The bore

In January, during Chinese New Year, I had started writing about Covid-19 — warning clients of its potential to destroy. By the middle of February, the phone was ringing off the hook like in Dial “M” for Murder. “Is Armageddon upon us?” prefaced most questions. Back then, there were 2,000 new Covid-19 cases a day. The world had a total of 70,000 cases. And 96% of them were in China. But they had begun to spread, hence the panic. Now there are north of 85,000 cases a day (40 times more than back then and within spitting distance of peak rates in April and May). So far we’ve seen a total 4.4mn cases and they are everywhere. The phone still rings. But the questions (if about Covid at all) concern the economic consequence of the pandemic and could be prefaced by “now that Covid is over….”

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