My Face-book newsfeed has been experiencing a little tremor ever since the Dhaka-based action movie Extraction started streaming on Netflix on April 24.

Press freedom in Bangladesh has been in decline long before the coronavirus came to our shores.

The recent back-and-forth debate over the use of face masks to prevent the spread of covid-19 has settled. In the beginning, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that there was no need for people who are well to wear face masks.

One of the key revelations of the Covid-19 pandemic is that things that we held to be true in the past are now seen to have been myths, and as we transition from the old order into a new (and hopefully better) order going forward, we can build a better world by fixing much of what was wrong with the old world.

What does a “contract” actually mean? I am sure many garment factory owners have been pondering over this issue these past few weeks. Here’s a simple definition of a contract: “A written or spoken agreement, especially one concerning employment, sales, or tenancy, that is intended to be enforceable by law.”

To support the COVID-19 affected economy, some experts are suggesting that the government of Bangladesh should go for printing money. However, I feel that there is no need to take such a radical measure since Bangladesh has a number of policy tools at its hand at the moment to heat up the economy.

The horrific images of white plastic body bags in which the final journeys are set during this great pandemic add to the myth of coronavirus as the great leveller.

One of the biggest lessons coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we are living in an interlinked world where no country can cut itself off for very long and no country can tackle the problem by itself. This lesson is even more true as we battle the double whammy of Covid-19 and the climate change.

The pandemic and its economic impact will be felt very strongly by the poor.

Alan Greenspan, who led the US Federal Reserve for two decades, was summoned in congress and testified that the financial crisis of 2008-2009 was an economic tsunami which could happen once in a century.

Bangladesh has been under lockdown since March 25, 2020 to control the spread of coronavirus.

April 13 was Easter Monday, an everlasting testimony to the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion and its symbolic assertion that there is life after what is perceived as death. In the midst of a somewhat stifling home confinement in fear of the ubiquitously merciless and relentlessly marauding novel coronavirus, somehow the day and its symbolism was comfortingly reassuring.

My generation grew up with masked heroes. They could shoot heat beams from their eyes or knock down a skyscraper with a single punch—“kavoom”! They could lead double lives: during the day they could be aristocratic noblemen or dashing socialites, and at night, they could put on their vigilante masks and raid the neighbourhood in search of culprits and criminals.

As nearly the entire globe remains in lockdown and international travel is almost at a standstill, international meetings are being cancelled and often replaced by conference calls on Zoom and other online meeting platforms.

I don’t remember exactly when I heard about the 2019 version of coronavirus, Covid-19, but I do know it was during my travels in Asia this past January.

Over the past few weeks, I have heard variations of “I don’t know why but I don’t think Bangladesh will be affected by Covid-19 in the way that other countries have been.”

Much has happened between the time the virus struck in Wuhan in December 2019 and now. By the time this piece appears in print more than a million and a half people around the world in more than 200 countries will have been affected and nearly a hundred thousand will have succumbed to the virus.

How will the world look like once this not-so-coveted Covid-19 crisis is over? Is this pandemic a virus-driven Ice Age that will change the world the way we know it? Can we ever go back to being normal? Or are we going to have “the new normal”?

As the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Bangladesh economy is becoming apparent in many ways, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced a second stimulus package for the affected sectors on April 5, 2020.

The Covid-19 pandemic is still having severe impacts on many countries and it is not at all clear how long it will take to play out globally.