The Corona virus pandemic has hit the world at large scale and speed that we have only seen so far in doomsday movies.The Truth which we are seeing today, is way more frightening than fiction. The human cost of the coronavirus is going to be unimaginably high. Worse, it’s going to end up having a long tail too.

The effect of the virus is likely to be seen long after medical science offers a cure or at least a vaccine for Covid-19 (the disease caused by the new coronavirus). That’s because the economic cost of shutting down large swathes of the world is going to be steep.

A 2019 joint report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank estimates the impact of such a pandemic at 2.2 per cent to 4.8 per cent of global GDP (US$3 trillion). That was well before the world knew of Covid-19.

Barclays predication that India’s aggressive 21 day lockdown could bring the country’s growth down to 2.5% from the 4.5 per cent it had earlier estimated.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address to the nation when he announced a 21-day lockdown, if this pandemic is not contained, it could set us back by decades.