The Global Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic
By [Name]
Course
Professor
Institution Affiliation
Class
Date
Topic: The global impact of the coronavirus pandemic
Article 1
The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020, and a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Countries were urged by the WHO to adopt strict social distancing and quarantine measures to avoid virus spread and to protect public health. Despite fragmented international efforts to contain the range, SARS-CoV2 has spread to 213 countries, resulting in more than 5 million cases and deaths approaching 400,000 since its formal identification in Wuhan China in December 2019. This issue of Cytokine & Growth Factor Reviews is devoted to reviews from around the globe. They describe the rapidly accumulating knowledge about the virus, the immunopathogenic consequences of severe disease, the implications of the cytokine storm, and potential therapeutic interventions that could improve morbidity and mortality until a vaccine can be developed and made available. Below, members of Istituto Pasteur in Rome and the Marie Curie ITN INITIATE (https://initiate-itn.eu) reflect on the lasting global impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
‘How quickly it hit us’ is one of the most common sentiments about the Covid-19 pandemic. We were all caught off guard in one way or another. A mysterious outbreak of pneumonia in an exotic foreign locale – in the next, a viral epidemic jumping from China to the heart of Italy, then to all of Europe, on to America – finally a plague that stopped the world. As the pandemic hit all countries of the globe, it became indisputably clear that everyone was united against a viral scourge.
Despite the shock, there were plenty of warning signs. Since the beginning of the 21st century, recurring outbreaks and epidemics have preceded the first SARS outbreak in 2003, the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, MERS coronavirus in 2011, Ebola in 2014−16; mosquito-borne Zika in 2016. A collage of news magazines (Fig. 1) screamed out warnings of an impending pandemic, but the clichéd phrase ‘it’s not a matter of if, but when’ continued to be ignored.
Topic: The global impact of the coronavirus pandemic
Article 2
While there is no way to tell the economic damage from the global COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic, there is widespread agreement among economists that it will have severe negative impacts on the worldwide economy. Early estimates predicted that should the virus become a global pandemic. Most significant savings will lose at least 2.4 percent of the value of their gross domestic product (GDP) over 2020, leading economists to already reduce their 2020 forecasts of global economic growth down from around 3.0 percent to 2.4 percent. The global GDP was estimated at approximately 86.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019 – meaning that just a 0.4 percent drop in economic growth amounts to almost 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars in lost economic output. However, these predictions were made before COVID-19 becoming a global pandemic, and before the implementation of widespread restrictions on social contact to stop the spread of the virus. Since then, global stock markets have suffered dramatic falls due to the outbreak, and the Dow Jones reported its largest-ever single-day fall of almost 3,000 points on March 16, 2020 – beating its previous record of 2,300 points that was set only four days earlier.
The economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is driven mainly by a fall in demand, meaning that there are not consumers to purchase the goods and services available in the global economy. This dynamic can be seen in profoundly affected industries such as travel and tourism. Many countries placed restrictions on travel to slow the spread of the virus, meaning that many people cannot purchase flights for holidays or business trips. This reduction in consumer demand causes airlines to lose planned revenue, meaning they then need to cut their expenses by reducing the number of flights they operate. Without government assistance, eventually, airlines will also need to reduce lay off staff to cut costs further. The same dynamic applies to other industries. For example, with falling demand for oil and new cars as daily commutes, social events and holidays are no longer possible. As companies start cutting staff to make up for lost revenue, the worry is that this will create a downward economic spiral when these newly unemployed workers can no longer afford unaffected goods and services. To use retail as an example, an increase in unemployment will compound the reduction in sales that occurred from the closure of shopfronts, cascading the crisis over to the online retail segment (which has increased throughout the mess). It is this dynamic that has economists contemplating whether the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to a global recession on the Great Depression scale.
Text analysis
Article 1
In this article, the author introduces the reader to a chronological history of how the world health organization first recognized the virus as a threat to the people. The author puts into concern the time when the virus was officially declared a global pandemic and put across the expectations and the guidelines that the world health organization gave to the public concerning how they could be able to prevent the spread of the disease.
This author clearly states that some of the guidelines that the world health organization put in place to minimize the spread of the virus were; proper sanitization of hands, maintaining social distance, and avoiding overcrowded places. The writer also goes ahead and says that the pandemic hit the world unexpectedly, and so people needed to wake and be ready be caus the solution to the pandemic was not to be easily found.
Article 2
The main article focus is mainly on the economic sector. The writer predicts what may happen if the pandemic is declared a global pandemic from the economic point of view. The central writer’s theme is on the countries’ economies that will be struck hard by the pandemic.
The writer gives a tally of the major companies and investors who will be at a loss if the pandemic becomes a global worry. The virus as brought about a fall in demand hence bringing a grate threat to the supplying sector. Since the disease was announced, many investors have pulled out their investments, and hence the economic sector is on the verge of shaking down.
Comparison of the articles
| Article 1 | Article 2 |
| This article focuses on the social impacts that will be experienced during the pandemic, which has a global impact on the communities since they will have to adopt a new usual way of life. | This article, too, focuses on the global impact, but it is more inclined to the economic side, the financial flow, the rates of demand, and the supply of services. |
| This article gives the guidelines that the world health organization has put across to manage the pandemic. | The article mainly gives predictions and an approximated tally of the rates at which all the major economic sectors will be affected. |
| The theme of recurring outbreaks in this article has affected the social life and culture globally. | The recurring outbreaks have made it hard for the economic rise and have affected the airline, attracting more economic profit. This theme is addressed in the article. |
Reflection essay
The two writers are trying to solve a single controversy: the coronavirus that happens to be a global pandemic that has affected people in all ways. The two articles talk about how worse the virus has become. The intensity of its effects has been felt by the world, both socially and economically. The results are severing socially because some rules have been set that people have to abide by them failure to which the virus will roam like the wind. There are strategies that the article discusses which help people manage to survive during the period.
The first article mainly talks about the pandemic’s impact, which is a bit diverse because the pandemic has brought issues along with it. Some of the shortcomings are the fac that community and the people will no longer interact as they used to. They are also restricted to self-quarantine, which is an activity that was not common to many. The main focus is on the way this pandemic has impacted the social lives in the world. People have been restricted from being around their homes (Munster, Koopmans, van Doremalen, van Riel, and de Wit, 2020). The judgment of the topic of discussion in the first article is inclined most to the social impacts which satisfy the topic of discussion.
In the second article, the writer is mostly focusing on the economic impact. These also come along with the pandemic. The virus has made many people stay isolated in their homes, which means that even those traveling above are not allowed. The fact that flights got canceled poses a threat not only to the airline companies but also to the country (Ayittey, Ayittey, Chiwero, Kamasah, and Dzuvor, 2020). This is because the flights bring much exposure to the locals in terms of business. This article also gives the rates of losses incurred concerning the virus, and the statistics tell that GPD approximated to a toll of 86.6 trillion, which reciprocates to a 0.4 percent drop. That amounts to 3.5 US dollars. The study of 2019.
Conclusion
Conclusively, the two articles portray how terrible the virus has impacted society both socially and economically. The social impacts are directly affecting the economy of the victim countries. The two writers have brought a similar them to consideration but in two different but related perspectives. The impacts of coronavirus on society and the economy have gotten addressed under a single topic of discussion.
References
Munster, V.J., Koopmans, M., van Doremalen, N., van Riel, D., and de Wit, E., 2020. A novel coronavirus is emerging in China—critical questions for impact assessment. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(8), pp.692-694.
Ayittey, F.K., Ayittey, M.K., Chiwero, N.B., Kamasah, J.S., and Dzuvor, C., 2020. Economic impacts of Wuhan 2019‐Nov on China and the world. Journal of Medical Virology, 92(5), pp.473-475.