The weekly cost of lockdown

Lockdown has always been a matter of trade-offs. The impact of suppressing the economy to also suppress a deadly virus has had consequences on every aspect of life, from non-Covid health treatment, to rising unemployment, to the impact on children’s education. But these costs can be calculated in something much closer to real time. New data from the OECD, analysed by The Spectator and unveiled in this week’s magazine, shows the weekly difference between a country’s economic activity now and how it compares with the year before. 

First, let’s look at change in lockdown stringency — as measured by Oxford University’s Blatavnik School of Government. When the second wave struck, Britain ended up with the tightest lockdown in the developed world. 

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Now, let’s bring in the OECD’s estimates of weekly GDP. This is a new series, far more frequent than the usual quarterly data or even the monthly estimates. As