Risk Management

General Discussion
1

Maajid Nawaz posted an article about a study by Philip Thomas, professor of risk management at Bristol University. He does risk management. He is saying the corona lockdowns can? will? cause more deaths than the disease. It was behind a paywall at thetimes.co.uk, so I didn’t read it, although I could have signed up for a 30 day trial. Also, I suspect it has some estimates that would be hard to defend. OTOH, Maajid is a pretty smart guy. Anyone heard of this?

2

There are several other articles about this and I’m in no position to seriously critique these.

But it seems that he said words to this effect:

“Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, Professor Thomas argued that according to his team’s calculations, if the UK’s GDP fell by more than 6.5 percent for a consistent period of time, the economic effect of coronavirus will cost the country more lives than the disease itself.”

Which isn’t saying that the “lock-down” will lead to more deaths only that the overall effects on the economy of the pandemic, will lead to more deaths.

So this could mean that the number of deaths from economic fallout will exceed the number of deaths from the illness itself, but without lockdown it would not.

So that may be what he’s saying and what he’s saying is not an argument for avoiding a lockdown.

 

 

 

 

 

3

OK fast forward to 22:45 here, this is the interview that the newspapers are citing:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gmg1

I’ll listen to it myself shortly

 

4

Checked out the interview, it’s only about 3 minutes.

Thomas says we have to figure out a way to keep the economy going while on lockdown or the economic after-effects will kill more people than the virus. He is talking about Britain but I guess it would apply to the whole English speaking world, at least.

5
  1. Deal with the Pandemic.
  2. Keep the economy on life support, at least, while doing so.
Gotta do both. Pushing the economy despite its effect of worsening the pandemic, will only make it MORE necessary to shut down the offending parts of the economy and social gatherings. Opening up and pushing social gatherings of any size and density, will just make it longer for the economy to be on life support. We have to deal with the pandemic first.

This 2.2 trillion Bill that’s being rushed thru, will keep the economy on life support for a period of time. But for how long would that be? When are we going to urgently be told that we must immediately pass another 2.2 trillion dollar Bill? A couple of months? (And we should be getting Bernie Sanders to tell us how to pay for these trillions that we are pulling out of our national asshole).

There are countries who dealt with the epidemic SO very cleanly. But the USA has failed for the most part. I, lil old me, could give a prescription to get us out of this, and I am nobody. But the current leadership of the USA with all its vast resources, can only seem to f’ it up.

6

Oh! The Prince of Whales has COVID-19 (I bet he caught it from one of those “sperm” whales). The Duchess of Cornhole, his wife, does not have the virus. God save the Queen.