COVID-19 culling the elderly - Good for the economy

A Daily Telegraph assistant editor, Jeremy Warner, has suggested coronavirus could ‘prove mildly beneficial’ to the UK economy by killing off elderly Britons. He reasoned the 1918 Spanish flu had a ‘lasting impact on supply’ because it killed off ‘primary bread-winners’, which he said is unlikely to happen with coronavirus.

He wrote: ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.’

Responding to criticism in the article’s comments section, Warner said he is ‘unrepentant about the economic point I was trying to make’. He wrote: ‘Any thinning out of those of prime working age is a much bigger supply shock than the same thing among elderly retirees. ‘Obviously, for those affected it is a human tragedy whatever the age, but this is a piece about economics, not the sum of human misery.’