Category: Health Policy

Saturday Soother – March 21, 2020

The Daily Escape:

David Hockney (a new painting) — here’s a quote from Hockney: “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring 2020”.

Blog reader Fred VK emails:

“How do you know if you could be in a third world country? When you go see the Doctor, she greets you wearing a face mask that says ‘made by Mr. Coffee’”.

It is difficult for people to talk about anything else. COVID-19 is on the march, and America isn’t prepared for what’s coming. Worse, we’re unsure if this is a one-two month problem, or something that will last a year or longer. Most countries think that the virus will grow exponentially, and will kill many of their citizens. This leads nearly all governments to order many businesses to close. No one is traveling, except to their local stores. In Connecticut, no one is able to get a haircut for the duration.

But since Wall Street is still open, anyone who owns stocks has taken a huge haircut this week. Friday’s drop leaves Trump looking at a Dow average that’s 3% below what it was when he took office. He’s presided over the worst week in the stock market since 2008.

This market crash is due to investors trying to understand the extent of the damage to the US economy that’s being done by how we’re fighting COVID-19.

In order to save our society over the longer run, we’re actively putting ourselves into a very deep recession. That may mean that people will be out of work for a short, or a long time. If it’s a long fight, that may lead to a very dark economic time for all Americans.

A fundamental question is:

“What unpleasant decisions would our federal and state governments be willing to take to get us out of a deep recession, if the virus is still around a few months from now, and still killing a lot of people?”

Is restoring our economy, and putting Americans back to work worth a million lives lost? Is it worth 300,000?

Remember that before 9/11, no one thought we would surrender our freedoms for 3,000 deaths, but we did. No one thought we’d fight a nearly 20 year war that killed 6,789 and wounded 52,353 Americans, but we did.

Those wars have cost the American taxpayers $5.9 trillion since they began in 2001. We’ll easily spend $2 trillion between here and September to prop up the economy while fighting the Cornonavirus.

What kind of sacrifices will we be willing to make if the Coronavirus is still killing Americans on Election Day 2020? Which Party will be saying we should put people back to work?

It’s likely to be both Parties.

Dark, right? There are encouraging signs. Small acts of kindness in supermarkets, artists performing for free on the internet, people trying very hard to avoid making the elderly sick. These are all wonderful things, and we need much, much more of them.

Some say that it takes a common enemy like the Coronavirus to unite us. If we become united in the fight, and stay united once we’re victorious, that would be also be a wonderful thing.

So, let’s take a beat, and think hopeful thoughts about the arrival of spring. Here in northwest Connecticut, the peepers began singing a week ago, and the daffodils are blooming. The first dandelions are peeping through the grass, but we’re expecting snow on Monday. So winter isn’t over just yet.

Let’s try to soothe ourselves by listening to two pieces of spring music. First, “Spring Morning” by Frederick Delius, written around 1888. This is always a Wrongo favorite in spring:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Second, listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: “Spring” (La Primavera) in a complete version, performed live in February 2020 by Alana Youssefian and the Voices of Music. This isn’t a “Vivaldi as usual” performance. Wrongo had never heard of Youssefian, but listening to her and the Voices of Music’s original instruments is a treat.

Subtitles in the video are words by Antonio Vivaldi!

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Facebooklinkedinrss

We’re In Uncharted Territory

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Factory Butte, UT – photo by goat_chop56

Blog reader David K. emailed:

“Now, what do we common folk do?  Start our “victory gardens” and shelter in place?  Volunteer to help our local farmers raise food? Hoard?  Wish I had a great idea, because I agree that our leaders don’t have a clue how to respond.”

That gave Wrongo pause. What do those of us who aren’t part of the “smart money” crowd supposed to do, particularly if what we’re facing is a worldwide depression? John Pavlovitz frames the existential issues quite clearly:

What happens if the stores run out of essentials for good?
What if you run out of money to stockpile them?
What if your neighbors stop sharing with you?
What if the government won’t help you?
What might you do then?

Politicians say we’re at war, but as Kunstler says: “At least in wartime, the bars stay open. That’s how you know this is a different thing altogether from whatever else you’ve seen in your lifetime.”

We’re attacked by a novel virus that’s created a completely novel social and economic situation. By definition, we aren’t prepared for an abrupt crash of both our social fabric, and our economic well-being.

Our politicians have no answers, despite most of them having been around for the 2007-2008 Great Recession. The Fed hasn’t done us any favors since then, either.

Last Saturday, Wrongo said that we’re crossing a threshold between what we know and an unseen future. Our traditional systems are no longer capable of keeping society and the economy on an even keel. Nobody really knows how deep and how harsh this will get, but the situation presents two questions:

  • How much disorder will we have to endure?
  • What does the world look like when this thing is over?

All this is happening in an election year, when the entire government and the political parties’ power structures are vulnerable, and could change. We are facing a new reality, for which no one has any answers.

Politics being what it is, the White House and the Congress are trying to work together to come up with solutions. On Monday, Trump gave another press conference on COVID-19. During his talk, the stock market dropped nearly 3,000 points. It was the market’s worst day since Black Monday in 1987.

The smart money was behind Trump in order to get its corporate tax cuts, but now, they’ve voted with their money. And Trump’s starting to look a little bit like Herbert Hoover.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) floated Democrat Andrew Yang’s idea of giving every American $1,000. He was joined in principle by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK). We’ll see if this is just more Republican grandstanding, or if they actually back a real plan of support for working people.

With Trump, you can expect to see bailouts for several industries, including banks, airlines, casinos and cruise lines. Imagine: Casinos are asking for help from the guy who only knows how to bankrupt casinos.

Reuters reports that the US airline industry said that it needs $50 billion in grants and loans to survive the dramatic falloff in travel demand from the COVID-19 outbreak. This is just more socialism for America’s corporations.

Two thoughts: First, $50 billion is higher than the book value of all the airlines combined. Why should they have any of our money? Either Republicans are for free market capitalism, or they should just shut up. Most of these airlines have implemented stock buyback programs when they should have been building contingency funds instead.

Second, this $50 billion should be added to whatever Congress spends on small businesses that are forced to close due to quarantine, or on parents forced to stay home to take care of kids who aren’t going to school anymore. They’re the ones who are really hurting.

We’ve lived through a time of unprecedented affluence. We’ve told ourselves we deserved it all, that we were entitled to all that our country has provided.

But that’s most likely over, and it might not return in Wrongo’s lifetime.

We have to think about what must change if we are to have a functioning society and economy in the decades to come.

The list of all the things that we need to change is far too long to enumerate here. At a minimum, we need to reform capitalism, make health insurance universal and strengthen worker’s rights.

We have to do a better job of sharing the wealth. It we don’t do that voluntarily, our children’s children’s generation will come and fight us for what we have.

To protect our families and their future, we need to become even more active politically in order to make these and other changes happen.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Can the Economy Endure a Two-Month Shutdown?

The Daily Escape:

Cannon Beach, OR – 2020 photo by franks28

The short answer to the question above is no, not without outright financial support for individuals by the government. That support if it comes, is likely to be too little, too late.

But the Fed tried something. On Sunday, it announced that it slashed its federal funds rate by a full percentage point, to a target range between 0% and 0.25%. In addition, they launched a new Quantitative Easing program for another $700 billion.

Investors threw up all over the Fed’s Sunday moves, because we’re looking at a “demand shock”, the state-enforced loss of consumer sales,something that can’t be stimulated away. The S&P futures immediately plunged 5% to hit its downside limit. That made for an interesting Monday, with the Dow ending down nearly 3,000 points, or another 13%. In the past month, the market has lost nearly a third of its value.

All these efforts to provide stability actually showed the market that our leaders have no idea what they’re doing. It’s the exact opposite of inspiring confidence.

Did the Fed panic? Fed Chair Jay Powell lowered rates right after Trump said he had the authority to remove Powell. That makes it seem, true or not, like the Fed is now in Trump’s pocket. No confidence-builder there.

Looking through a wider lens, Mr. Market has decided that the Fed is pushing on a string. Rates were already so low that there was little gain from the interest rate reduction, and little else that the Fed could do. Mostly, the Fed signaled that it is very frightened about the prospect of a global recession.

In addition, the market understood that the stimulus bill working its way through the House and Senate is inadequate to the task ahead. For one thing, Pelosi’s bill promises paid sick leave, but as written it only covers about 20% of all workers.

Again through that wide-angle lens, the growing COVID-19 business lockdown strategy will have an economic impact similar to a natural disaster, like a hurricane, but played out over a longer time frame. FEMA has found that 40% of businesses close in a natural disaster. And of the businesses that reopen, only 29% survive the after the following two years.

Since our economy is 70% services, many industries facing the lockdown, like tourism, casinos, restaurants, and hotels, will soon be in meltdown mode. The Fed has no answer to a massive drop in consumer spending, only the president and Congress can solve that.

We know that 40% of Americans don’t have enough cash on hand or room on a credit card to handle a $400 emergency. Many service industry workers will be hit with either cutbacks in their hours, or outright job losses. Without financial assistance, we’ll quickly see defaults on rent or mortgages, and delinquencies on credit cards and car payments.

So the Fed creates some more money. But just like in 2008, rather than distributing it to every citizen, they’re giving it to the banks. Somehow, all that money is going to people who already have plenty, while those who need it get nada.

Why is the answer always to give more to the supposed “job creators” when we get basically nothing in return? Why not just send a check to the actual people who need it?

Finally, what will this interest rate cut do for the economy?

  • Are restaurants going to start hiring workers that can’t actually come to work just because loans are cheap?
  • Are workers not collecting a paycheck going to go out and buy a new car/TV/house because interest rates dropped a bit?
  • Are banks going to lend cheap money to airlines, restaurants, and cruise lines when we have no idea how long this will last?

Every company on the planet has simultaneously realized that it is in an existential cash-flow crisis due to COVID-19. The big and smart companies already have drawn down their unused loan facilities to ride through the slowdown.

The slower and the smaller firms are staring at an economic nuclear-winter scenario where their revenue plunges for months, and they can’t pay their staff, or make their fixed payments.

The speed and comprehensiveness of the lockdowns, and their drastic impact make what’s going to happen very clear. Our leaders are in a fog of denial. They don’t see that much of what was the traditional mode of operating our system is crumbling.

During the 2008 financial crisis, we learned that events can move too quickly for anyone to intervene and limit the damage. Our business environment’s drive for highly efficient systems, from just-in-time inventory sourcing to reducing the number of hospital beds per capita, have created fragile systems that are now being stress-tested.

We may be learning, to our collective detriment, that all of these systems along with our leaders, have failed us.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – March 16, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Blue Lakes Trailhead, near Telluride, CO – August 2018 photo by Will Colebank. See 360° view here.

Remember last Monday? Since then, we’ve had a week of body blows to both the national psyche, and the economy. Thank God that the market was closed last week. Oh, wait a minute…it was open.

Please, Trumpheads: Try not to kill us while attempting to govern! The administration is literally making a pandemic worse by once again not thinking through their policies. From the WaPo:

“Airports around the country were thrown into chaos Saturday night as workers scrambled to roll out the Trump administration’s hastily arranged health screenings for travelers returning from Europe.

Scores of anxious passengers…encountered jam-packed terminals, long lines and hours of delays as they waited to be questioned by health authorities at some of the busiest travel hubs in the US.”

Q: How do you spread a virus faster?
A. Pack a bunch of people into an airport virus screening line for six or seven hours.

This dog’s breakfast was caused by the administration’s “enhanced entry screenings”, one of Trump’s travel restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus within the US. Passengers on flights from more than two dozen countries in Europe were routed through 13 US airports, where workers checked their medical histories, and examined them for symptoms.

What could go wrong?

Is it a surprise that there was no advance staff coordination to assure that people could get through a crowd of suspected Coronavirus carriers reasonably quickly? It’s similar to Trump’s 2017 chaotic implementation of the Muslim travel ban that triggered confusion and protests when travelers were detained, or sent back with almost no warning from US airports.

In some airports, the immigration line for US citizens was longer than the one for non-citizens. How can intelligent people not think any of this through? It’s clear from the long lines that there was zero planning for this policy’s implementation.

Trump has failed AGAIN.

It’s likely this clusterfuck will speed disease transmission rather than not having a travel ban at all. This is another example of “we’ve gotta do something”, and they settle on an action that exacerbates the problem!

Second, what kind of crazy, messed-up world do we live in where the most reliable information about the coronavirus comes from anyone but the government? Where Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) tells everybody to go out to a restaurant, when the NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying just the opposite?

Or, take Republican candidate for the Nevada Clark County School District Board of Trustees, Katie Williams. Williams is a former Ms. Nevada who was recently stripped of her title for posting political content supporting Trump on social media. She also ventured into pandemic denial when she tweeted this reply to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

“This is America, and I’ll do what I want” = “I’m too selfish to do anything that doesn’t benefit me.” Paul Campos puts his finger on the problem of 21st Century peak Republican asshole:

“The COVID-19 crisis is a classic collective action problem. Stopping it from overwhelming the nation’s health care system so that it causes hundreds of thousands or even millions of preventable deaths requires people to act as if society actually exists, and to recognize that the fact that they themselves may face a relatively low mortality risk is irrelevant to the much higher risk faced by the tens of millions of their fellow Americans.”

Expecting Americans in general, and Republicans in particular, to voluntarily engage in the kind of behavior that’s important for the greater good is not only unrealistic, it’s foolhardy.

Back to Williams: Can you imagine Nevada parents wanting one of the most selfish people in America on their kids’ school board?

Time to wake up America! As John Pavlovitz says:

The bill for MAGA has come due, Trump supporters.

It’s time to pay up.

The deferred invoice for you selling your souls is here….

This President didn’t create this virus,
but he ignored it,
denied it,
minimized it,
joked about it,
weaponized it,
politicized it,
exacerbated it.

To help you wake up, listen to King Crimson’s “Epitaph”, from their 2018 live album, “Radical Action”. The vocalist is Jakko Jakszyk:

Sample Lyric:

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh
But I fear, tomorrow, I’ll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I’ll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I’ll be crying

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 15, 2020

This news should hit America like a hammer:

We started seeing Coronavirus on the same day, but we diverged almost immediately. One country effectively managed the crisis, the other not so much. The South China Morning Post reports:

“With about 8,000 confirmed cases and more than 65 deaths, it was until recently the country with the most confirmed cases outside China – but South Korea has since emerged as a source of inspiration and hope for authorities around the world as they scramble to fight the pandemic…..

By carrying out up to 15,000 tests per day, health officials have been able to screen some 250,000 people – about one in every 200 South Koreans – since January.”

In South Korea, they text the results to you on the next day, and it’s free. We may never see either of those things become a reality.

America has tested a total of about 4,900 people (we think), since authorities are unable (unwilling?) to confirm the exact number of tests that have been carried out.

Seoul’s handling of the outbreak emphasizes transparency, and relies heavily on public cooperation in place of hardline measures such as lockdowns. But America is exceptional, right? Trump said this a few days ago:

“So much progress has already been made, especially when you compare it with other places.”

Rather than follow the lead of our ally, South Korea, Trump seems to have picked the North Korean approach of downplaying and cover ups. What a genius. On to cartoons.

The world we’re living in:

A strategy that isn’t working for us:

The supposed best system is failing us:

Lyin King will close in November:

Empty suit equals empty shelves:

Our new world:

Harvey’s heading to his new pen:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday’s (No) Soother – March 14, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Pavlov and Pavlov’s sister, the Aleutians, AK – Pavlov is the most active volcano in the US. Hat tip: Ottho H.

We’re crossing a threshold between what we knew about public health, toward an unseen future. There’s no certainty about what that future will look like. As important as it is to remove Trump, his incompetence has made his removal our second national priority. He’s made beating the Coronavirus our number one priority.

This has a domino effect: We don’t just have a national health emergency, but soon, a recession. So many things cancelled. So much commerce deferred, and for how long? Think about how many working people are/will be out of work due to postponements and cancellations, due to small companies closing. Due to illness of family and deaths of loved ones.

Widespread illness is showing the cracks in our health care delivery system: In early January, America was among the best-prepared nations for an epidemic. Our large number of ICU beds, plus our stockpiles of drugs and medical equipment, made us the envy of many nations.

And we took an early lead: On January 6, the CDC issued a Level 1 travel watch for China. On January 7, the CDC established a 2019-nCoV Incident Management group. On January 8, the CDC began alerting clinicians to watch for patients with respiratory symptoms and a history of travel to Wuhan. On January 17, the CDC issued an updated interim Health Alert Notice (HAN) Advisory to inform state and local health departments and health care providers about this outbreak. We began screening passengers on flights from Wuhan to five major US airports.

On January 31, Trump announced blocking of entry of Chinese nationals and mandatory quarantines on US citizens who returned from affected parts of China.

Since then, we’ve had inaction and mistakes by the FDA and CDC, including screwing up the provision of desperately needed tests. Even now the CDC and FDA say there’s an inadequate supply of reagents used in the tests, a bottleneck that should have been dealt with in January.

Organizations require strong leadership. That allows established process and procedures to rule in an emergency. That’s why we need good elected leaders in charge of the experts. Today, it’s the other way around. This is inexcusable.

Here’s a thought about one of the detestable people who helped bring us to this new threshold between where we were, and where we’re going: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). In 2009, she singlehandedly removed $870 million in pandemic funding from the economic stimulus package:

From Grunwald’s tweet:

“Collins also deleted the pandemic flu preparations as a nonstarter”

Stop saying that Sen. Collins is a reasonable Republican. She’s proven time and again she’s not. It’s possible that there may not be any reasonable Republicans left. Please donate to Collins’s opponent, Democrat Sara Gideon.

Finally, haven’t we had enough of the lying and purposeful misinformation spewed by Trump? Eric Boehlert has a great idea: The media and the rest of us should stop listening to Trump:

“The President of the United States is actively endangering the American public, and at what point does the press decide that dutifully broadcasting Trump’s misinformation is not in the nation’s best interest. At what point does the press unplug Trump for the good of the country?”

His forum should be restricted to only FOX news. There is no reason to have presidential debates, since no fact-checking organization, much less any citizen, can keep up with Trump’s lies and misstatements. Sure, the GOP will complain that Biden (or Sanders) are chickens, that they’re too old to match wits with Trump. But the truth is, Trump should be denied a forum when and wherever possible.

He hasn’t earned being normalized by the rest of us. And don’t say we should respect the office – he doesn’t.

We need only one point to prove this: Trump did not push to do aggressive Coronavirus testing because more testing might have led to more Coronavirus cases being discovered. Trump made it clear the lower the numbers on Coronavirus, the better for him and his re-election this fall.

That disqualifies him.

Here’s a little tune to help you through the weekend. It’s “Enjoy Yourself (it’s later than you think)” by Jools Holland, The Specials, Hozier, Rhiannon Giddens and others performed in 2015:

And it IS later than you think! Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Facebooklinkedinrss

The Health Crisis Now Coincides With a Financial Crisis

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, St. Augustine Beach, FL – March 2020 photo by Carl Gill

The WaPo reported that a Coronavirus-sparked oil war sent crude prices down on Sunday by 32.3%. That triggered a forced temporary halt of stock trading on Monday, when the S&P 500 index sank 7% shortly after the market’s opening.

This occurred on the 11thanniversary of the current bull market. But, as Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, wrote:

“The uncertain economic impact of coronavirus continues to grip markets, with stocks, commodities and interest rates all dropping sharply. Markets hate uncertainty and there is a ton of it currently in play.”

There is no question that there will be more angry Americans now that a health crisis coincides with a financial crisis. Who they focus their anger on remains to be seen. Trump took credit for each rise in the stock market, so will he take ownership now that it’s tanking?

He’s not a broadly popular president, and this will make him less popular, so fewer people will believe him when he tries to lay the blame on others.

The oil price plunge was triggered when Russia announced on Friday that it would no longer stay within the OPEC+ quotas after April 1st. Saudi Arabia then said it would slash prices for its customers in April. In addition, they hinted at increasing production from the current level of 9.7 million barrels per day to 10 million barrels per day.

This is the start of an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia over market share. But the real target for both may just be the US shale oil sector. US banks and other investors have been fueling the shale oil sector’s growth with hundreds of billions of dollars of loans over the years. And the shale oil producers keep ramping up production, despite it being largely unprofitable. They continue to burn through cash.

Brian Sullivan at CNBC warns us: The US oil industry valued its oil reserves, as collateral for its loans, at $60 a barrel. Today’s price is now about $30/barrel.

By sending some of these shale-oil companies into bankruptcy, Saudi Arabia and Russia are hoping that new money will refuse to support the US shale oil sector. Then production in the US will decline and take some oversupply out of the oil market.

Their timing is impeccable. Oil demand is down due in part to the Coronavirus. Chinese manufacturers are producing less and airlines in particular have less need for jet fuel. If OPEC and Russia increase production, and assuming US production still increases while demand globally is in steep decline, then global markets will be awash in oil.

And what does an oil glut do for Iran, already fighting a severe Coronavirus outbreak, and needing higher oil prices for their own economy?

But no worries! We can count on the competent leadership in the White House. And if that doesn’t make you comfortable, you might ask yourself, “Is this 1929 all over again?”

Maybe not, but if it is, who will be our FDR? In the 1930s and 1940s, FDR spent money on America’s democratic infrastructure. That money gave jobs to people. He created a social safety net, and allowed industry to again flourish.

But in the past 30 years, all the money has gone to our industrial infrastructure and to the rich, through tax cuts and subsidies. The easy money party has helped to pump up both stock prices and asset prices, giving us an ever-growing income and wealth gap.

What happens to the health of the people and to the health of economy between now and November is going to be a huge political concern. There’s always a tension between the best health policy, and the best economic policy.

Trump wants economic policy to win out, but the primary beneficiary of that is industry and the rich.

We should remember that when leaders are seen to be incompetent and/or ARE truly incompetent, they try to divert the voters’ attention. What Trump attempts to do in order to divert our attention, is worthy of discussion.

As of today, the fuse is lit. It’s an election year, and we know that Trump won’t go away quietly.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Trump’s Coronavirus Disinformation Campaign

The Daily Escape:

Mount St. Helen’s WA – July 2019 photo by NathanielMerz

The Coronavirus global tally as of Saturday March 7th is 105,612 cases with 3,562 deaths. Yesterday was the first day where we saw over 3,000 new cases in a single day since there was routine reporting of those levels in China a week or so ago.

That means the focus of new infections has shifted from China to the west. Wrongo saw a meme comparing flu deaths to Coronavirus deaths, saying that “54,000 people die from the flu each year and no one bats an eye, but people are freaking out over 3,500 coronavirus deaths”.

This is disinformation of the worst kind.

We’ve written about the differences between the flu and the Coronavirus: Coronavirus is at least 20 times as deadly as the flu, and is currently trending at 35 times as deadly. It is more contagious. This means that for 54k people to die from flu, 54 million people have to get the flu. But, for 54k people to die from Coronavirus, only between 1.8 million and 2.7 million people have to get sick.

This kind of disinformation is also spewing from the president. He has repeatedly downplayed concerns about Coronavirus. Just this week he:

  • Said he wanted to keep sick people on a cruise ship to fudge the numbers
  • Called the governor of Washington state, who has the most cases, “a snake”
  • Was preoccupied with his ratings on Fox
  • Said anyone can get tested, when they can’t

Meanwhile, the number of US cases have gone from 5 to 260 since he claimed it was all a hoax.

America can’t seem to get sufficient numbers of tests in the hands of health professionals. Connecticut, for example, has one examination kit that allows only 600 tests to be conducted. Do Trump & Pence realize that when you test fewer people, you do keep your number of confirmed cases low, but your death rate percentage is going to be higher?

The disinformation is reflected in polling. Reuters reports:

“Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week. And more Democrats than Republicans say they are taking steps to be prepared, including washing their hands more often or limiting their travel plans. Poll respondents who described themselves as Republicans and did not see the coronavirus as a threat said it still felt remote because cases had not been detected close to home and their friends and neighbors did not seem to be worried, either.”

Overall, about four of every 10 Democrats said they thought the new Coronavirus poses an imminent threat, compared to about two of every 10 Republicans. This is looking like a battle between the scientists working on the Coronavirus, and the political complacency of the right, who say that the virus is no big deal.

But this is a binary situation: One side or the other will turn out to be correct. The complacents assume that the number of cases will remain small (in the hundreds), so the number of deaths will also remain small. From Charles Hugh Smith:

“Given the scientific evidence that Covid-19 is highly contagious, let’s do a Pareto Distribution (80/20 rule) projection and estimate that 20% of the US population gets Covid-19. That’s 66 million people….higher than the 54 million who catch a flu virus in a “bad flu” season.”

Smith’s analysis paints a daunting picture: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Using the lower CFR (case-fatality rate) rate, 2% of 66 million is 1.3 million, so if Covid-19 infects only 20% of the US populace, current data suggests 1.3 million people will die.”

That should be a reason for panic.

Some final points: If even just 5% of all cases required hospitalization/intensive care, that would equal about 3.3 million people. Thus, America will quickly run out of hospital intensive care bed capacity. Smith says that there are just 94,000 intensive care beds in the US. Once the number of patients needing hospitalization exceeds the number of ICU beds, the death rate can grow dramatically.

And today, using disinformation, the Trump administration is trying to deflect and minimize what the scientists are saying. Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus in America is dangerous, and needs to be stopped.

A final word from Brian Schatz, Senator from Hawaii, on Trump:

“Today is a three dimensional demonstration of the consequences of electing someone like this. He’s not lying about his wealth. He’s not lying about his polling. He’s not lying about his opponent or his ratings. He’s lying about a pandemic and the government response.”

If in another 2-3 months, the hospitals are overflowing and surrounded by armed guards to keep the uninsured out of the building, we’ll be riding in a shit storm of Trump’s incompetence.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Is America Prepared For the Coronavirus?

The Daily Escape:

Coronavirus or not, it’s always business as usual – credit: Dave Note

The photo demonstrates why the coronavirus won’t be contained. 21st century humans will do what they want, when they want, and how they want. They’ll trust that their government will sort out the consequences.

We need to take a hard look at resilience, which is defined as the ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune. We talk about it for individuals, markets, governments, and society. In truth, it applies to every system on earth.

We had our first wake-up call about American resilience with 9/11, followed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. We watched the news, and saw that America was unable to snap back quickly, that we were powerless in the face of incomprehensible disaster.

There are still scars in New Orleans 15 years later.

We have ignored that the Covid-19 virus is at least as infectious, and possibly more than, the normal flu virus we see every year. But the mortality rate of Covid-19 is about 2%, or about 20 times as deadly as the normal flu, which has a mortality rate of around .1%.

Thus far in 2020, 19 million cases have been reported to the CDC, with 10,000 deaths and 180,000 hospitalized. Multiply 10,000 by 20, and that’s 200,000 deaths in the US, and following the flu model, perhaps 3,600,000 incremental hospitalizations.

We need to think about our resiliency. According to the American Hospital Association, there are 924,107 staffed beds in hospitals, down about 53,000 beds since 2000. Of the 2020 total, 792,417 are in community hospitals. The national occupancy rate for all of those beds is about 65%, based on the latest figures from 2017, so perhaps we have sufficient beds, assuming all hospital beds are equally capable.

Logistics will drive our resilience response. There is much to learn from the Chinese response. Wuhan didn’t have enough beds when the Covid-19 virus struck, and built two new hospitals in an attempt to have a place for all victims who needed to be in a hospital setting. They quickly had shortages of sterile gowns, masks and gloves. Then they had a shortage of health care professionals, and moved some professionals to Wuhan to deal with the explosion of cases.

They quarantined cities, something that we can’t do effectively without declaring martial law.

But, it gets more difficult. Covid-19 is a severe respiratory illness. Victims need the kinds of breathing therapies equipment that are usually in limited supply in each hospital. The NHS in England only has 15 available beds to treat the most severe respiratory failure in the entire country. They say they will struggle to cope if there are more than 28 patients who need them.

Testing is an issue, because without tests, we can’t be sure that the patient has the virus, and test kits are in very short supply. Iran reported on the BBC that it had just 14 test kits in the country at the time of the outbreak.

Live Science reports that in early February, the CDC sent testing kits to labs across the US, but a glitch in the kits made them unusable. Now, just five state health departments: California, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada and Tennessee, as well as the CDC, have the ability to test for the virus. As of Feb. 26, just 445 people have been tested in the US, not including the travelers who returned on evacuation flights. In contrast, the WaPo reported that as of Feb. 25th, South Korea had tested more than 35,000 people for the virus.

How will America scale up?

We need tests that work, equipment to treat respiratory failure, hospital beds, sterile gowns and gloves, along with trained healthcare professionals. Where will they come from? These are the questions the media and politicians should be asking Mike Pence, the new Covid-19 Czar.

Don’t count on answers. The administration has already told the federal government that all communication to reporters and others, is to go through Pence. That’s even more dangerous, because there is no one who will tell Trump or Pence anything they don’t want to hear. And Pence is muzzling the scientists who really know what’s going on.

The economic consequences are even greater than the blood-letting in the stock market this week would lead you to believe. The health consequences are enormous.

What about the political consequences? We’re in the middle of a presidential election, so we’re bound to hear the right and left version of this story. Wrongo doesn’t want Democrats to try and exploit the government’s less-than-adequate efforts to contain the virus.

They should be rational. They should invite scientists to testify to break through the administration’s spin. They should pass a supplemental spending bill aimed at containing the crisis based on the scientists’ advice.

This is a time for good policy that will turn out to be good politics.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Coronavirus in China Is Spreading Fast

The Daily Escape:

Sparhawk Mill, Yarmouth ME – photo by Benjamin Williamson

Should we be concerned about the new Chinese coronavirus? Given developments in the past few days, we need to focus on it. The CDC announced on Monday that a total of 110 people in 26 US states are under investigation for possible infection with it. But officials continue to believe the immediate health risk to the US public remains very low.

OTOH, the increasingly stringent measures taken in China to contain it sure make it look like Chinese officials are at least worried, if not yet panicked.

China is suffering from shortages of test kits and personnel to confirm that suspected cases are indeed the coronavirus. We know there are no special anti-viral medications that work, people can only rely on their own immunity.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has increased its estimate of global risk of the coronavirus from moderate to high. It’s now clear that this coronavirus is very contagious. The estimates of the reproduction rate (number of new infections caused by someone with the disease) is between 2.6 and 2.9. If that is true, the reproduction rate would be higher than for the 1917 Spanish flu, but lower than for measles, which is between 12 & 15. The reason is that it’s a large pathogen. From Foreign Policy:

“The coronavirus is a physically large virus—in relative terms…too big to survive or stay suspended in the air for hours or travel more than a few feet.”

So far, this coronavirus has a mortality rate of 2.2%: The latest data is 4524 confirmed cases, with 106 deaths. This observed level isn’t good, but it’s far lower than for SARS (9.6%), and is similar to the Spanish flu, which was 2.5%.

These are the reasons for the current freakout. Governments have started evacuating staff from Wuhan. CNN reports that:

“About 240 Americans being evacuated from Wuhan Wednesday morning local time…arriving in Ontario, California. About three dozen Wuhan-based US diplomats and their families are also expected to be on board…”

CNN mentions that Australia, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea and the UK are also evacuating their government employees and families.

Won’t evacuations just be another way to spread the disease unless the evacuees are quarantined for the 14 day incubation period? So many practical questions.

It’s a little early to speculate, but the impacts can go well beyond just public health. We’ve already seen a one-day negative impact on Mr. Market, who momentarily panicked.

A pandemic would severely affect Chinese economic output. With public transportation halted, commerce grinds to a stop as people avoid public places and thousands of employees can no longer go to work. Who pays their wages while the city is locked down?

We know cities can’t truly be isolated for longer than a few days. And we know people can’t live without food, water, fuel, etc. and money to buy these essentials.

The realities leave officials with an impossible choice: Either truly isolate the city (which isn’t possible) for more than a few days, or allow the flow of goods required to sustain millions of city residents. The second option creates uncontrollable vectors for the virus to spread beyond the city as transport workers and those fleeing the lockdown illegally, move on to other cities.

How would America cope with this virus if it gained a foothold here?

We had that experience 100 years ago. One of Wrongo’s grandfathers died in the 1918 flu pandemic. Of the estimated 500 million people in the developed world to be infected, the recorded mortality rate was 50 million, with about 675,000 occurring in the US. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of the 1918 pandemic.

Today, our elites would retreat to their country homes while demanding that their companies stay open. We’ve seen panic buying in Manhattan before blizzards that would only affect the city for two days. Logistics being what they are, local distribution centers absolutely do not have enough food to last through a prolonged shutdown. And Amazon won’t be delivering you toilet paper.

In times like these, it’s useful to remember that there is a never-ending attack being waged by the forces of privatization to take over America’s public health system, turning it into another monopoly profit center.

So far, we’ve held this effort at bay, but the lobbyists and the monied class keep working to convince Washington that this government system represents “waste, fraud and abuse”. The fight goes on.

Sadly, our leaders are immune to the coronavirus infections, because it is transmitted through the head (eyes, nose and mouth), and they generally have their heads up their asses.

Facebooklinkedinrss