Twitteretter

I am bemused by the aggressive criticism that the public, fuelled by the media, is directing at governments because of lack of PPE and test availability. How, after weeks of going through this, can these materials still not be widely available. This is a simple problem of supply and demand, which is at the heart of economic theory, and it is global even though we think about it in national terms. Nowhere near enough of these things are manufactured in normal times, to cover a pandemic. When it comes, there are not enough factories and raw materials, no established supply chains. And these take time to set up. In normal times, we don’t buy these goods, and this explains the lack of supply. We live in a market economy and, in this system, who would invest money and effort manufacturing goods that nobody needs and nobody would buy? Let me tell you something. If each consumer had purchased, in the last 20 years, 20 KN95 masks per year, we would certainly have enough production capacity ...

The coronavirus pandemic has, it seems to me, exacerbated some tendencies already shown by governments previously. What is particularly worrying, at least from my perspective, is watching what is going on in the US, where the president seems to be touting unproven medicines, inciting citizens to armed rebellion and civil disobedience, fighting his expert advisors and waging a budgetary war on beleaguered, underfunded US states to put them under pressure to restart economic activity. This observation has got me thinking that, whilst electorates can get away with practically any voting choice, however idiotic, in normal times, when a crisis comes, who you have in charge can quickly become life critical. The catch is, of course, that most crises come unannounced. Therefore, when going to the polls, it would be sensible to think: ‘If a global, life threatening crisis comes, who would I rather have in charge, a Churchill, von der Leyen, Merkel, Abe or a Qi Jinping, Trump, Kim Jong-un?’...