Each morning I wake up and the questions start immediately.
1/ Is hysteria even more contagious than covid-19?
2/ Why have people who didn't trust the government's policy response to climate change science (not settled) trusted their response to coronavirus? Eg Peter Williams.
3/ Is this the end of globalization?
4/ Will we return to the days of a command economy where we do a whole lot of stuff that we can never do efficiently and pay for the folly of it?
5/ Why is the Prime Minister on peak time telly talking about the price of cauliflowers?
6/ How is the world going to respond to the next virus?
7/ When a retrospective cost/benefit analysis is conducted into the lock-down will all of the people who died from other conditions or diseases because they couldn't get necessary treatment be included?
8/ Will New Zealand's obsession with retirement homes and voluntary mass segregation of the elderly turn out to be a godsend?
9/ With fewer than 20 hospitalized cases, is the unprecedented stress being reported by staff mainly about trying to keep out family members of non-covid cases and their response?
10/ What is the plan?
Professor Robert MacCulloch: Why is NZ Struggling?
21 minutes ago
4 comments:
2/ possibly the most important lens to filter with
3/ yes, for at least a generation
6/ more importantly, how will govt respond to the Threat of the next virus?
10/ a plan, and lots of loosely connected steps, are two quite different things. Not sure we need a plan right now as much as some coordinated experimentation with promising solutions.
1/ Is hysteria even more contagious than covid-19?
Yes, although it's confined to the media, government and bureaucratic classes.
2/ Why have people who didn't trust the government's policy response to climate change science (not settled) trusted their response to coronavirus? Eg Peter Williams.
People trust doctors more than most other professions, even if epidemiologists are not always doctors.
3/ Is this the end of globalization?
NO! At least not for goods and services. Tourism on the other hand, is going to take a hell of a hit around the world and there is going to be some re-calibration over supply-chains.
4/ Will we return to the days of a command economy where we do a whole lot of stuff that we can never do efficiently and pay for the folly of it?
NO! But nations are going to focus on having greater local capabilities on things like pharmacuetical production, which they have discovered has been outsourced to a frightening degree. This will not be the same as the Commanding Heights of The Economy nonsense of mid-20th century social democrats.
6/ How is the world going to respond to the next virus?
Depends on how far along our economic recovery we are before the next one hits, because if the decision is to once again to shut down most activities then economies may simply collapse.
And while people forget, the response of South Korea and other Asian nations has largely been better than ours because they did learn from their MERS disaster in 2015, so is there some hope.
7/ When a retrospective cost/benefit analysis is conducted into the lock-down will all of the people who died from other conditions or diseases because they couldn't get necessary treatment be included?
Excess deaths. That will be the measure.
8/ Will New Zealand's obsession with retirement homes and voluntary mass segregation of the elderly turn out to be a godsend?
I guess, compared to Italy. But I don't think it makes for a "healthy" society to exclude our aged from families to the degree that we do, simply because of a once-in-a-lifetime disease that targets the elderly.
9/ With fewer than 20 hospitalized cases, is the unprecedented stress being reported by staff mainly about trying to keep out family members of non-covid cases and their response?
Stress has many origins. In the case of our hospital staff it may simply be a result of them being put on heightened alert for days now - only to have nothing much out of the ordinary happening. Flopping back and forth between standard and extreme does not do the mind or body any good.
10/ What is the plan?
For getting out of this? There is none, just a whole lot of ideas floating around.
I'm glad someone's worrying about the important stuff. I'm struggling with should I open the sardines or the salmon to go with coleslaw? I wouldn't want to open the wrong one and find myself with a can of worms.
Only last month Burger King were advertising using a retired National Guard General and it was semi-satirical. Overkill. Such high office to attend to such a basic thing. Cabbages and Kings! Sledgehammers and flies! But that's where we're at these days.
Post a Comment