Last chance to bottle the Covid-19 genie

COMMENT | The severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2003 laboured on for eight months before it was contained. If what has recently been leaked from the medical communities in China is true, that Sars Cov II - which leads to the pneumonia-like sickness of Covid-19 - has been around since November 2019, the world is now in the fifth month of the first wave of the much-dreaded disease.

But Sars has become extinct. Sars Cov II is its cousin. Given its infectious nature around the world, there is no correlation between when Sars 2003 had ended in eight months with Sars Cov II 2019 ending by June 2020 too. The twain does not meet.

If anything, Sars Cov II, according to the likes of Professor Nouriel Roubini, writing in the Project Syndicate, has no causality to any "fiscal stimulus" or reduction of "interest rate".

As things stand, some US$123 billion has been spent around the world since February 2020 to refloat the global economy...