If WE can’t afford lockdown, what chance have the world’s poor?
by Sonia Elijah, The Conservative Woman:
IN AN interview with TalkRadio in November, Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, voiced her concern about the devastating effects of lockdowns. She said that ‘lockdowns are a luxury for the affluent . . . the UK cannot afford it’. Professor Gupta was spot on.
It has been estimated that each day of lockdown costs the UK economy £2.4billion, which it is hard to believe the country can afford without impoverishing generations to come. This vast sum is due in no small part to the unprecedented economic protective measures set up by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, including the government furlough scheme introduced in March 2020 and subsequently extended to the end of April this year.
Yet despite the government’s job retention schemes, the number facing extreme economic hardship in the UK has risen at an alarming rate. According to a report from the Legatum Institute think tank, 440,000 more people were in poverty by last summer and 690,000 more by the winter.
If the ‘UK cannot afford it’, where does that leave less developed countries? Their situation is a lot bleaker. If our economy is on a ventilator, theirs must be close to the last breath.
The world’s poorest come from developing nations which already suffer from high poverty rates. ‘Extreme poor’ is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. These developing nations are often indebted to the World Bank through their massive loan schemes, which puts them at a dire disadvantage in coping with the economic impact of Covid-19.
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