Thread by @t0nyyates

Missing from the Budget is any discussion or action at all on addressing the economy's problems post covid. What health budget will be need to put us in a better place to deal with another one, or will we not bother trying to prepare [the implication of where we are]?

The pandemic has been incredibly regressive in terms of - impact on children's education; mortality; who can homework and who cannot; square footage that one is locked down into. Any thoughts on addressing that, or do we just proceed as though it didn't happen and won't?

What will be the hangover on expenditure patterns, demand for space, where people want to live and work? What role, if any, is there for government in facilitating dealing with this legacy/transition?

What ongoing needs will there be for vaccination / therapy research and delivery? For changes in educational real estate and provision?

We seem to be assuming that come September it's as if Sars-cov2 never happened. Or to the extent that it isn't it's not the government's problem, won't impinge on spending, and the rest of us can deal with it.

What about social care too? There was anyway a funding problem, and now we know that there is a potential for a massacre, are we back to just not dealing with the old problem and ignoring the new death risk?

We seem to be assuming that the pandemic risk is such that there won't be another one in a time frame that interferes with the strategy of just growing away the debt burden. Is that right? What is the evidence?

Perhaps there's an assumption that if there is another pandemic in a shorter time frame than that, it won't be costly, because we will deal with it quickly, a faster vaccine, more health capacity, better test / trace / isolate / border quarantining infrastructure.

But if that's the case what do we have to do to get from where we are [facing costs like we just faced, because we have poor test and trace, limited ICU capacity, poor border quarantining, fast but not instantaneous vaccine technology, etc] to where we want to be?

And how much will it cost?!

The budget can be summarized as 'this bad thing has happened which gobbled a lot of money, but it will stop gobbling in about September, and then we will just be a bit poorer and other than that we will carry on. Thanks for bearing with us.'

Another way into this is to ask ourselves what went badly for us during covid, and well for other countries, and is it feasible for us to replicate the good bits of other countries' strategies, and how do we do it and pay for that and is it worth it?

Ask yourself another question. If we'd just come out of a regular large recession, say, how would the budget talk look different? The public health disaster we have lived through leaves no imprint. This could be a 2010 budget, or a 2040 budget.

To clarify, I'm not saying the Budget should look like the Budget coming out of a regular recession. It does look and sound like it, but since this is a profoundly different circstance with special, huge and complex legacies, the Budget should reflect that.