BY IZAZ KHATTAK
COVID-19 is now declining in China. There are now more new cases every day in Europe than there were in China at the epidemic’s peak, and the US, Italy, and Spain have surpassed it as the countries with the most deaths from the virus.
It took 67 days to reach the first 100,000 confirmed cases worldwide, 11 days for this to increase to 200,000 and just four to reach 300,000 confirmed cases – a figure now reached around two million in no time.
Political thinkers are now deeply concerned with the post corona world order. With every passing day, the situation is now appalling and the world’s great powers including United States of America are appear to be failing in controlling COVID-19.
From their helpless behaviour, we can underestand the destruction we are going to face in the near future. For understand the tragic situation ahead, we will highlight the history about century back when Spanish Influenza started from northern China in late 1917 and hit Europe ghastly in January 1918, causing the death of 0.92% of total population i.e 17.4 million people of that time.
There is a lot of difference between the two pandemics, still there are lot of similarities. The major difference between these two pandemics is that the world at that time was not connected globally as it is now.
Due to the Spanish influenza, world great economies collapsed, manufacturing industries were shut, sports industries were subverted, food industries were closed. Food of basic needs was becoming scarce and people were ready to spend much of dollars on getting something of physiological need.
It took the world about 10 years to get out of the effects of Spanish flu. Now sword of the same situation is hanging over our heads.
In this contemporary situation we ought to be prepared for such a grievous echelon coming ahead. We can also defy such a situation in the current pandemic where we all have to endure a shortage of food, a collapsed economy, loss of connectivity with our beloved ones, the decimation of educational year and much more hilarious outcomes.
COVID-19 which has spread to about 210 countries of the world isn’t going to be eliminated so early. It will remain for a few upcoming months and life till the end of June this year will probably be agitated.
Once the world will get rid of this epidemic, there will be the luminous difference between pre and post corona world order. There will be a massive shift of power from North to South and West to East. Status quo powers like the US, France, Germany, etc will not be able to retain their status quo and the world concept of security will witness a shift from traditional to non-traditional security.
The present powers will not be able to rule the rest of the world rather they will themselves struggle. Along with these exhilarating effects, COVID-19 will end up with producing opportunities for the middle class to improve their status and standard of living like Spanish influenza results in the converting of California to world business and billionaires hub.
California where the world-class companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, FedEx, etc offices are based, are basically an outcome of Spanish influenza. Before the pandemic of Spanish influenza, California wasn’t that much developed.
US President from 1933-45 Franklin D Roosevelt invited business community from all over the world to establish their business in California in order to put the US economy on track.
After Spanish influenza, Germany under the Nazi regime emerged aggressively on the world map so we can’t ignore the threat of new power to emerge on the world map.
Briefly, the world order will face walloping change after COVID-19 and it will take more than a decade for the world to come out from after effects of COVID-19.
(Izaz Khattak, is a student of BS International Relations at National University of Modern Languages Islamabad. He can be reached at izazkhattak321@gmail.com)
Also Read: Coronavirus And The Rise Of Authoritarianism
