I think a lot of people don't realise yet that we are dealing with 2 emergencies here. One is a health emergency, but the second is an economic and logistical emergency on a scale probably not seen since the last world war.
The government need to manage both of these at the same time and it will invariably involve balancing one with the other. It's a terrible conundrum as peoples lives are at stake, but when the health situation does improve people will need jobs to return to, and the likelihood is many of those jobs won't be there.
Every decision that is made will have consequences. For instance, closing schools causes a problem with child minding, with people staying off work or children going to stay with vulnerable grandparents who should really be isolating. Cancelling sporting events, like the Grand National and football matches, bring their own problems. The company that own Aintree racecourse, for example, used to bring in 95% of it's annual income from the 3 day Grand National event, I doubt they could survive the cancellation. Friends of mine own a hat shop in Liverpool and 50% of their sales are in the run up to Aintree. Many football clubs outside of the premier league cannot survive without the gate receipts and match day income.
When the big shut down comes, which it inevitably will at some stage as the government has already stated, then our already vulnerable High Street is going to find it hard, with many small business's, in the hospitality sector especially, failing. The travel industry will also be hit hard. The longer the shutdown, the more business's will go under.
Pensions and investments will be hit massively, and whilst they will no doubt recover over the next 5 years or so, that won't help the poor guys who are coming upto retirement now.
As I understand it, the people advising the government on this are trying to take into account all these factors plus the impact on the emergency services. They are trying to time events to ensure that the shutdown, when it inevitably comes, will have the minimal effect on our long term economy whilst enabling our medical services to cope with the numbers that require hospitalisation. The fact that more people may possibly die as a result of their decisions makes their jobs that much harder.
It's all well and good criticising government for making the wrong decisions or listening to the "wrong expert advice", but nobody at this stage really knows what's good advice and what isn't. Hindsight will give us a better indication, but even then it's inevitable that all governments around the world made mistakes in the handling of this virus, and all evidence would therefore be open to interpretation. For all governments, and ours is no different, it'll be a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Personally I'm just glad it isn't me having to make those decisions.
news.sky.com
