The benefits of the Lockdown and a false argument

I thought I was like Nick Gruen (the nicest bloke in the blogosphere) who enjoyed the lockdown.
When I started talking about the lockdown to other people I found to my astonishment lots of people enjoyed the experience.

Why you say. Here are some of the reasons:

• More time for sex.  Instead of the husband or wife getting to bed at midnight and simply wanting to sleep there is time to enjoy sex again!
• Tradies loved the lack of traffic.They could leave home later and get home earlier. They could even do extra work sometimes.
• Families could have dinner together for the first time. Both parents were at home. They saw their children in the morning for breakfast and more importantly for dinner.
• When people walked the air seemed to be better.
• More time. One mother had heaps more time. She didn't have to drive her children to school and back ,nor to swimming or violin training.
• Associated with this is just how much time at work involves social interaction. working from home means that is gone. It means one can play golf, go to the supermarket (eek).
• You costs are a lot lower, Transportation, food ,coffee etc
• The social distance , health requirements and isolation warderd off the flu

Now to the false arguments.

There are some arguing the costs of the lockdown is greater than if there was no lockdown. this was fist promulgated by Gigi Foster on Q&A.  It is also endorsed by Paul Fitjers. Menzie Chinn has dome it for the USA It is a silly argument on both sides of the equation for Australia

Firstly the costs are vastly over-estimated. Why you say? Well primarily because of Massive government intervention. Whether it is Job Keeper, Job Seeker, mortgage relief or rental relief etc household income has held steady this time round. It did not in either the early 80s or 90s. Hence suicides for example have not increased.

Secondly the counterfactual is all over the place. Foster does have a lockdown for old people but that is all.

However this fails to take into account people were changing their behaviour well before anyone knew what a lockdown was.. They were wearing masks and buying what they thought were necessities in February. 

This means the choice was between a formal lockdown with massive increase in government payments and an informal lockdown  where it is possible the costs are greater in the informal; lockdown.
I won't even go into why Scott Morrison had to impose a formal lockdown because of politics. That is self evident

Some might say all this is a rookie mistake but I could not possibly comment.