Corona, the butterfly that flapped its wings

Abstract

INTRODUCTION “It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?” Extract from Ray Bradbury’s classic science fiction story, A Sound of Thunder. According to chaos theory, the events that result in global changes are not big events such as wars, natural disasters, despots, dictators, and mass migration. It is rather the tiny things. A butterfly can flap its wings in one part of the world and cause a typhoon elsewhere. This phenomenon, known as the butterfly effect, is an effective lens in viewing and understanding the impact of events on economies, markets, and society. The novel Corona virus, a tiny virus viewed only through an electron microscope, became known as the great pandemic, which laid bare pre-existing social conditions and ambiguities of development and funding in its various forms, shaped and exacerbated by neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism, and current democratic policies and systems.