Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve read claims on the web that the job losses in the US were due to the virus itself, and to the fear of the virus making people cut back on activities. The claims are that the job loss is more from that, and not so much a result of the American Lockdown. So I thought I’d take a look at the weekly new claims for unemployment insurance. Of course, the different states have been hit differently by the changes. Here’s the graph of weekly new unemployment claims for one of the least affected states, Oregon.
Figure 1. Weekly new unemployment claims, Oregon, since 1999. “Usual” refers to the one-year period preceding the record rise.
I saw that and I thought something was wrong with the program I’d written to download and graph the data. But nope. In fact, every single state’s new unemployment claims looks just like that. I said YIKES! I’d heard that things were bad, but I had no idea things were that bad.
Now, there are a few interesting things about Figure 1. First, you can see the results of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis in the increased unemployment peaking in 2009. We thought unemployment was bad at that time … and it was.
Since then, new unemployment claims had been steadily decreasing.
You can also see that this increase in Oregon unemployment was not caused by the coronavirus. Nor was it caused by fears of the coronavirus. It was a result of the American Lockdown.
Finally, Oregon is doing better than almost all other states, and it is still seeing eleven times the number of unemployed as was typical for the previous year. Wow. That’s the good news?
Next, here’s a state from the middle of the pack, California. It has seen a seventeen-fold increase in unemployment, with over two million people out of work in California alone.
Figure 2. Weekly new unemployment claims, California, since 1999. “Usual” refers to the one-year period preceding the record rise.
Just as in Oregon, the jump in unemployment was sudden, and coincided with the American Lockdown.
Here’s the truly crazy part. There have been just under a thousand deaths in California. Bending the curve didn’t save them, nor was it supposed to save them. Instead, it was supposed to have delayed the hospitalizations and deaths so they hit over weeks rather than days. We don’t know, and may never know, the extent of that delay if any.
We do know that most of the deaths are among the group you might call “at death’s door”.
So in California, we’ve thrown at least two million people out of work in order to delay, but not prevent, the deaths of a thousand or so people, most of whom had other serious illnesses.
Am I the only person who thinks that making two million people jobless, merely to delay but not prevent a thousand deaths, is a bad deal for society?
Let me close my look at state-level data with a state that you’d think would have seen increased unemployment from the virus itself, and not just by governmental action. Between fear of flying, fear of crowds, and fear of the virus itself, I expected Hawaii to show a different pattern from the two above. Here’s their unemployment record:
Figure 3. Weekly new unemployment claims, Hawaii, since 1999. “Usual” refers to the one-year period preceding the record rise.
To my surprise, no increase in unemployment due to the virus itself. But once again unemployment is way, way up, thirty times the usual amount Normally Hawaii sees four thousand new claims every three weeks, as they saw right up to the week ending March 21. But now they have over a hundred thousand unemployed in three weeks and counting … madness.
Finally, here’s the corresponding graph for the entire US.
Figure 4. Weekly new unemployment claims, US, since 1999. “Usual” refers to the one-year period preceding the record rise.
Twenty-one times the normal three-week count of new unemployment claims … and fifteen million unemployed.
But wait, as they say on TV, “There’s More!”
As with all such data, it takes a bit of time for the Fed to collect it and post it up. The most recent data on all of the graphs is the most recent data the Fed has posted—I pull the data from the Fed site for each graph as I create it. That data is for the week ending April 4th. I’m writing this on the 18th of April. So there are two weeks of unposted data up to the present.
We have to assume that the new unemployment claims won’t be back to pre-lunacy levels any time soon. During the week ending two weeks ago (2020-04-04 in Figure 4) there were Six. Million. New. Unemployment. Claims.
And there were another six million the week before that. For that two weeks, the US was losing jobs at a rate of almost a million more unemployed EVERY DAY!
So perhaps ten million still in the pipeline, 15 million filed claims already. That’s 25 million unemployed …
The human carnage in that number, twenty-five million, the wrecked dreams, the failed businesses, the broken relationships, the stress on marriages, the increase in suicides and domestic violence …
There are about 130 million people working full-time in the US. As of two weeks ago, governmental action had thrown more than ten percent of them out of work, with more since then.
This sudden spike in joblessness is totally unprecedented. It needs to be stopped immediately. Hundreds of thousands more unemployed every single day that this madness continues is simply not acceptable. Too much pain, far too little gain.
Here’s my plan. You had to know I have a plan. Here’s my plan.
Whenever any governmental official forcibly throws people out of work by unilaterally making their business illegal, that official and everyone under their purview should immediately lose all salary, benefits, housing, insurance, transportation, and any other benefits.
Now I can hear you thinking, “How can Willis justify that?” Simple. It’s under the same doctrine they use. They’ve divided human activities into two groups. Only one of these groups is permitted. The other is forbidden.
Of course, everyone making a living doing something which is now forbidden is suddenly thrown out of their job. Wife and husband work for a now-forbidden company? Sorry … go home and fight with each other.
And to return to the question of how I could justify throwing all those government people out of work?
The answer is in the fact that the two groups of activities, one permitted and one forbidden, the government calls these two groups “Essential” and “Non-Essential” activities.
I rest my case.
So. What should we do?
I say put on any and all health and sanitary regulations we can think of that do not pull the wheels off of the economy. We don’t have to destroy the economy in order to slow the progress of the virus.
I say every part of the economy depends on every other part. As a result, excessive “staging” will retard the resurgence of the economy.
I say that “staging” is more judgment calls by the unqualified that will still outlaw people’s jobs.
I say that every day that the pluted bloatocrats governmental officials dither and sit on their thumbs and spin, more than half a million more people lose their jobs. Unconscionable.
I say that another layer of specialists and meetings and committees is simply putting or keeping people out of work.
And as a result of all of that, I say what I’ve said from the start …
End the American lockdown now. Not next month. Not next week. Now. Not in “stages”. Not in “phases”. Now.
Lots of talk about May 1. Gotta love the symbolism. May Day. I hope we’re back to work well before that.
But if not, let me suggest a peaceful workers revolt, the one where on May 1st we all just go forward to work. Not back to work. Forward to work. Everyone goes to their usual place of work on May 1st. No fanfare. Wear masks. Social distance. Wear gloves. Testing where appropriate. Whatever you need. And go forward to work.
Will that lead to flareups of coronavirus? I suspect so. However, future flareups will happen whether we go to work all at once or bit by bit. That virus will not go gentle into that good night no matter what we do …
Protip for those in charge. Historically, and for good reasons, in epidemics governments have used extraordinary powers to quarantine the sick. This was done to slow the spread of the disease, just as we’re attempting to do today.
Currently, however, it’s the healthy who are getting quarantined …
And to return to today’s point—quarantining the sick doesn’t destroy the economy and drive 25 million people out of work. Here are some of the measures cities used during the Spanish Flu:
Lots of things we can do to flatten the curve without flattening the economy in the process.
Finally, a plea for some perspective on this pandemic. As pandemics go, it’s not a rock star. Here’s a comparison.
I’ve lived through two pandemics with far higher death counts, and today they are hardly even remembered …
My best to you all, stay healthy, stay well, smell the flowers …
w.
The Small Print: When you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings.
This lockdown is infuriating. We cannot continue to believe that everyone not in hospital with the virus or dead from the virus is carrying the virus. That is not living. It’s barely even existing. Enough with the buggy computer simulations and the cowardly politicians. Protect the vulnerable, quarantine and assist the sick. Let the rest of us get back to living.
I agree with you Willis – I made the same call independently in mid-March, and it is proving correct here in Alberta and most locations elsewhere.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/but-is-the-growth-of-the-pandemic-really-exponential/#comment-2964734
[excerpt]
“I believe this UK Covid-19 estimated mortality range “between 0.5% and 1%” (deaths/infections) is ~correct for a typical country’s population distribution , and my hunch is “closer to 0.5%” – that is not very scary except if you are in the “high risk” group – over 65 years of age or otherwise high-risk (with other medical problems) – Covid-19 deaths are heavily concentrated in the high-risk group.”
One large hospital in Calgary has only 2 Covid-19 patients – the hospital is almost empty, cleared out awaiting the “tsunami” of patients who never arrived.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/13/coronavirus-the-chinese-virus-lockdowns-that-have-done-their-job/#comment-2965819
Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lock-down has resulted a debacle.
Most of our deaths are in nursing homes – our policy seems to be “Lockdown the low-risk majority but fail to adequately protect the most vulnerable.”
The global data for Covid-19 suggests that deaths/infections will total 0.5% or less – not that scary – but much higher and clearly dangerous for the high-risk group – those over-65 or with serious existing health problems.
“Elective” surgeries were cancelled about mid-March, in order to make space available for the “tsunami” of Covid-19 cases that never happened. Operating rooms are empty and medical facilities and medical teams are severely underutilized. The backlog of surgeries will only be cleared with extraordinary effort by medical teams, and the cooperation of patients who die awaiting surgery – patients who were too impatient…
This may look like 20:20 hindsight, but I called it this way in ~mid-March.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/but-is-the-growth-of-the-pandemic-really-exponential/#comment-2964810
[excerpt]
BAD CALL – END THE LOCKDOWNS ASAP.
…
I still think my ~mid-March assessment of this situation was the correct one:
“Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.
If tests prove positive, use chloroquine and remdesivir or other cheap available drugs ASAP as appropriate.”
With rare exceptions, we have not seen the “tsunami of cases overwhelm our medical systems”, and we have trashed our economies and severely harmed hundreds of millions worldwide who live from paycheck to paycheck. Considering the pro’s and con’s, the full lockdown was a bad call.
Regards, Allan
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/21/end-the-american-lockdown/comment-page-1/#comment-12253
[excerpt- posted 21Mar2020]
This full-lockdown scenario is especially hurting service sector businesses and their minimum-wage employees – young people are telling me they are “financially under the bus”. The young are being destroyed to protect us over-65’s. A far better solution is to get them back to work and let us oldies keep our distance, and get “herd immunity” established ASAP – in months not years. Then we will all be safe again.
I still think my ~mid-March assessment of this situation was the correct one:
“Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.
Allan, I agreed with you in March and agree yet today. What can be done, at least in Alberta? Do we have to march on the Legislature building to get attention? Latest stats show 3 people died under 60 and ALL had underlying causes. This is out of 4.3 million. This is shear madness.
do you know of proof that vaccines are going to work or that you cannot be re-infected having recovered. No literature as of18th April suggests that re-infection is not possible.
Would you care to share your info please
The record for development of a vaccine to public distribution of hundreds of thousands of doses…..is four years….
There is increasing evidence that this Covid-19 illness is not that different from other virus flu’s and milder than many – it barely touches the young and healthy – many are asymptomatic – and it is high-risk to the elderly and unwell.
Therefore, it makes little sense to lock-down and over-protect the low-risk population and under-protect the high-risk, which is what has been done – a huge percentage of deaths are in old-age homes.
.AND.
The economy has been trashed in this incompetent process, and many young people ‘s lives have been damaged/destroyed by throwing them overnight into unemployment and poverty.
Attaboys all around for this gross over-reaction/under-reaction to this almost-average flu.
Told you so one month ago.
Sorry, but 0.5% to 1.0% mortality rates for an entire country is equivalent to fighting a shooting war.
It is a huge catastrophe.
I agree that the lockdowns are not the best way to combat nCOV, but trying to dismiss the danger of nCOV is ridiculous.
In reply to:
“sorry, but 0.5% to 1.0% mortality rates for an entire country”…. is bad and not acceptable to those who would die.
This financial crisis caused by covid -19 isolation is a serious a major world war. We are just too ignorant, to understand how serious and permanent the damage is. Covid isolation is causing small and large business bankruptcy. Bankrupt companies do not restart.
A large section of our economy, sports, live music, theatre, restaurants, bars, and so on is dying.
We need an microbiological option that reduces the death rate by factors of 10 and 100 which would allow most of us to face covid-19 and get immunity.
Through the use of Zinc supplements and Vitamin D supplements (see my comment above for links and details)….
… and for those most at risk add a Zinc Ionophore.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973827/
Zn 2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture
Chloroquine Is a Zinc Ionophore
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/pdf/pone.0109180.pdf
c1ue April 19, 2020 at 9:05 am
Umm … perhaps, but we’re a full order of magnitude less deaths than that. Here are some past “huge catastrophes” to compare it with. I’ve added this graphic to the head post as well.
w.
Willis, for your info – and to all the fearful who’ve lapped up the lamestream propaganda:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0
Study in Germany found actual infection rate is close to 15% of population. And then the Santa Clara study found up to 80x more people actually infected (with basically no symptoms) than the official numbers.
This puts it at or below the normal flu death rate of 0.1%.
This lock down nonsense is like your getting a sliver in your thumb, and instead of using a surgical forceps to remove it, you use a 5 pound sledge hammer to smash the whole hand – rending it useless forever…. overkill will do more damage in this kind of scenario.
Remember people, lock downs will NOT prevent ANY deaths. All it was designed to do is prevent too many really sick people from overwhelming the health care system. It was to flatten the curve over a longer period of time – the area under that curve remains the same! (for the math challenged that means the total deaths are the same under both curves)
There are only 3 things which will stop the virus:
1) enough people in the general population get it, and get over it and achieve [herd] immunity.
2) a vaccine is developed and deployed
3) it stops propagating because it mutates to something less lethal.
Item 1 above is the fastest and only certain way to stop the madness. Item 2 takes too long, and may not even work – remember people the common cold consists of several “coronavirus” cousins – and we cannot provide a vaccine for the common cold. Item 3 – is a wish and prayer and not worth considering.
The health care system has not been overwhelmed – so the only logical and practical next step is to open up the economy, isolate and protect the really vulnerable, so that herd immunity can run it’s course.
We are actually not that far from herd immunity, if in fact as much as 15% of the general population has antibodies (immunity) already!
Furthermore, people are being severely misled. A Virus is NOT ALIVE! It is a teensy bit of genetic code. This one on the order of 200 nm (yes as small as a wavelength of UV light). It cannot remain intact long outside of a living body. It uses the living host to replicate and then send out these “seeds” of bad genetic code, hitching rides on fluid droplets excreted by living humans, breathing, coughing and sneezing. (masks are primarily to prevent you from spreading the virus to others, not really to protect you from getting it)
The ignorant masses have been led to believe this thing is alive and airborne – wearing masks when jogging alone or bicycling alone is a reflection of this mass delusion.
Ironically as mentioned it is fragile out of a host body. UV light destroys it very quickly. So the notion of encouraging people outdoors, alone or even it small groups to wear masks – is the antithesis of destroying the virus! Any virus expelled in your spittle or droplets emanating from your nose and mouth, will rapidly be destroyed when outdoors – but a mask will let it avoid UV destruction….
Watch this insightful video with two experts which high levels of credentials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pW-4VVNbyo
Specifically at 20:00 to 21:00, the credentialed expert indicates that chance of dying from the WuFlu is about the same as driving 9 to 450 miles per day in a car.
Duhhh, if the risk is about the same as driving in a car for a few hours a day – then cratering the economy is nonsense. (unless of course you secretly want to destroy civilization so you can create your socialist utopia with iron fisted gov control of everything)
In fact one or the other of the experts Levin had on his show last night, indicates in no uncertain terms that the lock downs are in fact slowing and hampering “herd” immunity which as discussed above is the only rapidly feasible way to knock down the so called pandemic.
This info, when combined with Willis’ aligned graphs of Sweden vs the US – the former not locked down and the latter locked down – with the same curve – shows by evidence – lock down is no different in outcome than not locking down. I would add, except that Sweden will achieve herd immunity faster than US if we remain locked down.
The stated mortality rate is not for the entire population. Instead it’s the mortality rate among the infected. You imply if we end the lock down, the entire population will be at risk and the deaths will skyrocket. Exact figures are unknown, but among known cases of Covid-19, the percentage with no or mild symptoms are reported to be in the 90% range.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/20/un-climate-change-fund-calls-coronavirus-an-opportunity-to-re-shape-the-world/#comment-2973043
Pre-coffee calculations are always suspect, but:
I say that in Iceland THE DEATH RATE [Total Deaths/Estimated Total Infections] IS LESS THAN 0.1%, SIMILAR TO OTHER SEASONAL FLUS.
AM I WRONG IN MY CALCULATIONS, OR IS COVID-19 JUST ANOTHER SEASONAL FLU?
Covid-19 appears relatively mild, often showing no symptoms among younger people, but is dangerous to the elderly and the infirm.
As I wrote in March:
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/21/end-the-american-lockdown/comment-page-1/#comment-12253
[excerpt- posted 21Mar2020]
“This full-lockdown scenario is especially hurting service sector businesses and their minimum-wage employees – young people are telling me they are “financially under the bus”. The young are being destroyed to protect us over-65’s. A far better solution is to get them back to work and let us oldies keep our distance, and get “herd immunity” established ASAP – in months not years. Then we will all be safe again.”
Have we wasted many trillions, harmed billions of young people and trashed our economies for nothing? Seems so. We should end this unnecessary lockdown now!
Next time, listen to your Uncle Allan, who tries his best to take good care of all of you. 🙂
– Allan MacRae
___________________________________
WHAT’S THE STATUS OF COVID-19 IN ICELAND? Last updated April 21, 2020
https://www.icelandreview.com/ask-ir/whats-the-status-of-covid-19-in-iceland/
Iceland has the best Covid-19 data, having ~randomly tested >43,000 cases, ~13% of their country’s population.
Active cases peaked on 5April2020. On 4May2020 the Icelandic government will begin relaxing COVID-19 restrictions in Iceland in general. Icelandic preschools and elementary schools will return to regular operation; salons, massage parlours, and museums will reopen; and gatherings of up to 50 people will be allowed. Swimming pools, gyms, bars, and slot machines will remain closed for the time being.
Iceland Total Tests to 21Apr2020 ~43,143
Confirmed infections 1773
Population of Iceland 341,250
Total Tests/Population 12.6%
Infections/Tests = 4.1%
Extrapolating to Iceland’s population = (341,250/43,143) * 1773 = 14,023 estimated total infections in Iceland
Ten deaths have been recorded to date.
10 deaths/1773 confirmed infections = 0.56%
10 deaths/14023 estimated total infections in Iceland = 0.07% = LESS THAN 0.1% MORTALITY RATE IN THE GENERAL POPULATION
10 deaths/341,250 population = 2.9*10^5 = 0.003%
Just received this. More confirmation of “Covid-19 is ~just another seasonal flu.”
Iceland data is better than California data:
Covid Mortality Rate (Total Deaths/Total Infections) is ~0.1% of general population.
https://qz.com/1841445/covid-19-may-be-undercounted-50-fold-in-la-antibody-surveys-show/
[excerpt]
In a press conference, Barbara Ferrer, director of the LA County Department of Public Health, said that based on the survey’s prevalence estimate, the county’s [Covid-19} mortality rate is between 0.1 and 0.2%, rather than above 4% as reflected by the official caseload. The Santa Clara survey also estimated a mortality rate between 0.1 and 0.2%.
Important John Solomon interview on the numbers of the flu & pneumonia deaths and herd immunity.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/john-solomon-reports/e/68822854
In consistency with your reasoning ,you should be the first to volunteer to die from coronavirus to help support the profits of the billionaires. But of course you’ll be safely isolated at home on your computer, urging the worthless masses to die for MORE PROFITS. But of course this remark will be censored by your freedom-loving website.
Eric Lerner… listen and learn…
I think we learned in the AGW debate that the “Lerners” of the world will never learn.
The position they adopt was never based on logic; ergo , it cannot be corrected with logic.
Something about wrestling with the pig wasn’t it?
No offence to pigs , of course 🙂
Some animals are more “equal” than others, remember? 😉
The billionaires aren’t the ones getting hurt, it’s everyone else. They won’t have less coming out of this they will buy up tons of their competition and watch an every larger amount simply go out of business. They are one of only two groups that won’t get hurt the other being anyone that works for the government.
“The billionaires aren’t the ones getting hurt”
Right on, Bob, …. they are getting the “cream” off the top of the “stimulus money”, ….. to wit:
Stimulus intended to help coronavirus-ravaged small businesses instead rewarding hedge funds, brokerages
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/stimulus-intended-to-help-coronavirus-ravaged-small-businesses-instead-rewarding-hedge-funds-brokerages
Yep. Black rock has been given unlimited funds by the Fed to buy up bonds they think necessary. What do Black rock manage? Bond funds. Who subscribes to Black rocks funds? The wealthy. So the Fed is giving money to Black rock to ensure rich investors don’t loose money on bad investments.
There are also a lot of pensions, 401Ks, IRAs, etc. that are invested in these funds. If they go under, millions of middle and lower class workers will lose all their retirement money that they have worked for decades to build. Don’t be so myopic.
Eric Lerner April 18, 2020 at 6:18 pm
Eric, the government takes away the jobs of a woman and her husband, closes their kids’ school, and mandates that the whole family can’t leave the house.
I’m arguing to restart the economy, but not for the billionaires or their profits. That’s crazy talk. I said nothing of the sort.
I want to restart the economy for that couple lying awake at night wondering how they’ll pay their bills, and for the single mom who was just making ends meet on her waitress salary until the government shut the restaurant down, and for the other 25 million unemployed who it appears you don’t care about in the slightest … we can flatten the curve without flattening the economy.
w.
Hear, hear!
Be careful with this response. The Federal Government is paying every unemployed worker $600 a week in addition to the state unemployment compensation, around $400 per week. Thus, you are better off unemployed if you were making less than $1,000 per week prior to the COVID crisis. Now I do not know how to value the dignity of work. We will find out when the supplemental benefits expire. I fully expect demands for continuation.
Yes, the $600 per week of additional unemployment is one of the leading causes of the surge. In Florida, the form for filing unemployment asks if your unemployment or reduction in hours is due to COVID-19. If you answer “Yes”, you need no other explanation and you are exempt from having to look for new employment. The maximum dollar amount for weekly unemployment in Florida is $275. When you add in the $600 federal subsidy, you end up with $875 per week. There are many who did not make that much in their pre-lockdown pay. So what is the incentive to are continue to work for less $$ than those who are not working?
I am a perfect example. I have a nice retirement job to supplement my SS. I have been working an average of 28 hours per week at a modest $13 per hour in an essential business. After taxes my take home averaged about $330/week. I currently qualify for $183/week in unemployment benefits so when you add in the additional $600/week that brings me $783/week. Well, why should I continue to work? I can justify my layoff as someone who is over 65 and has an underlying medical condition so that puts me in a high risk category and thus I should be staying home, no other quesitons asked.
That is insane! My wife was a Social Worker and was recently laid off due to the expiration of her companies contract with the state. This happened just before the Covid19 thing started to become an issue. She has her Bachelors Degree and worked hard hours everyday dealing with families and their little children with some serious health defects helping to provide council and resources to help improve the lives of their children. As a Social Worker, she was actually paid well making around 50k per year. That works our to roughly 960.00 per week.
When she was laid off, she chose not to apply for unemployment benefits since the weekly amount was going to be around 200.00 to 240.00 per week. So instead of keeping our little children in daycare and having to try and find a new job right away, she chose to stay home and be with our kids.
However, looking at things today, if indeed they are giving you an extra 600.00 per week and from what I hear they want to make it 1000.00 per week, why would anyone ever want to go back to work! For a person like my wife who would get around 200.00 to 240.00 per week on unemployment here in AZ with an additional 600.00 to possibly 1000.00 per week on top of that from the government for up to two years is ridiculous! That can equal 1240.00 per week and even more in some states! I’m an engineer and do well so my wife doesn’t need to work but shoot, at this point, I may ask her to apply for benefits if its that much. After all, its tax money…Might as well hold out our hands and eat at the trough we all paid into.
This lockdown will lead all these young people, single moms with kids or those who don’t have many marketable skills along with anyone who was on the fence about socialism to grow very fond of it. Being paid to not work is very appealing to someone in their 20’s who owns a large flat screen and a game console.
Willis… Eric Lerner misunderstands the key thing. He thinks the lockdown is needed to preent us all from getting sick so you must be crazy.
The lockdown is NOT to prevent anyone from becoming infected. It won’t do that. It is to prevent the hospital facilities from being owvewhelmed. That’s all. The plan is still for everyone to get sick and hopefully become immune…eventually… just at a slower rate than results from not locking down.
The ‘unless’ to that statement is ‘unless’ there is a working treatement or vaccine cobbled together,tested, manufactured, distributed and supplied to almost everyone real soon.
That was the original plan but it changed around 17 March with the doomsday Imperial College report predicting millions of deaths. The plan now is indefinite lockdown until we have a vaccine. Yes it’s that crazy. They have hugely overestimated how deadly this virus is and lost all sense of proportion.
The shutdown of dental offices except for emergencies was due to the inability to replace all the masks used by the dentist, the assistants and the hygienists. It had nothing to do with the virus itself.
Tom in Florida, that’s not correct. Working in someone’s open mouth, close enough to be regularly breathed upon by a carrier was a major concern. So was a sitting room full of potential carriers. The virus inhabits both the throat and the lungs. No mask, N95 or otherwise, was going to ensure that either the dentist or the hygienist could work safely in someone’s mouth, let alone from six feet away, according to dentists I know.
BobM,
My wife runs a dental office. They and other dentists in Florida were ordered to see emergencies only because of the number of masks used each day. Her office sees around 30 patients per day, most for hygiene and others for actual dental work. Multiply that by the thousands of dentist in the state and you can see the problem with mask resupply. The issue was that those masks were needed elsewhere for actual COVID cases. Prior to that her office had already started a policy of screening patients and rescheduling anyone with any kind of illness symptom whether it met the COVID threshold or not.
Many, many people affected are NOT billionaires but own small businesses that employ workers.
A lot of people don’t get the fact that without businesses, and especially small businesses, there are no jobs except government ones.
Government jobs can’t exist without taxes from businesses and their employees, either.
Exactly. The left is simply not rational. Many flu deaths can be saved by having the whole country locked down forever but that is not done.
Previously…now the precedent has been set. If it saves one life…safety first…
The carbon! Think of the reduction in CO2!!! Frankly, if the atmospheric PPM doesn’t budge in the midst of this worldwide brake-slam, CAGW as a theory is TOAST.
I think most people know that they just also prioritize other issues you dismiss. I agree small businesses are very important and they employ the most numbers of people but I still disagree with the argument. You just don’t want to try to understand why that is or care what we think.
The ’90’s called – they want your “Government jobs can’t exist without taxes from businesses and their employees” line back.
The Fed Gov’t has been running on borrowed/printed money for a long time. For a long while, other people and entities bought up that debt. Now the Fed Reserve buys most of it. “Buying your own debt” is just a convoluted way to print it – mostly so they don’t have to say they printed it.
Soon, the Fed Gov’t will fund the state gov’ts, so one more massive section of government will become completely untethered from the private sector. At least until the whole thing crashes.
@Matthew Schilling — Do you expect that can go on like this forever? Inflation will kick in. Very few of us have defined benefit retirement plans. Inflation robs people of their savings and investments.
To believe that deficits and printing money doesn’t have consequences is irrational.
.
Mr Lerner makes it sound like only billionares profit from the entire economy. If you remove the greater NY city area from the countries numbers the virus is barely making a dent in the nations health. It mostly effects those already knocking on heavens door. Yes, there are sad, tragic cases and no one wants anyone to ever suffer be sick or die, but alas all of those are part and parcel of the human condition. Being realistic is not being hard hearted. Grow up. The evidence is piling up the over reaction is insane. The madness and the power mad have the reins and it is past time to take it back.
“you should be the first to volunteer to die from coronavirus to help support the profits of the billionaires.”
man if you/we/us do not produce — especially food, water( treatment, and delivery ), electricity and medication, we all die.
who do you think produce that –Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy?
Do not leave out all the residential appliance sales and repairs. We have been running 8-10 service calls a day for non working refrigerators, stoves and washing machines. We continue to sell, deliver and install new refrigerators that need replacement. We are a small, family owned business with 10 employees.
There are many other small, family owned businesses that service and repair everything we all need in our lives. Most have less than 25 employees but they make the world go round in local communities.
Its interesting that this is happening in Florida as the same thing is happening here in Nova Scotia. My retirement hobby job is at a discount appliance store where sales have skyrocketed. When the social distancing rules started we stopped home service except for non working refrigerators. Within the week the sales of stoves, washers, and dryers took off, also sales of parts with over the phone troubleshooting advice. We have also started getting over the phone purchases sight unseen with delivery to the front yard.
The trouble with Socialism, is sooner or later you run out of other peoples’ money. Sooner, in this case . . .
That saying is so 20th Century. Now they just print it. They are going to ride the pervasive faith in the US Dollar all the way to the bitter end. I’m not sure what will happen then. I do know the mighty Inca Empire simply disappeared, having been swallowed by the forest
In the Weimar republic, people were wheeling barrows full of cash through the streets to buy a loaf of bread. If a dray horse fell down in the street, they cut it up for food.
Any further questions about that printing-money thang?
Eric is obviously one of those not affected by the lock-down.
He thinks himself as an essential service, immune from the rest of society.
A public servant lech, unsackable even for gross idiocy and incompetence.
I’m high risk – mid-70s with a damaged lung and still recovering from recent surgery. So I think my opinion counts when someone like Willis suggests a course of action which has the potential to make life a lot riskier for high-risk people (OK, he’s in the USA and I’m in Australia, but the same equations apply). So how severely would I condemn Willis’s recommendation? I’ll tell you in 3 words: He is right.
We are in the process of destroying the prosperity of a whole generation of young people. The governments will not be able to put the Humpty Dumpty economies they are gleefully breaking back together again. They will implement all sorts of heroic bureaucratic schemes (evidence the U.S. 2-plus trillion dollar ‘tip-of-the-iceberg’ we are now pissing away) that will lead to bigger governments, more regulations, smaller economies and fewer small businesses: The socialist utopia where we are ruled by big government and big business elites.
Molon Labe.
What we’re seeing is a dry-run for the Green New Deal and Agenda 21. And they didn’t even have to “come and take it,” We the Sheeple handed it all over from fear of the boogeyman. The WWII vets are spinning in their graves.
Mr Lerner I have already volunteered to die, my living will states no extraordinary measures are to be taken to keep me alive. You and people have already violated my living will. Insisting and shutting down the economy is and extraordinary measure and are directly against my wishes. Now on a person level and you want to climb under a rock go ahead, but please do not insist the rest of us do that. We are big we won’t interfere with you and other decisions about what is right for them but don’t force us to be snowflakes. There is an old saying that need to brought back, that is live free or die, it about time you snowflakes learn that yes there are always winners and losers and when a game is played the score is always keep by someone and a participation ribbon teaches you nothing of value.
its “Now on a personal level:, not “No on a person level”
Fixed. I hate typos.
w.
Mr. Lerner,
The lockdown is ENRICHING BILLIONAIRE Jeff Bezos!! Amazon stock ROSE 33% between mid March & the present. It ROSE to a RECORD HIGH, while most other stocks tanked, bankruptcy threatens family owned restaurants (including Chinese, Mexican … restaurants) & other businesses, 22+ million people of modest means have lost earned income …
Other billionaires benefiting include Sam Walton’s heirs. Walmart stock ROSE to a record high AFTER the lockdown. It is up 15+% since mid March.
Bad economies usually favor the bigger companies.
But where would we be without Walmart and Amazon right now? Too many local businesses shutdown because of the lock down. Where are you going to shop when the stores are all closed? Walmart and Amazon, to name 2 places.
Why do you think everyone who goes to work is going to die? Why do you think that waiting will protect those people? Do you think we can wait 4 years with no economy for a vaccine? Social distancing and lockdowns only flatten the curve, they do not save lives. You panicked fools make me sick.
Eric,
You are an ignorant fool. Being exposed to this virus is NOT a death sentence for healthy people under 60. Even if you get infected you have greater than a 99% chance of surviving it. People willingly face worse odd than that all the time. Get a grip and stop spreading fear.
Eric, you don’t have to buy from the billionaires. Let the people who work from them all lose their jobs to punish the owners.
Profits pay for everything. No profits means very little taxes. No taxes means no government income. That forces massive deficits and diluting the value of the dollar because that means more money has to be printed.
Have you ever considered maybe people don’t want to live in a world of massive unemployment and hyperinflation? Life is full of risks and millions are willing to take a reasonable risk by going back to work.
Amen
But Willis if it saves one life it’s worth it.
Of course.
w.
22 million unemployed. 13% of labor force by April 11th.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-unemployed-workers-millions-more-may-be-impacted
Sweden with no lockdown is expected to hit 10% unemployment.
Sweden here.
In the local town, sized 10,000 people, I noticed that most of the factories keep manufacturing as long as they have supplies. In one factory, assembling cooling systems for large industrial machinery and wind turbines, has filled their huge courtyard with the finished products.
The company’s problem is that their customers, mostly abroad, are not collecting the goods, due to the lock-down outside Sweden.
I strongly believe Sweden would have far less unemployment increase, if US and EU had just implemented the soft sensible precautionary measures that Sweden has adopted.
Premier Doug Ford in Ontario agrees. This is his latest public statement. The anger level is rising.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6837420/coronavirus-doug-ford-lives-at-risk-vaccine/
Coronavirus: Returning to normal without a vaccine puts ‘lives at risk,’ Doug Ford says
For millions of unemployed, the lock down puts their lives at risk. Domestic violence and suicides are up. No word yet on divorces. Many courthouses are shutdown so a decrease in civil legal proceeding are expected.
But please understand, the lock down only delays deaths, not saves them. The lock down was to flatten the curve and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. It’s impossible to continue the lock down until the threat is gone. The lock down is also preventing the US from getting herd immunity because the young and healthy aren’t getting exposed to the virus.
Ok, so perhaps you can explain which life is worth $2T ? Remember, this person is going to die anyway, we are just arguing about when.
I’m sure the sentiment comes from a good heart, but it is fundamentally wrong.
Across time and across society, lives do not have the same value and so saving one life is not the same as any given other life at any given time.
Think of it this way: two people are waiting for a liver transplant and a liver suitable for both potential recipients becomes available. One is a 60 year old male with obesitas and the other a 28 year old male with a MSc in Engineering. Who gets the liver?
In a number of diverse European countries- think the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany or France – the healthcare system already operates on the basis of “qualy”, basically an index of factors taken into account to put a relative value on any given life on a time scale.
That may be objectionable to some, but those are hardly uncultured, barbarian countries, that please note, do not have Sanders-like socialized public health systems – all are mixed public/privately financed systems- that have come to accept that finite healthcare resources cannot be applied equally across a rapidly ageing and longer lived population.
A bit Vulcan perhaps, but quite realistic.
No! if 10 die for one saved. Terrorists base their actions in the hope people will give in to just a few deaths. Just open the doors to dictators like Stal*n and Ma*; they will only kill tens of millions if you let them. Some organisations want to ruin economies and reduce population so they can benefit. A response should benefit the most people all the time.
Only if it’s my life. You just voted for ending the shutdown, I didn’t. (sarc)
This is how to deal with the problem Don’t fire anybody.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/denmark-has-a-message-for-america-do-more-fast/608629/
It achieved nothing for Sweden check out it’s economic data, it might as well have shutdown. I still think economically that tactic might work for some countries but clearly Sweden was not one of them. About all Sweden got to do was have a few more liberties but it’s death rate is ugly and the hit to the economy is massive with the unemployment rate at 8.2% by Feb and expected to hit over 10%.
” expected to hit over 10%.”
There would be one or two countries that would consider less than 15% , in the current circumstances, to be reasonably good result.
But it is very early days for those sorts of numbers.
[bad email-mod]
Let’s wait to judge Sweden’s response. While Sweden’s death curve may have a higher peak than many, in the end their death rate will probably be not much different than average, with their curve dropping below average for a long period. And even as it is, it seems Sweden’s health care system has not been over taxed.
Look closely at the demographics of the Swedish population.
Look closely at the number of large cities with air pollution.
Look closely at the number of people on welfare.
Hi Dr S,
Nice to see you are still reading WUWT.
And where do you think the money comes from to pay them? Just print it out of thin air? Do you know what the total payroll impacted by just the layoffs to date is? And for how how long should we keep paying them with this printed money? Of course, there will be no economic consequences from just printing money to pay people. If there weren’t that is what we would do now, nobody would have to work, we would just give them money.
I have argued that if the GDP drops then there Js to be a proportional drop in size of government. This is simply because tax revenue has declined which pays for the government. Once government bureaucrats are subjected to the same rules that they shove onto others they will change their tune very fast.
The chance of that happening is about the same as me having a hot, young girlfriend. Zero!
Willis,
I still want to know what value you put on a human life? The EPA for example uses a figure of 10
million dollars when doing cost/benefit analyses. Without a lockdown somewhere between 100 000
and a couple of million more people will die something even you admit. So where is your cost-benefit
analysis comparing the cost of additional people dying to the cost of a couple of months of high
unemployment. And as a comparison during the Spanish flu epidemic the cities that had the strictest
lockdowns were the ones that recovered the quickest.
Izaak Walton April 18, 2020 at 6:32 pm
I don’t recall “admitting” anything even remotely like that. Link?
And since in e.g. California no lives were saved by the lockdown, I’m not sure why I need a value. Two million are out of work in order to delay the deaths, not prevent but delay the deaths of a thousand people.
I say that’s a bad deal. YMMV.
w.
To be fair, some deaths may have been able to be prevented if deaths were delayed enough. We don’t know how many, however, and we could prevent most by investing in healthcare for now and the future instead of a lockdown.
Willis,
the claim that no lives were save by the lockdown in California is just nonsense. Do you really
think that if everyone had gone about their normal buisness for the last month the death toll
would still be only 1000? Or would San Fransisco be more like New York? And last but not
least it is worth noting that traffic fatalities are down by 50% since the lockdown saving
several billion dollars.
Hey, brilliant plan, Izaak! We’ll just keep the lockdown in place, and live off of the profits from having fewer auto repair and hospital bills because there are less car crashes …
w.
If reducing deaths is the goal lockdown forever as that will drastically cut both flu deaths, and car deaths, and deaths from accidents on the job.
Ah, yes. No death from contagious diseases, no accidental deaths (outside of clumsiness in your own home) – Utopia!
Of course, the deaths from famine will far exceed the “Great Persian Famine” of 1917-18. Eight to ten million out of a population of nineteen million. All of the famines engineered by previous despots will be reduced to brief footnotes.
All kudos to our farmers – my family is from that stock in Kansas – but for every one of them that is standing in his field, there are more than twenty others making his work possible. From agronomists in their laboratories, to the seed producers, the drivers that bring the seed grain in and the harvested grain out, the makers of parts for their machinery (and all of that chain, from miners in the earth to mills and foundries), the oil men who produce the fuel for that machinery, and the feed stock to chemical plants for fertilizer and pesticides for the fields, the grain millers, the bakers, the livestock feed haulers, the grocery store truckers, the grocery store stockers… (I’ve maybe listed ten percent of all of the laborers that put food on the table. But the idiots will still believe in the magic.)
Using that logic as everyone is going to die eventually, California will be in lockdown forever so they live forever … you either prevent a death or not 🙂
Living — Known to cause cancer in California!
Yep you are delaying death from the moment you are born.
Izaak,
I think that is an unfair question. The choice is not “the cost of additional people dying to the cost of a couple of months of high unemployment.”
The reason I say that is because:
1) it is not possible to just turn off the lock-down after a couple of months and expect the economy to pick up again where it left off. Many of the jobs will have disappeared for good because companies will have gone bust.
2) there will be increased suicides, mental illness, people simply dying of cold and hunger (especially the homeless because charitable donations are falling, I believe), and there will be increases in domestic violence with couples and kids stuck in the same house.
I’m not going to put you on the spot and ask you what value you place on these “damaged” lives. It is too hard. Similarly, I will not ask you what value you place on a fit 20 year old and a poor-health 80 year old. The former has most of his/her productive life remaining, and the latter has no productive life remaining and just a few years of calendar life remaining.
My view is:
a) most of the people dying are Old People with pre-existing medical conditions; the sort who will die in a year or two, and it is unethical to penalise our working population just to keep them alive a bit longer.
b) trying to put numerical figures on the value of lives of different people, in different circumstances, is too hard to be useful; and will give figures with which there will be no agreement.
c) it will take a generation for the world to recover and for GDP to get back to what it was before, if we carry on with the shutdown for another couple of months.
d) the pain is being felt by the private sector, and felt most by the kids in the “gig-economy”; the pizza delivery guys and uber-drivers. The people who live pay-check to pay-check, or customer to customer are the ones hurting most. The public service have job security and they are less concerned (as Steve said, above)
So I conclude that the most HUMANE course of action is to finish the lock-down RIGHT NOW, and let the nation’s workers get back to work.
One more thought, sir. The lock-downs can continue only be public consent. I reckon by the end of May (ie in six weeks) that consent will have evaporated. People will have started going out more-and-more and doing whatever work they can and by the end of May the lock-downs will no longer be effective.
Why not read the writing on the wall and stop this misguided policy now?
re: “Why not read the writing on the wall and stop this misguided policy now?”
The ‘wordy’ (those who use excessive verbiage to express an idea or concept) and those in search of “being needed” aren’t nearly finished writing either their ‘tomes’ (1st group) or getting enough attention (the latter group, although there is overlapping of the two) …
Oldcynic,
You might say that it is too hard to be useful but that is what insurance companies
and governments do all the time. It is hard and there is not much consensus but it drives
a lot of policy decisions from whether or not to ban smoking in public places, whether
lead in petrol is allowed, speed limits, whether or not medicines are covered by insurance etc.
You say that you conclude that the most humane course of action is to end the lockdown. My
question would be on what basis? What are your calculations about the additional loss of life,
the suffering involved from those extra deaths, and how do you weigh those suffering against
those who are out of work, stuck at home with an abuser etc? There are real costs involved on
both sides and I don’t want to minimise them but to claim that a particular course of action is
the best then you need to present your calculations about all those costs.
Izaak:
This is a financial calculation based upon a specific class of actuarial business logic, not a moral one.
This is a moral question, not a question of actuarial business logic we’d find in insurance calculations.
Surely you’ll agree this is a textbook example of the False Equivalence fallacy?
syscomputing,
Rather than being a “false equivalence” it is the very real issue facing politicans
around the world right now. Different society will come to different answers but
everyone has to make that decision right now. And what politicans need to do is
to make such calculations transparently and openly.
The other question that is worth asking is what sort of society do you want to live in?
One that places GDP above everything else including the lives of the most vulnerable
or one that prefers kindness and is willing to make collective sacrifices to save lives?
Izaak:
It’s not Either/Or. It is Both/And.
A society should be able to maintain a health GDP while simultaneously making necessary sacrifices to save lives. After a thorough “post mortem” analysis of this viral scare and all of its unintended consequences, I hope our nation establishes future protocols that refrain from using a sledgehammer to kill a flea.
syscomputing,
economic decisions versus moral ones happen all the time in government. The EPA
for example has recently changed its rules concerning the amount of mercury power
stations are allowed to emit. The upside to this is purely economic — power stations
are more efficient and so people get cheaper power bills (or more likely shareholders
get more in dividents) while the downside is that more people will become sick and die.
Governments have to be able to compare the two in a consistent manner. If you want to
claim that the two are imcomparable then how would you decide how to set levels of poisons that companies are allowed to emit?
Insurance companies do the all the time when setting premiums and deciding what
to cover. When you insurance company says that a particular drug or treatment is not
covered they have put a price on a life and decided that it isn’t worth it. They have to
do this else premiums would be too high and nobody would be able to afford them resulting in more deaths. If you get life insurance to cover your mortage for your family
you are relying on them to put a value on your life and do so fairly and reasonably.
A thorough assessment of the mistakes made in this enforced lockdown is already occurring. Voters will not forget this financial fiasco that has led to non-confidence in governments.
Izaak:
Seems like you’re making my argument for me by confusing moral decisions with pragmatic ones. Governments aren’t making moral decisions when they decide how much poison to allow companies to emit. Or in the case of philosophically Progressive governments, e.g., China, N. Korea, Russia, etc., how much poison they allow themselves to emit.
With regard to the citizenry, if the death of a few is acceptable in order to further the needs of the many, I’m sure the average politician would argue that’s a pragmatic decision, not a moral one. Otherwise, it seems to me that under your assumptions any agency of government making decisions on poisons (e.g., EPA) is inherently immoral and should be disbanded. But I have a feeling that you’d advocate for MORE government in the lives of the citizen, not less, true?
Once again, no, not really. What they’ve decided is that from a business standpoint it isn’t practical (i.e., pragmatic) to cover that particular treatment because to do so for the needs of a few customers would endanger the needs of the majority (and therefore, their business, the reason they exist). You said it yourself:
Are you saying that because you use an insurance company with your healthcare needs that you are inherently immoral? I mean, under your assumptions you ARE if you do, since you participate in the profit/loss margin for that particular company, no?
If you’re going to re-categorize business decisions for insurance companies as moral/immoral, then to be consistent you’re going to have to do so for all businesses, regardless of what type of business it is, otherwise it seems like you’re just contradicting yourself.
What say you?
“Why not read the writing on the wall and stop this misguided policy now?
because they are looking at more than deaths.
Mr. Mosher: Are you and the following the same: https://nypost.com/2020/04/18/why-america-desperately-needs-a-hard-decoupling-from-china/?…
No. people have confused us for 30 years
I owned one of the other Mosher’s books before this one moved in with me.
I envy your optimism.
“I still want to know what value you put on a human life?”
only individuals involved know that.
I can tell you price is going to be different if you are in your 20thies or in your 70thies.
And price is going to be different if you pay or if government pay ( which is theft )
I’d happily take $10,000,000 or even a figure less than that than $0 in a collective system. What figure is priceless? Is it infinity or is it nothing? Or is it more than nothing, but far less than a number that any of us would individually pick? 100,000 lives saved times $10,000,000 is $1 trillion dollars. U.S GDP last year was $21.5 trillion. We can probably successfully recover from a loss like that or even three or four times times that, but I would be very fearful if the loss was 15 times that or even approaching it. If we’re on the latter track then we need to get off of it quick even if it is much riskier, but not entirely unavoidable.
Izaak Walton
April 18, 2020 at 6:32 pm
Willis,
I still want to know what value you put on a human life?
—————————-
To get to the answer of that question, properly, start from how humanity approached that since time began.
Zero value, no value at all for any human life that causes and inflicts death and destruction to other humans, where even in the modern times, as now, still some people and nations consider full termination of such human life, and right to life of such humans.
Zero point zero value for the murderers, especially the sadistic ones… including life or right to life of such as…. price of life there non at all… void.
The “value” of life you looking for and implying there in your argument, once upon the time was considered and known as “blood money” (usually as compensation or a service payment)…
clearing one for and from the act of terminating or causing loss of human life, due to given accepted circumstances in society… and that was simply a payment in consideration of the life damages or loss of life, nothing to do with the value of life.
Completely non applicable or claimed or considered, at all, in the case of death by nature.
(where self defense considered and consisting as one of main life natural responses)
Only those who suffer god complexity will consist in considering some actual value as a given price on human life… and demand or propose or attempt to justify actions based in such non existing metric.
The dead do not get payments.
The living do sometimes, do in behalf of the dead, as a means of correction, to stop and reduce the unnecessary further loss of life and way of life and life standard.
cheers
“So in California, we’ve thrown at least two million people out of work in order to delay, but not prevent, the deaths of a thousand or so people, most of whom had other serious illnesses.”
No, it is to prevent the many deaths that would have occurred without counter-measures. Going back to the Math of Epidemics, the exponential growth phase of infections were shown. Something has to happen for that to change. The Gompertz curve is based on herd immunity, but that requires at least half the population to be infected. The alternative is to reduce the infectivity by social measures. California did that, and it worked.
Here is how the situation looked in that Willis’ post on 13/3, when the distancing measures were just beginning:
“Please be clear, though, that I’m not minimizing the danger. A virus of this nature can do immense harm if we don’t stay ahead of it. What I’m saying is that China and South Korea show that we indeed can stay ahead of it.
So let me suggest that we take all precautions, wash hands, social distancing, canceling large gatherings, testing as and when required, self-quarantine, it’s very important to slow the virus down … and that we also dial way back on the hysteria and the politicization of the issue.”
In Australia (and NZ) lockdown-like provisions were brought in at an early stage. We now have just 69 deaths total (many cruise passengers). But more importantly, last date there were only 32 new cases. We are now looking at a switch from containment to elimination.
Typo there Nick.
“lockdown -like ”
Should be lockdown -lite.
You’re welcome.
FB in NZ
We might have some chance of eliminating Covid-19 in NZ due to lockdown measures, but even if that happens, then what? Does the NZ government keep the borders closed until the rest of the world eliminates it? Until there is a vaccine, 12-18 months from now? Otherwise what’s to stop it coming in on the next flight?
I’m with Willis on this one. Quarantine and protect the vulnerable, let the rest of us get back to living.
Good luck with that. It’s in every part of the world, unless you are going to lock down your borders 100% indefinitely, in will be back soon enough.
We could potentially quarantine everyone entering the country until a cure or vaccine is found. Right now we are, and not letting non-citizens in at all unless essential.
In Australia and NZ we have very spread out communities. My town has no town of comparable size for 500 km, for example.
We are outliers.
You are an outlier. I live in a city of 5 million people.
My condolences, Stokes.
I live in a farm community of 8 people (counting the two grandchildren) on one square mile.
On the same -sized piece of dirt, in a slum in India, reside 700,000 people.
Not quite the same, really.
Locking down rural remote communities, especially where there are no cases, has been an over reaction.
I think one of the best tactics for reviving the Australian economy will be to maintain a ban on travel from the US. Not only do Americans make up one third of global cases but, like a global Typhoid Mary, one of the main sources of infection in many countries is travellers from the US.
TDS?
Hi Loydo:
Say that’s something I hadn’t read about yet. Would you mind linking some reading for study?
Secondly, just as a reminder, we’re still in a conversation here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/12/inside-climate-news-will-covid-19-deaths-lead-skeptics-to-rethink-climate-change/#comment-2967264
Unless you concede? 🙂
Let’s see; China had an internal lockdown of Wuhan in place yet allowed international flights to leave for points all over the world especially the US and Italy, and you want to blame the US for the spread of the Dem-panic? I don’t think that is a memory hole you have your head stuck in; you might want to consider pulling it out unless you are being paid by the Chicoms to spread propaganda and disinformation!
“Surely we can test that with precision by now?” Well yes its probably become more accurate in the weeks and months since the virus emerged. You can’t lie to a virus.
Relax, most of the “travellers” I’m talking about are my fellow countryfolk returning from the US. “One third”? But thats the point AMan, right now where is the disease? Which country has 3/4 of a million cases? If some leader didn’t want their country to get more cases, which travel routes should they be most worried about? TDS? Save your exceptionalism for when its absolutely necessary.
Loydo
April 18, 2020 at 9:06 pm
Loydo
Completely the opposite, upside down mind.
AUS and NZ, do not show any signs of facing yet the wave of COVID-19.
Which means these two countries definitely, according to the “brilliant” thinking of people like you, should stay in self isolation from the rest of the world till facing and passing the wave….
as else in the first sign of being hit by the wave, with no national isolation measures in place,
the rest of the world may resolve in being too tough and aggressive with imposing forced isolation and long lasting travel and otherwise bans and restrictions to these two.
The world can not afford to take a second chance, especially with a country like NZ, which clearly shows that it has not being really touched yet thus far… and quite far away with no much weight in global economy.
You see, NZ ain’t China… and with the winter approaching soon… things may be not so pleasant for the people in NZ.
Many countries may not need to think at all, if the COVID-19 wave shows up in NZ, as to how dealing with it.
Could be a simple instant taken measurement, a proper temporary removal of NZ from their maps.
Where the very close good neighbour AUS could be one leading the pack.
Don’t cha think!
cheers
Not sure what that means, but otherwise, great, we’re agreed then: death totals are probably inflated. That means Trump hasn’t “killed” those additional many thousands I thought I read you claim he has?
Right. Even better. Now that we’re agreed we can test who has it, we can surely know how many “Mary’s” are bringing it home. You sure do? Or at least you know who does? I’m interested, and I can’t find that info anywhere.
“I thought I read you claim he has?”
I’m not backing down from that. He downplayed for weeks when he should have been up-playing. Leadership delayed is leadership derelicted.
“I can’t find that info anywhere.”
I’ve been looking for it. I based my comments on some stats I saw a few weeks ago about the source of infections in Australia, the majority were ex-pats returning home and it gave a breakdown with ‘from the US’ the biggest fraction. But I can’t remember where I saw it.
At least with leadership questions we could intelligently quibble. But how do we talk about statistics that aren’t? Come on now, you’re not a dumb guy – of this there’s no quibbling. Individual personalities ought not get in the way of justified true belief.
Fair enough. I’m satisfied you saw something *somewhere*. Take care! 🙂
So do I but in the winter it must grow by at least a million. I grew up in a town(village) of 1300. I spent 11 years in a town of about 500. Each had it good and bad. I now live in the Phoenix area, I grew up in northwestern Minnesota, spent most of my adult life in North Dakota. The climate and demographics could not be more extreme between Minnesota/North Dakota that Arizona yet I enjoy it here. I hope to never see -40 F and below weather ever again. Although I was up in Bismarck North Dakota in January on the first morning it was 8 below.
It isn’t the spread that makes a difference it is not allowing gatherings of over 2 people not from the same family and locking down your borders. Broome a remote town of 13,000 in North Western Australia had an outbreak because a single health worker from Perth flew there with it. That one person infected 5 other health care workers which became 29 case before it was contained.
The statement from Rick above is partly correct both Australia and NZ borders will require 14 day isolation to cross 100% indefinitely so long as the virus exists and has no cure.
“No, it is to prevent the many deaths that would have occurred without counter-measures.”
But you do not know number of lives that is going to be saved, and you do not know number of lives that is going to be destroyed because of lockdown.
man if we do not work and produce all of us are going to die.
What do “we” pale face.
Stokes
You can be smug at the moment. However, if it turns out that COVID-19 is seasonal, you may well experience an onslaught of infections that will present you with the dilemma of continuing your lockdowns for 6 months longer than the Northern Hemisphere, and devastate your economies, or accepting the loss of life. Your primary hope is that a vaccine or cure is developed before your economies melt down. If you are really lucky, the vaccine/cure may also work on the common cold(s) and un-novel flues. Get back to me in a couple of months and let me know how things are working out.
https://news.yahoo.com/sunlight-destroys-coronavirus-very-quickly-new-government-tests-find-but-experts-say-pandemic-could-still-last-through-summer-200745675.html?.tsrc=bell-brknews
If the lockdown had been effective, we should have seen a significant step down in the number of deaths around 19 days (average 5 days to first symptoms, 14 days to eventual death) after the first day of the lockdown. Not visible on the graphs in any country.
“If the lockdown had been effective, we should have seen a significant step down in the number of deaths around 19 days (average 5 days to first symptoms, 14 days to eventual death) after the first day of the lockdown. Not visible on the graphs in any country.”
lockdowns only work if
A) people follow the rules
B) you separate the infected from others.
Locking down the infected with their families gets you Chris cuomos wife.
doh!
Thats why china, when learning that 80% of transmissions are family to family, would
isolate the sick from their family and test the family.
That meant.
Taking over school gymnasiums and turning them into isolation wards for people
who were infected but with slight symptoms or no symptoms.
ya’ll doing lock downs wrong.
doing the lockdown wrong gets you
1. minor improvements in the spread
2. A busted economy
Steven Mosher April 18, 2020 at 11:52 pm
Agreed. As I’ve said before, the virus laughs at the Western-style “lockdown”.
w.
watching people bungle the testing ( contamination at CDC)
and then bungle the lockdown
I have no doubt they will bungle the re opening.
Once again we are faced with a situation where one group is panicked
another group shouts hoax.
and reasonable people can’t be heard
India-style “lockdown” is probably even more hilarious. If the virus doesn’t spread in india, it’s not thanks to the lockdown. I see it first hand.
Are you really comparing Australia and New Zealand at the end of summer to the Northern Hemisphere at the height of cold and flu season?
There’s a reason why it’s called “cold and flu season”. Get back to us in 6 months.
It is mid-Autumn here, and mid-Spring in NH. But the thing is, we had a run-up of cases peaking in late March, which could reasonably be called late summer. Over 400 a day on three days, total 6547. Counter-measures were phased in starting mid-March. As the weather cooled into April, the daily cases diminished rapidly, and are now close to zero. The plot of Johns Hopkins data is here (from the utility here).
Willis the data man at his best.
Thank you Willis.
Here in Thailand, two weeks into lockdown (or is it 3?) the government realized that 44 of our provinces have no corona virus cases. They are getting ready to re-open these provinces. My province is among the 44.
I noticed low cases in Thailand compared to rest of world despite the high Chinese tourism. Could it be due to hot weather not causing virus to spread as fast ? I saw a number of cases come out of boxing events where large crowds were gathered. I imagine these events are air conditioned. Good luck to you !
” Eric Lerner
April 18, 2020 at 6:18 pm
In consistency with your reasoning ,you should be the first to volunteer to die from coronavirus..”
Frank Herbert :
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.
I thought of that line from Dune too.
P.S. There is a new Dune movie coming out. I will never see it. The person directing it stated directly that Arrakis was the future of earth under capitalism. And one of the characters will be a gender bender. Another person who can live of life of luxury only because of the very thing they hate.
I have a bracelet with the litany against fear etched into it, to remind me not to let fear rule my life. Found it on eBay.
re: “I have a bracelet with the litany against fear etched into it, to remind me not to let fear rule my life.”
Kinda goes along with the Desiderata. Some of it would be applicable to person found here too. These used to be sold at Spencer’s Gifts and the like. This was before going ‘full Catholic’.
https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html
“most of the deaths are among the group you might call “at death’s door””
Death’s door as in would have been dead in days or weeks anyway? I’m not disagreeing with the thrust of the post but this is a wild exaggeration. Or are you suggesting anyone over 60 is at death’s door?
My guess would be that the “death’s door” category is probably in the single figures. “Most” of the dead while elderly were still active and fit for there age and were not on their deathbed – they were on cruises or in restaurants or at least ‘out and about’ enough to catch it in the first place. Some were obviously on their last legs, but the majority? Nuh.
Thank you Loydo.
I am 75 and not at death’s door.
I am at the golf club door waiting for it to re open.
https://images.app.goo.gl/rVkV43zdRb2ce9wK9
People were golfing here last week, and after the snow melts, will do so again.
Hey we can golf in full lockdown just only 2 people per group … only illegal in a couple Australian states. Just can’t play 4 ball best ball well in the same group 🙂
Loydo, of all of the deaths in New York, only one percent of them had no co-morbidities. And many of them had two or three. And the majority of them were old, 70 and above.
Now, I don’t know whether “at death’s door” accurately describes an 82-year-old man with diabetes and congestive heart failure … but I sure as heck wouldn’t call him “young, fit, and healthy”.
w.
“82-year-old man with diabetes and congestive heart failure”
So age and medical complications and not age alone?
Thanks.
Now I khaojai.
A 103 year old woman from Kentucky just recovered from COVID-19.
She said that she has to live to 2030 to prove that that global warming is bullshit (or something like that).
That’s the spirit 🙂
Reminds me about the stress factor being very important to your immunity.
Lots of unemployment cause many more people with high stress levels, less immunity and finally more premature deaths.
Only one percent of the US population have no comorbidities. Comorbidities are more often than not chronic conditions which are not necessarily life-threatening, at least not in the short term. People with asthma, arthritis, obesity, diabetes, chronic heart disease, even some forms of cancer can live for a very long time. They can die quickly and unexpectedly if they contract an acute disease like Covid-19 or the flu.
I have four commodities, Asthma is the number one I can die at any time, it been that way all of my life, all I need is a trigger, I fear the southwest fire ant more than COVID-19 since their sting can cause me to have allergic reaction even at that I still go outdoors. Any cold, flu or lung infection can kill me, last flu I had I though i was going to die, I feared going to sleep. I was sucking on my emergency inhaler regularly. I am also precancerous, it is being monitored but it develops into cancer I will be dead in months. What really aggravates me is I am need of a shoulder replacement it bone on bone, I cannot get good sleep because laying down aggravates the pain, kind hard to sleep when you arm is jabbing you with pain. The replacement has been delayed due to the lock down even though here the hospitals are empty. To the most part this lock down is not saving lives, lives saved and lives lost maybe a wash. Don’t pin you hopes on a vaccine coming soon enough to make a difference let alone we get one at all.
I looked at the list of co-morbidities from the New York data and all of them are highly associated with either metabolic syndrome or are autoimmune in nature. I’ve spent the last 10 years following the growing debate on chronic disease health issues and I’m fairly well convinced that metabolic syndrome and autoimmune issues are caused by a diet high in grains, sugar and vegetable oils – basically what the government says is healthy and tells you to eat.
I was headed down a bad road – I was fat, my eyesight was getting worse, I had hand tremors, asthma and hayfever. All of these went away when I removed grains, sugar and vegetable oils from my diet. My eyesight is so much better I was able to throw away my glasses – how many other 50+ year olds can say that?
The consensus over diet and chronic disease is very much like the global warming scam – it was pushed initially by some very influential people, government jumped on board and now you’re a crank or a crook if you question the dogma. The information is out there though – I would highly recommend to all if you see your health failing and your doctor is saying “there’s little I can do, it’s just part of the ageing process” then you can probably do a lot better for yourself by ignoring the doc and changing your diet. I think you’ll be amazed at the improvement in very little time. Like for me my asthma went away in 3 days. YMMV.
“Loydo, of all of the deaths in New York, only one percent of them had no co-morbidities.”
That is not true:
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n
More than 10% have no co-morbidity.
My bad, Loydo. I didn’t make it clear that I was speaking of the New York City data.
w.
And many of the deaths in New York are victims of unknown causes; they were not tested. As of this morning, up to 4,500 of these are now called “presumed” COVID-19 deaths. Meaning, if I got bucked off my mare, they’d say her name was COVID-19 and write that on the death certificate!
Probably years of life saved is a better measure than just lives saved.
Yes. This also goes for a vaccine that may not be fully tested. Giving it to a young person is risky because we don’t know long term effects. What if it causes infertility or increases risk of cancer ? But giving it to older high risk patient has less risk because first they may die without vaccine if they catch virus, and secondly any side effects from vaccine are more likely to be low compared to their existing conditions.
Hey a sensible metric a rare thing on this site, but not as amusing as delayed deaths.
In a “service economy”, there is no “service” being (to be) performed.
Its a simple as that.
Another thing I don’t understand is we have the drug remdesivir which works quite well to cut mortality rate. There are some problems with it giving higher liver enzymes when on it. But if a person is 80 and has other serious health issues liver enzymes would be the least concern. How does this drug change the dynamics of the lockdown ? If the drug reduces fatality below that of the flu then why the lockdowns ? It is illogical.
Too short a supply and too long a lead time to produce. The company couldn’t possibly cover the demand for years yet.
37% of 397 people at homeless shelter test positive for corona-chan. 100% without symptoms. Ha ha, what a dumb disease.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/shocking-report-shows-half-homeless-boston-shelter-tested-positive-covid-19-and-none
I saw a group of homeless people the other day sharing some kind of beverage, I presume an alcohol one. High concentrations of ethanol likely denature the virus.
Scissor
The Alcodromeda Strain.
Oh, Clyde, now THAT’s funny! But you misspelled it.
The Alcodramada Strain
w.
Willis
Just as the first liar doesn’t have a chance of winning ‘tall tales,’ the one who has the last word usually gets the best laugh. I see what you did there! 🙂
I think it’s more likely homeless people spend a lot of time in the sunshine and have decent levels of vitamin D.
I prefer to call them ‘urban outdoorsmen.’
Willis,
There appears to be a distinct periodicity of 5 cycles per year in almost all of the data. Does your periodogram verify this? I certainly can’t think of anything relative to joblessness that happens regularly at five cycles per year.
Here in Michigan, there’s what… maybe a thousand or 2k cases in 90% of the state. Yet we’re 100% locked down because of o e city. So much so that I can’t even take my kids fishing in my boat. My county has less than 100 cases, and our hospitals are all but closed down due to lack of work, but our power hungry governor won’t even consider making life better for 90% of the Michigan landmass. I started out fearful and trying to follow all the rules, but I’m about to the point where I no longer give a shist. How is our area expected to build immunity when we have no cases?
At first the story was to do lockdown as to not over load medical system. I don’t hear that argument much any more. They are moving the goalposts. Hospitals seem to be able to handle the cases now pretty easily. So why not start things up partially and monitor. if cases appear to be increasing too fast then lockdown can be tightened. The Democrats want to hurt the economy to reduce Trump’s chances of re election. That is why they keep moving the goalposts.
“At first the story was to do lockdown as to not over load medical system. I don’t hear that argument much any more.”
That would be because the lockdown successfully prevented the medical system from being overloaded. Governor Cuomo was pleading for 40,000 ventilators at one time. Now Governor Cuomo is sending ventilators to other States that need them.
The first purpose of the lockdown is to try to determine how infectious and lethal the virus, while at the same time hindering its path into the population. It also helps to reduce the load on the medical system.
By now, we have some pretty good data on the Wuhan virus, which allows us to modify how we deal with it. We did not have this information initially, so had to assume the virus was very infectious and very lethal until proven otherwise, and the lockdown was part of proving it otherwise as safely as possible.
Go fishing. If you get a citation accept it and then take it to court and fight it. Most cases will likely be dropped. There are so many lakes and places in MI that you have a greater chance of catching the disease than getting a citation.
What area are you from? Have you ever been to Hell (near Pinckney)? I grew up not far from Hell.
[invalid email]
Oops, it’s once per year, peaking in the winter. Now that makes sense.
Absolutely not
South Korea shows the way. Much pain could have be avoided if more widespread and more efficient testing was done earlier. Lesson learned. The US won’t be so slow next time round ( likely ~100 years away).
As for re-opening, my guess is most things apart from large gatherings will come on line soon. Sorry, sports fans, no crowds but watch it on TV.
My bet is virus spreads mainly through large gatherings, schools and packed bars. Then through a family. Anybody with young kids knows they bring home every cold and flu out there.
Nope
Family first
then come clusters:
South Korea shows the way.
The way to what? They’ve painted themselves into a corner. They must, if they can, maintain this highly invasive, emergency stance forever. COVID-19 is never going away and their population has no immunity and no chance of achieving it (without a miracle vaccine).
The only way out for them is to relax the controls and suffer the pain that everyone else will have gone through. Likewise with the lockdowns. There is no way of avoiding the pain, the illnesses and deaths; they’re going to happen eventually regardless.
The only sensible route is to pace the infections so the illnesses can be treated and the deaths can be handled, whilst not destroying the economy and crushing liberties. Sweden shows the way.
South Korea is still increasing in cases. Currently tending to 1/50th of most western countries’ rates by using high testing and isolation of +ves. Looks good today. But, very likely they will reach a breakout level that will show where efforts to contain a virus that is already “in the wild” simply fail, due to virus distribution during the incubation period. That will be instructive for future epidemiologists. Or, unless it is seasonal, they will just take 50 times as long to infect the same portion of the population.
I certainly have sympathy for Mr. Eschenbach’s feelings here. But that’s basically it: sympathy, because I can’t begin to analyze this quantitatively.
Specifically, here are numbers I pulled out of the air. If the lockdown costs the U.S. 10% of one year’s GDP, i.e., around $2 trillion, and the average remaining lifespan of the Americans whose lives it saves is ten years, then, if we value a year of life at $100,000, the lockdown would have to save 2 million lives to be worth it.
But I just pulled those numbers out of the air. In particular, it’s pretty clear to me that much of the economic damage comes not from the lockdown but rather from spontaneous reactions to the epidemic itself, so the lockdown will probably cost Americans much less than that $2 trillion. On the other hand, although it’s not true that the lockdown avoids no deaths at all as opposed to merely delaying them a few months, the number of American deaths it does avoid will certainly be far south of 2 million. To discuss this rationally, therefore, we’d need to replace those numbers with more-certain values.
Moreover, even doing that wouldn’t take into account that a more-targeted approach could possibly save most of the lives that would otherwise be lost to the Wuhan virus. The paper at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764658?guestAccessKey=913ec584-d2cf-4175-b583-b60e9cb15412, for example, suggests that this might be achieved through centralized quarantines of mild/moderate cases together with contact tracing.
In short, there may be information out there that’s good enough to base decisions on, but I haven’t seen anyone marshal it yet.
The OVERALL death rate in New York State has tripled. It is simply false to say these are people who would have died tomorrow in any case. Even with the belated lockdown, more than 0.1% of the entire state population has already died. When this spreads to the rest of the country that means 300,000 dead. If all the lockdowns end without testing and tracking in place, there will be far more dead since nearly everyone will get the disease long before a vaccine is ready.
The REAL economy does not suffer from being partially shut down for weeks. The real economy is based on the workers who actually do everything in the economy and the machinery and other infrastructure that allows them to do it. To maintain the workers all is required that essential industries–food transportation and power mainly–keep running and none of the lockdowns have proposed shutting them. Everyone non-essential can stay home. The machinery just needs minimal maintenance, except for some continuous process industries like steel which again no one has proposed shutting down. The way to make sure people get the goods they need to maintain their lives is to simply maintain their monetary income while they are at home. No brainer! The government needs to send them that income.
But the FINANCIAL economy is suffering a meltdown because profits are hurt and asset values are hurt. Oh dear–that hurts mainly the 0.1% of population that actually owns most of those assets. To defend those stocks and bonds, the Fed, Congress and the President has directed 90% of the rescue package to supporting the shareholders and bondholders and 10% to supporting the workers who actually keep things running. And of course they want to get back to making profits as soon as possible. If a few hundred thousand workers die off, who cares?–there are others to take their places right and we all have to go sometime. Nothing counts more than 10,000 more points on the DOW, right, guys?
re: “The OVERALL death rate in New York State has tripled.”
Breakdown the demographics of those who died –
Or you’re just spreading Fear Factor Fodder … and besides, NY is reaping what it sown (see DeBlasio and company who advised no precautions were necessary at one point.)
The real question is not what the death are now it how will the year work out and next year. If this year has a higher rate and by the end of the year I highly doubt it will be triple and next year it lower, that means live were shorten yes but not prevented.
Most of the country is very different from NY and will not suffer the same high rates of cases and deaths. Most Republican controlled states will suffer far less.
Scissor
You said, “Most of the country is very different from NY …” That is an understatement if I ever saw one!
There are some similarities between large cities, like Chicago, Detroit, Philly, SF, etc. but your’re right, NYC is unique.
Just so. One analysis – if you take “downstate” New York as a separate country (Kings, Queens, New York, Suffolk, Bronx, Nassau, Westchester and Richmond Counties) – that country is, by far, NUMBER ONE in both cases and fatalities per million. Just about twice that of any recognized country. The rest of the USA doesn’t even break the top ten.
Now, I do feel badly for the denizens of the downstate; I know several good people there (most of them in my over-60 age bracket). But they did allow an open and proud Communist to become Mayor, along with its band of merry theys. Some mistakes turn out to be fatal.
To add to that, most of the cases in Florida are centered in the SE portion where New Yorkers (city that is) have been infesting the area for years.
Eric
You have no idea how an economy works. You speak as if the “Financial” economy is somehow removed from the individual humans that make it work. Almost like watching the news.
It means a harder retirement for me if the DOW does not come back. Just because I did not piss away my money when I worked and over my lifetime my pay was seldom over 50,000 a year. Putting away 18% of you income every year for a large number of years does pay, especially when the boss matches the first 6%!
Now let us get to New York City. Only a fool would extrapolate COVID-19 damage done to the New York Population since New York has 27,000 people per square mile and that population is wholly depend on public transportation. To say a North Dakota that average about three people per square mile. Most people in North Dakota don’t even live near public transportation let alone use it! So the Ro will be much different between the two populations. Also most North Dakotan’s do not have damage lungs.
Grow up snowflake and quit worrying about other peoples money and learn to take care of you own, you might some day also watch the stock market also and said swing of 1000 points can mean 10,000s of dollars to you.
You definitely sound like someone who thinks he’s owed a living.
Eric, your display of ignorance about economics is breathtaking. You are so “not even wrong” that it would take decades to even dent your ignorance and hubris. So I won’t try.
Lockdown does not make sense, the numbers are analyzed for Germany, see
https://youtu.be/Vy-VuSRoNPQ
I listened to the whole interview, thanks J. Seifert.
For those not understanding German, the essence was that CoVid-19 had peaked and fallen to to a certain level before the lock-down. The level right before the lock-down has been steady ever since.
The professor emphasize that the lock-down in Germany, did not change the rate one tiny bit regarding the virus itself, but is bound to cause havoc to the economy, social welfare and general health.
“We do know that most of the deaths are among the group you might call “at death’s door”.”
..
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/health/2020/04/14/cdc-report-thousands-health-care-workers-infected-coronavirus/2988120001/
..
Are you implying that the doctors and nurses treating the ill are “at death’s door?”
That is only 29 who are taking one for the team apparently.
The problem a lot of folks have with this thing, is that they look at the number of deaths. There are a lot of people that catch thing virus, and recover. However this virus is much more serious than the flu. Instead of three or four days to recover from the flu, it takes you two weeks to recover. I’m betting that Eschenbach’s parents are no longer alive, because if they were, he’d be singing a different tune.
I think there is a deeper issue in times of crisis people need someone/something to blame and fight. If you let it spiral out of control and the hospitals collapsed and peopled died then it would be the governments fault as well. Everyone needs to blame someone.
This topic and the people who are really fired up about it as as toxic as hell in exactly the same way as those in the CAGW crowd are toxic. You can’t have a reasoned argument they just get abusive and go off the deep end.
What are you talking about? I’ve had flus in the past that have taken weeks to months to get over. A decade ago I had one that left me deaf in one ear and with a persistent cough that remained for almost a year.
From what I can tell, cvd-19 is little more than a bad cold.
You sound like the old war vetran, “I once took a piece of shrapnel in the back I didn’t even feel and still fought on”.
or as Monty Python would do
“We had to get up before we went to bed and lick the road clean with our tongues and when we got home there was no super”.
Pool
It sounds like you are confusing the flu with a cold.
I had a cold that got in my lungs(no fever) it made me feel like I was on deaths door, I have Asthma could not breath. That took far more than a week to recover. I a flu when I was in my forties was down for nearly two weeks, that one did not end up in my lungs. I been through four pandemics if the number end up the the latest models say(good luck with that) it will be lightest pandemic in my life time, funny no one shut down for the last three, hell the last one was not in the paper so you would have notice.
I had an aunt that no longer resides on this “mortal coil.” She had related to me once that before the widespread availability of antibiotics, it was not unusual for someone to get a cold or flu that would last all Winter; they would not get better until Summer. I suppose that is where the term “walking pneumonia” comes from. They were not bedridden, and continued to do their farm chores so that they and the rest of the family could eat.
Henry Pool April 18, 2020 at 8:10 pm
I’m betting that your mind-reading powers suck. At 73, I’m in the high risk group myself. Since that hasn’t caused me to start “singing a different tune”, neither would my parents make me change singing styles if I were younger and they were my age.
w.
There’s a real chance those 29 died because they were intubated.
Pool
Are you implying that most of those dying are the doctors and nurses treating the ill?
Henry Pool April 18, 2020 at 7:39 pm
Nope. I’m implying that “most”, curiously enough, does not mean “all”.
w.
This crisis has made me and my clients a very decent profit.
I’ve used that to keep my employees on the payroll with a 10% bonus.
My clan is safe. Is yours? I hope so.
I do consulting work for a hedge fund. The fund did well. It uses computer models to trade and somehow the models picked up on the market crash. Generally we like market volatility. We still cut our risk quite a bit though. Personally I made some money buying sp500 near market low, but lost lots on my Real estate Reits. Damn REITs are suppose to be safe !
I used China as a harbinger. Around Jan 25th, I looked at the type (commonality) of chinese-based instruments that made money in the last 2 months, and I tried to duplicate that for Eupope/US. I then looked at the worst performaning instruments and shorted those.
That was my highest risk bracket. This short/long strategy net me 21% profit YTD.
Medium risk was just to long Gold, Mail Order Companies, Discount Stores, and Software. Net 26% YTD.
The lowest risk strategy was to short all currency but long US. Net 7% YTD.
The medium risk was the best.
“Whenever any governmental official forcibly throws people out of work by unilaterally making their business illegal, that official and everyone under their purview should immediately lose all salary, benefits, housing, insurance, transportation, and any other benefits.”
A good start but not enough, Willis. Such a government official – or non-elected MD giving lawless orders – must be tried, removed from office and jailed. We must teach future power-mad morons not to do something like this again.
As G.K. Chesterton said, “It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”
53% of the dead in New York State are under 74 years old. The average American at 74 has a life expectancy of 14 years. Not exactly dying tomorrow.
And NYC comprises what % of the population of New York State?
Nice cherries you got there.
A link supporting the 14 additional years the average 74 year old American should expect to live would be nice, but absent that:
I’ve a hard time believing the average American at 74 years old can expect another 14 years but it will stand until someone else asks for a link to proof.
You might consider that: “The average American at 74” is a blend of the healthy ones and those whose span is being extended by medication and regular trips to facilities where they’re more likely to catch the WuFlu than if they wandered around New York City. One cohort is generally susceptible to seasonal respiratory illness, the other has about the same survival rates as the rest of us. One requires frequent trips for medical attention, the other doesn’t.
One trait they both share is: without a functioning economy, one where labor is generating money to pay for medical care, both will die sooner.
To be fair, I looked up life expectancy at 74 and the 2016 SSA tables had males at 11.8 years, females at 13.7.
I should be so lucky, and I consider myself healthy.
In the UK 14% of covid deaths had a life expectancy of 1 month
harvesting
Ventilators are ki!llers.
In NYC they just make up mortality numbers. The latest addition was a 50% increase of 3700 who were presumed to have died of corona-chan without having tested positive. A real racket.
In NYC they just make up mortality numbers. The latest addition was a 50% increase of 3700 who were presumed to have died of corona-chan without ever having tested positive. A real racket.
Eric, either your information or you math skills suck. Average life expectancy in US is just under 80.
Willis – great analysis. But there are two issues not addressed here or on the sites I have looked at. The first is the last two parts of Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, “. . .nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Are these two property issues germane? Has Government (in)action deprived people of property or taken property?
The second issue relates to the epidemiological models that are the root cause of this economic disaster. Commercial computer models are slathered in exculpatory clauses in the end-user license agreements. These absolve the suppliers of the computer models and prevent the end-users from suing the model authors. But the EULAs are between the model authors and the users (CDC, various government entities). The public suffering damage is not a party to the EULAs. Can the public via class action get compensation from the modelers? I would be happy to get $1, knowing that the full $25 million has bankrupted the modelers.
Willis,
Please correct this scenario. It is about cost: benefit from lockdown.
Mohatdebos earlier noted unemployed getting $600 + $400 from Fed and State. That money comes mainly from previous taxes. The recipient might not notice much difference from the change of $ source. In time, that tax source will run out. The way to keep flow going is to tax those able to pay more, like the wealthy, and to restart certain businesses that are agreed to be essential.
People formerly on unemployment do not feel much difference. Pensioners, etc. What about others? Here we need to talk essential and non-essential jobs.
Does it really hurt the economy if a restaurant goes out of business? Former customers will find other food sources. This is an example of small non-essential.
Does it really hurt the economy if a major national airline goes bust? Not really for people carriers, maybe for freighters. People simply do not spend on tickets, they have the money for spending on essentials, less drain on the tax pool, but more unemployed airline staff to live off it.
There is scenario after scenario, but some broad principles emerge. Like, the exercise is incomplete unless and until the money flow from ordinary people to billionaires is reversed. Like, there are some essential jobs that must not be shut down, example medical treatment of the sick and disabled. Like, it boils down to maintaining jobs that create new wealth and not worrying so much about jobs that recycle existing wealth with a cut on the side (the old Christine Keeler appendix joke). The basic thesis is that lockdowns can go on for a long time if we place a realistic value on shutting down non-essentials, the money recyclers. Here we meet a social obstacle because this includes sectors like banking, insurance, gambling, commercial sport, alcohol and tobacco, tourism, advertising, entertainment, the media and so on. None of these is really essential, particularly at present bloated levels. Of course, these sectors have loud voices and have shown abilities to complain about endangerment of their cash flows.
This is a rambling account of a complex subject viewed from an angle where many people have never gone. I do not have 50 pages here to elaborate, so I will just conclude with some broad assertions.
Do not imagine that a cost:benefit analysis of a national lockdown means very much if done with conventional thinking. The true consequences of a lockdown are much deeper and less conventional than we might imagine.
We are at the start of a shock to established ways of life (which I define as protection of existing wealth benefits). Use the shock to introduce and examine how society can change its entrenched ways and be better for all.
Ask not what my $ can do for me, but what my $ can do for my country.
Geoff S
(I have not gone stupid, just expressing some concepts in attention-seeking ways, not very good at that.)
“, not very good at that.”
On the contrary, it leaps out of the page, because it addresses the elephant in the room – “the fundamental transformation” of economies around the world, that we are all looking forward to so much.
Well , maybe not all.
Geoff: “we need to talk essential and non-essential jobs.” Essential to whom?
Further, who decides what is “essential?” Is a computer programmer’s job “essential?” A government bureaucrat, who decides which jobs are “essential?” A small shopkeeper? A barber? A hotel keeper? A priest? A psychologist? A politician? An “illegal” immigrant who picks fruit? A university professor that researches “climate change?” A taxi driver? An entrepreneur? A soldier?
And you say, “Ask not what my $ can do for me, but what my $ can do for my country.” You were a government employee, were you not? Those of us, whose careers and $ (or £) have been screwed by the political class, think exactly the opposite. The flow of wealth for the last 40 years has been to the big boys corporate and political, from us human beings. From the politically poor, to the politically rich.
But you’re right: “We are at the start of a shock to established ways of life.” May it be a shock for the better.
I would really love to see a graph like this for Australia.
The rationale (if you can call it that) seems to be that a death from COVID-19 is a uniquely tragic event, and all measures must be applied to prevent it. Meanwhile, everybody eventually dies, and many people die of infectious diseases, and yet we don’t lock down the country to slow the progress of any of those diseases.
The point that we don’t sacrifice the economy to limit deaths from the flu is valid. The panic over COVID-19 seems to be based on the novelty of it, and the initial belief that it would kill millions of people of all ages. We now know beyond dispute that the risk of death is negligibly small in people under 50, and that half of the dead are 80 are older. Most of the media accounts of the disease either bury the fact that so many of the dead are very old deep in the story, or just ignore that fact altogether.
It’s as if we are pretending that human beings are immortal, and are furiously reacting to the latest evidence that people really do decline and die. It’s as if we think that sacrificing material prosperity will somehow please a vain God, who will then reward us by abolishing death.
“The point that we don’t sacrifice the economy to limit deaths from the flu is valid.”
No, but many people promote the mostly useless and sometimes harmful flu vaccine, or make it mandatory in the US.
Because the Left doesn’t really believe in “my body, my choice”. It’s “my body, the CDC, FDA, or governor’s choice”.
Here’s North Carolina:
As you can see, a significant declining trend over the past twenty years turned into a … rocket stick (as opposed to MM’s hockey stick).
I used the noted data source and graphed it using LibreOffice Calc., plus a bit of refining with GIMP.
Pictures can be inspiring, … or terrifying, in this case. I’ll be sending this to the governor as a picture-worth-a-thousand-words additional squeak in the crowd to re-open the state.
… and if anybody could possibly question whether lock downs caused it, then consider this:
LoL
Sweden, not closing work, not closing restaraunts, not closing bars. They must be shooting through the roof with Covid-19? Nope, they are better than most of the rest of Europe, about the same as us on a per capita basis. Japan is about the best large country in the world, they are still packing subway trains, and going to work. Thank god for these examples, otherwise, we’d never know what we don’t know. For instance we didn’t know that shutting down work would be completely ineffective in slowing the spread of the disease. Now we know. Lets get back to work.
How many minority ghettos does Sweden have?
How many large cities with air pollution does Sweden have?
So are you saying that if a state, province or country can rate itself sufficiently like Sweden, as in “no big ghettos really”, then those jurisdictions can immediately take themselves off any business lock downs? I’m sure that there are many millions of people around the world who would love to get back to work on that basis!
In reality, I’m pretty sure they have industry and pollution, and relatively poor areas in cities like Stockholm, not that much different, in the most general aspect of things, from any other major country where people actually live? If there is no bad ‘signal’ of increased spread of CoVID disease that anyone can verify from Sweden’s *not* having business lock downs, then *that* is a definite sign that the lock downs don’t help much. Trying to say that business lock downs ‘obviously’ must have worked in Spain or Italy, because ‘Sweden doesn’t count’ is really just seeing what one wants to see, confirmation bias, excuse making!
Mentioning Spain, that country apparently has a quite high count of’ total cases per million’ , that being ‘4191’ right now, as listed on the chart at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Now, thinking of Spain with over 4000 cases per million, just compare that to the number for neighboring Portugal, at ‘1982’ cases per million. Say what, not even half as many cases per million, for a country right next door? Explanation anyone, like Portugal must have locked down ever so much more tightly than Spain, or maybe those bad Spanish people touch their face twice as much, etc? Note that the “tests per million” for Spain and Portugal is quite similar, so the “cases” number *should* compare, but it doesn’t! If there is any real explanation for the patchiness of the spread of this virus, I certainly haven’t heard it. So it is pretty hard to justify economy wrecking procedures when one has no idea if those are even helping?
I was pointing out that in the US the highest number of cases and the most deaths are in locations that have:
1) significant minority ghettos
2) air pollution
Is there a connection? I don’t know but I don’t think that has been looked into.
Just want to be sure comparisons are apples to apples.
I farm and I haven’t stopped. Neither have my neighbors. Our rural town is busy. All the stores are open, even the Big Boxes. Some retailers have had record weeks, selling their shelves bare.
I’m not sure how that relates to the rest of the country. The Big Cities may be in total freefall for all I know: tumbleweeds in the glass and concrete canyons, fearful urbanites peeking out their tiny windows, while Big City cops are busy arresting the occasional escapee from solitary confinement.
Mr. Eschenbach is exactly correct, though. State government coffers are stripped. The functionaries cannot be paid much longer, because states don’t print money. PERS funds have dried up. The governors are demanding the Feds bail them out, but Congress is dysfunctional to the max.
So the troughsuckers may be up the creek. Furlough the Government; they have always been non-essential.
But tell them not to worry. I’ll give them a job in my fields chopping weeds with short-handled hoes. And when they ban diesel fuel, I’ll yoke them to my plow. Because useless mandarins have to eat, too.
And Furlough Academia especially. Every time I read another quacky climate research paper with tree rings and funky models I am reminded of what Dana said to Venkman in Ghostbusters, “You know, you don’t act like a scientist. You’re more like a game show host.”
At the end of the day government has to let us know what level of death is acceptable for an infectious disease. The left dances around this issue and never answers the question. In a country like the USA is 40k allowable or 100k ? Because the bottom line is that infectious disease is not going away and will be here for years. The first argument they used was lockdown to not overflow hospitals. But that argument no longer holds water because many areas of the country are ok with hospital capacity.
The hard cold fact is that we do NOT lockdown for flu, but locking down would save flu deaths. So why don’t we lock down for flu ? The only answer is the politicians accept a level of death from flu but won’t admit it. Frank and honest discussion is important and I have yet to see that.
Stevek
+1