On January 25, when WHO reported a total of 1,320 confirmed cases globally for disease the outbreak caused by novel Coronavirus (then named 2019-nCoV), with the majority of the cases (1,297 ) reported in China, Nepal with one confirmed case joined nine countries in the global map spotting confirmed cases. By March 23, the global total for the disease known by then with its new name COVID-19 surpassed 300,000 confirmed cases with the loss of over 14000 lives in some 195 countries. Nepal was fortunate to still remain with the same lone case, which was fully recovered.

PARIS – Emotions are not easily contained. They control us much more than we control them. And during a pandemic, the dominant emotion is naturally fear.

At a time when the entire world is shaken by the coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic, we all need to take necessary precautions against it. A few weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID19 a global pandemic, more than half a million cases have been detected, the death toll is rising fast and all the countries in the world are suffering.

The human dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic reach far beyond the critical health response. All aspects of our future—economic, social and developmental—will be affected. Our response must be urgent, coordinated and on a global scale, and should immediately deliver help to those most in need.

These are rather peculiar times that we find ourselves in. As the dark clouds of fear and uncertainty hover above, the world desperately lies in wait for that elusive fresh beginning. This is not the first time that a crisis has befallen our planet. As a matter of fact, in all these years of human existence, we have faced and we have overcome horrors far worse than what the current pandemic is shaping up to become. It is estimated that anywhere from one third to half of the population of Europe perished because of the Black Death.

HONG KONG – The world is at war. The enemy is resilient, ruthless, and unpredictable, with no regard for race, nationality, ideology, or wealth. Already, it has killed more than 26,000 people and infected over 560,000, from ordinary workers to the United Kingdom’s prime minister and crown prince. It has halted economies, overwhelmed health-care systems, and forced hundreds of millions to remain confined to their homes. And it will not back down.

My maternal grandfather who is 96 never misses to talk about the Second World War whenever I go and visit him. Elaborated anecdotes of the brave Gorkha soldiers fighting in the Burmese front under the Allied Command quickly change to more subdued references to the genocide, massacres, mass bombings and starvation. World War I had seen 40 million military and civilian casualties while the Second World War saw this increase to 75 million deaths. Thirty thousand Gorkha soldiers died in the World War II alone. Disease outbreak was a depressing corollary of all these wars and conflicts.

NEW YORK – The shock to the global economy from COVID-19 has been both faster and more severe than the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) and even the Great Depression. In those two previous episodes, stock markets collapsed by 50 percent or more, credit markets froze up, massive bankruptcies followed, unemployment rates soared above 10 percent, and GDP contracted at an annualized rate of 10 percent or more. But all of this took around three years to play out. In the current crisis, similarly dire macroeconomic and financial outcomes have materialized in three weeks.

I have a pollen allergy. Even a slight exposure to it greatly agitates multiple organs of my body and often causes debilitating headaches and intermittent fevers. Every spring, I still venture out to nature walk like a warrior donning facemasks and respirators to take on the pollen head-on. For I love to devour spring smell and glory notwithstanding my physique’s loathing of its byproduct (pollen), which is a given and plentiful in the suburbs of American south.

BEIRUT – Middle Eastern and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies are heading toward a recession in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, collapsing oil prices, and the unfolding global financial crisis.