By Don Aguiar

Mumbai, March 19, 2020: A question for the doctors here. Isn’t the incidence of flu as prevalent in India (a relatively warm country) as in colder countries and since coronavirus is a new strain in that family of viruses, why would Indians end up ultimately experiencing a lesser incidence than most other countries?

There is a possibility that cases are being missed. At present people coming into the country are mainly monitored, especially from areas where the coronavirus is very prevalent. There’s no mechanism to test others who have flu like symptoms. And at present, there’s a very high prevalence of such patients. But they are not tested for coronavirus as there is only one center (at Kasturba hospital, near Nair hospital) in Mumbai where the PCR test is done.

At the same time, have not seen any reported outbreak of patients having severe viral pneumonia or ARDS from any of the hospitals. Therefore the actual picture is really not known. But it’s better to be on the safe side and follow guidelines.

The infectivity is indeed alarming. A family from Pune returned to MUMBAI after a Middle East tour with 40 others from Veena World travels. They took a cab from Mumbai airport to Pune. They all tested positive along with the cab driver! So even if it’s a very mild infection with only 1% mortality, if it’s going to spread alarmingly, the number of infected persons will grow exponentially. In a country with 2.2 billion, and with so much overcrowding in the urban areas, we might soon have a few million infected till it plateaus. Even 1% of a few million means several thousand deaths and an equal number seriously affected. Our already overloaded hospitals could get flooded. Then what? The possibilities are indeed alarming.

Nobody has been “immune”, for lack of a better word, to the news about what has been happening in China over the last couple of weeks and now spread worldwide the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) which, after SARS a few years ago, seems to have overwhelmed the system in China, in both the rate of spread and number of infected. What angers most of us about this is that there seems to have been no lessons learned from the 2003 SARS outbreak, which was caused by the transmission of a virus from animal to human at a market where wild animals were sold for food. To top it all off, this new epidemic got going around the time of the world’s largest human migration, Chinese New Year.

We trust that the Chinese government is doing all it can to contain the outbreak, but equally important is to learn lessons from this outbreak and implement measures and education to try to prevent another cross-species contagion.

I don’t wish to be a Pete Repeat, but it does seem that the corona virus is on everyone’s agenda at the moment. Events are being postponed or cancelled, flights have never been as cheap as they are now, and tickets have never had as few restrictions to change as now is the case.

The latest report from China tells us that things are improving, so now it is a question of whether the information from China can be trusted or not. Given the size of China, which sometimes is overlooked by foreigners, it does mean that there could be doubt about what we are being told by the authorities.

It does seem that greater parts of Asia are safer places to be right now than Europe where Italy is standing out as the hardest hit and, as a country, virtually in a lock down mode.

It is impossible even to begin imagining the costs to the world, each country, people’s businesses and livelihood of this virus as travel (and thereby travel-related businesses such as hotels, travel agencies, airlines, etc.) and people’s movements grind to a halt. Let us all hope, and pray, that this virus will be eradicated as soon as possible.

We are all most certainly in the same boat, and in this boat, there is no first, business, or economy class I think. Whether the virus will trigger a collapse of the world economy (or “correction” as they say in the financial industry) remains to be seen, but the fact remains that the world is in debt more than ever before and the easy printing of money, to keep on fueling and inflating the value of assets, must sooner or later be rectified.

It seems, the more there is written about the causes of the Coronavirus – the more the written analyses are overshadowed by a propaganda and fear-mongering hype. Questions for the truth and arguments for where to look for the origins and how the virus may have spread and how to combat it, are lost in the noise of wanton chaos. But isn’t that what the “Black Men” behind this intended pandemic want – chaos, panic, hopelessness, leading to human vulnerability – a people becoming easy prey for manipulation?

Many around the world are worried about how the spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) will affect their lives, as we are seeing unprecedented travel bans and closures to public buildings and large gatherings.

Also, in some areas of the world, many are quarantined because the outbreak is now in their community or someone was infected in their school or place of employment. In these locations, schools are closed, or people are unable to get to work or grocery stores.

This ambiance of panic and fear – outstrips any sense of reality, when the truth doesn’t matter. People can’t even think any more about the causes and what may be behind it.

Nobody believes you (anymore), when you refer to Event 201, the coronavirus simulation, the Wuhan Military Games, the closing last August 7, of the high-security biological war lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland…. what could have at one point been an eye opener for many, today is sheer conspiracy theory. The power of propaganda. A destabilizing power – destabilizing countries and people, destroying economies, creating hardship for people who may lose their jobs, usually the ones who least can afford it.

Also, at this time it becomes increasingly important to remind people that the outbreak in China was targeting the Chinese genome. Did it later mutate to transgress the ‘borders’ of Chinese DNA? When did that happen, if it happened? Because at the beginning it was clear that even the infected victims in other parts of the world, were to 99.9 percent of Chinese descent.

What happened later, when the virus spread to Italy and Iran, is another issue, and opens the way to a number of speculations?

China has been purposely targeted for “economic destruction,” because of her rapidly advancing economy, an economy soon to overtake that of the now hegemon, the US of A, and because of China’s strong currency, the Yuan, also potentially overtaking the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency.

Both occurrences would mean the end of US dominance over the world. The coronavirus disease, now in more than 80 countries, has crashed the stock markets, a decline of at least 20 percent over the last few weeks – and rising; the feared consequences from the virus of an economic slow-down, if not recession, has slashed petrol prices within about two weeks almost in half.

However, without China’s central bank interference, the Yuan’s value vis-à-vis the dollar has been rather stable, at around 7 Yuan to the dollar. That means, the Chinese economy, despite COVID-19, is receiving still much trust around the globe.

With a stable Yuan the Chinese may buy all the US and European corporate shares they can at current rock-bottom prices from the stock markets that collapsed by a fifth or more, plus buy lots of oil futures. When the prices recover, they have not only made billions, probably trillions from the west, but they also may own or hold significant and influence-yielding amounts of shares in most of the largest US and European corporations – and will be able to help call the shots of their future endeavours.

There is however, one little silver lining oscillating at the horizon full of dark clouds. It could miraculously be an awakening of consciousness of a critical mass that could put an end to it all. Although, we seem to be far from such a miracle, somewhere in a hidden corner of our brain, we all have a spark of consciousness left.

We have the spiritual capacity to abandon the disaster path of western neoliberal capitalism, and instead espouse solidarity, compassion and love for each other and for our society. That may be the only way to break the gridlock and doom of western egocentric greed.