We need the economy to start operating soon rather than later.

We are in a situation where the entire world has literally come to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Such a situation has never happened to the world in the last 100 years. The governments across the world have taken mixed actions while dealing with this ongoing crisis, there are few outliers like Sweden and Japan who have not locked down their economy completely. While the majority of the Medical community and general public across the world are asking the world to be quarantined, I feel Sweden and Japan are right in not shutting their economy down. We are so interconnected and interdependent due to globalisation, we can't afford to shut everything down and be locked in our houses. What I am about to say here does not mean I lack care for human lives being lost. I am simply here to talk on the economic side of how this is going to play out and how this is going to affect millions of people in a far worse way than the one caused by the virus.

We all have been under quarantine more or less more than a month now with more than 90 per cent of the economy shut in the western world. This has already caused the economic collapse of unimaginable consequences. Governments from Europe to America and Asia all have had to come out a collective stimulus plan exceeding 3 to 4 trillion dollars already and itseems it may not be enough if the lockdown continues for long. Majority of the population in Europe may feel they are not affected in a large way financially since the governments are compensating them handsomely for sitting at home. The thing is we are borrowing from the future in order to compensate the entire population now. It needs to be paid indirectly through more taxes in future. The USA shutting down its economy is the worst thing for the world. US consumers are the largest consumers in the world. If the US stops spending, the rest of the world have less money. Plus the USA is a free-market capitalist economy and without the safety net like the generous European social benefits. The job losses have already started on a massive scale never seen before on a scale that is happening now. If the lockdown continues for longer than a month, we will definitely without a doubt go into a very deep recession.

Some of the reasons being as simple as people are getting laid off and more people will be laid off in the coming weeks. Trump's 1200 USD cheque for some of its low earning people is not going to cut the requirements for longer than half a month. People are going to stop paying their rents and when people stop paying their rents, landlords can't afford to pay their mortgage and quickly it leads to run on the banks. Credit gets dried and banks will stop lending money to people and businesses. Already the majority of the companies have announced hiring freeze for the year and no pay raises. Even if things start running, companies are going to be more careful than ever and would be looking to keep costs low and strengthen their financial position. This means more layoffs will happen in the course of the year. Consumer confidence is already seeing a 5-year low and it will continue to drop in the coming months as we emerge from this crisis. Luxury goods and non-essential wants will see a huge drop in sales as consumers will be scared to spend money in a fear that they may lose their jobs. US Fed expects the unemployment rate to hit as high as 35 per cent of the American population. Travel and hospitality have been one of the most severe hit parts of the economy. Unfortunately, the majority of them will have a bad year ahead and some of them may collapse completely. If roughly 60 to 100 million of them lose their jobs, that's just the start of the collapse of the rest of the economy.

I hope this situation never happens. If 100 million people lose their jobs, it will lead to credit market collapsing. People lose jobs> stop paying rent and mortgages>bank bad debt rises> banks stop lending > rest of the services collapse due to lack of credit and spending.

Even companies like Facebook and Google who most people think are not affected by this crisis will be affected. Small businesses and other companies spending on Google ads and Facebook ads will fall drastically as marketing would be the last priority of most businesses right now. So most of their employees may be sitting at home and working remotely, but they simply are not going to generate the same revenues for the company. The same goes for the recruiting and staffing industry who are going to see a massive fall in their revenues.

This crisis is definitely going to send major startups to go out of business. Most of the startups were free-spending the venture capital or private equity money like there is no tomorrow. COVID-19 will be the bullet that will kill them as the funding will definitely get dried now and most investors won't be able to get an exit via the public market anymore.

A lot of airlines are going to go bankrupt and I believe the governments should not bail them out. Bailing out airlines is far worse than bailing out banks. It's literally throwing money in a black hole. They should let them file for bankruptcy. The world is not short of airlines. If these airlines collapse, new ones will emerge again to meet the demand. Spending taxpayer money to save airlines on top of huge massive wage subsidy programmes is going to kill whatever chance the world has to recover economically from this crisis.

Why should the government bailout big companies while small companies are left out? Unfortunately, lot of small companies are the worst affected by this crisis and even if the government compensates them for salaries now, they will be worst hit as people won't be spending as freely after we go back to normal.

China appears to be going back to normal, But who is China producing for when the whole world has been shut down.? American consumers are the largest consumers of most major goods produced by China and Europe. If American consumers don't have a job or the money, you can simply say goodbye to the German economy which heavily depends on its car companies.

You can shut the world down hoping to slow the virus, but you simply can't stop the ticking credit time bomb. The more you delay, the more severe the problem is going to be. We can't expect governments to keep printing money and keep giving us money for not doing anything. We are the ones who have to pay for it in the future anyway.

This is, unfortunately, a crisis where we are going to see a lot of lives lost due to the virus, but let's hope it does not turn much worse with millions of people losing their livelihoods and their futures shattered because the governments across the world decided to shut us down. The government need to make a decision hoping people will do the right thing by maintaining social distancing measures while caring for the ones in danger. We can't afford to shut everything down for longer hoping the virus will die. This quarantine was essential to slow the growth of the virus and to trace the ones severely affected. But let's not drag this much further which will only destroy far more lives.

Its understandable that politicians are choosing to be on the safe side as many people act out of emotions. Choosing the lockdown is the easier choice in the eyes of the public. Only time will tell whether it was a right or a wrong move.

Donald Trump said, "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF." Because it's Trump, he was derided for his idiocy. But wouldn't most people agree with that comment? What sensible government would think otherwise?

Philip Johnston wrote a column in the Telegraph that the Exit strategy from this nightmare cannot be zero new cases because that is not going to happen. We have to get people who will be affected mildly back to work and soon provided that they do not interact with most vulnerable. Once the Healthcare system has the intensive care capacity to deal with all new serious cases, this will become less of an issue.

The government should spend more money on strengthening the healthcare infrastructure rather than bailing out airlines.

Only time will tell how we will look back at this time. Will it be remembered as the great coronavirus pandemic that wiped out swathes of humanity or a relatively minor contagion to which we overreacted in a massive way?