I'm not quite as bald as an egg. The electric razor I use every few days just means I won't need the barber's.

In isolation, it guarantees a close shave, as it has for decades of miserliness about spending money on haircuts. Why pay for what you can do yourself?

But chatting on the phone with women friends makes me realise that there is a debate about how essential hairdressing actually is.

One woman I talked to was outraged that hairdressers would be allowed to operate - can the virus not travel between hairdresser and customer, we wondered?

How can they cut hair without the risk of infection? Long scissors?

But another female friend opined that staying well coiffured raised morale.

She was horrified by the thought of women over a certain age (herself included) showing their true grey over the coming weeks. She may be right. Women need hairdos. Men, not so much. Me, not at all.

There is another, weightier argument, and that is that "crashing the economy" may end up causing more destruction than letting the disease spread.

Economists have devised what they call a "J-Value" to measure the longer term loss of life of an event like a recession.

A devastating recession as we slam on the brakes may eventually push up suicides, and lower the amount of tax revenue to fund healthcare.

Risk management professor Philip Thomas argues that a big fall in national output would mean "more years of life will be lost ... than will be saved through beating the virus".

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Other economists have criticised the methodology, pointing out, for example, that in a recession fewer people die in car crashes.

Either way, the calculation is different in different places.

In India, the ultra-poor might fear that a recession threatens them more than the plague does.

In Beverly Hills (or the more affluent parts of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra), the rich might think they can isolate themselves from it but their wealth would be severely damaged by an economic crash.

In Australia, clever public servants are no doubt making the necessary calculation, balancing the longer-term economic costs with the immediate health benefits of beating the virus.

It is a brutal and uncertain calculus. The political balance may change over time as more people die or, on the other hand, suffer economically.

But whatever the calculation: nobody doubts you can catch coronavirus from a hairdresser - and pass it on.

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