Cheerful news

This is a time when even contrarians have to become team players. I want everyone in countries that are in lockdown because of the Covid-19 virus (everywhere in Europe except Sweden, Belarus and Iceland) to obey the rules, stay at home as much as they can and keep away from other people, as people in Romania are doing. The economy is closed down, with enormous damage and hardship - if the virus nevertheless continues to spread we are in the worst of all worlds.

On the other hand, a sizable number of virologists and epidemiologists do not agree that the virus is a great threat to humanity. 

Here is another one. Professor John Oxford, virologist, Professor of Queen Mary's College, London, a leading expert on influenza, including bird flu and the 1918 Spanish flu, and HIV/AIDS, who says

"Personally, I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching TV news which is sensational and not very good. Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic!"

I am not sure when he said it. Britain looks likely to reach 8,000 deaths of people with the virus in a week or so. The professor could ask how many are dying from it, rather than with it, which is by no means a pedantic point, and argue that most are in the former group. His point bout not watching TV news is a good one. It probably applies to most of the news.

But not all of the printed media. It would be a pity to miss out on another reason for hope, from the usually very saturnine Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in today's Telegraph.

On one level, the immediate global shock is much greater than the onset of world wars. On another, a ‘sudden stop’ for three months is mostly an accounting mirage, so long as governments absorb the hit and productive economies are kept whole.


Ben Bernanke, ex-head of the US Federal Reserve, likens it to a winter shutdown from a polar vortex. There is some permanent loss but pent-up demand and a V-shaped recovery later claws back most of the lost GDP. Catch-up growth gradually pulls down the public debt ratio.

The stoppage does not fundamentally matter in macroeconomic terms unless we repeat the errors of austerity overkill and listen to those telling us that it is all too expensive. Thankfully these voices are being ignored in the US, UK, China, Japan, and Europe (with big caveats).