ABSTRACT
Summary: As lockdowns start being announced in the various locations of the authors, this chapter begins by focusing on who takes responsibility for making announcements and imposing lockdowns and what effects the announcements are designed to have. The distinction between responsibility being taken by a specific person and by an officeholder (such as a head of state) is underlined. The ways in which messages to similar effect can be phrased to have distinct local connotations comes up. From there the chapter moves towards mulling the economic consequences of lockdown, in particular the part that the private sector – seemingly in the background at this juncture – could or should play.
