Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

Coming up, the troubling absence of hard numbers when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic.

We don't know where we are exactly. We don't know where we're heading.

We don't know whether all the measures that we're throwing at that pandemic are making a difference.

But why a cruise ship may provide some of the answers that we desperately need

to help to understand this disaster, one that's spanning the globe now.

In some places, hospitals have been completely overwhelmed.

Beds and respirators, when hospitals get overwhelmed, that leads to

sparks and mortality. That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC.

Well, the financial meltdown in 2008 was thought to be a once-in-a-lifetime event, wasn't it?

Maybe not. The current crash could be twice as bad.

Some people are saying the worst crisis since the Great Depression we're hearing.

Angel Gurria is head of the OECDs, the body of rich developed nations,

and he warned that there won't be any quick rebound from this shock.

He's called for a maximum effort by banks and governments to support the global economy.

Right now, we have a duty to deal with the pandemic,

to lessen the economic consequences in terms of the unemployed, in terms of the small and medium

enterprises, in terms of the large companies, in terms of the sectors that have been hard hit,

we're calling for a Marshall plan together with the New Deal. This is no time to look at these constraints that we

normally applied. We're focusing now on working not only to accompany this crisis, but also

to throw everything we got at it. Throwing everything we got at it. How bad will it get?

And what does that involve in economic terms?

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