Winter is coming - a quantitative review of COVID
Over the last year, we have been analyzing the economic and political impact of the pandemic, anticipating the scope of this global shock on the local economy. In this report, amid a severe second wave, with an erratic vaccination program being implemented, we add a complementary question: How much longer will the COVID pandemic continue to affect the economy? When will its drag be soft enough so that it is no longer a dominant factor in policy decisions and economic expectations?
To answer this question we review, after a political introduction, the main quantitative indicators of the current health crisis. We start by reviewing the current wave of contagion and testing strategies, to move on to the back-and-forth of the current vaccination policy. The objective is to develop a simple, yet hopefully handy, time frame for achieving different vaccination objectives.
Such time references should also help us to understand the hardships the economy will continue to endure, and the political cost of the government decisions before the current vaccination policy, hopefully, takes effect.
The management of the pandemic is a politically sensitive issue that has been the rise and fall of this government´s acceptance rate. As we pointed out in our April 18 report, society’s confidence in the government has been deteriorating constantly since mid-last year, and the Di Tella Government Confidence index dropped in April to a new low in Alberto Fernandez's government.
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