LONDON (Reuters) - Last December the first infection with the new coronavirus was reported to the World Health Organization. Twelve months later, as the charts below show, global financial markets have been on a roller coaster like no other. The virus even wasn’t the first thing that spooked the markets this year. The tone was set when an escalation of an oil market turf war between Saudi Arabia and Russia sent oil prices crashing over 5% on Jan 8. Just days later though China’s stock markets began to fall as a cluster of more than 50 pneumonia cases in Wuhan city sparked a warning from the WHO there could be a new SARS-like virus. Oil continued to fall as traders were also now worrying about a drop in Chinese demand, but other major markets were not seriously affected until mid-February when it became clear the virus was rapidly spreading out of Asia. Cue carnage. From February 20 to March 24 as Europe’s big economies locked down, MSCI’s 49-country world share index lost more than a third of its value haemorrhaging a staggering $18 trillion. (Graphic: Trillion dollar carnage, ) Wall Street’s S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq slumped 35%, 38% and 30% respectively. London and Frankfurt’s internationally exposed FTSE and DAX markets dropped 35% and 40%, Japan’s Nikkei fell 30%, whereas Chinese stocks saw a more modest 16% drop. “In retrospect I felt I was one of the villagers in the boy who cried wolf story,” said Ben Inker, Head of Asset Allocation at investment firm GMO. “We had seen a number of potential pandemics never really develop...we were assuming that this was going to be contained and when it didn’t we understood why the world was freaking out.” For reference, the record quarterly drop for Wall Street was 40% in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression. The fact that the S&P and Dow were at record highs back in mid February made the crash this time seem more brutal. (Graphic: Speed, severity of coronavirus selloff eclipses previous market dislocation Governments were already trying to shore up their economies, but just like the financial crisis a decade previously it took powerful central bank medicine to steady the markets. The Federal Reserve’s move to cut U.S. interest rates to zero in mid-March initially had zero impact, but once it opened new swap lines to keep money markets flush with dollars and the ECB and other big central banks arrived with their own measures, the rout eased. The amount of money and effort thrown at the problem has been unprecedented. BofA calculates that central banks have spent $1.3 billion an hour buying up assets since March and made 190 interest rate cuts this year, which works out as four every five trading days. As well as fuelling the monster market rebound, JPMorgan estimates the central bank moves have left nearly $35 trillion, or 83%, of all richer, developed nations’ government debt with a ‘negative yield’ once inflation is factored in. It means investors are effectively paying for the privilege of lending to those countries. Germany’s finance ministry for example says it has earned more than 7 billion euros ($8.51 billion) from issuing new bonds this year. (Graphic: G4 policy rates nearly sub-zero, ) Locking down much of the world economy has not been easy. By April the International Monetary Fund was forecasting global growth would to fall to -3 percent, a 6.3 percentage point downgrade from its January estimate. Its latest forecast is for -4.4% for the year. “This makes the Great Lockdown the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis,” it has said. Unemployment and global debt levels have also surged and the World Bank warns global extreme poverty is set to rise for the first time in over 20 years. It could push an additional 88 million to 115 million people below the breadline this year and as many as 150 million by the end of next year. (Graphic: Global GDP growth, ) Stock markets were beginning to recover in April but the shocks did not stop. Oil went negative for the first time ever, dropping as low as minus $40 a barrel as oil producers began to fear storage capacity could run out. It did not last long though. By the end of April it was back up to almost $20 a barrel and is now back above $50 - a 220% gain for anyone brave enough to dive in - although it is still down nearly 25% for the year as a whole.