The UK policy response to covid19 – and that of many other countries too – has been characterized by a siloing of epidemiological and economic advice; and also with the economic component kept private and away from scrutiny. SAGE forecasts and deliberations excluded economics [eg tendency of people to respond to risk] and economists. HMT/OBR/BoE modelling and analysis has excluded the virus, and HMT work, to the extent any was done, happened in private. The false characterization of a trade-off between health and the economy that took hold in the government, and led to late and inadequate social distancing measures, epidsodically, and the subsidies to restaurants in the summer, may have had its root in this siloing.
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