It was chilling reading the plight of publicans with no food offering during the week and the stats from Dublin Airport Authority (97.2% – the y-o-y decline in passenger numbers at Dublin airport in June 2020, making it one of the biggest falls worldwide during the Covid pandemic. According to the recent air traffic report from @ACI_EUROPE).
The economic outlook for certain value chains decimated by the effects of the current pandemic relative to Government measures is stark and the prospect of the current status quo prevailing until the end of 2021 is frightening.
Cormac Lucey has a very thought provoking piece today in The Sunday Times.
He suggests the figures of measuring deaths related to Covid is flawed across board as the effect of damage to stalling the rest of the health system is not counted; which is very fair given the postponement of so many elective procedures.
He shows how Sweden’s more relaxed attitude has resulted in them recording more Covid related fatalities than some neighbours, but also less than other European counties per capita. Its economic performance was clearly the best In the second quarter as it allowed business continue.
What he doesn’t say explicitly, but it has been said elsewhere, is that if the economic gains from loosening the reins could be reinvested into the health system to save more lives, we could have a real debate on the cost benefit of extreme lockdown in terms of lives lost versus lives saved.
What a horrible world we are living in to have to talk about individual lives as statistics but there needs to be debate, even if we end up with the current restricted situation or more extreme, but we have to be very careful of the laws of unintended consequences of blanket lockdown.