Wednesday 23 March 2022

Saving lives… ruining livelihoods

As founder-owner-managers of a successful customer-facing business back in the early oughts we know that our business would have been crushed by today’s lockdowns, and we would have had to close — tossing 300 staff into unemployment. That’s what’s going on in the above pic, taken in central Hong Kong. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of small and medium enterprises, the “mom and pop stores”, the dreams and wealth of families, all crushed by a Zero Covid policy. I feel for them, empathise. 

All bankrupt for a policy which has had no effect in the Omicron wave. As we see from other countries where there’s no correlation between strictness of NPIs and virus case and death rates. Our government and its advisers, mainland and local, are in deep delusion.

To repeat: a policy of protecting the vulnerable and elderly would have controlled deaths while sustaining livelihoods.