Let me play devil's advocate for a second ...

To date worldwide roughly 230,000 people died of COVID. If we assumed a fairly constant rate (I know that's not appropriate in terms of scientific methodology, but hear me out) that would be < 900,000 by the end of the year.

Each year it is estimated that 9,000,000 people die of starvation and hunger related reasons (predominantly in so-called less developed countries).

Each year it is estimated that 7,000,000 people die of coronary diseases (predominantly in the so-called developed countries).

Nobody has reliable projections on the number of deaths the climate catastrophe will cause over the next 50 years, but I'd expect them to outweigh all of the above combined.

But no one, no government makes a fuss about any of these other figures ...

And I, for one, wonder why ...

It's a controversial topic. I think if the lockdown is too long, the economy will collapse and it will probably cause more deaths than the COVID-19 itself, specially in underdeveloped countries like the one I live in, where many families live hand to mouth, they don't have any savings to cope with situations like this and they're in desperate need to work. At some point, it's better to end the lockdown and let the people go to work, of course with some prevention measures and respecting the social distancing.

Either way we'll face hard times, some countries will have it harder to recover than others, but it's in the politicians' hands to minimize the effects.

What are your thoughts on countries with rolling lockdowns and it’s effects on the global economy?

COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented event. No one really knows how it's going to play out in the future, but one thing is sure that global economy is going to slow down. People have become cautious while spending on non-essential items and their income has also come down. It will result in the slowdown in global economy. Farmers and vulnerable section of the society will be affected badly due to lack of social security.

Nature of jobs will also change permanently and fourth industrial revolution will increase its pace. Technology will become more reliable to replace workers.

Unless all countries come together at global level and find a solution, it's going to be difficult to avoid possible recession due to this pandemic.

Which do you think is more important? Prioritizing health while the economy collapses? Or prioritizing the collapsing economy and risking health? 🤔

Health and economy both are necessary for human being. One cannot simply ignore one for another. Prioritizing health in short term was an emergency response as our health infrastructure was not ready to take on sudden influx of COVID-19 cases resulting in large no of deaths. But in the long term economic slowdown will start to hurt families without any savings.

In the last decade with the effort of World Bank and local governments, we have brought millions of people out of poverty line. But economic slowdown may result in bringing them back to poverty line.

Hence we need to find a solution to manage the corona virus cases while opening some sectors of the economy. But government has to make sure that it does not result into overwhelming of health infrastructure as re-lockdown will erode the trust of people in the policy decisions and further harm the economy.

I do think that Somogyi has a point in that here "the government should choose the less worse steps". I think that discussing in an international community is a very valuable asset BUT I would not stretch the result of that conversation to an international policy. There is no one solution that fits every country. On the contrary, every country needs to adapt to their specific needs. In Europe, more wealthy countries can take the hit, without their citizes suffering too much. In Southamerica it is much more difficult to do that because as Somogyi mentioned, in some countries people have very little money allocated in savings thus leaving them unprepared for this situations.

Good topic. I am on the opinion that somehow we have to accomodate to this situation. Economy has to go because there will be disastrous problems for many families. I live in a country where people have hardly any extra money so their monthly salaries are vital. Of course it is important to analyze the situation but government should choose the less worse steps.

I am really curios how Swedish model will work in the long run.

It was a great comment from you Andrej. I like numbers and numbers never lie.

*Extra: Some people feel worse bad because they do not have a car and they have to walk and bring their foods while 3 million people died last year because they did not have water supply.

We should always think a little bit deeper.