Let's start with some mouthful of secondary data.

As per Asian Development Bank, in a worst case scenario Bangladesh might lose 0.01% of its GDP of 2018 worth $3.02 billion along with 894,930 job losses for corona pandemic. The trade, personal and private sector, tourism and manufacturing sectors are likely to be most affected.

Bangladesh was ranked 41th among the world’s largest world economies and second largest among the South Asian countries in 2019. With above 7% stellar GDP growth rate since 2016, the country is expected to rank 36th in 2023 and 27th in 2028. Current GDP size of Bangladesh is $286 billion with GNI of $1,909. On March, 2019 Moody’s rated credit profile of Bangladesh as ' Ba3 stable ', supported by robust economic growth prospects, a modest government debt burden and access to concessional funding and expected economic activity in Bangladesh to remain strong over the next few years, driven by the ready-made garment (RMG) industry.

RMG sector constituted 84.21% of the total export basket in 2018-2019.

Now, " apparently " this industry is at the brink of collapse. Having $3.17 bln worth work orders either cancelled or suspended, face of the BGMEA President is looking very gloomy. Surely we can not afford 4.1 mln workers protesting on the street.

And the whole economy will get severely affected, if the RMG sector stumbles.

On going crisis is also posing absolutely the biggest managerial challenge for organizations across the world. And their response during this period shall vividly portray their image in years to come with greater consequences.

Everyday too many specialists, forums, schools and scholars are coming forward with their own predictions. And most of them are pointing at - “Doomsday Ahead". Apparently we are in need of extra board space to capture downward graph fully in its capacity.

Indeed these analyses are based on facts, logic and some deep understanding of economy. On the other hand, I cannot present you any numerical data to support my thoughts. If you are waiting to hear some positive prophecy, I am sorry to disappoint you. Please stop right away and start endless blind browsing in Facebook, Instagram again. That's our only redemption during this lockdown days, I guess. From now on, I am just going to say what I think based on my understanding of human nature and society. It's simply what I think from my gut feelings. And as per my experience so far, although adults and serious peoples love numerical data probably more than anything, gut feelings often matters more (Malcolm Gladwell also agrees with me in his famous book named 'Blink' .... Just poorly trying to strengthen my argument) than numbers.

But wait... ain't these the same group of experts who predicted collapse of world economy so many times before?! Don't you recall?

If their predictions came true, world would never have emerged from most of the recessions, depressions, pandemics, epidemics and wars. Remember they almost unanimously predicted the judgment day for world economy during 2008's Subprime Mortgage crisis in U.S.? Capitalism survived and flourished nevertheless afterwards. Around 60% population of Europe died during " Black Death " in 14th century, the most fatal pandemic in history of human kind. World actually witnessed " The Renaissance Period " after that, not the end of humanity. Plague of Justinian during the years 541-542 that killed over 50 million lives, The Great Depression in 1930s, World War I, World War II, Cold War... you name it. People came back stronger and often even more united than ever before. Along with the worst, hard times do bring the best of humans as well.

I believe indeed we have hard times ahead. No doubt about that. But economic models can hardly accommodate variables like human compassion, survival capacity, endurance etc. These qualities can and do influence and change the outcome. And they do it more frequently than we assume. In out of the lab real world scenarios.

I have a feeling that 2 mln years ago when a small band of our ancestors proposed to leave African landscape and scout through unknown territories equipped with nothing but some so called tools made of stones, there were also rock solid negative estimations and panics regarding the outcome of their expedition. If those apes like humans listened to the specialists’ predictions, we were likely to remain confined in Africa only probably till today. Sure enough, we have not. We are even planning to scavenge hunt the Universe now (Poor Milky Way!).

May be I am sounding a bit dramatic. Call me over optimistic, but I believe world economy will see a new flow of energy everywhere after the pandemic gets over. I believe in our capacity to turn around. It's the very basic nature of humanity to fight back during the hard times and thrive. I have last 10,000 years history of civilization and 2.5 mln years record of continues progress since the arrival of human species on planet Earth strongly in my favor. Therefore, I am hopeful. We will survive and thrive. Again.

Till then stay home, stay safe, stay alive.