Imagine you are a sole breadwinner in the family (well, that's the case in most families in India).
You haven't unfortunately made provision for emergency fund and don't have a health insurance (well, again that's the case for most Indians).
You fall sick...severly sick, requiring several months of rest (personally, I have the experience of falling sick for 6+ months when I was college student)
You start taking treatment & rest and don't go to work. One month passes; you manage it somehow. 2nd month your income will be severely hit or you won't get salary. You have to manage family expenses as well as cost of your treatment. You have no option but to sell your long term assets or borrow. You do one of them.
By 3rd month, fortunately you start recovering. You feel much better. But you aren't cured fully yet. You mostly need another 4-6 weeks rest to fully recover. But you are desperate to get back to work. You feel you can't afford to rest without income anymore. If you get back to the work there is a chance that your sickness relapses again; but if you don't go back to work, your family will perhaps be put to difficulties. (Personally, I've gone through this; my dilemma was between missing learning (not earning) and health; and it was also too boring to sit at home for such long period, at that age!)
So, you get back to work, thinking sickness will go-away and you anyway continue medication. Many a times, indeed sickness goes away, as I've seen. But some times sickness relapses and in fact becomes more severe (like what happened to me).
Now, you are forced to take rest again and you have no other way than further selling your assets or borrowing. Your family's well being will be just the matter of how much assets you have or how many real friends you have to lend you (because it is loan without interest and without fixed repayment date).
Now replace 'yourself' with 'India' (for that matter any 'not so prepared' country) in above situation. That's what the situation is. We are really stuck between a rock and hard thing.
However, today, it's not just India, but every other country is in the same situation. That's much bigger problem.
On 8th of April 2020, China opened-up Wuhan city (the epicenter and origin of Covid-19) after 2.5 months lock-down. When they did that, it's not that China was seeing zero new cases for a week or two (ideally 3-4 weeks). The incubation period of this Novel Coronavirus is about 3-4 weeks, as learned & experienced globally. So, ideal time for opening up is the time when we have not seen a single new case reported for at least 3 weeks. That's almost sure indication that whole region is mostly cured of the virus. But when China opened-up, it was still discovering 30+ cases every day. This number was too small however, compared to thousands of cases it was seeing in the peak time. For good one month time, since 8th March 2020, in China, the new Covid-19 positive cases found per day, were under 50 cases for most of the days and under 100 for few days, it was 0 for one day. They must have run out patience by that time and would have felt it's appropriate now to open-up. I wish and pray, let the situation doesn't escalate again. However, the initial numbers that are coming up are making me worry. Before opening up, new cases found were between 30-50 as I said earlier. Here are the new cases found since opening up:
PS: Experience, is the most expensive teacher. Any amount of teaching during good times, about getting 'prepared' (Emergency Fund, Insurance, Investing for Life Goals, Asset Allocation, Financial Prudence, Patience) during good times fall on deaf ears mostly. Hope we learn from this experience at least.
You haven't unfortunately made provision for emergency fund and don't have a health insurance (well, again that's the case for most Indians).
You fall sick...severly sick, requiring several months of rest (personally, I have the experience of falling sick for 6+ months when I was college student)
You start taking treatment & rest and don't go to work. One month passes; you manage it somehow. 2nd month your income will be severely hit or you won't get salary. You have to manage family expenses as well as cost of your treatment. You have no option but to sell your long term assets or borrow. You do one of them.
By 3rd month, fortunately you start recovering. You feel much better. But you aren't cured fully yet. You mostly need another 4-6 weeks rest to fully recover. But you are desperate to get back to work. You feel you can't afford to rest without income anymore. If you get back to the work there is a chance that your sickness relapses again; but if you don't go back to work, your family will perhaps be put to difficulties. (Personally, I've gone through this; my dilemma was between missing learning (not earning) and health; and it was also too boring to sit at home for such long period, at that age!)
So, you get back to work, thinking sickness will go-away and you anyway continue medication. Many a times, indeed sickness goes away, as I've seen. But some times sickness relapses and in fact becomes more severe (like what happened to me).
Now, you are forced to take rest again and you have no other way than further selling your assets or borrowing. Your family's well being will be just the matter of how much assets you have or how many real friends you have to lend you (because it is loan without interest and without fixed repayment date).
Now replace 'yourself' with 'India' (for that matter any 'not so prepared' country) in above situation. That's what the situation is. We are really stuck between a rock and hard thing.
However, today, it's not just India, but every other country is in the same situation. That's much bigger problem.
On 8th of April 2020, China opened-up Wuhan city (the epicenter and origin of Covid-19) after 2.5 months lock-down. When they did that, it's not that China was seeing zero new cases for a week or two (ideally 3-4 weeks). The incubation period of this Novel Coronavirus is about 3-4 weeks, as learned & experienced globally. So, ideal time for opening up is the time when we have not seen a single new case reported for at least 3 weeks. That's almost sure indication that whole region is mostly cured of the virus. But when China opened-up, it was still discovering 30+ cases every day. This number was too small however, compared to thousands of cases it was seeing in the peak time. For good one month time, since 8th March 2020, in China, the new Covid-19 positive cases found per day, were under 50 cases for most of the days and under 100 for few days, it was 0 for one day. They must have run out patience by that time and would have felt it's appropriate now to open-up. I wish and pray, let the situation doesn't escalate again. However, the initial numbers that are coming up are making me worry. Before opening up, new cases found were between 30-50 as I said earlier. Here are the new cases found since opening up:
| Date (April 2020) | 8th | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th |
| No. of New Cases | 63 | 42 | 46 | 99 | 108 |
PS: Experience, is the most expensive teacher. Any amount of teaching during good times, about getting 'prepared' (Emergency Fund, Insurance, Investing for Life Goals, Asset Allocation, Financial Prudence, Patience) during good times fall on deaf ears mostly. Hope we learn from this experience at least.
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