{"id":89,"date":"2020-03-30T20:27:39","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.protectthepeople.co.uk\/?p=89"},"modified":"2020-03-30T20:27:39","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:27:39","slug":"two-policies-and-their-outcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.protectthepeople.co.uk\/two-policies-and-their-outcomes\/","title":{"rendered":"Two policies and their outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
by Michael Wongsam<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the widespread denial and obfuscation, it is clear that the Johnson government at least seriously considered and planned to act on the reckless strategy of pursuing ‘herd immunity’ via the permitted infection of a large proportion of the population. This is despite siren voices even on the governments’ own advisory committee, such as Professor Neil Ferguson who led the benchmark Imperial College study into the modelling of the likely course of the pandemic. This has been adequately implied in many well respected mainstream media outlets. However, one cannot assume that such reckless approaches derive from a lack of seriousness, stupidity, or any other explanation that involves primarily the character or personality of the head of government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other very noteworthy example of this approach is the attitude of President Trump as illustrated by his press briefings on the crisis both initially, and even despite the announcement of a $2 trillion rescue package, his continuing pronouncements. Thus on Monday 23 March while the wrangling over the coronavirus relief bill was still continuing, he expressed the hope that the restrictions on Americans’ daily activity would be rolled back within a few weeks, while the night before he tweeted “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself”. Indeed, the massive rescue package itself is nothing but a corporate bailout and contains little to combat the spread of the virus beyond a one time payment of $1200 for most Americans. At the same time as the Trump administration are signalling their intention to lift the partial lockdown of the economy, the WHO are suggesting that the USA could become the next epicentre of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the character and personality of both Trump and Johnson can be impugned, the initial approach was adopted generally throughout the west. So for example, Spain, Germany, France and the US all had more cases than Italy when it first ordered a lockdown when they finally initiated a partial lockdown. Furthermore, there are an additional 16 countries – all of them rich, developed countries – that had more cases than Hubei province had when it initiated its lockdown, before they initiated partial lockdowns[1]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Therefore, unless one is willing to put this down to a generalised political dysfunction we have to explain why the strategy stands in stark contrast with the approach adopted in the East generally and in China notably. There are therefore two general approaches, and one has to understand what lies behind these. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first fact to understand is that contrary to the persistent claims, the government has not been following the scientific advice. That is the view of the editor of the Lancet, one of the premier medical journals in the world[2,3,4]. The scientific advice is to pursue the policy pioneered in China, and which is now being adopted in the west by degrees as a result of the enormous pressure being brought given the objective reality of the situation. The real political choice is between prioritising the needs of the people or prioritising the needs of the economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The objection could be raised, that this is a purely rhetorical assertion and that western governments care about the wellbeing of their people at least as much as those of the East. That the west was slow to act in the face of the obvious crisis which unfolded in Hubei province, which everyone was privileged to witness months before it came to western shores. That the fabric of liberal democracy makes the adoption of the methods used in China a more difficult and drawn out process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there is unimpeachable evidence from history which confirms the correctness of the previous argument, including the applicability within liberal democracy. That evidence exists in the history of the Spanish flu pandemic, and is made manifest in the comparative experiences of two cities in the USA which adopted the diametrically opposed approaches outlined above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trade off between public health and economic stability<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firstly it is important to understand that when such crises occur it reveals in stark relief the underlying trade-off between public health and public safety on the one hand, and economic stability on the other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has been eloquently outlined by Richard Murphy [2]. This argument states that implementing social\/physical isolation has the effect of slowing the spread of the disease, putting less strain on public health services, but severely attenuating economic activity for a much longer period – the much used \u2018flattening the curve\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n