It’s not time yet to wish Covid19 away. Reports from China, the originator of the deadly epidemic, present a scary picture in recent days. Crematoriums in capital Beijing and elsewhere are seeing unprecedentedly large arrivals of the Covid-affected dead even as the government speaks no word on casualties. “It is Spring 2020 all over again,” is how an epidemiologist viewed the situation. The situation took on the worst form after President Xi, worried over the economic fallout, did away with the lockdown in most cities this month and signaled a departure from his harsh ‘Zero Covid’ regime. For him there was no other go; for, the tougher it got, the worse the plight of the people and they stormed the streets to curse the controls on public life. Even a dictatorship could not stem the tide of protests.
Warning has come from authoritative sources that the world better be in readiness for a fresh bout of the Covid19 spread. Some 60 per cent of the Chinese population and 10 per cent of the world might get hit afresh in the next three months. This, at a time when we were heaving a sigh of relief, economies were getting back to usual mode after two years of total devastation and life was getting back to normal almost everywhere. China’s struggle however carried on. The World Bank has revised its growth forecast for China this year from 4.3 to 2.7 per cent – meaning a halving of China’s own GDP target of 5.5 per cent. The Covid-related hits and fall in property prices together hurt China badly. India, on the other hand, has less of a worry now. It recorded two deaths and 135 infections, the lowest level so far, a day ago – its total deaths due to Covid-infection rising to 5.30 lakh. India is in recovery mode after its economy contracted 6.6 per cent in the last fiscal. Yet, the imponderables are there. Another hit by the pandemic could upset Indian calculations of a steady recovery while the global economy is punctured also by the war in Ukraine.
Epidemics, deadly though, are seen as a natural way of controlling population growth. The theory propounded by Thomas Robert Malthus had it that epidemics, wars and famines would result in a balancing between population growth and food availability. Wars are killing people even now, but the scale of such fatalities is down due to a multiplicity of checks including the coming into being of the United Nations after World War-II. The main challenge to human existence lingers in the form of pestilence/epidemics as China has demonstrated.
