Coronavirus and the Economy
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
In 2003 when SARS struck, China accounted for approximately 8% of world commerce according to KCET's France24, but with COVID-19 China's share of world commerce is 19%. This is disrupted by viral attacks. This is a powerful blow to the world's economy and could be the beginning of a worldwide recession. There are 75,000 cases in Asian countries, most in China, but numbers are increasing in Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, and South Korea. North Korea, of course, is a closed state from which no data is coming. The first reported deaths have occurred in England, Australia, and France with at least one death but probably three reported in the USA. The USA is sending large numbers of surgical masks to China where health workers exposed to the virus as front line responders are increasingly being sickened and dying.
The long bull cycle which has blessed the world's industrial economies is long in the tooth and likely to peter out, the poor non-industrial countries will, of course, continue to participate in mass relocation efforts in the wake of climate change abetted drought and starvation. The increase of attempts to divorce currencies from international influences (gold standard, etc.) is already occurring with internet currencies and credit currencies causing problems in sophisticated countries. Drug cartel and human trafficking economies now exist and will further delay a return to the upside for the worlds' traditional economy.
The trillions of euros and dollars that are needed to slow global warming, reverse climate change and slow drought, species loss, desertification will be hard to come by as countries wrestle with viral illnesses like Flu, COVID-19, Ebola, in the absence of reasonably functioning world government. The USA no longer is a leader in world discourse and in many ways is exemplifying the me-first philosophy which is so inimical to the blue planet's future.
