Two generations to pay for Covid-induced education inequality: Prof Ananish
Economies were hurt due to Covid-19 pandemic-induced measures including lockdowns, said Ananish Chaudhuri, Professor of Experimental Economics, University of Auckland.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused more panic than the actual health damage, he commented at a seminar organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) yesterday.
Considering the rate of infection and the death rate, the coronavirus was not as serious as other epidemics of the past, he observed.
"Although the lockdown did not work very well to combat the coronavirus infection, the average life expectancy of people has decreased by eight months due to the rate at which people's income has decreased during the lockdown," said Professor Ananish.
"More people have died of other diseases due to lockdown. Apart from that, as educational institutions were closed due to the lockdown, we will have to wait at least two generations to overcome the inequality created in this sector," he commented.
The seminar, held at the BIDS conference room, was also live streamed on the video conferencing platform Zoom and presided over by BIDS Senior Research Fellow Dr Kazi Iqbal.
Questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns during the pandemic, Ananish Chaudhuri said the number of infections did not decrease a bit during the lockdown phases.
He said pandemic response plans of many countries and global organisations did not include lockdowns.
Citing the example of 24 countries of the developed world, he said that more people have died due to the coronavirus in countries under strict lockdown while fewer people have died in countries with soft lockdowns.
Ananish Chaudhuri said that no one has benefited much from the Covid lockdowns.
"Switzerland imposed no lockdowns but they also prevented deaths. Most of those who died of Covid in Britain were at home. Those who died in Sweden were also mostly at home," he pointed out.
He said the countries that saw more deaths basically had a high number of elderly people.
Since the number of young people is high in sub-Saharan African countries, the death rate was relatively low in the countries of that region, he argued.
Professor Ananish also said that farmers are the least affected by Covid worldwide. Those affected in that profession were above 70 years.
"Inflation is increasing globally not only because of the Russia-Ukraine war. The impact of initiatives taken for covid is also responsible for this," he said.
In his keynote article at the seminar, Professor Ananish said from 1913 to 1919, the Spanish flu killed 219.44 million people worldwide. In 2019-20, 6.31 million people died of Covid.
"So it turns out Covid was by no means a bigger disaster than the Spanish flu," he said.
The article also pointed out that 4.81 million people died in the Asian flu of 1957. The 1968 Hong Kong flu killed 2.18 million people.
"But Covid spread the most panic," he added.