How long the COVID-19 crisis will last, and what its immediate economic costs will be, is anyone's guess. But even if the pandemic's economic impact is contained, it may have already set the stage for a debt meltdown long in the making, starting in many of the Asian emerging and developing economies on the front lines of the outbreak.
NEW DELHI – Pandemics like COVID-19, alarming and destructive as they are, can serve a useful purpose if they remind everyone of the critical importance of public health. When a contagious disease strikes, even a society’s most protected elites must worry about the health of neglected populations. Those who have advocated privatization and cost-cutting measures that deny health care to the most vulnerable now know that they did so at their own peril. A society’s overall health depends on the health of its poorest people.
NEW DELHI – Pandemics like COVID-19, alarming and destructive as they are, can serve a useful purpose if they remind everyone of the critical importance of public health. When a contagious disease strikes, even a society’s most protected elites must worry about the health of neglected populations. Those who have advocated privatization and cost-cutting measures that deny health care to the most vulnerable now know that they did so at their own peril. A society’s overall health depends on the health of its poorest people.