Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1221489
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 MARCH 2020 OPINION THE beginning of the new decade was characterised by the novel coronavirus originating from a wet market in Wu- han, China. It was thought as yet anoth- er sensationalized outbreak similar to the recent Ebola and Zika, which quick- ly faded out of the limelight. However, this is more of a black swan event like 9/11 and the 2008 financial crises – un- expected and globally devastating. It captivated the world's attention for over 2 months while it disrupted whole industries, hospitals and schools. But most importantly it served as a harsh wake-up call to face our vulnerabilities as an all-knowing, all-powerful species. As the novel virus made its way out of Wuhan, around China and beyond, one could admire the technological re- sponses that were also novel. Function- al online dashboards (see John Hop- kins) were made available to track the spread and the death rate, people could turn to educational videos on YouTube and Netflix (Pandemic series premiered in January). Unfortunately, other shady sources of information were also suc- cessful in promoting ineffective face masks, garlic remedies and expensive lotion cures. The age of fake news was never more apparent, and this misinfor- mation will hopefully push people to be more sceptical. As a society we need to trust the topic experts and for this we need to turn to governmental authori- ties (CDC) and international agencies (WHO) to keep us updated. Tech titans were also trying to do their part. Facebook took down adverts for masks while providing WHO with un- limited advertising space. Google did its best to scrub the web from misin- formation and made all its employees work from home. Amazon and Mi- crosoft set up a multi-million fund for organizations working to contain the virus. These companies together with their subsidiaries (WhatsApp, YouTube, Teams...) experienced greater loads as they enabled teleworking, e-commerce and entertainment during quarantines. People could also witness live foot- age from China of the construction of a 1000-bed hospital in a matter of days. The Chinese regime also flexed its muscles by imposing lockdown on mil- lions of its citizens. A measure which undoubtedly helped contain the virus within such a mammoth population. The same measure is proving difficult to enact and enforce in Europe. In terms of devastating effects on the world markets, needless to say quaran- tined workers affected production at the world's factory (China) and disrupt- ed supply chains from phones to cars. However, nothing came close to what the tourism industry experienced. The cancellations of flights, hotels and con- ferences could only be compared to that of 9/11. Although not even, as in 2001 people didn't travel half as much, it wasn't until at least 10 years later when low-cost airlines, booking.com and Air- bnb were enabling travellers. As could be expected share prices of pharmaceu- ticals companies rose but also that of video-conferencing software. Here in Malta we were not spared this drama. As the virus was taking its toll on our closest neighbour, port work- ers refused to handle Italian contain- ers. Panic buying at supermarket was predictable if not understandable. You quickly run out of supplies if you have a family of four to feed, your baby needs formula milk or your son only eats 1 brand of biscuits. A couple of days of missed catamaran imports and we can be thrown into war-like shortages and chaos. This is revealing our selfish na- ture in difficult times instead of a more communal sharing of resources while also highlighting our dependency on import of essentials. It may have been easy at first to dis- miss the media as blowing it out of proportion, but an infectious disease should never be taken lightly. 'Corona' could be heard from office corridors for months now and its only logical that it's still making headlines as people feel the need to keep up with the latest devel- opments. Experts' latest estimate of the COVID-19 death rate is 1% - 10 times more than the common flu (0.1%). Reverberations of such a widespread economic and psychological shock will probably be felt beyond 2020. Uncer- tainty and fear linger in stock exchang- es, schools, ITU wards and executive meetings. Such slumps help trim the fat of cor- porations to weather the storm, howev- er only the financially fittest do. They will reconsider non-essential travel and resort to video-conferencing. For many countries this could be a huge experi- ment in teleworking. These technolo- gies have been around for many years Neville Zammit Coronavirus – how the world is reacting to a pandemic Neville Zammit is a millennial economist and business analyst neville90@gmail.com PHOTO BY JAMES BIANCHI As the world is realizing that this is not a drill, society should come to terms with our new vulnerabilities as a global community. It is also serving as a stark reminder for Maltese 'millennials' that times are not always booming