gravy wrote:It's like when Piers Morgan backs the NHS, you agree with the overall point but you really don't want him on your side.
I know what you mean.
But, you know, he's the guy who's doing the spreadsheets and graphs and simulations, in order to make the important points that need to be made. He's got the video to be linked. If you know of any alternatives...?
Yes, his economic analysis seemed a tad on the simplistic side. But I think the gist of it holds.
The way I'd put it is that "lockdown + a few more weeks to be sure < two full lockdowns". If restrictions are lifted too early and the virus re-emerges, then we'll be forced back into a full lockdown all over again. This would surely be more time with the economy out of action to do two (or more) sets of months-long lockdowns, than extending the current lockdown just a bit longer to be absolutely sure that it can't just instantly start its exponential growth all over again.
Also, I don't think it would work.
I'm reminded of Boris's week of "dither and delay" when he insisted that he wouldn't ban mass gatherings. The next day, all major sporting leagues and associations cascaded with cancellations, postponements and shut up shop anyway. Events were cancelled or pushed back to the end of the year or rescheduled for next year. When Boris finally officially banned mass gatherings, there simply weren't any left running to ban.
I think that they were all going to cancel and postpone anyway - because you can't seriously run events, and the economy in general, with this shit actively going on - but they were solely waiting to see if the government would say so first. Because, you know, insurance and stuff. If the government bans it, then there's the possibility of compensation and all that. But Boris didn't say it, so they all went ahead with their plans anyway. Because they were always going to shut up shop - it's simply not feasible from a commercial perspective to continue, much less from a moral angle - but, financially, it makes a difference if Boris orders it or they do it themselves voluntarily.
By Thursday, the UK government has to decide if the initial three weeks of lockdown needs to be extended. Can you imagine if Raab actually said "all restrictions have been lifted, and everything's back to normal again"? I don't know about you, but I'm not going anywhere. The Premier League is not going to say "oh, okay, it's fine for us to now put our players, who we pay millions of pounds, and all those fans back into harm's way, because ol' Dominic said so".
You can't feasibly operate an economy - definitely not at full speed - in this climate, as much as we might desperately want to get back to doing so.
As I've suggested before, imagine you've got an office with, say, 100 people in it. If one person walks in with SARS 2 - perfectly unaware, as they're asymptomatic right now - then - bang! - it spreads round the office like wildfire. And then you've got the whole office in off sick in self-isolation. Some of those employees, tragically, might not ever come back. Forcing them back into work when it's fundamentally unsafe to do so is a dumb move - economically, as well as morally - because one "virus bomb" going off in the middle of the office, and you've got NO-ONE working for you for at least a week. But if you let these guys work from home, then they might not be quite so productive (depends on the work, though, as it really makes no difference in my line of work, as I remote into servers to do pretty much everything, whether I'm in the office or not) but at least you've still got most, if not all, of those 100 people still doing work for you that brings in some kind of cashflow.
Indeed, I accuse those who lament "But what about the economy?!?" of actually being the ones who're insufficiently thinking about the economy enough. It's not just psychopathic, it's bad business. Because you might not give two flying fucks about your employees - but, for the continued operation of your business, you must give a fuck that you've actually still got employees, who're actually able to do work for you, or how does anything actually get done?
Like I said before, if they'd thought about the economy way harder than they did, then they might have made the calculus that, actually, if the entire world had closed all borders, stopped all international flight and passenger ships, and all the rest of it a few weeks earlier - to keep the Chinese epidemic as a local epidemic and not a pandemic - then, sure, bailing out the airlines and the tourist industry and all of that would have been expensive.
But that expense would be as nothing compared to what we've now got, with half of humanity in lockdown, with governments everywhere having to pay 75-80% of wages, 80% of self-employed wages, excusing taxes and rents and mortgages, with no tax money coming in as all businesses are locked down and so on and so forth. And the dither and delay did not save you a single cent when it comes to hailing to bail out the airlines and the tourist industry and all that - because your delay bought us nothing, all international travel has necessarily and inevitably come to halt regardless.
Some earlier self-inflicted economic damage - to bring the situation under control fast - would have been massively, massively, massively cheaper for the world economy.
"More haste, less speed"
- Aesop
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
