The genesis of this blog is my life in lockdown in the UK, watching the evolving impacts on my business and on my young children.
When a government calls a halt to normal life and chooses to allow only certain activities, the implications will number in the thousands, will range from minor to catastrophic, will be widely different across the population, and will be entirely unknown to government. From the other angle we could ask what type of society we would need to be for those implications to be knowable? We would not want such a society. A large part of this blog looks at a selection of the thousands of hidden losses from lockdown, that have not been discussed widely.
I venture into public policy and how as a society we choose who to help, when helping one person harms another.
I find that I write best when I start with a situation in my own life, usually from my travels. The topic of the particular article might have occurred to me while in that situation but more than likely I only linked the topic and the place when I came to write. I try to develop the theme and reach conclusions.
More broadly I would be delighted if this blog were to encourage reflection on the human, everyday, implications of public policy.
Simon Stevens
Edinburgh, 2021
Humanity, society and pandemic response 