's known from the history, each crisis leaves a long term impact and deadly corona virus is no
exception to the rule. The outbreak of Covid-19 may move luxury consumers to assess things
from a different outlook.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the world at a scale and speed that we have only seen so far in
doomsday movies. Truth, as we are seeing it today, is way more frightening than fiction. The
human cost of the corona virus is going to be unimaginably high. Worse, it’s going to end up
having a long tail too.

The effect of the virus is likely to be seen long after medical science offers a cure or at least a
vaccine for Covid-19 (the disease caused by the new corona virus). That’s because the economic
cost of shutting down large swathes of the world is going to be steep.

--End --