Health restrictions: what are the consequences for the economy and companies?

The turn of the screw to fight the second wave of Covid comes at the worst time, when businesses and consumers were starting to regain confidence.

This turn of the screw is of course a tragedy for cafes, bars, sports clubs etc.

All these sectors of the hotel, catering and leisure activities only account for a small 4% of the national wealth.

Certainly, but restaurants, cafes and bars are what makes life spice up.

Seeing iron curtains drawn and café terraces condemned lowers consumer morale and has effects on the economy that are not easily measurable but very real.

The economy is very largely a matter of psychology.

There is no strong economy and no growth without confidence.

The government has also insisted a lot on the fact that confidence was key to the success of the recovery plan.

This is the whole difficulty of the current period.

Make no mistake: tougher sanitary measures were needed.

Otherwise we run the risk of saturating our health system again and that would be worse than anything.

The disaster would be a new confinement.

But this turn of the sanitary screw, whether we like it or not, creates doubts about the return to normal.

A third of companies today say they are unable to predict the date and the tightening of sanitary measures thickens this fog.

In the service sector, while the climate has improved since the summer, we can see that morale fell again in September.

The danger is that the economy will seize up as we begin to see the first signs of recovery.

The virus of the economy is called mistrust.

We were counting on the return of confidence so that households consume part of the savings accumulated since the spring: this is not the case.

And for lack of prospects, companies are on the brakes and postpone their investments.

The recovery plan will only work if this climate of mistrust dissipates, and if consumers and businesses regain confidence.

But we can understand that they remain in the fog when the government itself sends contradictory signals in its fight against the pandemic and gives the feeling of hesitating between prioritizing the reconstruction of the economy and priority to the fight against the pandemic. virus.