Over the past couple of weeks, life seems to have started to return to some level of normality.
During the sunny weekend at the end of May, in particular, the parks were noticeably busier, Peach Place was bustling with thirsty outdoor customers and some local grassroots football clubs were planning to start socially distanced training sessions.
All-in-all, it felt that people, who had obeyed both the spirit and the letter of the rules for the best part of 10 weeks wanted to return to their own routines and social lives, and that was gradually happening.
Whether or not we are returning to normal life prematurely remains to be seen.
Some of the statistics around infection rates and excess deaths remain stubbornly high, and
in any discussion about Covid-19 our thoughts have to be with those who have lost loved ones during this awful period.
There is high excess capacity in terms of intensive care beds, which seems to be the main criterion for relaxing lockdown.
The direction of travel is very clear and attention has moved from saving lives to saving the economy.
With this in mind, I had the good fortune to watch a webinar during the week where a group of economists and accountants were looking at the country’s economic prospects coming out of the Covid-19 crisis.
I listened with some trepidation, expecting to hear of a massively depressing outlook.
However, they were very clear that this has been a unique economic crisis, in that the economy has not stalled for any of the more conventional reasons, such as a slump
in worldwide demand or tighter credit leading to unemployment, or because of a war.
It was quite a revelation to learn that even after the massive investment in the Job Retention Scheme, and the lack of tax revenue, that Government debt is still relatively manageable by long term (pre-1960 standards), leaving headroom to explore other options such as possible tax cuts to stimulate demand.
Predicting the future is never straightforward, but their general view was that although
many things will be different, eg people who are able to, will be more likely to spend at least part of the week working from home, business travel is likely to decline, other things, such
as tourism and consumer spending are likely to return to normal.
The infrastructure is in place for people to return to normal life, once it is safe to do so,
and there has been massive Government intervention over the past three months aiming both to keep as many people as possible in paid employment, and ensure that inventory will be available for people to buy.
Their view is that the prospect of a quick recovery is predicated on one thing. That one thing is quite simply optimism.
They took the view that if people are optimistic about keeping their jobs and are positive in returning to their normal spending patterns as soon as possible, then the most likely outcome is that we are likely to see a fairly rapid recovery, and avoid the calamity of mass unemployment.
This led on to another thought.
To be diplomatic, it is currently unclear how successfully the Government has been in controlling the spread of coronvirus, but it is difficult to conceive of a leader with a stronger reputation for exuding optimism than our current Prime Minister.
If the economists I listened to are right, that the key to a rapid recovery is whether people feel positive and optimistic, then it is just possible that we may well have the right leader for that particular job.
