Perspective: Reopening the economyBoris Is Worried Lockdown Has Gone Too Far, but Only He Can End It
The British government had asked Britons to stay at home, but Fraser Nelson writes in The Telegraph that government modelers did not expect such obedience: they expected workers to carry on and at least a million pupils to be left in school by parents. The deaths caused by COVID-19 are shocking, he writes, but so, too, are the effects of the lockdown. “Work is being done to add it all up and produce a figure for ‘avoidable deaths’ that could, in the long-term, be caused by lockdown. I’m told the early attempts have produced a figure of 150,000, far greater than those expected to die of COVID.” The decision about when and how to reopen the economy is a tough call to make, but “it’s a decision that will be better made sooner rather than later,” Nelson writes.
The British government had asked Britons to stay at home, but Fraser Nelson writes in The Telegraph that government modelers did not expect such obedience: they expected workers to carry on and at least a million pupils to be left in school by parents. The deaths caused by COVID-19 are shocking, he writes, but so, too, are the effects of the lockdown.The Treasury expected three million claimants for its “job retention” scheme. Nine million are now expected. The plan was for about one in five school pupils to stay in class: not just the children of key workers, but those regarded as vulnerable or with special needs. Instead, it seems, just 2 percent of pupils turned up.
He adds:
Work is being done to add it all up and produce a figure for “avoidable deaths” that could, in the long-term, be caused by lockdown. I’m told the early attempts have produced a figure of 150,000, far greater than those expected to die of COVID.
This is, of course, a model – just like the model for COVID deaths produced by Imperial College. But estimates of lockdown victims are being shared among those in government who worry about the social damage now underway.
For the moment, [the fact that Boris Johnson is not at No. 10 Downing Street; he is recovering at Checuers, his country residence, after being discharged from the hospital] might not matter: this is not the time for any big decisions. The COVID picture is still too unclear, the uncertainties too great. Other countries are still taking only small steps. Denmark is reopening primary schools and Austria small shops. Even Italy is looking at reopening its factories. Roberto Speranza, its health minister, has said this will mean “learning to coexist with the virus, because it won’t disappear”. That’s another way of bracing Italy for an increase in COVID deaths as the price of returning, slowly, towards normal life.
It’s a difficult call for anyone other than a Prime Minister to make. But with latest forecasts saying that a quarter of the British economy might have gone by the summer, it’s a decision that will be better made sooner rather than later.
