11-07-2020, 06:49 PM
(11-04-2020, 07:53 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(11-04-2020, 06:41 PM)panamaniac Wrote: Not that I’ve envied Doug Ford, but I definitely don’t envy politicians trying to balance public health/death counts against the risks to the economy.
The problem is that they aren't a balance, instead they're positively correlated...an increase in the pandemic will hurt the economy, people will be afraid and uncertain. The only way to improve the economy is to improve health outcomes.
What it takes is courage and leadership...to know what you're doing is the right thing for both our health and the economy, and to inspire people to work with you on those actions.
I don't think we're seeing either of those from DoFo right now...and we've never seen it from Trump.
There are other aspects too, like not having an economy based on the increasingly precarious service work...but that's a much bigger issue than the pandemic. Although, related, Uber and Lyft managed to write themselves some pretty favourable legislation in the California election.
Although we all hate to think of it, politicians may also factor popularity into their COVID-19 response decisions. Someone who loses their income due to a lockdown will blame the government in a way that somebody who gets COVID-19 due to an absence of a lockdown will not. (They'll more likely blame themselves for having contact with an infected person, or the infected person for having contact with them.)