COVID in Australia
New South Wales (NSW), Australia is seeing an exponential rise in its covid cases after its recent easing of lockdown restrictions.
On Tuesday (14 Dec) there were 804 COVID cases in NSW. This more than doubled to 1742 two days later (Thursday) and three days later today has nearly trebled to 2213 cases per day. A rise in daily cases was expected. But it is clear that what was initially a spike is turning into a run-away situation.
The dilemma
The country is in a dilemma – easing the restrictions leads to a spike in COVID cases. But re-introducing the lockdown would kill economic activity. This will lead to unemployment and a sharp drop in the earnings of the business and industry sectors. The economy would stall.
If we lifted the lockdown completely, it is possible that the covid cases would run out of control. How bad the situation can get will probably become clear in the next week or so. Is it possible to strike a balance between lockdown and rising covid numbers so that we can live with covid while letting the economy keep ticking?
A moral issue
There are of course moral issues to consider. One can rest assured that with the current covid numbers, there will be a minimum number of deaths amongst patients in ICU if we choose to relax all the covid restrictions. The question is, how many deaths are sufficient to justify such a decision? Can we fix a price on life?
When one assesses such a strategy to the covid issue critically, it becomes clear that lifting restrictions completely in favour of the economy is myopic and hasty. We can sweep the moral issue under the carpet for the while but that does not solve anything. But is there another way out of this seemingly intractable situation?
Is there another solution?
There is no obvious panacea available in the short-term. But a little thought will reveal that part of the problem lies in what the world is like today. More specifically, the problem lies with the nature of the global economy itself. And to find a solution, we need to change this economy.
We cannot change the economy of a country (or the whole world) in a day, so any solution will be for the future. What we need is an economy that is capable of withstanding both global shocks and pressing needs. We have already noted how climate change and environmental concerns have been forcing a change in the choice of our energy sources and consumer behaviour in general. We are now faced with a new (and unexpected) threat to our global economy. Few would have envisaged the full ramifications of a pandemic on the global economy when covid arrived two years ago.
We need a new economic model
We need to find a new economic model. It is a model that can decouple the economy of a country with the requirements for dealing with pandemics and other global crises.
The prevailing global economy today is predominantly a free-market economy. It has grown over the centuries in a free-market way. To avoid the problems of the covid and other types, one needs to re-structure it along more rational lines. Is such a rationalized economy possible for the future?
There may be. More on this later.
Join the discussion.
#CovidAndLockdowns #CovidLockdownAustralia #CovidAndNewEconomy
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