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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Calculating the benefits of lockdowns -Dipankar Dasgupta

Calculating the benefits of lockdowns -Dipankar Dasgupta

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published Published on Jul 19, 2021   modified Modified on Jul 19, 2021

-The Hindu

Lockdowns need to be guided by trade-offs between harsh and mild policies

Data show that as of now 26.2% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Of them, only 1% live in low-income countries. By contrast, the richer nations, such as the U.S., Canada, Germany and Britain, registered above 50% vaccination by July 17. For India, the percentage of the adult population that has received at least one dose stands at 34.1% as of July 18. How long it will take to eliminate the inequality in the administration of vaccines is shrouded in mystery. Till that happens, long or short lockdowns from time to time will remain the only defence against the virus. Several researchers have studied the effectiveness of the lockdowns in economic terms. It is important, therefore, to take stock of the issues that have materialised in this context.

A trilemma

The Economist has come up with a paradox of sorts in an article concerning the trade-off between lives and livelihoods. The article is rooted in the COVID-19 disaster and questions the practicability or even desirability of simultaneously protecting lives and livelihoods with the aid of lockdowns. The discipline of economics, or its dominant school at least, is intimately linked to trade-offs and its fundamental teaching is that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it too. During pandemic-driven lockdowns, this boils down not to a dilemma but a trilemma perhaps. Draconian lockdowns help you to keep on living, but they prevent you from earning a living. With incomes drying up, essential expenditures such as those on food, health and education cannot be sustained, implying that life cannot be lived. Extreme lockdown policies imply that you cannot quite have your life and live it too — at least not meaningfully.

The vicious trilemma needs to be torn down if humanity is to be preserved. This calls for a careful assessment of the severity of lockdowns, their costs, and the resulting gains they hopefully lead to in terms of lives saved. If the expected benefit of a policy falls short of cost, economists will reject it and suggest the adoption of alternative policies, involving an excess of benefits over costs. In other words, one needs to understand the nature of the trade-off. Is the suffering caused by a lockdown sufficiently compensated for in terms of lives saved?

The question is probably less simple than it appears to be at first sight. The New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, said, “To me, I say the cost of a human life is priceless.” In technical economic language, this amounts to asserting that the (monetary) price of a human life is infinitely high. If this be so, saving a life calls for endless sacrifice. If such sacrifice assumes the form of extreme lockdowns, then the line of argument precipitates the trilemma all over again. It is counterproductive to start off with infinity. Clearly, the Governor had failed to come up with a meaningful definition of the value of a human life.

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The Hindu, 19 July, 2021, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/calculating-the-benefits-of-lockdowns/article35398066.ece?homepage=true


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