That said, the problems with the Kiwi ‘try to eradicate’ approach are legion. To name just a couple, tourism constitutes somewhere between 6 and 20 per cent of the NZ economy, depending on how many indirect benefits and how much of the travel sector you count. Pretty hard to mimic 17th century Japan, with borders closed to all the world’s potential infectors and still have anything much left of those industries. In effect, then, the Kiwis are betting the farm on a vaccine. Meanwhile, the looming economic carnage is going to carry in its wake a less well-funded health care system, plenty of indirect deaths, massive inter-generational unfairness and a hobbled private sector.
At the same time, up in Sweden they look to be as close to herd
immunity as anywhere on the planet. And don’t let anyone blow smoke in
your eyes, the Swedish economy has weathered this virus better than most
anywhere (save Taiwan) in the Western world.
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