COVID19

A dip stick assessment as to how positive are periodic lock downs as and when deemed necessary .Well the trend is promising but this can only be effective when all are well adhering to it 100% which is a little difficult in India keeping a very large % of an unorganised sector which is a very integral part of the economy and indirectly contributes to the GDP and we are all some where or the other dependent on it. COVID 19 has led all of us and the GOVT towards a serious consideration to the pre and post closure strategy. Pre-closure strategy sure seems straight forward for an implementation as it is 100% linked to reduce the Infection rates and minimise community spread but sure the Post closure and revival strategy would be challenge.

A very basic assessment with the available information on the web shows the lockdown decisions well help for sure , for minimising the COVID19 spread but if 'N' number of unprecedented lock downs are expected to lower the spread of the virus to zero before our vaccines or the level of immunity in all comes to a level to be able to handle the infection, would be too optimistic.In any case even if the curve flattens wrt the Active Cases (AC) ,the COVID 19 infections will exist but could be optimally spread across states and could have very limited ,controllable or no spikes in then coming future. So what is the Pareto optimal minimum AC that can be taken as acceptable is still a question?? We really need to think fast here!

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The dipstick assessment, if the lockdowns are good for limiting the Active Infection Cases ?? The answer is "YES" and should be accepted by all without any personal reservations as we are actually helping each other with this and not ourselves only.The following representation would help to get a better feel why we actually extended the lockdowns and might again be necessary to implement circuit breakers.

 

But the challenge that we all might face is the post lockdown start-up which can be seen as a herculean task by an individual or by the industries as there is likely to be a severe dearth in the workforce and to bring the Industrial output to an optimal level will be affected by a concatenating drag that will have to be dealt with ,which would comprise of an ongoing recovery from the demonetisation and GST stabilisation (May be not for all sectors but sure for some ) and the shut down now due to the COVID 19 effect.

A robust restart strategic framework is what is seen lacking now as industries have already started asking for bail out packages which is all upto the govt to decide which should push the GDP holistically and not look into any one sector at this instant. Bringing in a restart post the lock down relaxation would need a reassessment of then existing situation and bring in the productivity with reduced workforce to overcome the startup inertia to attain the output terminal velocity. Reassessment of the systems-process and people will be vital now.

Again the lock down shows some positive results but this is with an assumption that the testing was rigorously conducted as it is being conducted during the Lockdown 2.0. But this is some thing that wasn't done that effectively and could have been due to some uncontrollable operational reasons as it seems ,as sudden spikes would not have occurred which have been reported a few days back. More spikes could be seen due to more investigations in place and this will again bring in a need to implement even more extensive circuit breakers ;which can seriously prove very detrimental if implemented again and again within short periods of time for the economy in toto.The graph has relevance only with an assumption of tests had been conducted with a 5% level of significance. This is a little too optimistic at this stage as the tests being conducted could in general have >25-30% margin of error keeping error factors like transport issues, test inaccuracy, incorrect sample collection and other related aspects as there is no process in place to monitor every lab and test being done. This is an important aspect that needs to be looked at critically for better projections.

Now and even post the relaxation of the lock down ,these few listed areas could be always kept at the TOM recall when ever a decision is taken for implementing the circuit breaker :

1.Will the current state of Economy that as yet to recover fully from Demonisation and GST impact again ready to take a dip and have a speedy recovery?

2.Will we be able to manage a more than 50% reduction in work force post the end of the circuit breaking phase?

3.Will we be able to again fund the poor in a much better way ?

4.Will we be able to again stabilise the economic impact which is highly dependent on the unorganised sector and which does make a difference?

5. Have we done enough during this time we had to make the health system robust through optimal capacity planning in a more technical manner rather than with the help of a broad rough assessment by various healthcare stake holders?

6. Do we have and are reporting our numbers correctly wit acceptable error margins ,every time we assess the GDP growth as still post all the turbulence we are proving to be better than the world and expecting to hold at 5%-9% ..as per the latest news reports. This is not bad at all at this time if it holds but holding that rate when the bottomline delivering for the businesses and the economy is not stable will be challenging now and later now?

7. Do we have a robust health analytics system that could give us reasonable projections on a daily and weekly basis for us to take informed decisions instantly rather than waiting for reports all the time and drive opportunities embedded in such typical turbulent times. This will help us not to just halt the country 100% again and will keep us well prepared for any upcoming eventuality?

8.Do we have a system or a set up in place to address issues similar to COVID19 through a serious continuous research?

 

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