Economics and Pandemics

It would seem remiss, in such a volume, not to reflect on the role of economics during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. It went wrong for health economics, given its lack of visibility at a time when the management of scarcity—the lifeblood of economics—was key. But, likewise the management of resources during the pandemic was also a disaster for some countries and parts of the world. So, what could economics have contributed with respect to informing how we manage resources in the midst of the pandemic (allocations of resources to testing, ventilation and temporary hospital sites) and considerations of ‘health versus the economy’ more widely? Much policy deception lies in government consistently blaming current crises on the past pandemic, when the key to success was that of preparation. What is required, from an economic point of view, is a coordinated system (i.e. public) with high levels of spending; this combination seeming to have worked best with regard to pandemic outcomes. Also ‘health versus the economy’ can also be characterised as false dichotomy, or at least incomplete, in the sense that we can also think, within the same framework, of ‘health for the economy’. These are two parts of the same framework, and which is invoked depends on where we are in terms of progression of any given pandemic. Internationally, too, vaccine provision, would be both fairer and more efficient if machinery for dealing with vaccine research, development and production and distribution were to follow principles of global common goods.