What is the economic cost of coronavirus for third world poor countries?

Too soon to ask. Part of the reason is that the expression “Third World” countries (an anachronism of the Cold War) does not give you any real idea on about how different developing countries are. In fact, under some measurements, China is “a developing country”, by the way. So, these countries are not all the same, and the idea that they are “less developed” than the “First World” countries is questionable. In some obvious things, they are. In others, the answer is much more complicated.So “developing countries” have very different strategies. Regarding Latin America, which is the region I know the most besides the U.S., there are very different approaches. Mexico for instance is not even trying to avoid the virus. They already assumed that COVID-19 is going to enter the country. So, their focus now is in preparing as best as they can for the outbreak in order to minimize the damage. On the other extreme, in some cities of Colombia, you can call a hotline and they send a medical team to test you. 

That way a patient doesn’t need to move, and that minimizes the risk of spreading the virus (comparing their answer to the U.S. that really makes me wonder about the meaning of “underdeveloped”, by the way). In Argentina, there are several protocols in place, regarding airports and hotels. Since they also have universal health coverage (like most of the so called “Third World” countries in the Americas), in my opinion they have a very good opportunity to contain the disease or at least minimize the damages. As a final present, the following a map of the countries with universal healthcare. Some have much better system than others, and not in all the countries with universal healthcare attention is free. But like it happens with traffic lights, green (universal healthcare) is the best option when facing something a public menace like COVID-19, red (healthcare is not universal nor free) is the worst. The countries in blue have free but not universal healthcare —someone should paint them yellow in my opinion.

Andres Garcia