Big events not happening frequently in our lives. Even big global pandemic last occured at 1918 infected millions of people all around the world. Ultra-spreading of the disease make it clear not everyone can escape this if they don’t do physical (social) distancing that hardly sacrificing our economy.

Fig. 1 COVID-19 illustration. Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash.

Development of the issue

The start of the year of 2020 was not so smooth for some people, especially me as people living in Greater Jakarta Area. The first morning, when I woke up, the water has flooded the street in front of my house. Fortunately, it doesn’t break inside but it cost more on my colleagues and many peoples. Then, in the middle of the first month, we suddenly hear news from China that an outbreak occurs there starting to infecting people rapidly. In almost a week the news story became viral and became the global issue.

Rise of the outbreak

January 2020, the world has been alarmed by the rise of pneumonia-like disease that closed the city of Wuhan and then continues of locking down Hubei and rest of China by the mid-February. The world are still run as usual, business are still open and people are still gather with their colleagues. In Italy, champion league match still held and attended by about 40,000 people across Europe. Then, the case begin rose rapidly outside China. Italy, Iran, and South Korea began as one of the first countries that experiencing outbreak. Next, the pandemic are hitting rest of Europe, Asia, and America.

March 2nd 2020, President Joko Widodo announce first and second case in Indonesia. At that day, people are stockpiling their house with supplies and the life changing event has begun. The next day, the case are begin to scale up and within one week 19 people has confirmed infected. The second week, the cumulative case has already at 134 and go to 579 case and following week. The case are growing exponentially, until now there are about 13,000 confirmed case all across Indonesia’s 34 provinces.

Global pandemic

The case was known as the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCov) or coronavirus, then renamed as COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) that World Health Organization (WHO) says it named like that because the disease has no attribution to person, people, countries, animal, also easy to pronounce and relatable to the issue. A month later at March 11th 2020, Dr Tedros of WHO announce COVID-19 as a pandemic—global spread of new disease—as it has infected more than 110,000 people at over 110 countries and territories. It means that every entity of the world has unite to fight this virus.

People talks about Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of the issue, first when the outbreak began in China, authority stated CFR of this virus is about 3 percent. Means that 1 of 30 people infected of the virus, 29 other people are have higher likelihood to survive. This number not same at any countries, it varies from 0 to 13 percent depends of many variables, but the biggest factors may on healthcare systems and capacity.

Fig. 2 People at the market protected with surgical masks. Photo by Jérémy Stenuit on Unsplash.

Affects to the people

The new normal. Life will not be same as before pandemic happens. There are some buzzword that people hear almost everyday. Lockdown, social distancing, stay at home, testing, flattening the curve, and many campaign that helps to prevent spread of this virus. Countries are reacting with different policies to combat the spread. Many follow action that China does, but with customisation of local culture. Not all succeed because many protest and resistance comes from people that under lockdown.

Non essentials business like travel, tourism, leisure, automotive, and real estates are hit-hard by this virus. Many people losing their jobs, as May 2020 report by United States Department of labor stated almost 33 millions people filed for unemployment claim. In Indonesia, estimated almost 1,2 million people go through the same way. Companies that could survive are forced to accelerate IT transformation and maturing work from home policy. This will cause new culture of working, remote working may not only for startups, but corporate may soon adopting because it may proved that it’s effective and could squeeze their operational costs. People are became normal and actively using e-commerce and catalysing digital transformation at society. Economical outlook for 5 to 10 years could changes rapidly and business should prevent and realign their strategies from now to make sure could survive this transformation. Pandemic not only hit hard on people health, but on every aspect of people lives.

Is there any chance that will end soon?

Actually no one could answer it. Actually many people on the internet modelled cases and predicted when it will reach the peak and end, but this disease is very hard to detect that makes the data that we already have may undercounted. The disease may come in few waves, so we should break the chains from now. Be discipline of physical distancing, always wearing mask or face cover, and wash hand frequently. Hope this pandemic will end soon and we’ll back to moving freely again.

Appendices

[1]: The New Normal - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-new-normal

[2]: Statistik Harian COVID-19 di Indonesia - https://kawalcovid19.blob.core.windows.net/viz/statistik_harian.html

[3] Coronavirus Gets A New Name - https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/11/coronavirus-gets-a-new-name-covid-19-heres-why-renaming-it-is-important/#353e1490548e

[4] World Health Organization Declares COVID-19 a ‘Pandemic.’ Here’s What That Means - https://time.com/5791661/who-coronavirus-pandemic-declaration/

[5] Why We Don’t Know the True Death Rate for Covid-19 - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-death-rate.html

[6] Virus corona: Gelombang PHK di tengah pandemi Covid-19 diperkirakan mencapai puncak bulan Juni, Kartu Prakerja dianggap tak efektif - https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/indonesia-52218475