What makes #Covid19 so tricky from a public policy perspective is that it’s neither a short/sharp emergency nor a gradual transition. If it was short, govt could put the economy on life support for 2-3 months (Job Retention Scheme, etc) to avoid scars. 1/n.

If it was a slow/secular - e.g. like decline of manufacturing - you could use standard policy levers (ALMP, social security, retraining). Trouble is, it’s in-between. There’s c.18 months in which large parts of the economy (leisure, tourism, etc) simply aren’t viable. 2/n.

After this, lots of businesses *might* be viable again (if there’s a vaccine/treatment) but lots won’t because the crisis speeds up some long-term trends (decline of the high street/home working) and changes some things forever (e.g. new norms of social distancing). 3/n.

This makes it hard to know how to dial down economic support, because you don't know which businesses are zombies & which aren’t. One lesson: the best approach by far is to be bold & cautious on the public health response (test and trace, etc, as @noahpinion & others argue). 4/n.

The public health side is just more tractable - i.e. clear, measurable, learnable. So it's better to address that than to face all the uncertain second order economic consequences. This is primarily a public health crisis, so the primary policy tools are public health tools. 5/5.