[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Oh, it's news to me that you can have a test and you can avoid coronavirus! Has anyone told the virus that or is this just your command?

Here's your straw man you are looking for Old Boy.

I'm sorry, mate, but we cannot avoid this as there is no way available yet that can stop the virus from spreading. Despite every effort of the care homes, the virus is still getting in and the death toll is dreadful.

There is - keep everyone apart as much as possible. Combined with mass testing and contact tracing (see South Korea) and it is possible. What countries need to wake up to is ceasing non-essential international travel completely.

As far as the economy is concerned, we cannot sustain the lockdown measures for long. Fortunately, we don't have an unsustainable deficit anymore, and interest rates are at their lowest in living memory. However, there is a limit to how much debt is manageable, and we cannot let too many businesses collapse - that would be truly disastrous.

Again applying household budgeting principles to the global economy is a flawed outlook. If the whole world is borrowing money to sustain their economies in a global pandemic the obvious question is who are we borrowing from and who do we owe it to? Who are they borrowing it from?

This is where the fact money is a human construct - it's not backed by anything like gold any more - is key. During an economic recession printing money is a perfectly reasonable way to increase money supply and stimulate growth. The risk - hyperinflation - is extremely low and the lever to control inflation (interest rates) has plenty of scope to rise to bring this under control.

The currency markets will be minimally affected as other currencies like the Euro and US dollar will experience the same.

Other EU countries are already starting to relax the lockdown, and I dare say we will learn a lot from that.z

We know what we need to do. Test and contact trace. It really isn't rocket science and has been the internationally recognised way to deal with pandemics for decades now.