Quote of the day 29th March 2020

"It is important for me to level with you - 

we know things will get worse before they get better."

(Boris Johnson: Extract from letter the PM is sending to every household about Coronavirus/COVID-19)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Even Corbyn-19 couldn't destroy an economy the way this government has
Chris Whiteside said…
In case you have not noticed the COVID-19 Coronavirus has been causing chaos around the entire world, not just in this country.

The virus has damaged the economy in every country. The priority for now has to be to save lives, but the government has put an unprecedented package of measures in place - which in normal times would make Corbyn and McDonnell look positively Thatcherite but these are not normal times - to ensure people don't starve, go bankrupt or get evicted in the meantime.

Not because that's going to stop the economy tanking - nothing could stop COVID-19 tanking the economy - but so that there is some sort of economy to worry about when the Coronavirus crisis is over and we can go back to trying to sort it out.
Anonymous said…
A complacent government certainly could not stop COVID-19 tanking the economy. It didn't have to be this way
Chris Whiteside said…
"It didn't have to be this way."

I'm sorry but that is nonsense. Of course it had to be this way.

to repeat in slightly more precise language what I stated in my previous comment, I very much doubt if there will be a single country anywhere in the world which both has escaped and will continue to escape significant damage to their economy this year from the Coronavirus pandemic.

There is certainly a direct correlation between, on the one hand, the degree to which a government was and remained complacent and, on the other hand, the number of people COVID-19 kills in that country, but the damn thing will cause massive damage to the economy of every country regardless of what the government does.

If the government of a country is complacent, and somehow manages to stay complacent as the body count starts to go through the ceiling, that damage will be caused by the deaths which the coronavirus brings about and the reaction of the population to those deaths.

If the government of a country is NOT complacent the measures it takes to limit the spread of the disease will themselves cause massive dislocation to the economy.

The economy tanks either way. QED.

(For the benefit of those who were not fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study either Latin or how to prove things, "QED" stands for "Quod Erat Demonstrandum" which means "That which was to be proved" and it is written at the end of a proof.)
Anonymous said…
Singapore, South Korea, Japan, all essentially islands appear to have a better grip of the situation. It didn't have to be this way.
Chris Whiteside said…
All three of those countries, just like everywhere else in the world, have taken a significant economic hit from Coronavirus even though I agree with you that they have handled the pandemic better than most.

So far as damage to the economy is concerned, yes it did have to be this way.

Anyone wanting to make further contributions to this thread is welcome to do so as long as you sign your name or use a consistent pen-name.

However, no further anonymous comments on this thread will be accepted.

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