It’s a trade-off between the doves and the hawks

By Kevin-James Fenech 

Kevin is the founder and owner of JOB Search - jobsearch.mt and FENCI Consulting fenci.eu.

Thus far we have lived an almost Utopian world, as seen from a doctor’s perspective. By this I mean, the government effectively gave the Minister of Health an open cheque and the opportunity to temporarily pass any legal notice, most of which restrict our freedoms, in the interest of public health. It was necessary. No argument.

We do however need an Exit Strategy. I am hoping that come 1 May 2020, we can start to relax current restrictions and re-start the Maltese economy.

We simply can not continue living in this Utopian doctors’ world in which business activity, commerce and trade are frozen indefinitely.

The time is near for the government to change gear and strike a trade-off between public health and economic health.

It is unsustainable; unhealthy; and unaffordable; for the Maltese people to stay at home and not work. The ‘almost lockdown’ was necessary but can not and should not be repeated again.

The Prime Minister therefore needs a healthy internal debate to scale-up between his public health hawks and his economic doves; this debate also needs to spill over into the public domain. The PM will then need to make a trade-off between the two opposing arguments and come up with an Exit Strategy which balances the interests of both sides of the argument. The days of public health reigning supreme needs to be phased out.

Readers please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting breaking our public health service or overburdening it. Yet we do as a country have other equally urgent + important matters to deal with; such as re-starting the economy before it’s too late; before the socio-economic situation becomes more pressing that the COVID19 pandemic.

One approach is the ‘Suppress and Lift’ strategy. As Gabriel Leung, an epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, put it in an article he penned for the New York Times:  “One needs to hit the brakes and release them, again and again, to keep moving forward without crashing, all with an eye toward safely reaching one’s final destination.”

To my mind, the peak is now and by the end of April the rate of growth of infections should show a marked deceleration. We should, therefore, be aiming for mass testing post-June so as to assess the situation about future possible ‘herd immunity’. We also need to re-think how the old, vulnerable or those with underlying medical issues are protected and kept out of harm’s way whilst the rest of the population, mainly children and the working population can resume an element of normal life. It is important that the economic engine re-starts; granted in a phased manner but time is of the essence here. We need to have a good summer, since come autumn we may need to  ‘suppress’ again. I am thinking of hospitality, food & beverage, tourism, retail, all of which have been hit hard in March and April.

Medical doctors and health professionals will always tell us to exercise due caution; not to lift restrictions too early; and not to put the economy ahead of public health. What perhaps they don’t appreciate is that our country’s economic health is as important as public health, since the socio-economic implications of too long a ‘almost lockdown’ are serious. The longer we keep everyone semi-locked-in and 80% of businesses closed the more likely it is that business owners withdraw their investment plans. The more likely it is that uncertainty and a lack of business confidence reign which will mean that recovery becomes anaemic and morphs from V-shape, to U-shape, to (God forbid) L-shape and the ultimate loser in that situation is the worker.

The worker does well when the owners of capital; the owners of business; and the risk takers have an appetite and confidence to invest. The worker never does well in an economic climate where confidence is low, uncertainty high and taxes on the increase. All of sudden, the government will be faced with a voter quickly forgetting how well the public health hawks handled the COVID19 crisis but how slow the economic doves were to implement an Exit Strategy so as to set the economic recovery in motion by early summer.

It is thus the right time for our leaders to start thinking of appropriate trade-offs; to have this dialogue with key stakeholders; and to even open up the debate in the public.

A perfect world free from COVID19 does not exist. We will always have to deal with the virus just like we have in generations past learnt to live with other infections and viruses which killed a lot more than the Coronavirus has done so far; we must learn to live with this.

A good summer will allow our economy to recuperate; for cashflows to start flowing again; and semblance of normality to return. Let us therefore explain the Exit Strategy with timelines and milestones explained.

We need a permanent trade-off between the public health hawks and the government economic doves which allows us to navigate around the virus and keep the economy alive with public health still at the forefront. Let’s adapt and move forward.