Page 5 - IDEA Kriza a straty na zivotoch covid19 cerven2020 20

EKONOMICKÁ KRÍZA A STRATY NA ŽIVOTOCH IDEA 2020
IDEA anti COVID-19 # 20
Health consequences of economic crises JUNE 20202
Kristína Hrehová, Štěpán Jurajda
Summary
• In this article, we provide a summary of key findings from existing research on the relationship between countries’ economic performance and people’s economic activity on the one hand and their health and mortality on the other.
• The blanket restrictions imposed on day-to-day life as a swift defense mechanism in the face of the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic saved many people from illness and death. On the other hand, these measures had and will continue to have a strong negative economic impact, which in turn has a negative impact on people’s health and livelihoods, too. Decisions about the intensity and duration of blanket restrictions must take both these effects into account and attempt to achieve a balance between them. To do so, however, it is essential that those making the decisions have at least basic knowledge of the extent of both these impacts. Yet estimates of these effects in the context of Covid-19 are not yet available.
In the foreseeable future, we can expect the epidemiological models to be able to offer us—based on the experience and data we have gained thus far—more reliable estimates of the basic parameters of Covid-19, such as its fatality rate and the influence of various restrictive measures on its transmission. Yet hand in hand with this it is also important to develop more accurate models of the economic impacts and to incorporate impacts on health into them. Until that is done, all that is available to us is our experience from previous economic recessions and crises.
2 This study represents the authors’ own views and not the official position of the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Economics Institute nor of the Charles University Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE). The authors are grateful to Daniel Münich for their valuable comments and advice. The study was produced with support from the Czech Academy of Sciences as part of its AV21 Strategy programme and from the Experientia Foundation.
3