THE FALLACY IN THE CURRENT APPROACH OF DEALING WITH COVID19 – UPDATED

We are in the midst of the unprecedented 21 day lockdown in India with similar lockdowns having been imposed across numerous countries across the world to battle COVID19. The situation is unnerving and open ended insofar as it is likely the lockdown may be extended even beyond the initially stipulated 21 days.

The ‘lockdown’ involves asking all citizens to stay at home for a protracted period which may be anything from two weeks to longer, shutting all offices, commercial establishments, public transport and public places. The economy has grounded to a halt, factories shut, construction sites suspended. Workers have started moving back to their villages. Daily wagers and self-employed such as rickshaw pullers, street vendors and others are struggling to make ends meet with nil income.

The Prime Minister of India went on record to acknowledge that this lockdown will come at a major economic cost to the country. Government of India has been pro-active in announcing packages to provide money, food and cooking gas to the poor. RBI has announced moratoriums from payment of loan instalments, reduction in interest rate and reduction in cash reserve ratio (CRR) to introduce more liquidity in the economy and help banks, businesses and individual borrowers tide over this lockdown period where the revenues have been reduced to NIL.

Cases globally have exceeded 5,00,000 with USA now leading the pack with 100,000 cases. The number of fatalities that the disease has seen over the last 3+ months has exceeded 20,000 approximately. So everyone is busy prophesizing doom and how this will multiply to a very large number of cases with explosive intensity. The whole situation is not only unprecedented for the nature of the disease and its onset but more so for the effect it is having on the people of the world in terms of the morale and livelihood of the populace.

According to me we have lost focus in the swamp of the social media forwards, internet theories and herd mentality action of the Governments. What is being done, to deal with the disease is worse than the disease itself. We are literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Or in other words, we are literally looking to kill the body to prevent it from catching a disease.

The contrarian perspective provided here has been sounded by different quarters of experts and commentators in bits and parts.

Before we discuss in detail how the approach of the Governments in dealing with this crisis is worse than the crisis itself, let us list down some facts which have become clear and undisputed in the previous few weeks but are lost in the avalanche of fear mongering messages and propaganda –

1. COVID19 of itself is not a fatal disease. In fact, it is no different than any other flu in terms of its effect on the patients. The fatality rate is very low – less than 3% as per the reported cases, and even lower if you go with the commonly held belief that the actual number of cases are highly under-reported. The fatality rate is certainly lower than most pandemics and epidemics to have hit humanity in the past. More so, the fatality is seen only in cases where there is a pre-existing medical condition such a heart disease, blood pressure, diabetes, lung illness or cancer. As such demographically the fatalities are higher in case of aged population 60+ with less than 1% of the reported deaths being of younger age group.
2. COVID19 is not the only present day disease to affect a large population and cause large number of deaths. In fact diseases such as dengue and tuberculosis cause way more deaths every year in India. In case of dengue, there still doesn’t exist any cure or vaccine and the disease occurs every year with transmission through mosquitoes which wreak havoc freely without any ‘social distancing’ norms. However this has not caused the Government to impose a lock-down in India every summer to prevent people from being bitten by mosquitoes to avoid dengue.
3. COVID19 will recur. Even if we manage to stave off the spread of the virus over the next few months, the virus will mutate and occur every year just like H1N1 and other viruses. It is here to stay and won’t be eliminated for good. A vaccine however will be developed sooner or later.
4. Large percentage of population will get it sooner or later. It is now evident that most people will get infected sooner or later. Most persons may not even realize they have it as it will only show mild symptoms and they will get fine just like any other flu, without there being any need to be hospitalized. Their bodies will develop anti-bodies to the disease and they will get fine, ceasing to be infectious.
5. There is a very specific segment of the population which is at risk. The segment of persons at risk of being debilitated or dying from COVID19 have now been clearly identified as those who are aged or those with pre-existing medical conditions.
6. The Diamond Princess case is crucial to understand. In a petri dish like environment of a cruise ship with 3700 persons, the virus actually infected only 712 persons i.e. less than 20%. Of these half were asymptomatic and less than 1% of the affected cases died. In fact less than 0.2% of the exposed population, i.e. the ships occupants died. To put it another way, 99.8% of the ship’s population came out unaffected or recovered.

What is being done by Governments to tackle this crisis, is to impose a lock-down – forcing all citizens to stay at home. Closing borders, shutting all shops and establishments other than essential services. Grounding flights and public transportation and suspending construction and other economic activities. Effectively the income of individuals has been suspended during the period of this lock-down by the Government.

Why is this ill-advised?

1. The impact of these steps at a macro level will be to cripple the economies around the world. There will be a tremendous demand compression and a virtual cessation of economic activity and global trade. While it may appear to be surmountable if it was for a definitive timeframe, but to have this situation with an open-ended tenure would carry the risk of bringing on a recession of the scale of the Great Depression. The IMF has already gone on record to say that the global economy is entering a recession. There has been a de-rating of GDP growth of India as well by most global economists and institutions.
2. The global financial markets will take a hit, even worse than what they have taken already. The sentiment will drive them further down, with the prospects of a looming recession. This will in turn financially cripple many institutions, destroy wealth of investors and make everyone recede into a shell insofar as further investments or spending is concerned.
3. At a micro level, many businesses will go bankrupt. Travel, hospitality, retail, aviation, transportation, and the list goes on and on. There will be default in servicing of debt by the companies and the pain will cascade to banks and financial institutions.
4. Millions of individuals will lose their livelihood and even more will see a dip in their income leading to an even further compression in demand and pain for businesses. Retail loans will also see a slew of defaults, again affecting banks and non-banking lenders.
5. There will inevitably be an effect on the mental and physical health of individuals on account of these measures, the fear psychosis and the general atmosphere of gloom and doom. There may be many deaths on this account too.
6. Government tax collections will go down sharply as businesses will be shut, sales will be down and profits converted to losses. This will in turn lead to a reduction in Government spending, contraction of GDP and further pain in the system.
7. The Governments will have to spend tremendous amounts for bail out, aids, and subsidies to provide basic income and food to the affected population leading to huge fiscal deficits and throwing all fiscal discipline out of the window.
8. If the lock-down prevails for a longer period with individuals having no income, there may be riots, theft, and other law and order issues with people revolting against the government imposed bankruptcy.

All this being done to achieve what???

Prevent people from getting the flu? Prevent a small percentage of population from dying at the cost of the entire world? This may sound like a horrible thing to say, but it is not to say that the small population of people at risk should be let go of and neglected. There can certainly be a better way to tackle the same situation as is being considered and advocated by some countries such as South Korea and Israel:

1. Don’t impose lock-downs. Let the economic activities proceed as normal. Make rules of social distancing mandatory in work place and keep large public gatherings restricted.
2. Isolate aged population and persons who are high risk due to re-existing conditions rather than locking down entire nations.
3. Test aggressively and isolate those who are affected and those that have come in contact with affected persons.
4. Get prepared with enough medical facilities including PPEs, masks, gloves and ventilators to handle the swamp of cases which will come in and the new waves that will follow every year.

Even if the virus does spread and a large population contracts the flu and recovers, there will only be a down time for the world work force rather than a total shut down. As most experts have been voicing, most will contract this anyway and ought to do so such that they build immunity.

Even if there are deaths of persons due to the virus, this is now an inevitability. The number may be in the thousands as presently or lacs or millions, no one can predict. Yet it will be a miniscule fraction of the global population. More lives have been lost in the past and every year due to calamities such as earthquakes and tsunamis, terror attacks and diseases such as cancer, dengue and tuberculosis.

What will be saved will the world at large, including the financial and mental health of the population at large. What will be saved will be the global financial institutions and companies. What will be saved will be the livelihood of the poor. What will be saved is deaths of millions from financial ruin, starvation and other illnesses.

It appears that most Countries are going by the herd mentality. Fear psychosis is at its peak.

Even if they are successful in containing the pandemic over the next few weeks, this will be at the cost of ruin of millions. We are literally killing ourselves to prevent us from getting the flu.

With the UK PM, Boris Johnson and the UK Health Minister contracting it, I hope their speedy recovery will convince them that the reaction to the disease is overblown and a mistake.

In conclusion I feel strongly that the lock-downs should not be extended and period of lock-down should be used to improve the medical preparedness for the inevitable number of cases. The economy should be allowed to go back to functioning by mid-April with social distancing norms and isolation of specific segments of the population at risk, affected persons and exposed persons only.

This is imperative for the country and the world.

© Anshuman Khanna 2020

Published on www.anshumankhanna.in