All we do know is that under the lockdown 50% unemployment in Los Angeles is a reality right now, and likely will spread across the country. Twice the peak of the great depression. The worst economic crash in the history of the United States, and not just a teensy bit worse, twice as bad or more.
Yes that is a bleak reality. It will change the future.
I second what GTOO concluded what will happen. But not his optimistic view of job-creation.
Most countries in Europe has a social safety net in the form of government payment if you loose your job related to the income what your job yielded (with a maximum). Or even if you had no job your can get a basis payment to survive. Both have the security that they stay health insured. I know that in the end all who keep there job or pension will have to pay for this kind of solidarity by rising taxes. I am ok with that.
You see USA react in a similar way but very ad hoc by sending checks to those who need it. (Augustus calls that helicopter-money) Perhaps this is the moment that the USA can create more social solidarity and less difference in income in its population. Obamacare, as I understood it, was also a step towards medical insurance for all.
According to the survey, 61% of LA county was employed in mid March ... I'd be curious who they consider workers as I have a very hard time imagining LA county had ~40% unemployment prior to this pandemic.
40% not employed under normal times sounds reasonable. That would have to include children, retirees, and stay-at-home moms.
But yes, like you said, not sure where they would count business owners and independent contractors.
Restaurants and roads opening for non goods carriers in Kerala while government apparatus to be function from tomorrow in Assam. The first cases were imported directly from Wuhan to Kerala in students. District borders still cordoned for civilian transport. 3.9 million train tickets for the day after the lockdown were cancelled earlier. Center warns against states tweaking lockdown guidelines. Minimum spending limit on purchases to ensure people don't leave home and crowd for frivolous purchases. Districts with less than 15 cases return to normalcy wrt construction, opening of stalls and shops etc. There've been unfortunate instances of attacks on ambulances carrying patients. HCQ made available in containment zones. 1 case for every 100000. Kitchens firing on full flame. ISKCON alone had served 12 million plates of hot food by the end of the first lockdown until 15th April. Their philosophy resonates with me so I know only their numbers but there're other philosophies who've temple kitchens like Sikhs who do as much in non calamitous times so...
Today was a second peak in my city although below 500 new cases.
Last edited by fiby41 on Mon Apr 20, 2020 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Covid in Austria.
Yesterday April 19, I had a walk and talk of about 1,5 hour with an (ex) covid patient of 40+, mother of two young teenagers and a husband which was the first infected in this family. Since April 4 she is allowed out of house because the sickness abated after 4 weeks. Before she had no health complaint, and was fit.
We start climbing a little hill, she is panting and has once a dry cough. I ask her if we are going too fast, but after a short stop she wants to continue, her condition is still (after 6 weeks since the start of the infection) rather poor she says.
She tells me how ill she felt and how weak she was, almost unable to climb the stairs to their bedroom on the first floor. And one night taking a breath was so difficult she felt she was suffocating, so the ambulance was called and she was transported (in sitting position) to a regional hospital at about 40 km.
When they arrived at the hospital she had to stay in the ambulance, a physician came and examined her in the ambulance and concluded that it was not necessary to hospitalize her.
So that night she was driven home again.
She is worried if she will have an impaired lung-function for ever or for a long time.
Her husband did not suffer that much and did the cooking, the children hardly noticed they were ill, neighbors brought shoppings to her front door. During her sickness she managed to oversee the homeschooling of the two children and she was also able to keep her two parttime jobs (educating via internet) more or less going.
Now allowed to go outside she is doing the shopping for the family and for her parents which live nearby.
Peculiar is that the local police came every day! to check if they all stayed at home.
I think 60,000* by next Monday and 100,000 by the end of May (assuming lockdown continues) are high estimates (not unrealistic, just upper end of realistic). The major hotspots in the U.S. look like they've already peaked or are peaking now. Are you seeing something I'm not @GTOO?
Going from 40,661 deaths to 60,000 deaths in 8 days when the weekly death rate is 18,500 is easy math. Looking at individual states, most death rates are still increasing. Very few states are actually on a successful trajectory (of the states with more than 1,000 deaths, only New York has peaked and the current rate is only ~10% below the peak). Looking at new case rates, many states have peaked, but they're mostly going sideways, so the death rate is going to follow a similar trajectory of going sideways. Cross-referencing to European nations, you'll notice that death rate declines are very slow, something like 2.5-3 weeks to cut death rates in half. 3 weeks at an average of 13,000 deaths per week takes you from 60,000 deaths to 99,000 deaths and the date would still be a week before the end of May, so plenty of slack to reach 100,000 deaths by the end of May.
My GF's temporary contract got canceled two weeks early. Now she's eligible for $600 week + normal unemployment through July or something crazy like that. Normally she wouldn't have even qualified for unemployment. I'd like to get a taste of that type of deal myself!
Gotta admit, this is the kind of thing that makes me a bit furious... not with you or your girlfriend... but with the entire program.
I've got a relative who is in the same boat as 7W. While she is somewhat vulnerable, he is extremely so (diabetes, obese +++) but has an essential job so he has no choice but to continue working or lose the position he's held for twentysome years. Meanwhile we are paying full salary UI to twentysomething bartenders who have virtually zero risk from the virus and would be working if we did a Sweden.
I went grocery shopping to three stores the other day, a Mexican grocer, a Middle-Easter produce shop and an Asian market. All were full of seniors. WTF. Young non-vulnerable people are sheltering in place and ordering groceries online. Old people are doing their regular daily grocery runs, continuing their tradition of buying items for the next meal. This is insane.
RE: Buying time. The medications I linked to more than a month ago are still the recommended treatments. Nothing new on that front other than heparin for the lung clots which is the regular treatment for such things. Ventilators are no longer the bottleneck. The Seabee Admiral I linked to a few weeks ago had additional hospitals built within a week or so in the places that needed them. So, that bought time was incredibly costly and didn't really buy us much of anything.
The question is still, when are we not buying something of value with the lockdown? How much is 1 more is month of preparation actually going to help us, versus the damage we incur for each month of lock down.
Some of that depends on the industries affected, right? For instance, meat & dairy & toilet paper industries have discovered that they weren't designed to switch from wholesale to retail production and that is a liability for their businesses. Service industries need to assure their customers the service personnel aren't spreading the virus to customers or else they won't have customers (how long until you go for a haircut? I'm about to let my wife make an attempt to cut mine).
Meat industry has the problem that retail buys hamburger whereas wholesale buys the steaks & ribs for restaurants, so they now must figure out alternate ways to get steak & ribs to consumers. Meanwhile restaurants that buy steaks & ribs wholesale need to figure out how to get them to consumers without consumers having an on-premises indoor meal.
IMO, it's hard to make the case that major shutdowns weren't an overreaction (except major hotspots). What's confusing to me is how to explain the trajectory of Italy, Spain and NY vs. Sweden? It's like a different disease.
How early a nation/state reacts to the virus, even by one day, has a major impact on the outcome. Italy, Spain, & NY were late reacting, easily a month or more late.
USC-LA County Study: Early Results of Antibody Testing Suggest Number of COVID-19 Infections Far Exceeds Number of Confirmed Cases in Los Angeles County
Los Angeles (April 20, 2020) - USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) today released preliminary results from a collaborative scientific study that suggests infections from the new coronavirus are far more widespread - and the fatality rate much lower - in L.A. County than previously thought.
The results are from the first round of an ongoing study by USC researchers and Public Health officials. They will be conducting antibody testing over time on a series of representative samples of adults to determine the scope and spread of the pandemic across the county.
Based on results of the first round of testing, the research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the county's adult population has antibody to the virus. Adjusting this estimate for statistical margin of error implies about 2.8% to 5.6% of the county's adult population has antibody to the virus- which translates to approximately 221,000 to 442,000 adults in the county who have had the infection. That estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the county by the time of the study in early April.
-and-
The estimates also suggest that we might have to recalibrate disease prediction models and rethink public health strategies.
Absolutely. And higher comorbidities than the average. Goes to show that those who said this is just like the flu for young people were not too far off.
1456 sailors on the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle tested positive out of a total of 1760 sailors aboard. Between 20-30 have been hospitalized and none have died. The crew had no outside contact since they left Brest on March 16th.
How long until they announce that the supply of tests has been exhausted? I find it hard to see how this is going to work otherwise.
At the time I assumed the administration would never in a million years be willing to lockdown the economy and I figured if they had accurate testing data they would be compelled to do so - so, I figured, they would have to somehow manufacture a testing debacle. I was wrong. The administration was willing to lockdown. Yet the testing debacle continues.
Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO, lays out with typically Swedish bluntness why he thinks:
UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
The paper was very much too pessimistic
Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
The results will eventually be similar for all countries
Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people. The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available
The prison population has a different age distribution.
So does "The Diamond Princess" and probably that area in Italy, yet both were repeatedly quoted here as the golden source to calculate the death rate. Inmates are also 90% males and being male is one of the biggest risk factors, which should at least partially balance out younger average age.
