If only we had an official independent body doing econ- epidemiology, we could chart a course through the omicron variant and adjust as news came in.
A bunch of economists doing it off their own back is better than nothing. But

1) not good to leave the funding for this important task to chance.
2) the analysis can easily be ignored.
3) there is no mechanism to ensure the appropriate balance of expertise between econ and epi, or to embrace dissent within each field.
4) you need control to make sure that economists, epidemiologists and public health researchers are focusing on the right things. Without it you can't hope that their incentives as academics/whatever will match immediate public need.
Depending on how you view the new variant, you might think that we are basically in the end phase of covid, or the beginning of a forever war. Either way, this kind of joined up advice is going to be needed for a long time.
There are decisions to be made about how we live, work, get around, how we fund our covid related health, all of which impact on our vulnerability to new variants, or entirely new epidemics. These decisions need a fusion of economics and epidemiology.

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More from @t0nyyates

29 Nov
OK Freddy and your defence for the other racists the Spectator has published over the last few decades?
So the response to the problem of platforming racists is to say ‘if other people are doing it then so should we’?
And not confronting racists over their racism is justified by that not being your personal ‘style’?
Read 5 tweets
25 Nov
Wonder if Haldane will stick it out for much longer now we are told there is no new money for ‘Levelling Up’.
Can’t really expect The Department For Taking a Bit Away From Here and Adding it There to work miracles snd undo centuries of place based disadvantage.
White Paper 1: ‘we must take away a bit here and add it there’.
Read 4 tweets
25 Nov
Musing aloud about the major global macro themes. These seem to be...
1. How much team transitory was wrong, initially, and what central banks will / should do about it. Complicated by the recent change in the Fed targeting regime which has confused things.
2. The vanishing labour supply, post covid. Super-imposed [particularly in the US] on the vanishing male labour supply longer term.
Read 10 tweets
25 Nov
Agree with almost all of this column. Except. A big reason why the Tories aren’t trying to privatize the NHS is because it isn’t popular. And it’s not popular because the idea is frequently talked about, and negatively.
Effort spent defending itself against privatization charges is not likely to be very large, and it is naive to think that it simply impedes good natured work towards reform. It’s part of what underpins the status quo.
It seems unlikely to me that somehow Brits are ideologically wedded to public provision. It’s what they know; and regularly contrasting it with other private provision models helps mould the view that what they know is best stuck to.
Read 7 tweets
12 Nov
This is like one of @robmanuel's bots. Lots of drama and disdain. Means nothing.
Old core Tory MPs. Totally ignorant numpties need upending. Entire system is a project. See 1960s Greenland rewilding or Taiwan film production. Unusual brains and fast dashboard info can rewire policy production. Smell the javascipt coffee or VL will make web war.
Classic SW1 think-tank rando. Remain to Brexit is dial-up to fibre. Whitehall simpleton-MSM is a vector of sleep. Manhatten Project was quick so anything is codable. Just need to kill procurement flunkies.
Read 7 tweets
12 Nov
I don't think central bankers actually holding office should be proposing fiscal frameworks, or fiscal policy settings. The suggestions themselves are interesting and sensible.
The ECB, like other central banks, was given independence to protect monetary policy from politicicans who might be tempted to use monetary policy to create booms before elections; or to inflate away their fiscal problems.
This has a cost in that there is a loss of immediate democratic control over the operation of monetary policy. That is a cost if you think democratic control over policy levers is a good thing.
Read 7 tweets

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