The Need for Saving Livelihoods for Saving Lives

It is with good reason that the study of the economy is observed to be exceptionally multidisciplinary. Economies have always been closely linked to and affected by the happenings in the political, geopolitical and sociological battlefields of nations. Quite surprisingly, what has had equally, if not more, lasting and devastating impact on economies is the incidence of epidemics or worse still, pandemics. A pandemic is a widespread outbreak of an infectious disease that can cause immense morbidity and mortality over multiple countries and continents, potentially causing significant eco­no­mic, social, and political damage.

The world has witnessed many such lethal outbreaks. The closest parallel to COVID-19 is the 1918 influenza pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu. About one-third of the world’s population was affected by respiratory tract infection. Twenty million is a conservative estimate of the death toll. Scarcity of labour, spiralling costs of production, stress on public resources and overdependence on social security systems were few of the dire economic consequences of the pandemic. The “hysteresis” effect, that is, long-term consequences have turned out to be more ghastly. According to the ­National Centre for Biotechnology Information, due to the current global scenario characterised by increased global travel and urbanisation, the likelihood of such pandemics has increased exponentially over the past century. A precedent to the COVID-19 (SARS-2) outbreak was the SARS-1 that emerged as a major international threat in 2003.