COVID – Economy – Business - Part 1: The Fundamentals

COVID and/ or Corona is all around us. All of us are discussing this. Many times with fear – how we will protect ourselves and our near and dear ones from this. But many times it is also about what the future foretells?

How is this going to change us when it all ends? How will society change? What will be the economic impact? What will be the effect on various industry segments, how we work, how we travel, how we get entertained, how we connect?

These questions are being increasingly deliberated, but it will take a while to come to some answers. And for most we will not have an answer, we will discover through the journey.

But first the basics. What is Corona, what is COVID-19 (and all such terms), where it came from and how, and where is it headed?

Corona – where did the name from?

If we will look at the definition of Corona, it essentially means a crown (we are familiar with the coronation, when someone becomes a king or queen and the crown is put on the person’s head).

Corona – something suggesting a crown, such as

a usually colored circle often seen around and close to a luminous body (such as the sun or moon) caused by diffraction produced by suspended droplets or occasionally particles of dust
the tenuous outermost part of the atmosphere of a star (such as the sun)
a circle of light made by the apparent convergence of the streamers of the aurora borealis

Coronation – the act or occasion of crowning

Ref: https ://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

If you look at the photograph above which is a typical crown, it has this pointed, you know pointed structures which are ball-shaped at the top. And Coronavirus (left top) is it looks under the microscope, the similarity can’t be missed.

And the other definition of Corona is on the bottom left – it is the outer edge of something glowing, like a star. And here too, the similarity of the virus is un-missable.

31^st December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in Wuhan City reported a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown causes, with a common link to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a wholesale fish and live animal market. The market was closed down on 1^st January 2020.

9^th January 2020, the China CDC reported that a novel coronavirus (later named SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19) has been detected.

10^th January 2020, the first novel coronavirus genome sequence was made publicly available.

20^th January 2020, there were reports of confirmed cases from three countries outside China.

23rd January 2020, Wuhan City was locked down.

30^th January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared this first outbreak of novel coronavirus a ‘public health emergency of international concern’.

11^th March 2020, the Director General of the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic

India began thermal screening of passengers arriving from China on 21 January.

The first case of the in India was reported on 30 January 2020, originating from China.

Notes:

SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

CoV-2: Coronavirus 2
COVID: Coronavirus Disease

Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/novel-coronavirus/event-background-2019

COVID – The sequence of the Events

The sequence has been controversial, with many questioning it in multiple dimensions. The source, Wuhan becomes all the more contentious because of Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is at Biosafety Level 4, the highest level. There are speculations from many credible sources that the virus may have originated from the lab. However, we sure need to wait on this.

COVID – India’s response

Another key area to focus on is the strategies that had been adopted by various countries to control the spread. India created the first task force on COVID-19 on 7^th of January, it circulated the preliminary guidelines to all the state governments on 18^th January. India gave notice for thermal screening and various airports and 21^st January for China returned individuals. India had been the pioneer in many ways – in terms of restricting foreign travels and probably the most stringent lockdown.

Pandemics – a long history

Incidentally, around 18 years back we had a similar attack from another virus of the same family – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). However, the impact of that was significantly lower than the present. (The scientific name of the virus is CoV-2, Coronavirus 2. However, in general, it is known as COVID-19, Coronavirus 2019).

The crisis was declared a pandemic on 30^th January 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is a critical development, and probably this is the point where we should get a little into the various terms – epidemic, pandemic, etc.

Epidemic: A disease that affects a large number of people within a community, population, or region.

Pandemic: An epidemic that’s spread over multiple countries or continents.

Epidemic vs. Pandemic: An epidemic in multiple countries

Endemic: Something that belongs to a particular people or country.

Outbreak: A greater-than-anticipated increase in the number of endemic cases.

The declaration of COVID as a Pandemic is critical to the fight, as this aligns the world with a common goal, common plan, and in many ways common resources. It also helps countries to make decisions which in normal times can well be contested – like travel restrictions.

Pandemics – dooms over the centuries

But while we today are extremely perturbed with COVID, the pandemic has a long history. And some of them had been much more devastating, at least in terms of deaths than COVID had been so far.

Name	Time period	Type / Pre-human host	Death toll
Antonine Plague	165-180	Believed to be either smallpox or measles	5M
Japanese smallpox epidemic	735-737	Variola major virus	1M
Plague of Justinian	541-542	Yersinia pestis bacteria / Rats, fleas	30-50M
Black Death	1347-1351	Yersinia pestis bacteria / Rats, fleas	200M
New World Smallpox Outbreak	1520 – onwards	Variola major virus	56M
Great Plague of London	1665	Yersinia pestis bacteria / Rats, fleas	1,00,000
Italian plague	1629-1631	Yersinia pestis bacteria / Rats, fleas	1M
Cholera Pandemics 1-6	1817-1923	V. cholera bacteria	1M+
Third Plague	1885	Yersinia pestis bacteria / Rats, fleas	12M (China and India)
Yellow Fever	The late 1800s	Virus / Mosquitoes	100,000-150,000 (U.S.)
Russian Flu	1889-1890	Believed to be H2N2 (avian origin)	1M
Spanish Flu	1918-1919	H1N1 virus / Pigs	40-50M
Asian Flu	1957-1958	H2N2 virus	1.1M
Hong Kong Flu	1968-1970	H3N2 virus	1M
HIV/AIDS	1981-present	Virus / Chimpanzees	25-35M
Swine Flu	2009-2010	H1N1 virus / Pigs	2,00,000
SARS	2002-2003	Coronavirus / Bats, Civets	770
Ebola	2014-2016	Ebolavirus / Wild animals	11,000
MERS	2015-Present	Coronavirus / Bats, camels	850
COVID-19	2019-Present	Coronavirus – Unknown (possibly pangolins)	160,717 (12AM IST 10th April 2020)

The Spanish Flu which happened approximately a hundred years back lost 40 to 50 million people. And estimates show around 500 million got affected, about one-third of the population at that time.

Historically, pandemics have happened because of bacteria or viruses. And in all the cases, there had been a pre-human host, from whom it had jumped to the humans. And here we need to pause and look at a few things, especially in the coronavirus.

COVID – how does it affects us?

A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. And it needs a host, the living organization which activates the virus, helps it to reproduce and transmitted. When infected, the host cell is forced to rapidly-produce thousands of identical copies of the original virus.

There are millions of viruses (though only 5,000 types have been studied in detail), and they are all around us. Many of them are carried by other animals, and even by us but with no symptoms. But once in a while, one virus will mutate in an animal host (the pre-human host), and “jump” to humans. The coronavirus is one such, and it is deadly too (especially since it affects the pulmonary system).

As of today, there is no clarity on the pre-human host of COVID. The image above, which shows Pangolin as the pre-human host is speculative. The same is the theory that it has jumped to humans when someone consumed animal meant purchased at the Wuhan market. There is even a theory now made public by Luc Montagnier, who won Nobel Prize for discovering AIDS virus, claimed that it may be a misadventure at the Wuhan Lab while trying to develop a vaccine for AIDS. However, what is the truth? We need to wait to know about it.

As we saw before, any virus, which mutates and finds a host in humans may not be having manifestations, and even ones that affect us may not be deadly (as with common cold). However, for the virus which affects us, the impact is seen in two dimensions – how badly it affects us, and how quickly it spreads.

COVID – how does it spread?

The contagious nature of the virus is defined by the metric R0 or R naught. This is how many people, on average, will be infected by one infected person.

The R0 for COVID is 2.5, whereas that for measles is 16. So clearly measles is much more contagious, but COVID is much more deadly – with a significantly higher percentage of patients who need intensive care, as well as face fatalities.

Add to this the fact that there is no known cure and no vaccine. So if unchecked, this will progress geometrically – with possible doubling every few days if unchecked. Add to this the fact that 86 percent of the infected people are asymptomatic, that is no symptoms at all. So there is the possibility of infected people, who don’t know that they are carriers, may unknowingly transmit the virus.

COVID – how does it transmit?

The transmissions typically happen by personal contacts, through touch or when an infected person sneezes in proximity (and globule carrying the virus reaches the potential victims).

The graph above is the global trend on 19^th April 2020 – 10 PM IST. It is geometric in progression.

So how we ensure that people avoid social contacts, and flatten the curve (so that there are not too many infected people, who will put tremendous stress on the entire system, especially the healthcare.

Given that humans by nature are social, the methods followed by most of the governments are lockdown – where people are being forced to maintain distance over some time, with expectations that it will become am habit in the times to come.

COVID – what lies ahead?

So here we are – there is the deadly virus called Corona which has spread globally with no signs of slowing down. It has no treatment, and no vaccine (which is understandable given it is NOVEL or new) However it is deadly, highly contagious, and affects the pulmonary system – which is one of the most vulnerable, as well painful experiences if affected.

Add to this the dispute on the origin of the virus, the supposed non-cooperation of China, and the confused handling of the situation across many countries.

We are now in the middle of the ravages which the virus is inflicting. As it slows down (hopefully shortly), we need to look at other areas – society, economy, industry and other facets. We will revisit the same in the coming days – as a continuation of these discussions.

Postscript

Well, it will not be out of place to have a small note on HxNx, a term made familiar by H1N1 – the terms associated with Swine Flu (swine influenza) and bird flu (avian influenza).

What does H & N mean? They stand for Hemagglutinin and Neuraminidase respectively – proteins on influenza (also called flu) surface which helps invade the host’s cells.

There are 16 varieties of H and 9 of N, and the combinations of them make 144 varieties of influenzas – from H1N1 to H16N9.

All of them are around – but vary in severity, categorized as A-B-C. The Cs and Bs are the ones we can live with, but the category As – like the H1N1 is deadly.

References:

Global Data

https ://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https ://www.bing.com/covid

India Data

https://www.mygov.in/covid-19

Apps

https://www.mygov.in/aarogya-setu-app /

Background

https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready

https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_how_we_must_respond_to_the_coronavirus_pandemic