Are we worrying too much?

In the week that India overtook Russia to become the third-worst affected country by the pandemic, it has been argued that measuring virus cases relative to population size would give a better indication of how countries are faring. Based on cases per capita, India does not appear to be doing anywhere near as badly as several other countries. However, this misses several key points including that testing per capita is lower and healthcare is much poorer in India than elsewhere. The key economic consequence is that the authorities will need to keep in place many of the restrictions that have already led to a severe slowdown.