So unfortunately nobody is doing the math (health cost of economic shutdown vs heath cost of not, using QALYs or some measure of human suffering caused by either). I spoke to a friend at the WHO and it isn't being done there or, seemingly by the UN agencies in concert.
https://twitter.com/chr1sa/status/1266903593585504256
And it isn't being done by politicians on either side as it's politically toxic for most (health related deaths from being poor could be very hard to measure). Which is why we need to have a universal model based on amount of human suffering.
It would look at years of life lost to the disease with each life lost year with a suffering metric increase of 100, or less if that person was already suffering in some way. Then it would look at say the suffering caused by malnutrition by being pushed into extreme poverty, or
...stress from being unemployed etc. And this suffering is real, the World Bank estimates 40-60m people pushed into extreme poverty. The suffering of people who have lost their jobs or have closed small businesses is also real. But so is the suffering of people who will die...
...if we don't lock down. It is complicated and nuanced and requires decisions based on insufficient data because science takes time and we don't have time. But no govt. or institution seems to be building this model, or sharing it if they have, and as usual humans have...
... managed to turn what should have been something that brings us together - as there is a common enemy that isn't us - into an ideological Left = lockdown, Right = open up. And in both cases the most vulnerable suffer.
Meanwhile, monetarist rather than fiscal policies mean that much of the stimulus has been top down, buying assets including corporate debt. This was sensible in 2008 as the big gears of capitalism had seized and it took 3 years for the effects to percolate down into unemployment.
This time it's the bottom that has seized, small businesses shuttered and people instantly laid off. And the effects will ripple up onto larger balance sheets if we don't fix it. But we are in the perverse situation where govt. stimulus, not just in the US, is buying Apple bonds.
Where Apple is a company sitting on $100+ billion in cash. So like last time, the stimulus will have the byproduct of exacerbating inequality but without the benefit of being the right pill.
Again, it's not cut and dry, we need some monetary stimulus and we need some fiscal like we need to balance lockdown with opening up. Financial and physical wellness are intertwined, they form part of a single idea of security and well-being that should be being measured.
But is isn't being measured by anyone, and it needs a nuanced and moderate rather than ideological stance. Which is why I am a Radical Moderate.
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