Policy effectiveness and Covid-19 restrictions

These days the Covid-19 pandemic is still within the risk zone (Higher than expected number of COVID -19 new cases).The so called second wave of new cases in most of european countries, is growing at an alarming rate.In the Americas the daily cases, indicates that there still a long way before getting the pandemic under control.More so,the projections of Covid-19 related deaths for the coming months set this desease, as the priority target for public health authorities. This brief description, is the setting which policy makers have to deal with, when it comes to think about solutions.Given that this Pandemic meant a negative shock on both suply and demand, the first macroeconomic policy decisions, were aimed at providing to the economy with external life supporter, as it also went into the intensive care units with severe consequences in unemployment , consumption and investment.The sudden stop was in place and its impact was developing further on.The outcome so far,to get a recovery look better than anticipated(World Bank,IMF). In the meantime social distance,contact tracing,washing hands, wearing mask and early testing , were a useful complements to get the R0 (basic reproduction of infection cases) below 1.Any R0 vaue >1, meant the virus was spreading to someone else.Besides, some preliminary available data for R0 value, were in the range between 2,0 (Re=2),up to 5.0(Re=5).So,the initial infected individual (R0), was able to spread the virus within the range of at least two other people, and at the most to five more. The problem has been to avoid what at such a rate means a collapse of the health system. Just before the the summer season, Germany was able to get R0 <1, but as soon as the restrictions relaxed a bit ,R0 was again above 1(R effective Re=1,2)).Thus, it is obvious that to get R0<1 is a challenging task.(Pandit,J.Managing the R0 of Covid-19:Mathematics fight back.2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/anae.15151). The combinations of stimulus fiscal package, monetary easing, and social behavior recomendation,was the proper path to the expectations of getting things back to the new normal soon, while the vaccine was in process to become available. Given this new social- economic covid-19 setting, some macroeconomics models, projected a decrease rate of new covid-19 infections over time, although with important distributional effects(Volante,G. The great lockdown:Macroeconomics and distributional implications of covid 19.Priceton University. 2020). However,a constraint to be aware of, is the impact of the underground economy,and those who work under the book because they are undocumented inmigrant, and they do not have any chance of getting access to the solutions that the system provides, whether it is either economic or sanitary.Thus,these people are out of the system,and they becomes the missing variable in modelling analisys, which make harder to get the virus under control as far as the policy recomendation is concern.(Spain and the USA).In fact , while there are illegal inmigrants, the virus spreading will stay active no matter the lockdowns, which assume that all of those who should goes in, are the same who later goes out.But illegal inmigrants cannot go in, they stay out doing the best they can on transitory jobs, and if they indeed go in, it make the "indoor staying" an additional source of contagious and spreading the disease.In this case,Social distance and wearing mask,(basic measures), are also necessary for those who stay inside their homes to avoid "indoor staying implications" ,as an additional source of contagious.It follows that to get full control of this pandemic, it should be added up some domestic rules of behaviour applied to those who share their home with illegal inmigrants, along with an emergency policy of mandatory testing of those who are out of the system.In the meantime, the economy is on its track to a recovery and the vaccine is close to be in place.But it will take time to get it done to all at risk, with illegal inmigrants probably the last one on the list.