Corona Pandemic: Changes, Impacts and Our World

Covid-19

At the end of 2019, a novel corona virus was identified Wuhan, a city of Hubei province in China. It rapidly spread in China followed by an increasing number of cases in other countries too. Later on, this virus has been named Covid-19 by WHO. It has brought many changes in every sphere of our life and society and it has affected International Relations and caused diplomatic tensions as well. It’s continuously indicating us that the post Covid-19 world would be different than it was previously. In this essay I’ll point out various changes briefly like Political, Economic and to some extent, the probable scenario of post Covid-19.

 

Let’s discuss about the initial stage of Corona virus. When a crisis comes in front of us, we take no time to blame someone. And same chaotic situation is true for politics; even worse when it’s entitled with power politics. Corona Pandemic is no different. Covid-19 hit first China early in December 2019 and then it wasn’t the actual headache for world leaders like Donald Trump but when it started spreading rapidly around the globe, USA attempt to find a scapegoat for the spread of Covid-19. USA and Europe based experts have started claiming that the virus had come out from Wuhan lab & Trump admits it a Chinese virus which is completely ignorant approach. Though it’s still a hypothesis from where it actually came from. Because of USA-China rift, Donald Trump blames WHO for working in favor of China and he temporarily halted US annual contribution to WHO. Asian immigrants are still facing racist behavior in the USA and Europe. Not only in the USA and Europe but later India joins to find out a scapegoat for the spread of this virus. As usual, blind supporters of dominant govt. use the religious sentiment as a tool and they blame Muslim community (Tablig) for spreading this virus when it first came out in India. Even a hospital from Gujarat was accused of being racist behavior just because of religious belief.

 

The world after covid-19 is heading somewhere completely different. We will see radical changes in several sectors such as globalization, global economic order etc. Covid-19 will have big impact on economy as well. Countries will follow more independent policies where they will try to enrich domestic production. In short, economic nationalism will rise. Multinationals fear rise in protectionism because of athis pandemic. Already president Trump has started his next election campaign by using this term. From now on, every country will work for its own interest.

 

Somehow Corona Pandemic shows us the vulnerability of powerful states. Whether it is health sector or management of sudden crisis. USA, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Spain are going to face hard time in coming days as their economy would certainly go down. All of the country mentioned above, they do have many obvious strengths in this crisis—they’re wealthy nation, hub for technological & scientific innovation but the outbreak has also exposed weakness. The US govt. prides itself on being prepared for 21^st century threats such as cyberwarfare & great power competition but it wasn’t nearly as prepared for the modern danger of pandemic disease. It goes same for other powerful states.

 

China is trying to take advantage of Covid-19 crisis to maximize its international role. China has already provided huge amount of medical equipment to many countries as well as in Europe too. It has clearly highlighted how much the world had dependent on China’s product. Famous online based company Ali Baba jointly has been working with China since early days of Corona outbreak. USA had played the most important role to provide necessary things to the world when a crisis came out; China has taken that place, at least it’s a fact in this new pandemic period. It has hit USA’s image for sure and Corona Pandemic has amplified the “New Cold War” between USA & China. China improves its international image by countering this virus as well. The US has its presidential election, the Corona Pandemic has shifted the US attention from the Global Superpower to its domestic politics. China and Russia will use this opportunity to gain space in international arena to gain their dominance in the Middle East and Africa.

 

As Corona virus has already reached in Asia & Africa, this crisis will have impacts beyond public health and economy. Since huge number of countries from Asia and Africa are poor and underdeveloped, they’ll face drastic unemployment crisis (Though it has already started) and as a result they’ll face food insecurity and that makes citizens angry at their governments. This situation can give terrorists groups opportunities to recruit new members by promising them to reduce their frustrations. As a result, external and internal chaotic situations will have increased. Even recent UN report warns pandemic has created a “Captive Audience” for terrorist groups and at the same time, the focus on the pandemic has put pressure on counter terrorism budgets led to the withdrawal of troops from the fight against ISIS and Al-Qaeda as well as over reach in some countries, potentially fueling radicalization, report said.

 

Another very interesting changes has already happened and that is due to Corona virus, religious faith has deepened among people around the world.  According to Pew Research, Corona virus leads to deepened religious faith for 24 percent of Americans. And it’s same another part of the world too.

 

Since everything is just stopped as where they were, so it’s been very difficult to work and very limited number of vehicles are permitted on the roads. As a result, environment looks different as of now. Delhi and Dhaka are the capital of India and Bangladesh respectively, are known densely populated and polluted cities to the world. But during this lockdown, scenario has changed a lot. AQI (Air Quality Index) says it all where polluted cities were above 150 regularly which is very much unhealthy for people, now it remains under 100 for many times a day that is very positive Air visual report. And the heating of our planet has been slowed.

 

The Corona virus has put the world in a reboot and reset mood. The governments are struggling to find out a balance strategy between saving lives and Economy. We would certainly make assumptions on post Covid-19 world but nobody exactly knows the absolute image of post Covid-19 world. This pandemic surely has shown us that invisible enemy is much more dangerous than visible one and we must give great emphasis on health sector. On the whole, the pandemic seems to demonstrate that, regardless a nation’s political structure, governments recognize that their primary responsibility is to address uncertainties facing their citizenry.

 

Kaniz Fatima

Dept. of International Relations

45 Batch

Email: fatima.kcc@gmail.com