It’s not only factories that can’t retool overnight to meet the Covid-19 pandemic. Our brains can’t, either. The way we think and the things we think about follow patterns that are capable of evolution and change — just not that fast.
You can see this phenomenon all around you right now: whatever we cared about before, we’re now using as our lens to think about the novel coronavirus. And subject matter experts, the people we need most in a crisis, are also the most likely to keep thinking as they have, because their thinking is so strongly shaped (or deformed) by professional training and strong collective values.
Also read: How India can buck the trend of global recession caused by coronavirus
I could give you lots of examples. If you usually think about workplace diversity, now you’re likely to be focused on the disparate impacts of the virus on workers based on sex, race and class. If you’re focused on reforming incarceration, you’re probably among those warning of the pandemic’s impact on the prison population.
But perhaps the most important two examples of experts following their training and beliefs are the two disciplines whose knowledge is most central to the current crisis: epidemiologists and economists.
Their intellectual approaches have a lot in common. Yet the difference between their approaches is already shaping government responses to the pandemic.
And what began as a difference of emphasis has the potential to become a chasm as the public health catastrophe continues and the ensuing economic crisis deepens.
To oversimplify, think of epidemiologists as experts who have spent their entire careers preparing to understand and suppress rapidly spreading disease. Their distinctive intellectual bent is to build models of transmission and then develop real-world interventions to change the expected outcome. Their core value is preserving public health.
“Flatten the curve” is a perfect example of the epidemiological worldview. Early models of transmission showed a steep infection curve. Social distancing is an intervention aimed at elongating that curve so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed, and deaths are reduced.
Now think of economists, or to be more precise, macroeconomists. They, too, have models — theirs are supposed to predict how the economy works. And they, too, are focused on interventions with the potential to improve outcomes.
But that’s where the similarity ends. Unlike epidemiologists, who identify a biological enemy and try to defeat it without thinking much about the costs, economists live on trade-offs. It’s an article of faith for economists that there is no such thing as an absolute value — not even the value of human life.
Instead, most economists embrace the hardheaded reality that helping one person often leaves another less well-off. When it comes to taking health-related policy measures, economists delight in pointing out that we are implicitly or explicitly putting a measurable economic value on human life. If we lowered the speed limit to five miles per hour, there would be almost no traffic deaths, they like to remind us. The 55 miles per hour speed limit puts a price on human life, whether we like it or not.
What’s more, macroeconomists have typically spent their careers preparing to understand and respond to crises in the economy. They are acutely attuned to the grave dangers associated with an economy grinding to a halt. When they see governments taking measures that will have precisely that effect, they’re preconditioned to respond with horror and to advise a different course of action.
The upshot of these different worldviews is that, on the whole, epidemiologists are insisting that we must take all necessary steps to control the spread of Covid-19. Meanwhile, many economists are saying that we must find a way to reopen the economy and that we must explicitly weigh the trade-off between virus-related health and broader human well-being that is in part a product of a functioning economy. (Of course, not all epidemiologists and economists fit neatly into these two boxes; I am offering a heuristic device to make sense of different approaches, not a sociological study.)
The gulf between the worldviews is big — and it’s growing.
When epidemiologists say that there is no trade-off to be had between health and the economy, because if people keep getting sick and dying it will leave the economy worse off, lots of economists just shake their heads. “There is always a trade-off,” you can hear them thinking. The consequences are measurable. People dying is unfortunate, but it’s still a cost that can be compared to the costs of shutdown.
Meanwhile, when the economists talk the trade-off talk, lots of epidemiologists (and others) find it morally reprehensible when people are dying.
The conflict between these two approaches is going to come to a head if and when the rate of new infections and deaths in the United States starts to go down as a result of social isolation. That’s when economists will say it’s time to start getting people back to work. And it’s when epidemiologists will say we are courting the disaster of a recurring outbreak.
In the meantime, the best we can do is be self-aware of our own intellectual tendencies.
Also read: Is Covid-19 a Chinese weapon or an accident? Either way, world must stop playing in bio labs
#WHO
#government
#Epidemiologist
#economist
Why epidemiologists and economists keep arguing over health Vs economy when epidemiologists say there is no trade off between health and economy, lots of economists just shake their heads in disagreement? Let’s try to analyse and understand it.
Facts:
To oversimplify think of epidemiologists as experts who have spent their entire careers preparing to understand and suppress rapidly spreading diseases. Their distinctive intellectual bent is to build models of transmission and then develop real world intervention to change the expected outcome. Their core value is preserving public health while on the other hand, to oversimplify think of economists or to be more precise macroeconomists, as experts who have spent their entire careers preparing to understand and suppress rapidly going down economy, they, too, have their models – theories are supposed to predict how the economy work. And they, too are focused on interventions with the potential to improve outcomes.
Both types of experts are suggestive &/ advising to the decision making authority not the implementing agencies. The opinions &/ views of the both are correct at their places.
My Reaction:
Crises were started in the fields of public health so the epidemiologists were consulted and their advices were followed by the government and their law and order enforcement agencies first.
The isolation and lock down was the best proven way to overcome/ combat the covid 19 pandemics along with other cautions, precautions, preventive measures and effective treatment methods. But, unfortunately, the pandemics couldn’t get combatted even after several months. It might be because of different approaches or methods in different ways by different types of law and order enforcing intectuals and governing systems in different countries with different types of severities and results as well. Hence the isolation could not work well.
As time passed with lock down and unproductiveness, economists started bothering about the economic crises, so they in turn, started advising governments to allow people to work from the home even in the isolation but since the world was never prepared &/ equipped before to work or produce products and services or to do trade from the home during the isolative conditions such as covid 19 pandemics. So people couldn’t work as much as required to uphold the economy.
The economy of the majority of countries has almost gone down very steeply during the pandemics during last several months without productive work due to the lock down &/ trade off decision. Now people and their governments have already started facing economic crises. It seems too difficult to support life without resuming the routine productive work as normal. It is the question of survival of the humanity on the earth either ways.
There is one and only known effective way to combat the covid 19 pandemics which is the isolation and treatment but if people don’t work institutionally, they can’t buy their food and other essential needs to survive. Hence, they should work anyway.
There must be a novel and effective approach &/ work protocol to work individually or institutionally with all measures of not spreading the covid 19 any more…
✍️….. ??Dr. Sharma Yogesh Kumar??
#WHO
#government
#Epidemiologist
#economist
Why epidemiologists and economists keep arguing over health Vs economy when epidemiologists say there is no trade off between health and economy, lots of economists just shake their heads in disagreement? Let’s try to analyse and understand it.
Facts:
To oversimplify think of epidemiologists as experts who have spent their entire careers preparing to understand and suppress rapidly spreading diseases. Their distinctive intellectual bent is to build models of transmission and then develop real world intervention to change the expected outcome. Their core value is preserving public health while on the other hand, to oversimplify think of economists or to be more precise macroeconomists, as experts who have spent their entire careers preparing to understand and suppress rapidly going down economy, they, too, have their models – theories are supposed to predict how the economy work. And they, too are focused on interventions with the potential to improve outcomes.
Both types of experts are suggestive &/ advising to the decision making authority not the implementing agencies. The opinions &/ views of the both are correct at their places.
My Reaction:
Crises were started in the fields of public health so the epidemiologists were consulted and their advices were followed by the government and their law and order enforcement agencies first.
The isolation and lock down was the best proven way to overcome/ combat the covid 19 pandemics along with other cautions, precautions, preventive measures and effective treatment methods. But, unfortunately, the pandemics couldn’t get combatted even after several months. It might be because of different approaches or methods in different ways by different types of law and order enforcing intectuals and governing systems in different countries with different types of severities and results as well. Hence the isolation could not work well.
As time passed with lock down and unproductiveness, economists started bothering about the economic crises, so they in turn, started advising governments to allow people to work from the home even in the isolation but since the world was never prepared &/ equipped before to work or produce products and services or to do trade from the home during the isolative conditions such as covid 19 pandemics. So people couldn’t work as much as required to uphold the economy.
The economy of the majority of countries has almost gone down very steeply during the pandemics during last several months without productive work due to the lock down &/ trade off decision. Now people and their governments have already started facing economic crises. It seems too difficult to support life without resuming the routine productive work as normal. It is the question of survival of the humanity on the earth either ways.
There is one and only known effective way to combat the covid 19 pandemics which is the isolation and treatment but if people don’t work institutionally, they can’t buy their food and other essential needs to survive. Hence, they should work anyway.
There must be a novel and effective approach &/ work protocol to work individually or institutionally with all measures of not spreading the covid 19 any more…
✍️….. ??Dr. Sharma Yogesh Kumar??
Both are selfish … They just think of their field and not in totality
In developing countries it’s a catch 22. You either die of Corona or you die of hunger.