The pandemic has dealt a massive blow to Hong Kong's Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) industry, with event planning companies facing millions of dollars in lost income, and thousands of jobs at risk. [Link]
So says your article on the last minute cancellation of the Hong Kong Book Fair.
But it is not the pandemic that "dealt a massive blow". It is the Hong Kong's government's reaction to the virus that dealt the massive blow.
The HK government could have decided to let the Hong Kong Book Fair continue. It did not.
We need to acknowledge that there are trade offs. The costs of lockdowns vs the costs of not locking down. Yet all we see are the Covid deaths, not the costs of lockdowns.
We now know a lot more about the epidemiology of the virus. It is dangerous. But so is locking down. It's clear that there are many deaths from the lockdown itself, from not testing and treating serious diseases, to suicides and depression. Not to mention the economic costs of bankruptcies and shattered dreams of businesses hit by government-mandated lockdowns.
The way forward ought be clear to a brave government:
- Protect the elderly. Especially those over 70 and with pre-existing conditons
- Protect front-line workers: hospital staff, food retail workers, transport staff
- For the rest of Hong Kong: get back to work, get back to school, get back to sport.
And… all to be sensible, wear masks and sanitise. Infections will happen. We handle them. Which we can.
Enough of the madness of lockdowns. The figures, the science, show us that lockdowns don't work to stem the virus, yet they destroy lives and livelihoods.
As the most famous French public intellectual, Bernard Henri-Levy, says, we must "resist the wind of madness blowing over the world".
It is, he says "a psychotic delirium".
Pf, etc....
ADDED: As published on 27 August. They edited in a way to change what I said. Which was not to say we ought look at costs of lockdown “instead” of Covid deaths, but in addition to. Plus, the headline is misleading. The economic mess is result of policy response to the virus…
