Covid-19: Siege without end?

With all transport in and out of the country practically blocked, Britain faces what looks like constant crisis and in the meantime the public debt and the private debt keep going up and up. It is just a matter of time for the financial system to be bombarded with defaults generated by lack of economic activity and by the efforts to deal with the pandemic.

Companies - big and small - face the wall. During World War Two, British households were destroyed with bombs. In the Twenty-First Century, British households are being destroyed by a biological agent and this would go on ad infinitum. British authorities have said that there is no end in sight. With of without vaccination, there is no visible end of the tunnel. The virus is not just mutating in the United Kingdom. New strains have been arriving from places as far as Brazil and the possibility of a strain that cannot be tackled with today's vaccines must not be discarded.

In an effort to deal with the present pandemic, thousands upon thousands are not being treated for other diseases. This is the new Battle of Britain. This is not something that can be solved within weeks or months. We must prepare ourselves for a siege that could last several years.

On another issue - the extent of the damage done to the British economy by the measures implemented to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic is incalculable. In 2008, the financial sector had to be rescued, but the economy itself was working full blast. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, many areas of the British economy have come to a hault, many are being subsidized and others have simply evaporated thus ceasing to produce tax revenues for the British Treasury. There is little talk about balancing the budget because at this point in time balancing the budget is an impossibility.