Left hand, right hand

In these difficult times it seems quite important to put aside petty political differences and support the government of the day in their efforts to manage the highly complex issues that come about due to a pandemic like the one we are living through.

It would be nice but sometimes they seem to make it really really hard to do so.

For instance, today the government has effectively asked the public at large to restrict themselves to only essential trips and to not visit pubs, clubs and theatres, I guess by inference that the actual list of places we should not visit is considerably greater but those were the ones that were mentioned explicitly. But this is a request and not an order.

At the same time, as they have not banned anything for the adults, they have chosen not to close schools. Having not closed schools they have implicitly left in force the laws that force parents to make sure their children attend school else they can face penalties starting with warnings, then fines and finally ending, potentially, in imprisonment.

So, stepping back. The adults have been asked not to attend the aforementioned venues so as to limit the spread of the virus. The rationale for that is quite simple and extremely necessary because the virus is highly contagious and  for a percentage of those catching the virus it can develop into an extremely serious and life threatening condition with a small percentage of all that catch the virus becoming terminal and dying.

So trying to reduce the spread is sensible because otherwise the high contagion rate means very large numbers of the population catching the virus and suddenly that small percentage who suffer the 'life threatening' condition becomes a large actual number of people, albeit still the small percentage.

That might just seem like the natural order of things and that having a big bang approach to the spread would be sensible from an economic perspective after all, once it has spread then we can get back to normality.

But it's not that simple. That small percentage will still be an horrendously large number of people. Some might argue, although they would be mistaken, that this number would be the same one way or another. It would not, because to manage the spread and isolate the most vulnerable at the correct times means that some in the high risk groups will never catch the virus as it will pass through the community and slowly become harder to catch.

That's not the biggest issue though. The really big problem is that if the number of people requiring hospitalisation and intensive care breeches the availability of care resources then the percentage of those dying increases, potentially quite significantly, due to the fact that no care is available. This results in medical staff having to play God and deciding who gets treated, to potentially live, and who does not, to probably die!

So by managing the spread, the total number of deaths is, probably, significantly lower. Definitely lower, but probably, significantly.

Having arrived at that point we return to the governments request. Let's say that everybody followed the request and stayed at home. That sounds good, right? Apart from the human nature bits which mean it would not happen, but lets just say it does. Then, we have schools that are not only open but laws that force parents to make their children attend.

The good news is that only a very very tiny percentage of kids have suffered any serious reactions to the virus. That's great, but they spread it really well. So even though the parents have stayed away from civilisation, it will be coming to visit them in the present the kids bring home unwittingly from school.

But not all family units have kids so that is a smaller percentage of the population than the larger percentage that visit social venues. That's good but not ideal, but it is something. However, it is, at best, a mixed message for the public and will only slow the spread but not as much as a comprehensive ban would slow the virus.

The government have stated that closing all schools would have a multiple detrimental effect. First, the kids that are not at school would need looking after and so who would do that. With a workforce made up of parents that are not stay at home mums or dads then there would be a cost, one way or another, for one of the parents to stay home to look after the kids!

The government doesn't like that idea much as there is an economic impact both to businesses without these parents now at home and because these parents might now need some income support from the state. not ideal as the taxable revenues would be falling as the social services call will be increasing. That's like you buying LV clothes when you can only ever really afford M&S!

Secondly, there is a knock on impact to the education of the children. That might not seem huge but could have a percentage knock on effect on the future earnings of the country. I know that might seem hard to conceive but trust me, if you take something out of an input, in this case, education and knowledge, then there has to be a knock on impact upon the outputs, in this case the knowledge, education and learning that goes into the countries earning potential which ends with GDP.

Ultimately, I suspect the UK government will have to go the same way as the governments of Italy and France, with others following suit soon. I do wonder whether the governments of those countries have effectively and adequately informed their people that this is not a short term thing. This is not going to be over with in a couple of weeks, nor a couple of months. At best, it will require some population management for at least the rest of 2020.

The economic impacts of this will result in serious downturns, recessions, in pretty much every country in the world which of course means a worldwide recession. Maybe I'll indulge myself and write about that next time I get bored.