Covid - 19: The Economy Catches A Cold

The coronavirus outbreak shows how interconnected we all are. Panicked citizens. City-wide quarantines. Countries sealing off borders. Supermarket shelves emptied of produce. Scientists and doctors frantically looking for a cure.Sound familiar? These scenes played out in 2003, when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus swept through southern China before spreading across the world. Back then, the world was a very different place.Social media had not yet been developed, and the Internet was in its infancy. China was still manufacturing cheap, disposable goods. The epidemiology of SARS was poorly understood, hitting a world that was unaware of how far and fast a new virus could spread, and that was unprepared for such a threat.

- Ong Xiang Hong

This new epidemic, dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO), bears many similarities to the SARS epidemic 17 years ago. The virus emerged in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, spreading across China during the Chinese New Year travel season. In response, the World Health Organization recently declared a “public-health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) – a designation that it has used for outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, and H1N1 influenza outbreak.

Each new crisis sees scientists, doctors, and politicians alike racing to characterise and contain the new threat. But the COVID-19 coronavirus has emerged in a world rampant with other threats – fake news, misinformation, isolationism, xenophobia. These have caused a phenomenon unheard of in the annals of public health crises: people seem to be more scared of COVID-19 news than COVID-19 itself.

Compounded with the speed at which social media spreads news, ordinary citizens across Asia are reacting to COVID-19 with dread and anxiety. Some of this anxiety is justified: COVID-19 presents a novel situation where no effective cure or vaccine has yet been found for the virus. But leaders around the world have called for calm and a measured response to the situation.

The numbers alone make for some alarming reading: SARS infected over 8,000 people, with 774 official deaths, while COVID-19 has infected more than 45,000 people and killed over 1,000 so far.

But there is reason to distinguish COVID-19 from the SARS scare. Improved detection and analysis techniques mean that more COVID-19 cases are being counted than SARS. Many SARS cases were likely never recorded because tests were slow to arrive and affected people were reluctant to seek treatment.