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ITHACA, New York: Barriers between educational disciplines are synthetic creations designed to facilitate analysis, given our limitations.
But, as the economist Albert Hirschman once said, it’s up to us to break them. The ongoing war against COVID-19 and its economic consequences is such a moment.
The pandemic has cast a shadow over the economy: so far, the two worst performing economies at the time of the 2020 quarter have been Peru and India, where GDP fell 30. 2% and 23. 9%, respectively, year-over-year .
These record declines were because of the pandemic, but also to the way we deal with it.
In Peru, for example, the gross mortality rate (WRC) – the number of deaths per COVID-19 consistent with millions of inhabitants – is 939. The fall in GDP is obviously related to this.
Several European countries with the best CRM, such as Spain (647) and the United Kingdom (613), have also reported some of the most internal economic crises.
But India’s CMR is only 60, which, although one of the highest in Asia and Africa, makes its severe contraction at the time of the quarter (more vital than almost every country in the world) difficult, especially since India’s economy was between 3 or 3. 4 fastest development until five years ago.
OPEN SPACES VERSUS ENCLOSED SPACES
Understanding such anomalies requires the interaction between medicine and human behavior.
Note the traditional wisdom that COVID-19 is more likely to be transmitted in enclosed spaces than in open spaces, so it is safer near a park than a restaurant.
We assume that this concept comes from medicine and physics, which tell us, respectively, that COVID-19 is highly infectious and that aerosols carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virus (which can bring the virus that has not been clarified lately) will probably be eliminated. and miss your nostrils in outdoor parks.
But this is not necessarily the case, as the aerosols are heavy and tend to fall temporarily in calm air. In contrast, a breeze in an open area makes the spray very likely to stay suspended longer and therefore pose a threat that doesn’t exist indoors.
However, the claim that enclosed spaces are more harmful would be true due to human behavior.
WHY SOME PLACES MAY BE MORE DANGEROUS THAN OTHERS
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the rate of transmission of the virus through an inflamed user about 50 cents in a place to eat and in a park.
Let’s also assume that part of the population is infected. For example, if you’re near a random user in a park or restaurant, 25% will most likely get COVID-19.
However, suppose an authority announces that the threat of contracting COVID-19 is greater in a place to eat than in a park.
If other people do this, it can turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Restaurants will be less in the face of threatening showers (e. g. those that do not pass to places where the threat of contagion is greater than 25%). , only those who are tolerant of threats will move to restaurants.
It is moderate to assume that buyers of places to eat are more likely to be inflamed because they would have taken more risks.
Let’s say, in a nut words, that 75% of other risk-tolerant people are infected, while only 25% of others are infected.
The probability of an inflamed user transmitting the virus remains 50%, as before. Second, if other people think places to eat are more dangerous (and only those tolerant of threats come in), the chance of getting the virus in a place to eat is 37. 5%. , while the probability of contracting it in a park is less than 25%.
HOW THE NEW RULES ARE ACCELERATED
These possibilities will be shown through epidemiological data, and many others will know that the trend has something to do with the nature of the virus, rather than being fully motivated by human behavior.
By this argument, if the government had announced that restaurants were safer than parks, then parks would have the riskiest position over time.
Even if parks were safer than places to eat for epidemiological reasons, it could face a greater threat in a park than in a place to eat if it were widely accepted that the parks were more dangerous than places to eat.
Recognition of such connections paves the way for political interventions that can involve the virus without crushing the economy. India’s mistake was to impose a “blockade,” a term that is not the case, as it forced tens of millions of migrant workers across the country, on foot, after their jobs and wages in urban centers disappear overnight.
Once we know the links between medicine and economics, desirable political concepts begin to emerge, as Joshua Weitz of the Georgia Institute of Technology reported at a recent webinar at Stockholm School of Economics.
ACCOUNT FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE DEVELOPED ANTIBODIES
Countries such as India and Peru want to design behavioral regulations that allow the economy to function, at least in part, while containing the virus.
Here is a concept Since the higher tests give us a broader concept of who had COVID-19 and who has anti-SRAS-CoV-2 antibodies, we can offer those other people a very high salary for COVID-19 dicy jobs, adding in hospitals and advertising sectors, which involves face-to-face interaction.
By using them as links between vulnerable people, we can keep the source strings intact while disrupting virus transmission chains.
In general circumstances, the market would do so on its own: it would increase the demand of other people with antibodies, as well as their wages, but markets do not paint a pandemic well, when there are many externalities in paintings.
Therefore, governments will have to interfere with wise and well-designed policies that allow us to maintain the virus without affecting the economy.
Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist at the World Bank and senior economic adviser to the Indian government, is a professor of economics at Cornell University and a non-resident researcher at the Brookings Institution.