Corona Virus And The Economy: The World’s Inconsiderate Twin Set -By Oniororo Oladele Orepo

On the 30th of December 2019, a Medical doctor CNN refers to as ‘hero doctor’ in a report, Li Wenliang, raised an alarm about a new ravaging outbreak similar to SARS to his colleagues on an online App, WeChat.

He warned them to beware of the looming danger. His alarm went viral and the police caught whims of it, but instead of the law enforcement agents to carry out an investigation on the claims of the doctor, he was reprimanded, coerced to falsify his claims and ridiculed.

This Doctor, about two weeks later was reported to have died from the same virus, Corona Virus. This sparked the rage of the public; with enough cynism built by the public’s suspicion and shady attempts of the government to cover up the case, they asked that the government probe into the case revolving around the Virus and the doctor’s death. They also demanded that the Wuhan government apologize for the death of Li Wenliang.

A consoling, mild and most seemingly acceptable argument for the prior mitigation and stealthy attitude the government of China used in approaching the COVD-19 outbreak in Wuhan should be nothing less than saving the face of its economy, after it just started battling to get back in shape since the SARS outbreak. We can say that the government of China silently handled the outbreak so that the economical activities wouldn’t be truncated, frustrated or the economic environment would not go losing its stand again.

Otherwise, anything other than this economy-saving argument would lead us into believing in two or more conspiracies about the novel virus; that the government of China knew about its engineering or that they were going to profiteer from it, so they made it spread to attain yet another level of economic level. And these conspiracies, if later found out to be true would mean a lot of grievous consequences to China, as a lot lives are being lost daily.

Over 3,330,772 cases of the infection has been confirmed, 1,053,250 recovered and 234,768 deaths have been recorded, according to the statistics compiled by worldometer’s statistics(see worlometer.info), as at May 1st 2020.

Most developed countries have lead the world in easing their various lockdowns, with this new measure often preceded by the news that the peak of the infection had passed. Now, Denmark has reopened and has been applying stricter measures in controlling the spread, while other European countries like Germany, Switzerland, Albania and Greece are planning their reopening.

However, this doesn’t mean that the air is clear of threats of the infection not spreading further. The virus is yet to have a drug which has constantly proven to work 100%, virologists too, are yet to come up with a vaccine which would give the world the confidence that COVID-19 has been conquered.

The fear of lifting the lockdown is as a result of the cases relapsing and also the possibility of having a second wave of the virus, which is solidified by a similar outbreak in history, the Spanish Flu. The Spanish Flu which lasted for almost thirty six months, happened to have four waves that resulted into the world losing around 17 million to 50 million lives. This is a mistake the world shouldn’t due to haste, make again in yet another time, as patterns of such pneumatic virus can be studied through history.

However, on the other side of this dilemma is the economical rationale for reopening the lockdown immediately after passing the peak of the infection. If countries can ease their lockdowns, economic activities would come back to play and the teeming population of people out of jobs would be able to secure new jobs for themselves, and they would start to would pay taxes to generate revenue for the government again, but right now, the narrative is different, as the social policies to aid those out of jobs may lose its structure, as it is going down.

Most developed countries now are only running costs of keeping the social policies running, by funding stimulus packages to help businesses and individuals, through aids such as the distribution of palliatives and allowances in order to help the people on lock down, because a greater percentage now are unemployed.

These times needs all hands on deck that we may not lose lives to a bad economy or to the ravaging pandemic.

Oniororo Oladele Orepo is a final year student of philosophy, studying at Olabisi Onabanjo Unisersity, Ago-Iwoye Ijebu, Ogun State. He is a passionate Human rights activist through policy policy agitation. A Pan-Africanist in deed.

Contact: obaorepo@gmail.com