By: Hidayat Nasar
The unrestrained outspread of COVID-19 is proving cataclysmic. The reason behind this is that the preliminary cautions that were requisite to be taken out were doomed. Despite the nimble spread of the virus the world, especially the peripheral states have failed awfully. It was Paramount that every country should have gone for a complete lockdown. In the case of Pakistan the Prime minister Imran khan relied upon the argument, that in case of going for a complete lockdown, Economic crises will erupt in an already Economically depressed country. This argument of prime minister is nothing more than a junk. In this menacing situation, it was more appropriate for the world to act like North Korea and follow the follow footsteps pf North Korea to keep their people safe from the victimization of this virus. The world should be aware that it is the silence before the storm. The current scenario of the world truly illustrates the filthy face of capitalism. If you are staying home, you will ultimately die of unemployment and poverty. If you are going for work your life is at risk because of corona virus.
The outrage of the crowd diseases either bubonic plagues, the influenza, or the contemporary coronavirus is fundamentally tied to the availability of large concentrations of people and the movement of a significant percentage of those people at commodities between these concentrations of people. For instance, if we look back at the ancient Roman plagues, we often hear that the Roman empire had an excellent road network but that same road network that provided tremendous amount of benefits in terms of trade, communications and military power was also the mechanism for the spread of devastating diseases, from one part of the empire to another. In the similar manner, when we look at the recent pandemic, i.e. coronavirus, in a far more globalized world, we again see that these pandemics may take years to disappear rather than months and they can have potentially catastrophic affects on a Global scale. The basic weakness that our civilization and economy suffer from is that, the more interdependent they are, the more vulnerable they are to these pandemics. But at the same time, the interdependence of these economies makes leaders reluctant. When the first evidence of a pandemic emerges, to take decisions will off course hurt the economy very badly but might actually halt the pandemic or at least mitigate it enough in the early stages. We see this again happening in the current scenario, COVID-19 outbreak as well, where a large number of countries including USA and China, initially tried to dark play the outbreak out of fear of the Economic consequences and the result is that things have gone worse from bad since the outbreak.
Secondly, the cost of the measures required to halt the pandemic is disproportionately bound by those members of society that have the least ability to coup with it. This is a Global phenomena. This pandemic is likely to enhance elite capture of decision making, elite capture over resources and it is likely to justify increasingly, intrusive and repressive measures that can than also be used after the pandemic passes, in order to retain a much higher amount of authoritarian control. For instance, the different sections of Administration imposing very harsh local quarantine measures on basically poor neighborhoods but the same measures are not implemented where wealthy and powerful people resides.
The writer is a student at Quaid e Azam University, Islamabad. He can be reached at [email protected]