The Thanos effect: COVID-19, the snap heard around the world
In Marvel’s blockbuster superhero movie, “Avengers Endgame,” a galactic villain named Thanos dons a bejeweled gauntlet of infinite power. When Thanos snaps his gloved Infinity Gauntlet fingers, half of life throughout the entire universe ceases to exist. Resulting in a dystopian Earth and a universe laid in ruin.
Snap!
And just like that, in real life, the COVID-19 coronavirus has decimated the world economies, taken lives, and rendered millions sick around the world.
Currently, there are 2,565,879 known cases of Coronavirus worldwide, and 177,789 attributable deaths, according to source Worldometer. Every death represents households upended, futures cut short, workers lost forever.
“As confirmed cases of COVID-19 spread, it has the potential to take lives, overwhelm health systems, and trigger lasting geopolitical change. The International Monetary Fund says the global economy now faces its worst downturn since the Great Depression, and Oxfam International has warned that half a billion people could be pushed into poverty. Around the world, desperate efforts are underway to contain what has become a profoundly disruptive outbreak.” This isn’t the excerpt from a Hollywood blockbuster script, but an actual quote published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In its published Strategic Intelligence report on COVID-19, the WEF expressed a clarion call that, “organizations have to reckon with a new reality where they cannot support the number of employees they could previously, or simply cannot expect employees to take daily commutes in ways that may put them at increased risk of exposure to the coronavirus.”
“When whole economies quarantine themselves, everyone suffers. Modern capitalism depends on the maintenance of demand and the dynamics of production.”
Simple translation: A parallel national (and global) “economic pandemic” is looming.
A failed economy breeds mass poverty, hysteria, and draconian hardship. Some people are under the false belief that major developed countries can’t fail economically, that major countries are fiscally inoculated/protected from economic ruin. Wrong!
In an article written by Kimberly Amadeo in TheBalance.com, when the developed country of Greece fell into economic ruin in
2010 (and needed bailing out by its European allies), it “was the biggest financial rescue of a bankrupt country in history.” And it’s important to note that this was at least the third bankruptcy Greece has experienced!
No developed countries are immune to financial ruin. “The sovereign debt levels of developed countries have risen to an alarming level in recent years, posing a serious threat to their economic prospects, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.”
“The overall debt of the US grew at an average annual rate of 7.1% during 2010-2017 to reach a staggering US$20.5 trillion in
2017.”
As of April 22, 2020, the United States Debt Clock displays a staggering $20.4 trillion of debt! To put this in perspective, such debt would require each American citizen to pay $74,267 to pay off this mountain of debt! Here’s the badbad news, America’s national debt could easily balloon higher in the trillions of dollars because of the national economic stall resulting from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
An economic recession is a major downturn in a nation’s economy. This is bad. Attributes of recession are “there’s a significant decline in economic activity. Indicators include a drop in employment, manufacturing activity, consumer confidence and, yes, stock prices — all of which were happening” reports John Schmidt, a senior finance writer at Acorns, in his March 27, 2020 article, “How to Prepare for a Recession.”
With critics decrying no confidence in our woeful leadership in the White House and in our Executive Branch of government, many economists say America is building up to a crescendo of a major economic recession.
What can we do? How should we respond?
Here are a few tips Schmidt recommends to brace for a recession...
1. Build up an emergency fund
2. Check your spending
3. Get ahead of any debt
4. Maintain your regular investments
5. Refine and skill set
Schmidt concludes, “While no one can predict exactly when a recession starts or ends, you can position yourself now to avoid a lot of its brunt. Markets rise and fall and rise again. Jobs come and go. But historically, every downturn has ended in an upturn. Preparing now can help you weather the worst of it and be better positioned to benefit when the economy does turn around.”
Snap!
And just like that, we’re preparing for the worst, but optimistically hoping for the best. Simon Jenkins, a writer for The Guardian and broadcaster for the BBC, said, “During medieval plagues, people turned to priests for advice, comfort and prediction. Today we turn to scientists and doctors. Where their decisions have external consequences, as today, we turn to economists. The easiest answer to a pandemic-induced
diversify your recession is to eliminate its proximate consequences. Do not overly suppress people’s economic activity.”
In Philadelphia, African-American physicians have joined ranks with area churches to provide free COVID-19 testing in predominant African-American cohort communities, that’s seemingly experiencing a higher infection rate nationally, and by public opinion, a national cohort community that’s being tested less frequently in the mainstream in comparison to its white peer cohort communities.
In a recent WHYY/PBS interview, Pediatric surgeon Ala Stanford commented on the rising COVID-19 coronavirus cases in Philly, “In Philadelphia, African Americans represent 44 percent of the population, but at last check, 52 percent of the deaths,” she was emphatic that this was “unacceptable.”
Dr. Stanford responded by rolling up her sleeves to form the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. According to the WHYY/ PBS article, “The (Black Doctors
COVID-19 Consortium) is a newlyformed arm of Stanford’s firm, an affiliation that includes a number of doctors and churches in Philadelphia’s Black neighborhoods.”
Dr. Stanford has a GoFundMe campaign set up for donors to support her continuing free COVID-19 testing efforts in the community, she’s currently raised
$43,000 towards her goal to raise
$100,000.
We’re all in this fight together against this villainous enemy called COVID-19 coronavirus; your kind donation, no matter how large or small, can be made at:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/
covid19-BDCC
And snap!
Just like that, as a united community, we all can make an impactful contribution to help fight the battle against the spread and scourge of COVID-19 coronavirus.