As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, governments have turned to proven public health measures, such as social distancing, to physically disrupt the contagion. Yet, doing so has severed the flow of goods and people, stalled economies, and is in the process of delivering a global recession. Economic contagion is now spreading as fast as the disease itself.
This didn’t look plausible even a few weeks ago. As the virus began to spread, politicians, policy makers, and markets, informed by the pattern of historical outbreaks, looked on while the early (and thus more effective and less costly) window for social distancing closed. Now, much further along the disease trajectory, the economic costs are much higher, and predicting the path ahead has become nearly impossible, as multiple aspects of the crisis are unprecedented and unknowable.
In this uncharted territory, naming a global recession adds little clarity beyond setting the expectation of negative growth. Pressing questions include the path of the shock and recovery, whether economies will be able to return to their pre-shock output levels and growth rates, and whether there will be any structural legacy from the coronavirus crisis.
From the data I’ve gathered, with a global death toll now passing 33,000 and the infected now rising to more than 700,000 normal life may not return to the UK for up to six months as the government warned that strict social distancing measures may continue into the summer to help the National Health Service cope with coronavirus.
All we can do is continue to take necessary precautions and stay indoors, On Sunday evening, Mr Johnson confirmed that 20,000 former NHS staff have now returned to work in the health service to deal with the crisis.
Do the right thing and stay indoors! 🦠