The Marshmallow Recovery?

Dorset Echo

Looking at the crumbling wall of resolve as we dismantle lockdown reminds me of Walter Mischel's famous experiment testing children's ability to delay eating a marshmallow when promised a second one after a short period as a reward for the delay. By tracking later lives, the conclusion was the restraint was linked closely to later success.

We've spent the last fifty years building an economy based on marginal dissatisfaction, and more lately that whatever we want can be delivered now. Right now. Marshmallow on demand. Restraint as a bad thing.

So when we coop people up for three months (with good reason) in order to "flatten the curve", and then open the door to that coop we can hardly be surprised at the response. We seem to have a binary response - we've been good at accepting being cooped up, but then when we're not, we're very not.

The "guided by science" line has been quickly replaced to something along the lines of "guided by the economy", and in particular those with lo…