Social economic implications of COVID-19

Prior to COVID-19 outbreak and taking into account the advances in the medical field witnessed in the recent past, never had mankind thought that a mere virus would threaten the world. Doomsday prophets envisaged a scenario where a demented megalomaniac in the Middle East or East Asia would deploy nuclear arsenal on civilization in a vain attempt to assert dominance.

Subsequently, the Group of Five: USA, UK, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand thought this scenario was all covered up. Through real-time intelligence sharing gathered dubiously through spyware technology, they ensured they were ahead of their rivals. In a fit of paranoia, the intelligence community, particularly in the US, employed developed and employed tools of mass surveillance, leading to a condition named by whistleblower Edward Snowden as “immortality of data.”