SoDATA — Observers say unless governments around the world stop Covid-19’s progression and relax social-distancing controls too soon, the human toll and economic impacts will remain earth-shattering, including frequent viral videos such as this one.
Swing factors that will largely determine the contours of the pandemic in the next year remain under review — even in South Asia and the MENA region there’s a sense of de javu, instrospection with some rethink.
The definition of “herd mentality” could find a new friend.
Still, in “Beyond coronavirus: The path to the next normal,” McKinsey has considered some perspectives to help leaders organize their thinking and responses as business and society take on spheres of action for safeguarding lives and livelihoods, and of course the economy.
Now that our traditional metrics and assumptions have been rendered irrelevant, says the consulting firm, “it’s our turn to answer a question that many of us once asked of our grandparents: What did you do during the war?”
Definitely, back then we did not have fast foods and our children were fed with home-made foods including Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies, ice creams, franch fries, paratha, omelette, anda ghotala, lassi, etc.
McKinsey says the battle against COVID-19 is one that leaders today must win if we are to find an economically and socially viable path to the next normal. That also holds true in South Asian countries like Pakistan and in the MENA region — which combined has one of the largest consumer base south of Tropic of Cancer — fertile for MNCs, Fast Foods (a $254 billion market) and Brands. Still, the recovery, recalibration will take more time than up north. Plus, new variables we expect to crop up and influence the market. One of them we forecast is the sense of getting back to the normal and closer to the nature — a not so “new normal” in the region but definitely a factor to reckon with.
