Policy evaluation isn't possible without considering trade offs

This is one of those things, as with the French Revolution, where it’s too early to say:

Countries led by women fared “systematically and significantly better” in the battle against coronavirus, locking down earlier and suffering half as many deaths as those led by men, according to a new study of country-by-country responses.

The analysis of 194 countries confirms the early anecdotal observations that female leaders appeared to be doing a better job at containing the pandemic than their male counterparts, crediting the difference to “the proactive and co-ordinated policy responses” favoured by the women.

This is entirely possible, of course it is. We would make just a little point if it is, which is that if women are indeed different in their approach to political decisions then the fact that they are women has to be taken into account when voting for them. Which we do think is rather the opposite of what is the generally fashionable insistence.

However, it is the evaluation itself that needs to be considered here. As economics tells us, everything is always a trade off. As Bastiat insisted, we must consider the unseen as well as the obvious. So, what is the effect of having beaten off the virus then?

Long-term economic success or failure is still too early to be gauged.

Ah, we don’t know. So it’s too early to jump to that conclusion then, isn’t it?

This could go either way of course. Lockdown itself caused damage. But so also did the change in behaviour for fear of the virus without lockdown. It’s possible that swift and effective lockdown caused less damage than the fear would have done unchecked. It’s also possible - and we strongly suspect this to be true of the UK currently - that the lockdown has done more damage than either the virus or the fear. But the point here is that we don’t know - because it’s too early to say.

If Zhou Enlai can manage to grasp such an economic point then surely we can too?