Staying at home is our best weapon against the coronavirus pandemic. But a global economic crash could be a much more significant threat to human life. At some point we will have to endanger lives in the present to save those in the future.
People all over the world are currently confined to their homes. Lockdown has emerged as our main means of combating the Covid-19 epidemic because there is nothing else. The development of a vaccine will take at least a year, even under the most optimistic assumptions. It then needs to be manufactured on an industrial scale and rolled out in mass immunisation programmes.
It is difficult to see all these things happening in less than 18 months, even allowing for heroic fast-tracking. But let us imagine that we manage to shorten the whole process to a year. Can a lockdown strategy work over this prolonged period of time?
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