[W]e require the current economic shock, which is much larger than 2008, to result in much smaller life loss than was associated with 2008. Otherwise we will lose more life to the economic effects of Covid-19 suppression efforts than were ever likely to have been lost to Covid-19 itself. Of course the consequences of the 2008 crisis were amplified by the policies adopted thereafter, and perhaps those consequences could have been substantially alleviated by a more enlightened approach. But the historical record from the UK does not suggest a willingness to vote for such an approach, even if any sort of credible plan for avoiding the economic life loss were actually to be proposed. The 1945 election was perhaps the exception, but it’s unclear that several months stuck at home on your sofa really leads to the same sort of cathartic re-evaluation of life’s priorities as storming the beaches of Normandy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201101062720/https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~swood34/