Thank you very much to Truth Reporter who submitted this opinion piece to UNN.
It’s all about risk.
If you’ve ever worked in the healthcare industry you’ll be fully conversant with the concept of risk assessment. It is fundamental to many industries, not just healthcare that before you perform any sort of task you consider what might go wrong and how to mitigate potential harm.
The NHS revolves around managing risk but looking at their current performance you might well be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Personal protective equipment is still in short supply in some areas of the NHS and the supply chain is not fully meeting the demands of front line staff. The author has had first-hand sight of emails from within the NHS management structure stating that requests for PPE are still not being fulfilled in a timely fashion. Some doctors have stated that they are not willing to work with COVID19 patients unless the PPE requirements are fully met.
On a day on which both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of state for Health tested positive for the virus, we are reminded of the ease of transmission but of course, we know that Boris wasn’t practising social distancing until very recently. The snowballing hysteria seems now to be leaking into every aspect of society, the news regarding Mr Johnson only added to the momentum.
The problem for me is that a lot of the hysteria seems to be being translated into policy without any real regard for the actual risks to people or the secondary effects to their lives – isn’t that what we’re concerned with at the moment – protecting people?
Consider the police using a drone to order a couple walking a dog to go home. They were in a remote location not near anyone and in the fresh air. What risk did they pose to others? Then consider the fact that Mr Johnson still refuses to stop incoming flights from high-risk countries with high infection rates and refuses to screen the arriving passengers. I could make many more similar comparisons but I am sure you can think of lots of other examples.
What I am trying to highlight is that there is a disconnect between logic, reason, risk and implementation and today we get the news that the government is ‘discouraging’ house moves and urging people who have not yet exchanged contracts to pause their moving efforts.
This news was to me utterly shocking. Given the current social distancing measures it is unsurprising that the housing market has slowed down but to effectively encourage the shuttering of the housing market is nothing less than suicidal from an economic perspective. What is more, anyone with a modicum of common sense could, if they thought about it carefully, successfully move house and still comply with all the social distancing measures.
Initial browsing for houses is now almost done exclusively online – so no risk there. Viewing could be enabled using social distancing protocols and with a few gloves and sensible precautions, the house move itself could be completed. Negotiations happen mostly on the phone these days so I’m still wondering why everything has to grind to a halt.
Some clues come from the banks who consider a different type of risk – credit risk. The current situation means that the normal variables banks use to assess credit worthiness are breaking down. Many categories of worker are suddenly faced with enforced redundancy, others with uncertain prospects. It seems that the banks are worried they can no longer assess people’s suitability to take on a loan. In addition, the potential for the early demise of many elderly people will mean that there will be an increased number of properties to be liquidated in the near future – a supply glut that was not priced into any of the bank’s probability matrices.
COVID19 is proving to be a tricky adversary, it has outpaced and outsmarted most of the world’s leaders then promptly went on to decimate financial indices worldwide, crashed the oil price and forcibly decoupled the price of physical gold from the paper index.
I see two dynamics in play. First I see governments who have grown so scared of public opinion, social media and the 24hr news cycle that they have panicked into a series of poorly thought out measures, lashing out like a man in the dark facing hidden adversaries. Second I see a cynical cabal who have been waiting for a global crisis wheeling out their well-worn gambit of social control, financial repression and destruction of liberty.
The combination of the factors above is toxic in the extreme, what shines through is that the banks are scared, very scared. When the banks are scared then there is trouble ahead. While it may seem distasteful to view what is essentially a public health emergency through the lens of the international economic system it is probably the most accurate way of assessing what is going on.
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Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
