COVID-19 Map worldwide, with statistics

[JimT]

First, you have no idea what the alternate scenario would have looked like.

Second, there hasn't been a national shutdown. Far, far from it. Many, many businesses have continued to operate, mine included. Many of those have been surprised as to how effectively they've been able to operate without their labor force heading into an office each day. Elementary schools have continued to teach pupils. There are winners and losers. Walmart, for example, has boomed as have companies like Amazon (thank God for that innovation). Companies with an inability to adapt have suffered but that's always the case when events force a need for change.

Also, a lot of already existing trends have merely been accelerated. The continued migration to online shopping, cloud kitchens and delivery (who needs ugly strip malls and all that travel back and forth to the grocery store?), working from home (flexibility of labor, less need for over-priced office space), telecommunications (flexibility of labor, less need for business travel), the need for greater automation and robotics in everything from manufacturing to farming. These are just a few examples.

The greatest casualties remain social-related consumption and leisure. They'll bounce back eventually albeit not any time soon. In the interim, many families may well even have benefited from greater time together, playing, talking and exercising. Of course, others have been impacted by change and all the more so because that change has come swiftly and to a lot of families at once.

Demand would have slumped, and significant job losses incurred, with or without government directives. Such is the nature of a health crisis which affects the ability of people to work and play closely alongside each other, making them want to stay at home. (And smart companies make use of a crisis to shed ineffective labor.) Even after 'the great reopening' many companies will have to go to significant lengths to protect their labor forces - they won't do well with many staff off sick (or worse) - with a consequent impact on production efficiency.

There are few opportunities to observe the impact of less limited restrictions and social distancing regulations. Sweden is the best example but even Swede's have faced restrictions - just less than their neighbors. Analysis until early April shows very limited benefit of being 'open' with 3x the death rate. Data indicators for the month of April show a similar pattern. We shall see.

We are only two or three months into this. Many things aren't going to be normal for some time. C'est la vie.

Some might take your prognostications/observations as the writings of an elitist, out of touch, white guy.

Online education has been a dismal failure especially for those on the lower end of the economic scale.

You obviously have solutions for the monumental job destruction you envision as well as the wealth destruction given the collapse of the commercial real estate market along with their lenders?

 

[ronsatspokane]

I'll bet you don't see those in Seattle. It'd be a death sentence for your car's paint.
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New developments. The NAZI regime of Inslee and his chief enforcer Bob Ferguson are sueing businesses in my town that violate Inslee's shutdown orders. That is not going to work out well for them.

 

[Brians356]

New developments. The NAZI regime of Inslee and his chief enforcer Bob Ferguson are sueing businesses in my town that violate Inslee's shutdown orders. That is not going to work out well for them.

Not going to work out well for Inslee's enforcers, or for the businesses?
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[ronsatspokane]

Not going to work out well for Inslee's enforcers, or for the businesses?
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Not going to work out well for the regime. People are pissed.

 

[Brians356]

Not going to work out well for the regime. People are pissed.

Well, we'll see next gubernatorial election. The conservative 90% of WA's territory hasn't the population to outvote the idiocracy.
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[ronsatspokane]

Well, we'll see next gubernatorial election. The conservative 90% of WA's territory hasn't the population to outvote the idiocracy.
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That is the concern. Tim Eyman is running against him. He's the guy to got the $30 car tabs on the ballot and got it passed. Inslee and his chief enforcer Ferguson then sued the public and are fighting its implementation. Those who are paying for the Seattle area transit on their car tabs may be pushed over the edge. I've got friends in Seattle who a paying upwards of $700 a year to license their car.

 

[SGK]

Online education has been a dismal failure especially for those on the lower end of the economic scale.

You obviously have solutions for the monumental job destruction you envision as well as the wealth destruction given the collapse of the commercial real estate market along with their lenders?

Online education wasn't in my list of accelerated trends although it certainly has an enormous place in allowing people to continuously reskill themselves. And, yes, this crisis (as with most crises) has been harsh on the poor. As you allude, children from poorer families have been shown to spend less time on home schooling than their wealthier counterparts. I'm sure there are many reasons as to why. (At least in Miami-Dade the school system has gone to great lengths to assist pupils via the provision of laptops etc so they can continue their schooling over the last couple of months.) I'm all for reopening the schools (sensibly) and generally investing substantially more in education. We don't pay our teachers anywhere near enough and our children will need ever greater skills to succeed in the future. The good news is that technology helps them work with ever-increasing complexity.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be long certain forms of commercial real estate.

The US has lots to learn about support for those at the lower end of the economic scale...

 

[ronsatspokane]

Online education wasn't in my list of accelerated trends although it certainly has an enormous place in allowing people to continuously reskill themselves. And, yes, this crisis (as with most crises) has been harsh on the poor. As you allude, children from poorer families have been shown to spend less time on home schooling than their wealthier counterparts. I'm sure there are many reasons as to why. (At least in Miami-Dade the school system has gone to great lengths to assist pupils via the provision of laptops etc so they can continue their schooling over the last couple of months.) I'm all for reopening the schools (sensibly) and generally investing substantially more in education. We don't pay our teachers anywhere near enough and our children will need ever greater skills to succeed in the future. The good news is that technology helps them work with ever-increasing complexity.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be long certain forms of commercial real estate.

The US has lots to learn about support for those at the lower end of the economic scale...

I think the US has learned. Unemployment numbers in minority and low income communities reached the lowest levels in history prior to the pandemic. Now the left wants to destroy the economy and in the process punish those demographics to insure the continued existence of an underclass.

 

[INTJ]

First, you have no idea what the alternate scenario would have looked like.

Second, there hasn't been a national shutdown. Far, far from it. Many, many businesses have continued to operate, mine included. Many of those have been surprised as to how effectively they've been able to operate without their labor force heading into an office each day. Elementary schools have continued to teach pupils. There are winners and losers. Walmart, for example, has boomed as have companies like Amazon (thank God for that innovation). Companies with an inability to adapt have suffered but that's always the case when events force a need for change.

Also, a lot of already existing trends have merely been accelerated. The continued migration to online shopping, cloud kitchens and delivery (who needs ugly strip malls and all that travel back and forth to the grocery store?), working from home (flexibility of labor, less need for over-priced office space), telecommunications (flexibility of labor, less need for business travel), the need for greater automation and robotics in everything from manufacturing to farming. These are just a few examples.

The greatest casualties remain social-related consumption and leisure. They'll bounce back eventually albeit not any time soon. In the interim, many families may well even have benefited from greater time together, playing, talking and exercising. Of course, others have been impacted by change and all the more so because that change has come swiftly and to a lot of families at once.

Demand would have slumped, and significant job losses incurred, with or without government directives. Such is the nature of a health crisis which affects the ability of people to work and play closely alongside each other, making them want to stay at home. (And smart companies make use of a crisis to shed ineffective labor.) Even after 'the great reopening' many companies will have to go to significant lengths to protect their labor forces - they won't do well with many staff off sick (or worse) - with a consequent impact on production efficiency.

There are few opportunities to observe the impact of less limited restrictions and social distancing regulations. Sweden is the best example but even Swede's have faced restrictions - just less than their neighbors. Analysis until early April shows very limited benefit of being 'open' with 3x the death rate. Data indicators for the month of April show a similar pattern. We shall see.

We are only two or three months into this. Many things aren't going to be normal for some time. C'est la vie.

Logically, the alternate scenario would have looked like what other pandemics have looked like.

 

[INTJ]

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/our-four-largest-states-compare-and-contrast.php

 

[Brians356]

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/our-four-largest-states-compare-and-contrast.php

Slight humorous typo in that graphic: "Morality" -> "Mortality".
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[INTJ]

Slight humorous typo in that graphic: "Morality" -> "Mortality".
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Fits either way.......

 

[Brians356]

Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaks truth to so-called "journalists". Eight weeks prior some called DeSantis' reopening of FL an "experiment in human sacrifice", citing models predicting a "bloodbath".

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[Brians356]

Around the country, citizens are fighting back against extreme and likely illegal shutdown orders. An inspiring example comes from Minnesota, where today all of the state’s Catholic bishops signed a letter to their congregants saying that they will not obey Governor Walz’s current order. Walz modified his shutdown order again today, but it still prohibits churches from gathering in groups of more than ten. ... Two Twin Cities churches have sued Governor Walz, alleging that his shutdown order violates First Amendment freedom of religion. ... On another front, the owner of several restaurants and bars in central Minnesota whom I wrote about here will be in state court on Friday to contest the order of that court shutting down his Albany, Minnesota restaurant. Attorney General Keith Ellison obtained the order improperly by appearing ex parte before the court, something that is not permitted unless it is impossible to give notice to the opposing party, which was certainly not true here. ... In Ohio, a state court judge held today that Ohio’s Health Department’s shutdown order exceeded statutory authority. ... Last month Attorney General Bill Barr reminded mayors and governors that there is no “pandemic exception” to the U.S. Constitution. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a Kentucky lockdown biased against churches. And this week the head of Justice’s Civil Rights Division warned California Gov. Gavin Newsom that civil-rights protections forbid favoring secular over religious activities.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/the-pushback-continues.php
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[Adam in WI]

Liberty will prevail, folks.

 

[ronsatspokane]

Liberty will prevail, folks.

I like to think so but sometimes I wonder. Was talking to a sheriff the other day. They get calls all day long from people narcing on other people who are violating social distancing rules. This in an area that has not been hit by the pandemic. One wonders who these people are and how many of them there are. My guess is that there are a lot of people who view government as their mommy and daddy and will call mommy at the drop of a mask.

 

[Brians356]

John Hinderaker today writes (and I concur 100%):
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Robert Skidelsky, a member of Britain’s House of Lords and Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University, addresses this issue in an essay titled “The Unspoken Reason for Lockdowns.” The essay covers a lot of territory and is well worth reading in its entirety, but I want to focus on his conclusion:

Today, epidemiologists cannot tell us what the effects of the current COVID-19 policy mix will be. “We will know only in a year or so,” they say.

The outcome will therefore depend on politics. And the politics of COVID-19 are clear enough: governments could not risk the natural spread of infection, and thought it too complicated or politically fraught to try to isolate only those most at risk of severe illness or death, namely the 15-20% of the population aged over 65.

The default policy response has been to slow the spread of natural immunity until a vaccine can be developed. What “flattening the curve” really means is spacing out the number of expected deaths over a period long enough for medical facilities to cope and a vaccine to kick in.

But this strategy has a terrible weakness: governments cannot keep their populations locked down until a vaccine arrives. Apart from anything else, the economic cost would be unthinkable. So, they have to ease the lockdown gradually.

Doing this, however, lifts the cap on non-exposure gained from the lockdown. That is why no government has an explicit exit strategy: what political leaders call the “controlled easing” of lockdowns actually means controlled progress toward herd immunity.

Governments cannot openly avow this, because that would amount to admitting that herd immunity is the objective. And it is not yet even known whether and for how long infection confers immunity. Much better, then, to pursue this goal silently, under a cloud of obfuscation, and hope that a vaccine arrives before most of the population is infected.

Emphasis added. I think Skidelsky is right, and governments across the Western world are engaged in an elaborate charade in which the real strategy they are pursuing–if there is one–is never truthfully disclosed. Governors in the U.S. say they are lifting restrictions when it is “safe” to do so. But how is it safe? The virus hasn’t gone away, and it isn’t going to go away.

I would only add that if Skidelsky wants to see a real “cloud of obfuscation,” he should come to Minnesota and listen to Governor Tim Walz blather incoherently through his frequent press conferences.
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/shutdowns-whats-the-point.php
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[JimT]

Very interesting interview!! Wait till the end where he will mention his herd immunity website which will surely please most on this thread.

 

[SGK]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

 

[SGK]

But this strategy has a terrible weakness: governments cannot keep their populations locked down until a vaccine arrives. Apart from anything else, the economic cost would be unthinkable. So, they have to ease the lockdown gradually.

Doing this, however, lifts the cap on non-exposure gained from the lockdown. That is why no government has an explicit exit strategy: what political leaders call the “controlled easing” of lockdowns actually means controlled progress toward herd immunity.

Governments cannot openly avow this, because that would amount to admitting that herd immunity is the objective.

This has openly been the case. Most countries, New Zealand and a couple of Asian states being notable exceptions, abandoned complete suppression as a strategy almost immediately. They reacted too slowly for that to be a plausible strategy. It has since been a case of buying time to manage the path of the virus through the population while minimizing avoidable loss of life (which is not at all the same as none). Time to build hospital capacity, time to learn about the virus, time to get moving on vaccine development but, most importantly, to not completely overload healthcare infrastructure because when that happens you lose a lot of people that would otherwise be saved. Even the first Imperial College study recognized this. It recognized that strict social distancing until a vaccine was likely to be impossible to execute and expected it to be eased when hospital capacity could afford it. By most epidemiologist estimates we are very long way from 'herd immunity'. A recent study in hard hit NY state showed a mere circa 12% antibody rate. I think Toby is going to be just fine on his bet.