The Two E’s – Epidemic and Economy

Considering the latest pandemic occurrence on the globe, it is important to understand how health and economy are related to each other in a way that they run shoulder-to-shoulder always.

In very abnormal circumstances, the buildout of disease is ceremonially named “Epidemic”. And recently is the one case. Literally speaking, the effects of epidemics are more than that of national loss in terms of population, health and death rate. It pertains to how the world economies outbreak with the mushrooming of lethal abnormality. Enunciating about the influences of such vast spread diseases, the economic impacts are not trivial. There is undoubted damage to the world’s fragile economic system.

Considering the impacts, ‘the fear of the pandemic’ rather than the pandemic itself plays a role. This is what very effectively explains the condition of the economy during such epidemic episodes. From an economic perspective, the most important instance of economic breakdown is the SARS episode, where according to an economic report, Singapore and Hongkong slipped into recession in 2003. According to a survey by Asain Development Bank, the cost of SARS in terms of lost GDP in nominal terms was about 0.6% of their 2003 GDP for East and Southeast Asia. India’s GDP declined by almost 12.8% in 1918 during the Spanish Flu episode. Liberia, for example, witnessed an 8% GDP breakdown during the Ebola breakout in 2013-2014. To speak of the very late Corona epidemic episode, the Indian Stock Market is at the lowest rate of growth, since the past 36 months. Also, the USA stock market is at a 10% downward freeze. The fear of epidemic changes the economic plans and investment patterns of the global economy. 

Such is the dark consequences of epidemic spread. Not only nationally, but also internationally the economy suffers from the loss of an uncountable number of human and economic resources. Although the distribution of the consequences stands unfair as some industries viz, pharmaceutical companies producing drugs, antidotes, antibiotics, and vaccines for the cure of particular fatal diseases potentially benefit from the widespread. However, the insurance companies, providing health and life insurance, have to bear huge unrecoverable costs, at least for the short term. Vulnerable populations, such as BPL people, have less access to health services and potentially suffer more than an average middle-class and affluent human being. 

Metaphorically, the cliffs are not as low as they seem. They are rather difficult to climb and gain victory over. The consequences are severe than fantastically imagined in a normal human mind. Assisting the economic condition, the mental breakdown of most of the population stands as an important consequence of loss of Global confidence. Affixed to the first position is the fear and panic spread out by the epidemic, rather it’s very named, in its true sense. 

Image Source – The Economic Times