woodguru wrote:
Politicians shouldn't be in the medical manipulation business, that is going where they have no knowledge
Countries that followed guidelines that have worked in dozens of situations have far better economies than we do.
I agree with your first paragraph and ask what countries that followed the guidelines have far better economies than ours??
Given our job growth for four months in a row until last month I think we faired much better than predicted.
A few considerations here..please consider:
A low impact of COVID-19 in terms of case numbers and deaths does not necessarily translate into a low economic impact. [1] Many countries are experiencing a recession, even though COVID-19 has not had a serious effect on them in terms of health. Even minor public health events can severely affect firms in lower income countries due to their poor socio-economic conditions (vulnerability) and their weak capacity to respond to crises (resilience). Moreover, in a globalized world, many countries are suffering indirect consequences from value chain disruptions and lower international demand for goods due to widespread recession.
Section 1 presents recent evidence on the current state of industrial production and exports. Section 2 focusses on the impacts of COVID-19 on firms based on the most recent data collected by UNIDO in several Asian countries. Section 3 discusses the policy implications of our findings.
Covid-19’s economic impacts are broader and more severe than most past crises. The disease has been highly infectious in comparison with past major disease outbreaks, spreading rapidly to reach almost every country in the world and infecting more than four million people (Madhav et al., 2018, p. 317). In addition, while previous pandemics have typically emerged in poorer countries and have had their greatest impact there, Covid-19 emerged in an important economic hub and has affected countries central to the global economy: at the beginning of March, the list of the ten countries most affected by Covid-19 was ‘almost identical to the list of the ten largest economies in the world (Iran and India are the exceptions)’ (Baldwin & di Mauro, 2020, p. 2). The impacts of the disease itself (illness and absenteeism), the policy measures being taken to control its spread (closing businesses and schools, and restricting travel and gatherings), and the behaviour changes that individuals are making to avoid exposure (avoiding public places and reducing consumption, especially in social settings) combine to simultaneously affect supply and demand at multiple points in the economy. Most of the economic impacts of Covid-19, as has been the case with past epidemics and pandemics, are a side effect of the measures taken to control the spread of the disease, rather than a direct effect of the disease itself.
Covid-19 has greatly disrupted global value chains, which now account for more than two-thirds of world trade (Dollar, 2019, p. 1), and disruptions are likely to continue to propagate back and forth through these networks as countries restrict economic activity to control the disease (Baldwin & Freeman, 2020; Jonas, 2013, p. 10). The experience of value chain disruption during the pandemic is likely to feed into future debates about deglobalisation. The manufacturing sector will suffer disruption through shutdowns, labour shortages, supply chains and
transportation disruptions, and declining demand as customers cancel or delay purchases and investments.
https://www.unido.org/stories/coronavirus-economic-impact-10-july-2020https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/coronavirus-how-are-countries-responding-economic-crisishttps://www.cgdev.org/blog/economic-impact-covid-19-low-and-middle-income-countries