Balancing Of Death Risk With Economy

Balancing of death risk with economy

- Gurbir Singh

There is growing impatience to return to ‘normalcy’; yet the galloping pandemic has kept people in India and elsewhere locked up at home, and the economy in deep freeze. With the government beginning the rollback of curfew measures from April 20, the search is on for the balancing point: how do we keep isolation measures in place to flatten the curve of infection and death without pushing the economy to the brink?

It is now accepted that a lockdown is not the cure for Covid-19; at best, it is to arrest the spread of the infection so that the healthcare system has a fighting chance to treat the flow of patients. The final answer, a vaccine, is still a year or more from commercial distribution.

It is obvious there can’t be indefinite or permanent lockdowns. Says Dr Stephen Phillips, a US based medical epidemiologist: “No country can afford an indefinite precautionary principle based on the strategy of avoidance of all risks. The economic, social and psychological consequences are too destructive and dire.”