This evening ( Mar 18) news reports China had ( discovered) only 13 new cases today.
Starbucks has opened 90% of its stores in China.
Maybe those with tours to Europe scheduled for August or later have reason to be, at least a little bit, optimistic. ( assuming the stock market has not wiped out your travel fund)
"6 Ft and wash your hands"
That is certainly a potential improvement. May have to get through our current wave.
Yes, let's hope we are able to flatten the curve.
It's a very optimistic view of the US's anticipated progression of the virus. According to experts that I just heard, we could anticipate that kind of curve flattening and decrease in new cases IF (and that's a big if) we also followed China's model in treating the virus, which to my knowledge we aren't anywhere near doing here in the US. That would involve massive testing, segregating into quarantine centers those who test positive but not needing hospitalization rather than volunteer home self quarantine, designating some hospitals as virus only treatment centers and some hospitals taking over the treatment of those with other ailments to reduce the spread of the virus by health workers. As far as I know we are doing none of these things and they may just be what's needed to bring us through this sooner and with fewer deaths. Just look at what's happening in Italy because they are doing the 'self quarantine, close businesses, and no large gatherings' model rather than the more extreme China model and it seems to be progressing worse there than in China. I know this sounds more pessimistic than I would like but I think it's way to early to be truly optimistic.
China has political and economic levers under its disposal that can't be easily replicated here. Plus, it took them about 2 months to get to where they are. We haven't even tested large numbers of people, and we don't know how long it will take different European countries to bend their curves.
It’s the 19th now in China and I thought I heard they had no new cases today.
Diane, I heard that too. That's when I also heard the expert speaking about the China model for combating the virus and it may be working.
Agnes, I fully realize that we are in a different situation than China regarding what our government does and does not have control over because of our free democracy. That's one reason why I don't think we'll come close to being able to combat this pandemic as quickly as it appears that China has.
Heard this on the news on the way to work this morning and sadly, confirmed it with a google search, some people aren't getting it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/19/coronavirus-spring-break-party/
No way to verify what China says
And no way to make independent-minded Americans stay home. Look at the spring-breakers on east coast beaches.
Beaches in my county are closed as of today. But that action raises some legal questions. In Florida, local counties have legal control of “dry sand” and the state owns “wet sand and water”. The governor has not yet shut down the beaches.
"Yes, let's hope we are able to flatten the curve."
American businesses are starting to freak out about the effects of this policy on the economy (as well as a certain somebody who's worried he's going to go down in history as the next Hoover). Someone on CNBC was ranting this morning that we need to basically quarantine anyone over the age of 70 and let everyone else go back to work.
Sadly, I don't think we're going to flatten anything here in the US of A.
-- Mike Beebe
(To Mike Bebee) It is the proposed British way - under the strains of the infection, Boris Johnson was able to sustain it for about two days. It does not work because the virus kills mainly older people and people with pre-existing conditions, but it may kill also fit and young people - the so called "patient 1" that propagated the virus in Codogno originating the main Lombardy infection, is a fit 38-years old that spent several weeks in intensive care, his life is no more in danger but it will take a long time to recover anyway.
It may be that Italy already experienced such a thing. Somebody thinks that the virus is so strong in Bergamo and Brescia - you will have seen military trucks bringing coffins to Modena as the Bergamo crematory is overwhelmed - because those are strong industrial areas and there were pressures not to close factories and businesses. Now most of them are closed anyway as people refuse to work.
We cannot tell for sure, but the best way out for business is cleaning out the virus as soon as possible - some business will be lost but that is inevitable. Delaying the question brings more deaths and even less business.
With:
50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic (repubblica.it)
If we can't track who had it where and we don't test everybody symptoms or not, doesn't seem like we're going to flatten the curve (much) wo drastic quarantine/lockdown that I don't see us doing.
"We cannot tell for sure, but the best way out for business is cleaning out the virus as soon as possible - some business will be lost but that is inevitable. Delaying the question brings more deaths and even less business."
I don't mean to sound dire on this, but most people don't understand how worrying things were for the American economy a few months before this virus hit. Back in September, an esoteric part of the underlying economic system called the repo market started to freeze up. This piece of the economy is so critical that the US Federal Reserve began throwing billions to stabilize it, then trillions. While this injection of cash unfroze the repo market, it did nothing to address the underlying fundamental issue which is the accumulation of mountains of incredibly risky debt at all levels of the economy: trillions and trillions of dollars of this stuff, the end result of ill-conceived monetary policies that began back after the financial crisis of '08. These "easy money" policies encouraged a massive wave of borrowing at the corporate and consumer level and rewarded risk over safety. More and more, and riskier and riskier, debt began to pile up and it was only a matter of time before the bill for this irresponsible behavior came due and due hard.
The Corona virus appears to be that bill.
The reason you're seeing Trump on the TV almost daily has nothing to do with calming you and everything to do with calming the markets. Huge hunks of supporting economic infrastructure are decaying and decaying rapidly. The Fed and Congress will throw trillions at this problem, but they are already behind the curve. The unemployment numbers will be unthinkable, so bad that last night Trump told the states not to release them. The longer this work stoppage goes on, the worse the debt defaults will be. Simply put, we are looking at a perfect economic storm, the likes of which make '08, '01 and '87 look laughably trivial. The nightmare that almost came true in '08 when Lehman went under and AIG was teetering is now multiplied by a thousand-fold and the risk is global. The best-case scenario at this point is probably a "mere" depression. The thought of a "V-shaped" recession went out the window when the lockdowns began.
The worst case is that there's a systemic default in the banking system, and I'm specially thinking of Deutche Bank 'tho the risk exists to a lesser extend in other banks. DB was in deep trouble before this all began. They're carrying astronomical amounts of bad debt and are party to a complex hellbrew of financial obligations, the worst of which is derivative counter-party risk agreements. In short, they're on the hook for ~$47 trillion in payments should certain unthinkable financial conditions arise. Those conditions, once the stuff of survivalist blogs and websites hawking gold, are coming true and coming true fast. Should DB fail to pay one of these, that's game over for the entire global banking system. Every major bank on the planet would find itself holding trillions upon trillions of dollars, yen, yuan and euros worth of debt that was absolutely irredeemable. The entire system would lock up. What would happen after that? No one knows, because nothing in the entire history of capitalism comes close to this level of collapse. No word exists in the economic lexicon to describe what you'd call this catastrophe.
Can this be avoided? The ECB, Fed and BoJ, along with the Chinese, are making massive pumps of liquidity to keep it from happening. They very well may yet hold the line. The cost of this intervention is a massive increase in the sovereign debt these nations are holding. Perhaps it's worth the price.
In short, the virus concerns me.
The fallout terrifies me.
This is only just beginning.
-- Mike Beebe
"This is only the beginning"
Yep.
This is a follow-up from MIT to the Imperial College report that caused U-turn in virus policy of the UK and US.
They advocate (best case) a cycling lockdown where you use new cases in ICU/Emergency (>100/week for example) then the surrounding County goes into lockdown and doesn't come out until < 50 new/week. (Don't get hung up on the numbers)
They show that you'd have to keep doing this over and over while driving the virus out. They estimate about 2 months locked down for every one month free. And of course, copious testing supplies. I should mention that "driving the virus out" has this strategy until vaccine(s) are developed. After that would depend.
This is their estimate for best case and it goes on for another 18 months (approx). Which includes finally getting a vaccine.
Personally, I don't think we can implement those kind of controls here until a lot more people die.
And by then it may spread so far that they won't work. :(
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-months/
We’re not going back to normal
Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever.
