Europe’s COVID strategy: Beware the lasting traces of the crisis

We look at the situations of the euro zone and France. These countries have opted for a public health strategy that tolerates a high number of infections and imposes near-constant restrictions to avoid saturating the hospital system. We know that another strategy (“zero COVID”) was possible. It would have kept the number of infections very low thanks to very rapid measures as soon as the pandemic flared up. Moreover, on average since the onset of the crisis, this other strategy would have permitted a lower level of health restrictions and a smaller loss of production. For various reasons, European countries deemed that this zero-COVID strategy was not suitable for Europe. The strategy they did choose will result in the European economy remaining weak at least until the summer of 2021 . I t will take a very long time (probably until 2023 ) to correct the job losses and capacity underutilisation. The result is a long crisis ( four years ), leading to a long period during which wage earners are kept out of work and companies suffer production losses, with the risk that this situation will leave behind deep long-term scars ( affecting human capital, companies’ financial situation and their capacity to invest, and public finances).