A crisis of lives and livelihoods
It’s highly contagious — even when symptoms aren’t showing. It thrives in everyday environments. It can go undetected in young and healthy people until they infect a more vulnerable member of society. It spikes as people go about their day-to-day lives. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum
Excerpts from the Minister for Economy and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s 2020 COVID-19 budget response address on March 26
SINCE its origins in Wuhan, China last year, Fijians have watched the novel coronavirus — COVID-19 — spread from country to country and then continent to continent, crippling markets and sickening tens and, now, hundreds of thousands in its wake, with the worst clearly yet to come.
This is a crisis bigger than anything the world has seen in a century. Hundreds of people are dying every day. Hospitals in the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations are being pushed to their breaking points.
The United States of America just saw case numbers surge past 65,000, up from 15,000 cases four short days ago. In the most badly affected nations — like Italy — doctors are being forced to choose who to treat; who lives and who dies.
Both Italy and Spain have now eclipsed China in COVID-19 fatalities, despite having much smaller populations.
Any student of Fijian history knows that pandemics — like COVID-19 — must be battled with the same urgency as full-scale military conflicts.
If not, they can be just as fatal as any war.
In 1875, measles arrived at Fiji's shores. The disease ultimately claimed the lives of an estimated 40,000 Fijians — one-third of the entire population at that time. Then, in 1918, the Spanish Flu broke out across the world, infecting 500 million people and killing around 50 million. Upon arrival at Fiji's shores, the virus claimed the lives of nearly 9,000 Fijians — 5 per cent of all people in Fiji at that time.
These are the cold, hard facts of our history. Taking stock of this past should not drive us into panic.
But it should serve as a sober reminder that extreme crises of health warrant the sternest possible measures in response — before it's too late.
When it comes to COVID-19, it does not rank among humanity's deadliest diseases; recent viral strains like SARS, MERS and Ebola have all proven much more fatal.
When it comes to the sheer number of deaths, NCDs like heart disease and cancer still outpace COVID-19 in the number of victims they claim.
But it is the nature of this new coronavirus that has made this disease the trickiest, most unpredictable and most punishing pandemic of our lifetimes.
It's highly contagious — even when symptoms aren't showing. It thrives in everyday environments. It can go undetected in young and healthy people until they infect a more vulnerable member of society. It spikes as people go about their day-to-day lives.
And, quickly and quietly, the virus has spread around the world, killing thousands and dismantling the way people live and the world does business. In doing so, it has upended the very fundamentals of the global economy.
It's clear we're faced with more than a crisis of health — far more. This is a crisis of lives and livelihoods alike. No government, no business, no financial institution and no multilateral organisation was ready for the economic devastation of this pandemic. Indeed, some leaders even scoffed at it. Under the strain of necessary travel restrictions, rightful health concerns, and other unimagined impacts, we are facing a oncein-a-lifetime, coronavirus-driven collapse of the foundations of the international economic system.
Some people — including here in Fiji — are still dangerously blind to this new reality. They need to take a good, long look at the world economy. Entire industries are crumbling, businesses are closing and unemployment is skyrocketing. Major stock indexes are plummeting, carving off trillions of dollars in value — and the floor is nowhere to be seen. Companies that — mere months ago — were considered economic stalwarts — including the world's largest airlines — are hurtling towards insolvency.
This virus has paralysed the world — literally.
No one is going anywhere. Planes are empty, sitting idle. Airports are deserted. Oncehumming factory floors are silent. Flows of trade reduced to trickles.
Supply chains are unhinged. With only a handful of exceptions, every business, everywhere in the world is facing its most difficult year on record.
In even the best-case scenario of global containment, this will be the most severe global economic depression of our time, worse than anything our parents, or most of our grandparents, ever experienced.
We're talking worse than the global financial crisis. For Fiji, the economic fallout will not only prove greater than Cyclone Winston — it will be far worse than cyclones Winston, Josie, Keni, Gita, and Toni combined.
Every aspect of our economy will be thrown out of whack.
Even in the global financial crisis, planes were still flying. In 2009, our arrivals were down only 7.3 per cent on the year. The year after Winston, tourism numbers actually surged by 6.4 per cent!
As of today, Nadi Airport is shut down. Over the next few months, there will not be a tourism sector in Fiji.
Right off the bat, that's up to 38 per cent of our GDP, gone. Even if we were an ICT-driven economy, call centres and other workplaces would close as well. In fact, one call centre has already planned a permanent shut down in Fiji.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world economy including our major markets –– is rapidly approaching recession territory, propelled by historic declines in growth across Asia and Europe.