Needs must when the devil drives: Coronavirus and the economy

We don't know if any of the 35 R&D vaccine projects under way globally, will succeed. If one does, it will be years before it is commercially available and distributed.

In China, less than one per cent of people with no chronic health conditions died, but the death rates were above 10 per cent for those over 65 with a heart condition, and seven per cent for those with diabetes.

In Australia, there are millions of young and middle-aged people with chronic health conditions. Even if the aged and those with chronic conditions were isolated, the virus may still overwhelm the hospital system, with a speculative death rate of 30,000 people or more.

Unfortunately, many Australians believe that staying at home will kill the virus. That is false.

Even if we eradicate the disease in Australia, says Professor James McCaw, a mathematical biologist at the Doherty Institute, the virus will spread around the world and return.

"That epidemic in some places may also go locally extinct after a small or a large wave," he said in The Age. "But it's almost implausible to imagine this virus going extinct globally, which means that it will be here to stay. It will become a part of our everyday life …"

Economy

Now comes a question often asked in university philosophy tutorials. How much is a human life worth? Is it a million dollars for a person in their teens or much less for a person with a chronic illness in their 70s or 80s?

Note that 99 per cent of Australians will survive the virus. Do we look after the many or the few?

Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt know that suppressing the virus for too long, will compound the economic damage to the Australian economy. The current social and work restrictions are jeopardising the economic survival of the nation.

Even if the Australian government halts the JobKeeper payment of $1500 a fortnight in September, can it really return to the old Newstart rate of about $540 per fortnight?

Saul Eslake forecasts the ranks of the unemployed will double to almost 1.4 million. I suggest it will be twice that number.