The coronavirus outbreak poses a serious risk for the world economy, despite that most of the global leaders and economists refuse to acknowledge it. The coronavirus outbreak could become the first truly disruptive pandemic of the globalization era, which will cost the incredible 1 trillion USD to the global economy.

With the death toll approaching 3,000, over 80,000 cases officially recorded and an outbreak in Italy now shutting down the richest chunk of its economy, some economists are beginning to war game what an untethered outbreak could mean for global growth.

The uncertainties around the virus are much and the epidemic is still out of control, but the WHO calms the population that it is far from pandemic size. However, according to the latest calculations, an international health crisis could be enough to wipe more than 1 trillion USD from the global gross domestic product (GDP). That would be the economic price tag for a spike in workplace absenteeism, lower productivity, sliding travel, disrupted supply chains and reduced trade and investment.

While the International Monetary Fund currently estimates the virus will only cause a decline of 0.1 percentage points from the 3.3% global growth forecast for 2020, the IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said in a Yahoo Finance interview that a pandemic declaration would risk “really downside, dire scenarios”.

Meanwhile, the UBS Group AG Chairman Axel Weber is already far more pessimistic than the IMF and warned global growth will experience a massive drop from 3.5% to 0.5% and China will shrink in the first quarter.

Quite before the coronavirus outbreak, the analysis of the World Bank shows that destructive pandemic could result in millions of deaths and might destroy as much as 1% of global GDP, which is estimated at about 85 trillion USD. A disastrous health crisis akin to the 1918 Spanish flu, which may have killed as many as 50 million people, could cost 5% of global GDP, the Washington-based lender said in a 2015 report.