Financial leverage is built on the idea of spending money to make money – buying a home or investing in a business, for example. This blog by IFT PhD student Philipp Wirth summarises a recent seminar on the “deadly” nature of financial leverage when applied to COVID-19 and care home deaths. The paper by Peter Morris and Ludovic Phalippou (Said Business School, Oxford) and Betty Wu (Adam Smith Business School, Glasgow) examples how and why leverage must be calculated properly to support future policy responses. 

March 2020 proved to be a defining month for humanity all around the world. COVID-19 would affect hundreds of millions of people in the months and years to come, but March was the month that the UK, like many other countries, introduced a nationwide lockdown to stop the disease from spreading. The most vulnerable members of our society were the elderly, the demographic which still accounts for most COVID-19-related deaths. A recent report of the ONS shows that for 2021, COVID-19 was the second highest cause of death among care home residents in England and Wales.  

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