THE LOCKDOWN DEAL
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On June 14th Namibia entered its fourth hard lockdown since the start of the global pandemic last March. Over the preceding 15 months 1,000 Namibians had lost their lives to COVID-19; three months later and the death toll stands at over 3,200. In Africa only Tunisia has lost a larger share of its population to the disease. The latest lockdown may have arrived too late, but without it there is every reason to believe that the toll would be higher still. Blanket lockdowns are an example of a blunt, but effective disease containment measure. Of course there are more stringent types of lockdowns that reduce the number of deaths. Other varieties of lockdown prioritise the health of the economy. Finding the equilibrium between these opposing goals, maximizing the ratio between the number of additional lives saved per unit of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) lost, yields the most potent lockdown. Yet even this approach is not immune to critique. Ask, to what extent should a society bias the lives of its elderly over the futures of its youth? How many, if any, deaths should be deemed tolerable? These are necessary questions with no easy answers. Balancing moral, political, economic and public health considerations to construct a lockdown that is at
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once potent, enforceable and moral is a task beyond the capabilities of your author. As we emerge from the latest lockdown, consider instead the more tractable question of what it is a government is asking of, and dictating to, its citizens when it enforces a hard lockdown. In a lockdown such as Namibia’s where schools close, travel is restricted and businesses suffer, citizens willingly cede their personal agency in service of wider community health. This is the citizen’s part of the deal. For as long as such a lockdown lasts a government’s implicit promise is in turn to provide greater support to its citizens. In the rich world governments plunged themselves further into debt, increased spending to war-time levels and slashed interest rates to stimulate demand in the economy. They ran the gamut of fiscal and monetary policy to protect the lives and livelihoods of their citizens knowing that they possessed the necessary fiscal infrastructure, power and credibility to borrow lavishly and still maintain the ability to service these debts. The Namibian government’s response was adequate, but as a middle-income country options were limited. During the 2020 lockdowns the government introduced a number
