We have learned historically that if we can isolate sick people, we can often keep a communicable disease from spreading. Unfortunately, the situation with the new coronavirus causing COVID-19 is different: We can’t reliability determine which people are spreading the disease. Furthermore, the disease seems to transmit in many different ways simultaneously.
Politicians and health organizations like to show that they are “doing something.” Because of the strange nature of COVID-19, however, doing something is mostly a time-shifting exercise: With quarantines and other containment efforts, there will be fewer cases now, but this will be mostly or entirely offset by more cases later. Whether time-shifting reduces deaths and eases hospital care depends upon whether medical advances are sufficiently great during the time gained to improve outcomes.
We tend to lose sight of the fact that an economy cannot simply be shut down for a period and then start up again at close to its former level of production. China seems to have seriously overdone its use of quarantines. It seems likely that its economy can never fully recover. The permanent loss of a significant part of China’s productive output seems likely to send the world economy into a tailspin, regardless of what other economies do.
Before undertaking containment efforts of any kind, decision-makers need to look carefully at several issues:
- Laying off workers, even for a short time, severely adversely affects the economy.
- The expected length of delay in cases made possible by quarantines is likely to be very short, sometimes lasting not much longer than the quarantines themselves.
- We seem to need a very rapid improvement in our ability to treat COVID-19 cases for containment efforts to make sense, if we cannot stamp out the disease completely.
Because of these issues, it is very easy to overdo quarantines and other containment efforts.
In the sections below, I explain some parts of this problem.
[1] The aim of coronavirus quarantines is mostly to slow down the spread of the virus, not to stop its spread.
As a practical matter, it is virtually impossible to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
In order to completely stop its spread, we would need to separate each person from every other person, as well as from possible animal carriers, for something like a month. In this way, people who are carriers for the disease or actually have the disease would hopefully have time to get over their illnesses. Perhaps airborne viruses would dissipate and viruses on solid surfaces would have time to deteriorate.
This clearly could not work. People would need to be separated from their children and pets. All businesses, including food sales, would have to stop. Electricity would likely stop, especially in areas where storms bring down power lines. No fuel would be available for vehicles of any kind. If a home catches fire, the fire would need to burn until a lack of material to burn stops it. If a baby needs to be delivered, there would be no midwife or hospital services available. If a person happened to have an appendicitis, it would simply need to resolve itself at home, however that worked out.
Bigger groups could in theory be quarantined together, but then the length of time for the quarantine would need to be greatly lengthened, to account for the possibility that one person might catch the disease from someone else in the group. The bigger the group, the longer the chain might continue. A group might be a single family sharing a home; it could also be a group of people in an apartment building that shares a common ventilation system.
[2] An economy is in many ways like a human being or other animal. Its operation cannot be stopped for a month or more, without bringing the economy to an end.
I sometimes write about the economy being a self-organizing networked system that is powered by energy. In physics terms, the name for such a system is a dissipative structure. Human beings are dissipative structures, as are hurricanes and stars, such as the sun.
Human beings cannot stop eating and breathing for a month. They cannot have sleep apnea for an hour at a time, and function afterward.
Economies cannot stop functioning for a month and afterward resume operations at their previous level. Too many people will have lost their jobs; too many businesses will have failed in the meantime. If the closures continue for two or three months, the problem becomes very serious. We are probably kidding ourselves if we think that China can come back to the same level that it was at before the new coronavirus hit.
In a way, keeping an economy operating is as important as preventing deaths from COVID-19. Without food, water and wage-producing jobs (which allow people to buy necessary goods and services), the deaths from the loss of the economy would be far greater than the direct deaths from the coronavirus.
[3] A reasonable guess is that nearly all of us will face multiple exposures to the new coronavirus.
Many people are hoping that this wave of the coronavirus will be stopped by warmer weather, perhaps in May or June. We don’t know whether this will happen or not. If the coronavirus does stop, there is a good chance the same virus, or a close variation of it, will be back again this fall. It is likely to come back in waves later, for at least one more year. In fact, if no vaccine is found, it is possible that it could come back, in various variations, indefinitely. There are many things we simply don’t know with certainty at this time.
Epidemiologists talk about the spread of a virus being stopped at the community immunity level. Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch originally estimated that 40% to 70% of the world’s population would come down with COVID-19 within the first year. He has revised this and now states that it is plausible that 20% to 60% of the world’s population will catch the disease in that timeframe. He also indicates that if the virus cannot be contained, the only way to get it under control is for 50% of the world’s population to become immune to it.
The big issue with containing the coronavirus is that we cannot really tell who has it and who does not. The tests available for COVID-19 are expensive, so giving the test to everyone, frequently, makes no sense. The tests tend to give a many false negatives, so even when they are given, they don’t necessarily detect people with the disease. There are also many people who seem to spread the disease without symptoms. Without testing everyone, these people will never be found.
We hear limited statements such as “The United States surgeon general said Sunday that he thinks the coronavirus outbreak is being contained in certain areas of the country as cases of the virus rise across the United States.” Unfortunately, containment of the virus in a few parts of the world does not solve the general problem. There are lots and lots of uncontained cases around the world. These uncontained cases will continue to spread, regardless of the steps taken elsewhere.
Furthermore, even when we think the virus is contained, there are likely to be missed cases, especially among people who seem to be well, but who really are carriers. Getting rid of the virus is likely to be a major challenge.
[4] There is an advantage to delaying citizens from catching COVID-19. The delay allows doctors to learn which existing medications can be used to help treat the symptoms of the disease.
There seem to be multiple drugs and multiple therapies that work to some limited extent.
For example, plasma containing antibodies from a person who has already had the illness can be injected into a person with the disease, helping to fight the disease. It is not clear, however, whether such a treatment will protect against future attacks of the virus since the patient is being cured without his own immune system producing adequate antibodies.
Some HIV drugs are being examined to see whether they work well enough for it to make sense to ramp up production of them. The antiviral drug remdesivir by Gilead Sciences also seems to have promise. For these drugs to be useful in fighting COVID-19, production would need to be ramped up greatly.
In theory, there is also a possibility that a vaccine can be brought to market that will get rid of the virus. Our past experience with vaccine-making has not been very good, however. Out of 200+ virus-caused diseases that affect humans, only about 20 have vaccines. These vaccines generally need to be updated frequently, because viruses tend to mutate over time.
With some viruses, such as Dengue Fever, people don’t ever build up adequate immunity to the many disease variations that exist. Instead a person who catches Dengue Fever a second time is likely to be sicker than the first time. Finding a vaccine for such diseases seems to be almost impossible.
Even if we can actually succeed in making a vaccine that works, the expectation seems to be that this will take at least 12 to 18 months. By this time, the world may have experienced multiple waves of COVID-19.
[5] There are multiple questions regarding how well European countries, Japan and the United States will really be able to treat coronavirus.
There are several issues involved:
(a) Even if medicines are identified, can they be ramped up adequately in the short time available?
(b) China’s exports have dropped significantly. Required medical goods that we normally import from China may not be available. The missing items could be as simple as rubbing alcohol, masks and other protective wear. The missing items could also be antibiotics, antidepressants, and blood pressure medications that are needed for both COVID-19 patients and other patients.
(c) Based on my calculations, the number of hospital beds and ICU beds needed will likely exceed those available (without kicking out other patients) by at least a factor of 10, if the size of the epidemic grows. There will also be a need for more medical staff. Medical staff may be fewer, rather than more, because many of them will be out sick with the virus. Because of these issues, the amount of hospital-based care that can actually be provided to COVID-19 patients is likely to be fairly limited.
(d) One reason for time-shifting of illnesses has been to try to better match illnesses with medical care available. The main benefit I can see is the fact that many health care workers will have contracted the illness in the first wave of the disease, so will be more available to give care in later waves of the disease. Apart from this difference, the system will be badly overwhelmed, regardless of when COVID-19 cases occur.
[6] A major issue, both with COVID-19 illnesses and with quarantines arising out of fear of illness, is wage loss.
If schools and day care centers are closed because of COVID-19 fears, many of the parents will have to take off time from work to care for the children. These parent will likely lose wages.
Wage loss will also be a problem if quarantines are required for people returning from an area that might be affected. For example, immigrant workers in China wanting to return to work in major cities after the New Year’s holiday have been quarantined for 14 days after they return.
Clearly, expenses (such as rent, food and auto payments) will continue, both for the mother of the child who is at home because a child’s school is closed and for the migrant worker who wants to return to a job in the city. Their lack of wages will mean that these people will make fewer discretionary purchases, such as visiting restaurants and making trips to visit relatives. In fact, migrant workers, when faced with a 14 day quarantine, may decide to stay in the countryside. If they don’t earn very much in the best of times, and they are required to go 14 days without pay after they return, there may not be much incentive to return to work.
If I am correct that the illness COVID-19 will strike in several waves, these same people participating in quarantines will have another “opportunity” for wage loss when they actually contract the disease, during one of these later rounds. Unless there is a real reduction in the number of people who ultimately get COVID-19 because of quarantines, a person would expect that the total wage loss would be greater with quarantines than without, because the wage loss occurs twice instead of once.
Furthermore, businesses will suffer financially when their workers are out. With fewer working employees, businesses will likely be able to produce fewer finished goods and services than in the past. At the same time, their fixed expenses (such as mortgage payments, insurance payments, and the cost of heating buildings) will continue. This mismatch is likely to lead to lower profits at two different times: (a) when workers are out because of quarantines and (b) when they are out because they are ill.
[7] We likely can expect a great deal more COVID-19 around the world, including in China and in Italy, in the next two years.
The number of reported COVID-19 cases to date is tiny, compared to the number that is expected based on estimates by epidemiologists. China reports about 81,000 COVID-19 cases to date, while its population is roughly 1.4 billion. If epidemiologists tell us to expect 20% to 60% of a country’s population to be affected by the end of the first year of the epidemic, this would correspond to a range of 280 million to 840 million cases. The difference between reported cases and expected cases is huge. Reported cases to date are less than 0.01% of the population.
We know that China’s reported number of cases is an optimistically low number, but we don’t know how low. Many, many more cases are expected in the year ahead if workers go back to work. In fact, there have been recent reports of a COVID-19 outbreak in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, near Hong Kong. Such an outbreak would adversely affect China’s manufactured exports.
Italy has a similar situation. It is currently reported to have somewhat more than 10,000 cases. Its total population is about 60 million. Thus, its number of cases amounts to about 0.02% of the population. If Epidemiologist Lipsitch is correct regarding the percentage of the population that is ultimately likely to be affected, the number of cases in Italy, too, can be expected to be much higher within the next year. Twenty percent of a population of 60 million would amount to 12 million cases; 60% of the population would amount to 36 million cases.
[8] When decisions about quarantines are made, the expected wage loss when workers lose their jobs needs to be considered as well.
Let’s calculate the amount of wage loss from actually having COVID-19. If workers generally work for 50 weeks a year and are out sick for an average of 2 weeks because of COVID-19, the average worker would lose 4% (=2/50) of his annual wages. If workers are out sick for an average of three weeks, this would increase the loss to 6% (3/50) of the worker’s annual wages.
Of course, not all workers will be affected by the new coronavirus. If we are expecting 20% to 60% of the workers to be out sick during the first year that the epidemic cycles through the economy, the expected overall wage loss for the population as a whole would amount to 0.8% (=20% times 4%) to 3.6% (=60% times 6%) of total wages.
Let’s now calculate the wage loss from a quarantine. A week of wage loss during a quarantine of the entire population, while nearly everyone is well, would lead to a wage loss equal to 2% of the population’s total wages. Two weeks of wage loss during quarantine would lead to wage loss equal to 4% of the population’s total wages.
Is it possible to reduce overall wage loss and deaths by using quarantines? This approach works for diseases which can actually be stopped through isolating sick members, but I don’t think it works well at all for COVID-19. Mostly, it provides a time-shifting feature. There are fewer illnesses earlier, but to a very significant extent, this is offset by more illnesses later. This time-shifting feature might be helpful if there really is a substantial improvement in prevention or treatment that is quickly available. For example, if a vaccine that really works can be found quickly, such a vaccine might help prevent some of the illnesses and deaths in 2021 and following years.
If there really isn’t an improvement in preventing the disease, then we get back to the situation where the virus needs to be stopped based on community immunity. According to Lipsitch, to stop the virus based on community immunity, at least 50% of the population would need to become immune. This implies that somewhat more than 50% of the population would need to catch the new coronavirus, because some people would catch the new virus and die, either of COVID-19 or of another disease.
Let’s suppose that 55% would need to catch COVID-19 to allow the population immunity to rise to 50%. The virus would likely need to keep cycling around until at least this percentage of the population has caught the disease. This is not much of a decrease from the upper limit of 60% during the first year. This suggests that moving illnesses to a later year may not help much at all with respect to the expected number of illnesses and deaths. Hospitals will be practically equally overwhelmed regardless, unless we can somehow change the typical seasonality of viruses and move some of the winter illnesses to summertime.
If there is no improvement in COVID-19 prevention/treatment during the time-shift of cases created by the quarantine, any quarantine wage loss can be thought of as being simply in addition to wage loss from having the virus itself. Thus, a country that opts for a two week quarantine of all workers (costing 4% of workers’ wages) may be more than doubling the direct wage loss from COVID-19 (equivalent to 0.8% to 3.6% of workers’ wages).
[9] China’s shutdown in response to COVID-19 doesn’t seem to make much rational sense.
It is hard to understand exactly how much China has shut down, but the shutdown has gone on for about six weeks. At this point, it is not clear that China can ever come back to the level it was at previously. Clearly, the combination of wage loss for individuals and profit loss for companies is very high. The long shutdown is likely to lead to widespread debt defaults. With less wages, there is likely to be less demand for goods such as cars and cell phones during 2020.
China was having difficulty before the new coronavirus was discovered to be a problem. Its energy production has slowed greatly, starting about 2012-2013, making it necessary for China to start shifting from a goods-producing nation to a country that is more of a services-producer (Figure 1).
Figure 1. China energy production by fuel, based on 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy data. “Other Ren” stands for “Renewables other than hydroelectric.” This category includes wind, solar, and other miscellaneous types, such as sawdust burned for electricity.
For example, China’s workers now put together iPhones using parts made in other countries, rather than making iPhones from start to finish. This part of the production chain requires relatively little fuel, so it is in some sense more like a service than the manufacturing of parts for the phone.
The rest of the world has been depending upon China to be a major supplier within its supply lines. Perhaps many of these supply lines will be broken indefinitely. Instead of China helping pull the world economy along faster, we may be faced with a situation in which China’s reduced output leads to worldwide economic contraction rather than economic growth.
Without medicines from China, our ability to fight COVID-19 may get worse over time, rather than better. In such a case, it would be better to get the illness now, rather than later.
[10] We need to be examining proposed solutions closely, in the light of the particulars of the new coronavirus, rather than simply assuming that fighting COVID-19 to the death is appropriate.
The instructions we hear today seem to suggest using disinfectants everywhere, to try to prevent COVID-19. This is yet another way to try to push off infections caused by the coronavirus into the future. We know, however, that there are good microbes as well as bad ones. The ecosystem requires a balance of microbes. Dumping disinfectants everywhere has its downside, as well as the possibility of an upside of killing the current round of coronaviruses. In fact, to the extent that the virus is airborne, the disinfectants may not really be very helpful in wiping out COVID-19.
It is very easy to believe that if some diseases can be subdued by quarantines, the same approach will work everywhere. This really isn’t true. We need to be examining the current situation closely, based on whatever information is available, before decisions are made regarding how to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Perhaps any quarantines used need to be small and targeted.
We also need to be looking for new approaches for fighting COVID-19. One approach that is not being used significantly to date is trying to strengthen people’s own immune systems. Such an approach might help people’s own immune system to fight off the disease, thereby lowering death rates. Nutrition experts recommend supplementing diets with Vitamins A, C, E, antioxidants and selenium. Other experts say zinc, Vitamin D and elderberry may be helpful. Staying away from cold temperatures also seems to be important. Drinking plenty of water after coming down with the disease may be beneficial as well. If we can help people’s own bodies fight the disease, the burden on the medical system will be lower.
Oil bottoming? https://mobile.twitter.com/TaviCosta/status/1244816487790948353
Two extremes.
Energy high-yield credit spreads just reached record levels while WTI prices are at 18-year lows.
Previous divergences marked major turns in oil.
Oil could be in the process of bottoming.
Very intresting. How many conseguences can have? Oil 200 dollar barrel?
I will bet that oil prices do not bounce up to $150 per barrel, however.
We keep on talking ad nauseam about Covid-19, while all that Covid-19 has done is exposing how deep in overshoot we are. Being human, we are more clever then the story of the deer (take 5 minutes and click the link below to find out what happened to the deer of St Matthew Island, absolutely fascinating), but that can only work for a while. There is so much human constructs (like the global financial system) can do to hide that at almost 8 billion and counting, we have overshot our resource base. The fruits of the last 10 years of growth have benefited us all (by not collapsing), but the actual gains have been concentrated in the hands of a small minority of the world’s population. I suspect this is what happens when civilizations peak right before collapsing, as some have already commented here: inequalities become exponential.
And for those saying that we will recover, just look at the Roman Civilization, or Mayans, or Easter Island…this is not the case here…we are all interconnected…everybody is plugged into the matrix, except for a few tribes that probably number in the hundreds across the world….The whole planet is Easter Island, the Mayans or Roman Civilization…this will NOT be a regional collapse, where one society collapses, while other humans thousand of kilometers away did not even KNOW that there had been a collapse on their planet.
If it wasn’t Covid-19 exposing this reality of overshoot, it would have been another snowflake, and pretty soon at that…
Please find below the link to the story of the deer in St Matthew Island…please note, for us humans, we were never going to collapse because zero resources were left. We were going to collapse way before that, because the software that is needed to run the whole show (the global financial system) would collapse because growth (and this system is binary, Grow or Die) would stop because we don’t have enough resources to grow anymore. It is not a coincidence that the financial trickeries the CBs have been playing for the past 11 years, started 3-4 years after conventional oil, which underpins everything else, peaked. Covid-19 or not, we were heading for collapse….and like I said before, even if we had infinite resources, we would have just kept adding humans, asphalting the whole world, till eventually the biosphere would collapse….but we don’t have infinite resources, so global economic collapse wins over biosphere collapse. Way to go global economic collapse, you win 🙂
http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/st-matthew-island/#page-2
Very right
before Netflix, check this out by Nafeez Ahmed:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-03-30/nafeez-ahmed-on-synchronous-failure-and-post-pandemic-systems-change/
Printing money after 2008 was colateralising the future and we ran out of future
Like I’ve been saying for years now. Native American lifestyles or bust. That was the closest thing to sustainable that we can imagine on a finite planet. We can’t honestly think we can destroy all of the world’s old growth forests and have a happy ending. Not with our knowledge now of the biosphere and how interconnected our world is.
Conf industry itali told we lose Minus 10 per cent in First ,3 months.
The goats run the world now
https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewStuart/status/1244937982991351809
WUTTTTHEEEEFUUUUKKKKK… voluntary?????
It’s the end of the world at stake and it’s voluntary???????
Because they are concerned about PRIVACY!!!!
Meanwhile they allow Facebook Google and every other tech company to TRACK our every FUKKKKING movement both online and off…
Now they are just taking the piiiisss with all of this… come on fellas… this virus is made in a lab… and it’s being used to create a controlled demolition of an economy that was already rotten to the core…
And governments the world (particularly the US and UK) are responding like amateurs when they have already seen Wuhan… behind the curve time after time after time… it’s almost as if they want to help the virus along — to welcome it in….
Why dontcha give it a pot of warm snot to relax in (like a virus spa!!!) maybe a cigar? How about a glass of fine wine? What do viruses like to eat? Whatever that is, bring em a truckload of it….
Maybe they’d like to fornicate? Bring in whatever they fancy… or do they just roger themselves? In that case just get them in front of a laptop and loop some har d co re pourn.
Anything else you’d like Mr Virus? Keep up the good work… and if we inadvertently get in your way please do let us know….
07:50 GMT – Coronavirus tracking app must be voluntary: German minister
German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht told Deutschlandfunk radio that tracking apps to help tackle coronavirus could only be used voluntarily in Germany.
“It’s a real infringement if I have such data so I can only agree with everyone who says that if there is such a solution that actually breaks the chains of infection, it’s only possible if those who have it on their mobile phones and so use it do so voluntarily,” Lambrecht said.
Germany hopes to launch a smartphone app within weeks to help trace coronavirus infections, after a broad political consensus emerged that adopting an approach pioneered by Singapore can be effective without invading people’s privacy.
Workers are threatening to shut a major fulfilment centre because a handful of workers have Wuhan…. this is with a containment policy in place in the US and Italy…. if the governments were doing nothing then it’s not hard to imagine how quickly the handful would become hundreds in that facility … and every facility and office in the country
And workers would refuse — in the millions – to come to work.
08:10 GMT – Coronavirus cases at Amazon raise spectre of disruptions, closure
News reports that a handful of Amazon US warehouse workers have contracted the virus raise the potential of future site closures and operational disruptions at the world’s largest online retailer.
The COVID-19 cases led to unrest among some staff. Fifteen of the 5,000-plus workers at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, staged a walkout on Monday. The company fired one of them who it emerged was supposed to be under paid quarantine and not at the site.
Employees have also protested in other countries, including dozens of Amazon workers at a facility near Florence, Italy, this week.
Japan losed 3.5 billion for losed olipics games
Lots of jobs disappear. Lots of tourist spending postponed, it the games take place in the future.
The ripples from the virus continue. I live in Eugene, Oregon where we have built a $200 track and field stadium (we are, after all, the track capital of the US). We were supposed to hold the PAC 12 track championships here in May, the Olympic Trials in June and the World Championships in 2021. This would have poured tens of millions into the local economy. All gone for this year at least. We’ll have the O Trials next June and Worlds in 2022 if a world still exists. . .
Ha, a $200 million stadium. Sorry!
Spanish Flu ran for 2 years… no attempt to contain… extrapolate the infections and deaths to a world with 8B people … keeping in mind that population density (close contacts) are many, many times higher now…. then factor in volumes of people who travel the world compared to 1918…
Without containment this virus would have torn the global economy to pieces by now…. then entire world would be Italy…. nevermind … it will end up worse because most countries don’t really have the means to enforce containment … and their people MUST work or they don’t eat… not every government can do what Australia is doing and pay 80% of your lost wage… and even Australia cannot keep that up for too long without getting junked….
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
The Belarus president was quoted on the news yesterday saying “It’s better to die standing than living on your knees”, as they keep sport events going. I do think it would be better to let the virus run its course even though it would mean piles of bodies and a collapsed health system. What we will get now in this impending economical collapse will be far worse. But it couldn’t have gone any other way as no sane leader would hold back quarantine measures in the light of what is happening in Italy, Spain etc.
What we will have now are riots, revolutions, famines, civil wars in many peripheral countries. The death toll will be millions more than what the virus itself would take out.
Quarantine or let the virus burn = same result, within a very similar timeline = Global Economic Collapse, quickly followed by the collapse of Industrial Civilization.
I like the expression Xabier used a few days ago (which I had to google) 🙂
We find ourselves (all of humanity) “Between the devil and the deep blue sea”
You know who else said that? Magneto from the X-Men comics, who probably got it from Emiliano Zapata by way of FDR. (Some online sources attribute it to Euripides, but none give a source.)
I love this guy!
Yes, we can perform such napkin style estimation, it has been said the y/y deadly rate in Italian regions spiked ~5-10%, so translating that into periphery or even very poor parts of the world it must be a higher number still, but in slightly different demographics (more younger people affected). So, taken globally in span of several years, that impact will be noticeable.
I disagree! Part of the reason that shutdowns are so successful now is the belief that social distancing was successfully used during the 1918 – 1919 epidemic.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/
How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic
Social distancing isn’t a new idea—it saved thousands of American lives during the last great pandemic. Here’s how it worked.
The charts show how Philadelphia, with no social distancing rule, had a single peak in viruses. St. Louis, with a strong social distancing rule, actually had a second peak a year that was higher than the first peak. San Francisco had two separate peaks, the first higher than the second.
All of these peaks took place within a 24-week period after the start of the epidemic in a particular city. They really weren’t over the full period of the epidemic as far as I can see. I also question how good the data really was back then.
The article says, “Cities that ordered social distancing measures later and for shorter periods tended to have spikes in deaths and higher overall death rates.” It also says, “Cities that ordered social distancing measures sooner and for longer periods usually slowed infections and lowered overall death rates.”
Whether or not this is true this time around remains to be seen.
I would observe that smaller cities seemed to have lower infection rates overall. This may be the real difference, as much as differences in social distancing requirements. It may be that gatherings, in general, were smaller in these cities. The author doesn’t seem to have tested a smaller-city hypothesis.
Even if it is true that social distancing was successful in reducing deaths, there is still a question regarding the extent to which social distancing can be done without killing our networked international economy.
Also, there is a question of how many lives can be saved, and the age and health of those with illnesses. There is a different distribution now than in 1918-1919.
“Also, there is a question of how many lives can be saved, and the age and health of those with illnesses. There is a different distribution now than in 1918-1919.”
That’s true, as opposed to the Corona virus that preys primarily on the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, the Spanish flu killed a lot of young healthy people because their strong immune systems went into over-drive attempting to fight off that flu.
09:40 GMT – Swedish economy to shrink by four percent in 2020: Finance minister
Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson has said Sweden’s gross domestic product is seen shrinking four percent this year as the economy slumps due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“We have a very serious economic situation, both in Sweden and globally,” she told reporters. “This is both a demand and supply shock that is spreading between countries.”
The government has introduced measures, including subsidies for shorter working hours, tax rebates and loan guarantees, and easier rules for claiming benefits, to ease the blow
REALLY? Only 4%…. Surely they forgot a 0….
Of course she is right. Sweden isn’t a country that depends on export for the economy.
https://www.tillvaxtanalys.se/in-english/publications/pm/pm/2019-03-13-swedens-export-dependence—vulnerability-for-fluctuations-in-international-demand.html
“Sweden is a small open economy with a high trade dependence. The export dependence is highest in the manufacturing industry, where more than 60 per cent of the value added is exported. But also primary industries and parts of the service sector are largely dependent on exports, both directly and indirectly as suppliers of raw materials and services to the export industry.”
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/theemigrants.jpg
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2020/03/31/anti-malarico-introvabile-bloccato-dalla-burocrazia/5754779/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1585639516. This medicine work. But import from India bloked . Here again problem of import from India and china
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10222409190048777&id=1539155266
Marco, what is tour opinion on this? South Italy?
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/socio-economic-issues-will-erupt-italian-officials-fear-south-turning-powder-keg
Signs of social unrest in major Western cities could be developing over the next few weeks, and as we previously warned last Friday, a global depression with high unemployment could unleash a “social bomb” in European countries and or North America.
we are not like Venezuela is not true. but it is true that on WhatsApp there were groups to assault supermarkets. for this the government has put 400 million for food. in the south, poor and ignorant people. undeclared work without social safety nets. earn day by day
They must throw money. [spending power] at everybody.!!! I mean everybody. Monetary sovereign nations will have to bail out non monetary sovereign nations. OR the. Non MS states in the eurozone Must urgently reclaim their sovereignty. Drop the Euro altogether.
Remember the answer to the ever lasting question?: “How will you pay for such things as bailouts?”
The Fed will pay out what ever the government passes into legislation. It cannot go broke. But it can run out of resources.
Italia must go out euro fast
Today all stock market fly. They live in other planet
Dr. Copper unwell:
“Copper miners are poised for their worst quarter since 2008 after the coronavirus pandemic fueled demand fears for industrial metals and forced companies to curb mining operations.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/global-copper-miners-head-for-worst-quarter-since-2008-on-virus
“A member of the Lebanese banking association, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP all dollar withdrawals would be halted “pending the airport reopening”. “Dollars are imported and this is no longer possible because of the coronavirus,” the source said. “Dollar importers have suspended work.””
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-lebanon-banks-halt-dollar-withdrawals-after-pandemic-closes-airport
“Egyptian banks have been instructed to apply temporary limits on daily withdrawals and deposits in a move seemingly designed to control inflation and hoarding during the coronavirus’ spread.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-egypt-banks/egypts-banks-told-to-limit-withdrawals-and-deposits-idUSKBN21G0UI
India – Hundreds of millions are flooding back to their villages (many are having to walk – and have no money or food!)
The nightmare is only beginning
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-52101615
Innnndddddiiiaaaaaaaa… Incredible Innnddiiaaaa… (actually one of the best countries I have visited…)
https://youtu.be/EvTn6tPVQJ0
“An exodus from emerging markets (EM) assets has been taking place thanks to a combination of the coronavirus outbreak and falling oil prices. Investors are opting to park their capital into safer havens, which puts EM companies at risk of default.
“This was readily apparent in rising yields on EM debt as the countries in the most tenuous positions headed toward distressed levels.”
https://www.etftrends.com/relative-value-channel/emerging-markets-could-be-facing-a-wave-of-debt-defaults/
“Last week, S&P Global Ratings downgraded over 70 Mexico government bonds, over 20 Ecuadorian bonds, and some Colombian government debt, too. Argentina was left alone. That’s because it is already super duper junk. If it goes any lower, it’s a hard default.
“Within Latin America, Argentina is the one country looking set to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps and go bust.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/03/30/within-latin-america-argentina-is-surefire-bet-for-hard-default/#4e0cfc475ebc
“Brazil’s government is considering a possible emergency loan package for energy distributors that are struggling with lower energy use and facing lost revenues due to the coronavirus outbreak, an industry group told Reuters on Monday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-brazil-energy/brazil-government-considers-loans-to-energy-sector-in-coronavirus-bailout-idUKE8N28G02D
“South African bonds will now be removed from indices used worldwide to track investment-grade debt, adding to pressure on the currency as some investors will be forced by their mandates to sell their holdings.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b4a074ca-f664-4fcf-92f9-949413264294
The smaller poorer countries will break down and then it will continue into the core.
We will have a front row seat of watching this tsunami roll in and over us. We may not have to wait long. I think we could all agree this has been a fascinating month – I’m truly in awe of how fragile it is.
“The smaller poorer countries will break down and then it will continue into the core.”
This is how I suspect things will go, too.
This pandemic is a big blow to the collective fun that keeps the people distracted from the reality, supporting the mad people doing mad things, turning madness into a norm, i.e. something that is normal.
I wish that this destruction of the collective fun would continue.