Scrutable

This was posted to FB by a friend who works in the film & TV industry today. In principle it's a cool idea --- apparently there are people who have already seen every movie and TV series in existence, so there is still a demand for more . I imagine you need a negative PCR test before you get on the plane, and I'm not sure how the crowd scenes work if everyone has a mask on, but the concept looks good and they are clearly thinking about maintaining Spain's competitive position as a filming location.

It got me thinking --- at some point, governments are going to have to step back a little bit from fighting COVID-19 in "hair on fire" mode and think about how to run their economies while living with the virus. I have no time for the "lockdown skeptics", but at some point, if you're not prepared to take the measures needed to get to Zero Covid (and I think that very few governments are, even if they have some geographical advantages on their side), you're going to have to think about how society functions(*).

What else are we going to see emerging once (or "if") we realise that this is going to be with us for a while?


(*) Indeed, even if you do get to Zero Covid, you have to deal with the fact that international travel is a thing. New Zealand has the big advantage in this regard that it's a long way from anywhere, so not many people go there for a summer beach holiday with the kids or a stag do, and hardly anyone goes there for a 48-hour business trip either. We could probably get to Zero Covid here on Mallorca without too much effort, but in normal times we have 9 million tourists a year flying in; that's 10 people for every inhabitant.

Yeah, a lot of Western* governments have really f.cked it by not getting the virus under control when they had a chance. I'm hopeful that a vaccine will be available by the end of next year, but personally my bets are in the latter half.

That is a very long time for the economy to go limping on with bars and restaurants and shops all hobbled, not to mention for people to feel constantly under threat from an invisible enemy. My mental health is already in tatters, and I'm relatively privileged in my ability to deal with this sh.t in practical terms (my employment, accommodation and underlying health are all low-vulnerability to covid).

*in this case, that's basically what I mean: Asian and Australasian governments have done much better than those in Europe and the Americas

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 05, 2020 2:41 pm

(*) Indeed, even if you do get to Zero Covid, you have to deal with the fact that international travel is a thing. New Zealand has the big advantage in this regard that it's a long way from anywhere, so not many people go there for a summer beach holiday with the kids or a stag do, and hardly anyone goes there for a 48-hour business trip either. We could probably get to Zero Covid here on Mallorca without too much effort, but in normal times we have 9 million tourists a year flying in; that's 10 people for every inhabitant.

Actually international tourism is normally NZ's single biggest export earner. It's directly about 5-6% of GDP. The hit to GDP from the collapse in overseas tourism was estimated at 3-5% by one of the retail banks. But it's only one tourist per resident per annum.

basementer wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 05, 2020 3:54 pm

Actually international tourism is normally NZ's single biggest export earner. It's directly about 5-6% of GDP. The hit to GDP from the collapse in overseas tourism was estimated at 3-5% by one of the retail banks. But it's only one tourist per resident per annum.

"Biggest export earner" sounds like a question of taxonomy. How many parts have they divided "agriculture" into?

That said, I imagine that the average tourist to NZ spends a lot more on their trip-of-a-lifetime than someone going for a week to Fwengy-roller. Maybe the Aussies spend less per trip, but I guess they make up a big percentage of the visitors. And with a bit of luck they will have a travel corridor soon.