Severe lockdown will ruin Indian economy: Health expert Johan Giesecke to Rahul Gandhi

In another video conference talk, Rahul Gandhi spoke with Harvard’s public health expert Professor Ashish Jha, who sounded an ominous warning, saying that the world is entering the ‘age of pandemics’.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, continuing with a series of talks on the Coronavirus crisis, interacted with Johan Giesecke, a well-known Swedish physician and Professor Emeritus at the Karolinska Institute at Stockholm on Wednesday.

Giesecke said that no country thought of an exit strategy prior to announcing the lockdown.

“All the countries in Europe that instituted the lockdown one or two months ago, did not think about the exit strategy at that time,” said Johan Giesecke.

“I think you will soon create more harm than good with a severe lockdown,” he added.

Giesecke further said that India needs a graded exit plan from the lockdown to protect the economy.

Claiming that a severe lockdown may disrupt the economic growth, Giesecke said, “India has to ease restrictions one by one, it may however take months to completely come out of lockdown.”

He suggested that the exit has to be step wise. “Take away restrictions in India one by one, you take one away, you soften one restriction,” he said.

In another video conference talk, Rahul Gandhi spoke with Harvard’s public health expert Professor Ashish Jha, who sounded an ominous warning, saying that the world is entering the ‘age of pandemics’.

“We are entering an age of pandemics. I am confident that this is not the last global pandemic you and I are going to see in the next 20 years,” Jha said.