I'm honestly more worried about the economic toll than I am the health impacts.
So many people are going to lose their jobs, their homes, and their healthcare, if everyone continues to cancel all travel and entertainment. These economic events have real impacts on families for a generation. And service workers will be the hardest hit.
The median age of fatal infections is 75. And yet we have healthy 25 year olds holed up in their apartments, hitting local economies hard. It's nonsensical. Most people should be behaving normally with some added protections (like washing their hands), and those who are at high-risk should be protected.
1. Young people interact with older people and those with pre existing conditions, and can pass on the disease.
2. More importantly, an unique characteristic of this disease is that although mortality rates for the young are low, hospitalization rates appear to be high, which poses a severe threat of overwhelming hospital systems. The disaster in Wuhan was at least in part due to that and unless precautions are taken, Seattle could be heading that way soon.
15% of all confirmed cases in China were serious at some stage and require some kind of oxygen assistance. This is the one number we need to focus our minds on. Death rate is entirely dependent on the availability of resources. If we don't slow down the spread we will face disastrous consequences.
There are thousands in Wuhan who have been on life support for weeks if not months. Even if they do survive they will face diminished lives and this is with China sending all available resources (doctors, nurses, ventilators) of the nation there. Death rate itself is worthless to argue over unless one names the context: sporadic outbreaks here and there or tidal waves?
This! Think of the people you can spread it to unknowingly. This is why I am a young person holed up in their apartment, and starting to work from home until this thing tapers off.
As of today in King County, people are already being directed to ICUs in other counties south of it [1]. It does not help that the first major outbreak is in a long-term care facility filled with elderly and vulnerable people.
> The disaster in Wuhan was at least in part due to that and unless precautions are taken, Seattle could be heading that way soon.
This is almost happening right now in the Northern Italian region of Lombardy, hence today's mentions by some of the authorities of instituting a red-zone for the region itself (or parts of if, nothing is certain for now). [1] (in Italian)
This seems more of a policy issue than an economic issue. In Europe you'll have healthcare and you will keep getting paid when you're in isolation. Kenia or Peru mit lack the budget to do that for their population, the U.S. does not have that problem.
It's a choice to value the economic value a person brings over their life, heath and wellbeing and I find it really odd to read a comment such as yours.
This doesn't need to hit families and definitely not for generations. It's your national choice, by how you vote and what policies you do and do not accept, that a few weeks out of work means you lose the job, your livelihood and at the top of absurdity also your healthcare. Somehow you've come to consider that as normal but in a country that finds trillions each year to buy overpriced fighter jets or similar things, making the choice to NOT let families go into intergenerational poverty due to a health emergency should really not be that difficult.
While that might help individuals, it doesn't help the travel industry. Yes, employees in Europe will generally not lose healthcare, but what about the businesses they'd like to return to? Such as hotels, tour guides, restaurants, etc.
While I do largely agree.. in the U.S. the politics are bundled in ways that are largely unable to be agreed upon. The influence of large industries also cannot be underestimated. That also doesn't even consider the issue of the number of politically motivated people working in media that want an economic crisis to unseat Trump.
The advent of woke tribalism has been more damaging to both freedom, democracy, sane policy negotiation etc. Stone-walling is now the norm. It's really hard to say how any of this will shake out in the end.
If people stay calm, keep about 2 weeks of food/water as a normal point (don't stockpile for months), you can easily overcome any logistical issues. Panic only exacerbates the problems. In the end, some will suffer, but it's like we're overestimating the impact.
Worst case, this will probably be similar to the 1932 flu... I don't think it will get even that bad in practice (which was pretty bad). Within a year or 3, it should be fully recovered, unless too many people, do too many stupid things and panic too much, making wierd economic shifts.
I don't know any healthy people literally holed up in their apartments. But most people I know have kids. We still take our kids to school. We still go to the grocery store. We still take them to soccer practice. Even the most paranoid person I know is not holed up in their apartment.
What I'm not doing is flying my kids, with my 74 year old mother, so we can go to Disneyworld in Florida. I'm not taking my young children to Disneyland, which is local, because it's an international destination and if we run across a bug they will catch it because young children have no ability to not constantly stick their fingers in their mouth.
We could just say "we aren't going to see grandma anymore" but my sister in law also just had a baby. Should I tell my wife she can't see her newborn nephew because we could transmit it to the grandparents through visits? Or maybe we can just not go to Disneyland for a little bit? I understand that the odds of this chain of events playing out is low. But I would feel really, really stupid if it happened to.
I also talked my mom out of going to Vegas. Why? Because the US has tested damn near no people. If we had been testing aggressively like South Korea I could justify saying "there's been no found cases in Vegas, you should probably be good". Instead I have to say "No found cases in Vegas, no fucking clue what that means".
FWIW, most parents I talk to think this is a big nothing. One is keeping their trip to Italy this month. Another is immune compromised and as of yesterday, still flying into Seattle for some reason. I think it's a poor choice.
It's nonsensical to you because you're not looking at it from their perspective. The healthy 25 year olds that are holed up in their apartments value playing it safe with their health more than they value helping businesses that they don't own.
Which is why it boggles my mind that so many people live in a society that encourages no savings social net, no healthcare if you don't go to work, houses that are over 100% mortgaged, car loans, phone loans, furniture loans etc. etc.
This wouldn't be an issue if society just encouraged people to save 10 or 20 grand to have a "just in case" fund to last a few months, and if people got healthcare even when they didn't go to work.
The problem is that encouraging savings of that magnitude all at once will grind our economy to a halt, potentially resulting in the loss of their income source as the economy severely contracts.
but we have to slow it down so we can spread out the demands on hospitals over a longer period of time. Drastic measures are working in china. I wish there was another way. Maybe you say it isn't worth it. Maybe you don't have any elderly relatives. The Case Fatality Rate for 60-69 year olds is 3.6%. For 70-79 is is 8%. For 80+ it is an astounding 14.8%.
The silver lining here is that this dramatic drop in production and travel is exactly what the environment needed. We're finally giving working from home a serious go. Holidaying within our borders.
I'm sure it'll all look pretty silly in 24 months time, when this recedes into a background seasonal and we finally finish our personal stockpiles of toilet paper, but we might learn important lessons too.
The silver lining here is that this dramatic drop in production and travel is exactly what the environment needed.
Yeah, everyone will be so happy the environment is cleaner. They won’t care that they are laid off, lose their house and the economy spirals in a recession.
Most people should be behaving normally with some added protections (like washing their hands), and those who are at high-risk should be protected.
You would think, but you would be wrong.
Here is the fundamental math. There is a number called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number which is how many people the average infected person infects in turn. If that figure is above 1, the epidemic spreads and some nontrivial fraction of the total population will get sick. The exact number who catch it is impossible to calculate since the relationship between the basic reproduction number and how many people eventually get the disease is chaotic.
But if that figure can be reduced below 1, the disease dies out on its own. It took draconian measures, but this is already happening in China.
Public health officials have a variety of strategies available depending on the situation. But the choices from most desirable to least is as follows.
1. If possible, get the basic reproduction number below 1.
2. If not possible, encourage at risk groups to get extra protection so that as the disease sweeps through, as many as possible don't get it.
3. Be overwhelmed.
The current strategy is focused on the first option. As noted, the basic reproduction rate is already below 1 in China and the disease is dying out there. If it escapes, the second option will be tried. But an epidemic that hospitalizes 20% of victims and kills 3% will, if we accept #2, leave us quickly at #3.
And as much as a temporary slowdown of the economy loses us all, figuring out how to some up with a reasonable substitute for hospitalizing 20% of the country when we don't have medical staff (knowing that a failure to figure it out will result in much higher casualty rates) will have much greater economic impacts.
It turns out that we can quantify it. Based on https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statis... it is reasonable to say that we value a human life at about $8 million. If half of 327 million Americans get sick and (as current rates have it, 3.7% of them die, the economic impact is about $48.4 trillion. That is about the same as the US economy for 2 years. If losing 1/4 of our economy for 6 months, and then suffer similar economic damage on the path to recovery, gives us even odds of preventing this, we absolutely should panic.
And, as China demonstrates, it IS still possible to prevent this outcome. It will take heroics. But it is possible.
> it is reasonable to say that we value a human life at about $8 million
We're talking about the very elderly dying a bit earlier than they would have otherwise. Before you accuse me of being heartless, I agree that that is indeed sad and worth mourning. But, no, it is not the same economically as a working-age person or younger dying in large quantities.
And keep in mind it's March, and flu season will naturally be on the decline this month.
Nonsensical until someone aged 25 gives nCov to their grandparent aged 75, and that person dies. Suddenly, your work just doesn't seem so important.
(don't have to wait for a vaccine, we can return to life when there's a reasonable therapy which should be 2-4 months... unless all 50+ late-stage drug trials all fail...)
This is a conversation between two respected journalists, from NBC and the New York Times, quoting Twitter as fact, and failing the most basic of simple math questions.
I honestly believe that the Corona virus is more of an illness of mass psychological fear than it is a Virus. I'm not saying the virus isn't real, or that those who suffer from it aren't real.
I'm simply saying that, at least for the US according to the CDC, 260 people have become ill and 14 people dead... which is nothing compared to 300,000,000 entering a state of unreasonable fear.
I know people who don't get a yearly flu shot (50,000 dead/year), don't wash their hands before eating (most viral and bacterial infections aren't airborne), smoke (400,000 dead/year), drink (80,000 dead/year) and regularly drive late at night when tired (35,000 dead/year)... yet they are taking every possible precaution against corona virus, because they don't want to be the 15th death. It's so weird.
Again, not saying it isn't an issue or doesn't exist or can't become a bigger issue. Just that the fear is so disproportional to the threat, it's mind blowing for me. It feels like some mass psychotic event. I'm just disconnected enough from most people's reality that I can't seem to share in it, so I stand a contrarian outsider like I've always been, scratching my head.
Meanwhile, our hospitals in Seattle are already filling up, and they're diverting people to further hospitals; as this is a virus with an extremely high hospitalization rate. We all need to do what we can to keep those hospitalizations low, so our medical system doesn't collapse and turn people away who need ventilation. That means doing your part to not be a vector of infection.
But if I get the virus, sure I'll probably be ok. Others that I pass it to might not.
I'll need to self isolate, which means I'll need to stay away from my children and parents for two weeks? four weeks? That's going to be very hard to do. Maybe I could stay at home with my children and they will be fine, but then they will need to be kept isolated. How long will the stigma and fear around them last, six months? How long till the rest of my family are comfortable letting my kids see their grandparents again. If I get the virus, it will be very difficult to do all the things I'll need to do as a responsible adult.
It would be magnificent if we all treated this like a natural disaster and for the next two months, not in a state of panic in which we're all gunning to be the last player standing, but from an intention of mutual aid - do what we can to make it very difficult for viruses to transmit - wash our hands, wear masks and disposable gloves out in public, clean surfaces with disinfectant wipes. In two months this might be gone.
It's a small, thin hope, but what if we can use this current enigmatic and existential crisis, to practise co-operating to handle the much bigger crises that loom further ahead in the century?
Influenza has a CFR of 0.1%, COVID has CFR of 2-3% (20-30x higher). Officially the CFR for COVID is ~3.3% but it is thought that is too high because there is thought to be many people who have it who are asymptomatic or have a mild reaction. It is estimated that 40-70% of adults will contract it in the US this year. That is 83 million people in the US alone. 10-15% of COVID patients have Acute Respiratory Distress. 10% * 40% * 209M adults => 8.3 million people that would need to be hospitalized. What is the CFR when hospitals can't cope with a fraction of that? If the CFR is 2% and 40% get it, that is 2.1 million dead people this year alone, in the US, alone.
As paulg tweeted the other day (I'll update his number)... There are 20.5k cases outside of China. That number doubles every 3 days. That means there will be 2.6 million cases in 3 weeks.
We have to do everything we can to slow it down, buy us time to try antivirals, buy us time to get to summer where heat, humidity and mass doses of Vitamin D can help keep numbers down.
Sadly, this is true for so much of American culture re: our current politics and social fears. We live in a culture that explicitly governs on and trafficks in fear. I don’t think we ever got out of fear mode after 9/11, but reasonable people can disagree here.
Also, people aren’t just thinking about themselves, they’re taking into account the risk of transmission to a loved one who’s in a higher-risk age group. I’d hate to contract coronavirus and pass it on to my parents who’re in their 60’s.
Seven weeks ago there were ~100 cases in Wuhan, now there's 60k. What's to stop that from happening in Seattle, or the Bay, or anywhere else in the developed world that isn't taking the precautions China did?
This is the normal human cycle. We did the same for things as big as terrorism and as small as every tiny thing that teenagers have ever done, broadcast via the local news.
People freak out at things that are different; not normal. It absolutely is irrational. The fact that smoking marketing smoking is still legal is all the proof you need that numbers and death rates are meaningless.
Your argument against caution would have worked just as "well" in China after the first 14 cases, but if you had made that argument then, think how stupid it would sound now with what has already happened in Wuhan.
None of the annual death counts you cite are exponential processes (with unknown growth rates) at the beginning of the growth curve. So either you don't understand exponential growth or you are being intellectually dishonest in acting as if these numbers are in any way comparable.
In the face of a pandemic that may kill an unknown percentage of the population the precautionary principle absolutely applies, and even if the total cases in the US never goes over 1000, the measures now being taken will have been the right choice because the risk of uncontrolled spread is unacceptable.
I understand why you might feel that way. I used to feel the same. But I think at this point if you're not panicking, you might not have fully absorbed the literature.
From my point of view here in Seattle, we're already seeing some minor effects: No one can find any toilet paper. Sounds minor, right? But it won't feel so minor when it's food rather than TP.
The virus isn't the issue. The issue is people. Everyone wants to maximize their chance of being completely unaffected by this disease. When everybody does that simultaneously, we're in trouble.
Suppose a million cases do happen. Who will care for them? Do we even have a million hospital beds? We just surpassed 100k cases today.
I recommend watching https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... over the next week or so. It's quite astonishing to see the numbers climb. I remember when South Korea hit 100 cases. That was about two weeks ago. Now they're at 6.5k.
I wish I could vote you up more than once... I've been saying to people, pragmatically have a couple weeks of food and water, just to get past any logistical issues likely to come up... you don't need to panic, don't need to buy into the fear and for the most part things will be fine.
If we fail to take dramatic measures, the projected number of deaths in the USA is similar to the Holocaust.
If we take dramatic measures we have a good chance of heading off that outcome. This is worthwhile even though it will hopefully look like a crazy overreaction to the actual fatalities.
I agree that most of the people who are reacting are way overreacting to the actual facts and risks. But I strongly preferring them erring in the direction that they err than having them dismiss the risk based on few current fatalities as you are doing.
Hopefully the collapse in lobster sales is just an isolated example in a relatively small sector of the economy, and not a portend of things to come.
If more companies are forced to shut down or cut/postpone spending in response to sharp drops in revenues, their suppliers and employees will react by cutting or postponing their own spending, leading yet others to do the same, in the worst case fueling a sudden and self-reinforcing feedback loop of global contraction in economic activity.
It's possible that stock markets worldwide are now pricing such a scenario. Let's hope it doesn't get that bad.
But hope is not a plan. Please make sure you're well positioned to survive a sharp economic downturn, just in case!
The US Fed's actions recently (emergency meeting, 50 bps rate cut [1], futures markets anticipating a 89% chance of a 75 bps cut in March and a 59% chance of a cut to 0% in April [2]) seem to indicate that these events are "canaries in the coal mine"; policymakers and central banks are already seeing current and forward looking data ahead of what is publicly available indicating an economic contraction is in progress. I know the Fed has access to electronic payment data (credit card transactions) in the US through an agreement with those networks, and uses that info for decisioning (among other data sources not publicly available).
Also, 10 year treasuries are at a record low today below 0.7% [3]. This is unheard of, and an indicator that capital markets are seeing an unprecedented flight to safety [4].
Not intended to be alarmist, these are simply observations (although I heard someone say very recently, "the bond market is basically signaling that all hell is going to break loose."). It appears macro econ policy folks are trying to engineer a soft economic landing, but monetary policy only goes so far. Be prepared, make good personal finance choices in the near term.
It's not that common shocks to an economy to have a permanent effect. Businesses and investors understand that the event will be temporary, some businesses may shut down during the event but once the event ends, the pent-up demand it generates and allow spending on recovery, tends to more than compensate.
That said, the economy was an extremely fragile condition before all this began so this might be an exception.
Thank you. Whats your opinion re personal prepardness in terms of your financials? Leave cash in bank? Withdraw some? Withdraw plenty? Keep it in USD or convert to something like Euro. Or buy large quantities of bullion? If so - “less better” like palladium bars or “more better” like silver coins at low value per coin.
I am extremely worried about the global economy. The air travel and cruise industries are getting hit really bad. WP had an article today that for travel industry it is becoming the worst crisis since 2001, when the towers went down. There is a talk of tax breaks, and other nations have already enacted tax relief.
The prices of air travel in the US are laughable at the moment. I can fly roundtrip from Chicago to LA for $140.
On the island where live, the local fishermen had a below normal haul and the co-op was not paying well per pound, so 2019 was already a bad year. I also understand that many of the fishermen have extended themselves for larger boats and more traps. With the decreased demand, these things will add up to lost boats/homes/livelihoods. Without a doubt, this will have an impact beyond the immediate fishing industry.
We in Spain would gladly buy all your surpluss lobsters at reduced price, but there is a small problem with a certain US ban to our spanish olive oil also, because some issue about airplane companies figthing, so...
All is like orange agent poured over the economy wherever you look.
Or the panic could be a great boost to the ocean ecosystems. Just like WWII was because fishing boats were afraid to leave ports lest they get caught in cross fire.
To be fair, Flybe was on borrowed time. It feels like Coronavirus was a fig leaf for poor management and the owners wanting the UK government to give a loan rather than them investing in their own business.
That’s not to say this virus isn’t affecting the economy but the government’s decision not to offer a loan is what pushed Flybe over.
Almost all airlines are operating on the line. I think we will see many more go out of business. Budget airlines because no vacations and scheduled airlines because no business travel. Only the larger ones would survive based on bank relationships.
Oysters were poverty food right up to Dicken's day. Times change!
If I was a lobster (they can live over 50 years, so its not impossible given I'm old now) I'd be delighted if people stopped pulling me out of the sea for no cents.
> Dirt-cheap because they were so copious, lobsters were routinely fed to prisoners, apprentices, slaves and children during the colonial era and beyond. In Massachusetts, some servants allegedly sought to avoid lobster-heavy diets by including stipulations in their contracts that they would only be served the shellfish twice a week.
I think its really interesting how most people imagine expensive things taste better just because they are expensive, specifically lobster, caviar. They exist in scarcity right now and thats the only distinction as there are longer periods of time where they weren't "delicacies" but still tasty parts of a meal.
There's also the aspect that, as the price goes up, the more it'll be cooked by more expensive/better chefs -- which presumably produce better food, or at least, better looking food (and if you believe in eating with your eyes, translates to better food)
In which case, it does actually taste better as a group. It probably finds better recipes as more experienced cooks take a stab at it (whereas before, it was so low-class few would likely even consider doing anything with it beyond the simplest/cheapest combinations).
These kinds of things are usually compounding, or even feedback loops; it's rarely useful to only look at a single step of impact. Though I wouldn't doubt cost isn't a part of the explanation (and ofc it goes the other way too -- good things made cheap, cheapen the perceived value. Perhaps they were also good when it was cheap... But cost was so low you wouldn't accept it as good-eatings)
Honestly, I like lobster but the thought of having to eat it twice a week (reg the comment above) makes me nauseous. Some things are much better in moderation.
Sorry, but I love caviar. In fact any sort if fish roe is good. It does not have to be expensive. In Russia they eat fish roe/caviar on buttered bread for breakfast. It's really good.
Is it that hard to imaging people just like something that you don’t? Especially in food, where different people demonstrably have different neurological responses to he chemicals that touch their tongues.
I for one loved lobster long before I had any concept of the meaning of money.
Really curious to see data on the California commercial lobster fishery, 98% of which goes abroad to Japan and China. They run $35-40/lb over the last year or two, so I imagine they have much further to fall, which is great for the recreational divers in the area.
Edit: wow, falling to $25 already, I saw this same site for $42/lb last year.
California's lobsters had the finest flavour, are more dangerously deceiving to naive fishermen (crushing's fingers creature), and much more challenging to catch and put in a table. They have a bad habit of losing legs at the slightest opportunity (and nobody wants to buy a three legged lobster).
They just taste sweeter. Plus a 1 pound California lobster has more edible meat than a 1 pound Maine lobster, despite the huge claws of the Maine lobster. It's all tail meat. Plus the "face meat" (meat underneath the giant spiny antennas) is an amazing and distinct flavor.
It's a smaller fishery too, they aren't that common north of Point Conception.
This sounds like the story leading up to a very smart marketer who comes in with a creative solution to solve the problem. Comparable to the northern european guy who convinced all of Japan that eating raw salmon was safe.
my issue is how to reconcile the way different countries have handled it. i don't think this is a nothing burger, but i'm also wary of the "overreaction" by the media and then you add signaling and political issues and it becomes a mess.
- america and some european countries. we haven't tested anybody in the US and are basically treating it like it's nothing, but it's clear that this thing has been spreading already. still yet to be seen how it plays out in terms of overwhelming the system.
- contrast this to a place like korea which is aggressively testing 10k people per day, finding a low mortality rate, but still trying to balance hospital resources.
- compare that to italy and iran, where they are struggling w/ resources and people seem to be dying at an alarming rate (imagine if like 3 politicians just dropped dead from this thing).
- now compare that to china, where they literally quarantined tens of millions (and still are), had to build extra hospitals in a matter of days, and are still implementing draconian measures to manage it. they basically had to shut down their production briefly. and even then the actual numbers might not be clear.
if someone could help enlighten me with an explanation that would fit all these cases that would be much appreciated. right now it's too black and white, that this is some world ender or "just the flu, bro".
This article helped me answer those questions. This will probably become another cold/flu in addition to the current cold/flu seasons-as a better possible outcome:
What confuses me is how China had Chernobyl-style liquidators spraying down the insides of malls and outdoor public areas, supposedly with bleach. Contrast that with America's relatively tame "don't touch your face, do wash your hands for 20 seconds" advice.
This is a very serious disease for many of the infected when left untreated: it causes pneumonia (inflammation of the lungs/airways) which makes people’s respiratory system less effective, leading their blood oxygen levels to drop and potentially leading to death, especially in the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions like cardiovascular problems, obesity, diabetes, compromised immune systems, asthma, other chronic respiratory issues, ....
A significant proportion of people over 60, a non-negligible proportion of people ages 40–60, and still some proportion of people aged 20–40 need to be hospitalized and put on supplemental oxygen. In severe cases people need support from a mechanical respirator. In the WHO report from China 20% of positive cases needed hospitalization. This might be a substantial overestimate if there are many mild cases not caught by tests, but even if that estimate is off by a factor of 5 or 10, if there are many cases this can overwhelm hospital capacity.
When treated aggressively by a capable healthcare system (caught early before severe symptoms start, treated with antiviral meds, patients put on supplemental oxygen as soon as blood oxygen starts to dip, hospitals have enough respirators for severely affected patients) so that people don’t die while waiting for their immune systems to fight the virus off, many fatalities can be avoided, as is happening in Singapore or some wealthier provinces in China. But this depends on social distancing in the community, widespread testing, aggressive isolation and contact tracing of infected people, and efficient triage of cases.
If cases are not caught early and treated aggressively or if medical systems get overwhelmed, it is bad news. If this virus is not checked and spreads throughout the world quickly, the death toll could be in the millions.
Beyond being very dangerous to a substantial proportion of infected people, it is also extremely contagious, and has been spreading very rapidly. It is contagious even among pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic people. Perhaps most dangerously, its early symptoms are close enough to ordinary cold/flu symptoms (and some of the infected seem to not advance to the more serious stage) that people who are shedding the virus continue to go about their everyday lives without realizing they are infected with novel coronavirus instead of a typical cold or flu.
To be clear, at this time we only the “CFR” - known case fatality rate. Likewise, we only know the known case hospitalization rate.
What we do not know, and can only estimate, is the “IFR” or the overall infection fatality rate, and the overall infection hospitalization rate.
Imagine the flu was a brand new virus which we didn’t have any test for. In 3 months we would see 100,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths from this new virus.
Only after testing became inexpensive and widespread would we come to realize that actually 32 million people were infected with this virus, but only 200,000 per year went to the hospital, about 20,000 of which end up dying.
My point is, we do not know the infection hospitalization rate, nor the infection fatality rate of COVID-19, but its upper bound is the CFR and it’s reasonable to suspect the actual value is at least an order of magnitude lower than the current CFR data might indicate.
It’s not reasonable to state anything definitively about the overall hospitalization rate of COVID at this time without the qualifier that it’s based on only known cases and therefore overstated by some unknown amount.
You may find this letter (written March 4th) from doctors specializing in Emergency Medicine more compelling than my own summary:
My hyperbole: It’s known that preexisting conditions contribute to deaths: if we presumptuously view atmosphere in a Chinese city as a condition, then the Wuhan death toll makes some sense.
Also for “just the flu”: it’s a coronavirus. A cousin of common cold. So it gets you like common cold, you usually don’t know when or where or how you got it. Most effective prevention, not vaccination, not facemasks or spacesuits, but washing hands often, facing away from people when sneezing, eating more vegetables, getting good nights’ sleep, those mom of 5-year-old kid items. There are not many effective meds save for NyQuils and lab experiment Ebola shots. I think “just the common cold” is a technically accurate description regardless of whether it’s world ending or not.
I wonder if we'll see actual price reductions on the consumer end. Somehow I don't see franchises like Red Lobster bothering to pass their savings on to the customer.
Restaurants routinely run specials and sales when commodity prices fall. Red Lobster competes with a bunch of other chains, why wouldn't they advertise "2 for 1 lobster!" to drag people away from Carraba's or TGI Friday's?
My chef son-in-law, who's worked at some great restaurants in the Pittsburgh area, says that they almost never pass on cheaper ingredient costs to the consumer.
In 2019 the lobster fishermen in my area of Canada sold lobsters to buyers for about $6 each. That was for "markets" the size that are sold to restaurants.
The lobster fisher has boat payments, fuel ($1,000 to fill the tank per trip), wages for helpers, insurance, zone license. Now more rules to prevent right whales from getting caught in ropes. Which means new rope or new ways of handling the traps and equipment. And there is a quota so you can only catch so many.
Meanwhile that $6 lobster goes for maybe $50 or $100 in a restaurant in a large city.
For restaurants that sell the lobster at "market price", you might see it change by a dollar or two. But in general, note that the price of a meal is driven much more by demand than by the cost of ingredients, which are only about a third of the actual price of a meal.
Most stores near me sell chicken lobsters (1-2lbs). Most recent years, the lobster catches have been really good, and prices are generally 4.99$-5.99$/lb. Getting them steamed adds very little to the prices.
Those same chicken lobsters will cost you 20+ at a restaurant, and would be 15-20 for a lobster roll. Restaurant prices haven't moved (up or down) in more than decade.
I'm seeing it where I am at least. It used to 10-12 dollars per lb now it's down to 6 dollars a lb. A month ago I got some at 8 dollars a lb and I already thought it was a steal.
Readit News
So many people are going to lose their jobs, their homes, and their healthcare, if everyone continues to cancel all travel and entertainment. These economic events have real impacts on families for a generation. And service workers will be the hardest hit.
The median age of fatal infections is 75. And yet we have healthy 25 year olds holed up in their apartments, hitting local economies hard. It's nonsensical. Most people should be behaving normally with some added protections (like washing their hands), and those who are at high-risk should be protected.
2. More importantly, an unique characteristic of this disease is that although mortality rates for the young are low, hospitalization rates appear to be high, which poses a severe threat of overwhelming hospital systems. The disaster in Wuhan was at least in part due to that and unless precautions are taken, Seattle could be heading that way soon.
There are thousands in Wuhan who have been on life support for weeks if not months. Even if they do survive they will face diminished lives and this is with China sending all available resources (doctors, nurses, ventilators) of the nation there. Death rate itself is worthless to argue over unless one names the context: sporadic outbreaks here and there or tidal waves?
[1] https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article240963446.h...
This is almost happening right now in the Northern Italian region of Lombardy, hence today's mentions by some of the authorities of instituting a red-zone for the region itself (or parts of if, nothing is certain for now). [1] (in Italian)
[1] https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/03/06/news/coronav...
It's a choice to value the economic value a person brings over their life, heath and wellbeing and I find it really odd to read a comment such as yours.
This doesn't need to hit families and definitely not for generations. It's your national choice, by how you vote and what policies you do and do not accept, that a few weeks out of work means you lose the job, your livelihood and at the top of absurdity also your healthcare. Somehow you've come to consider that as normal but in a country that finds trillions each year to buy overpriced fighter jets or similar things, making the choice to NOT let families go into intergenerational poverty due to a health emergency should really not be that difficult.
The advent of woke tribalism has been more damaging to both freedom, democracy, sane policy negotiation etc. Stone-walling is now the norm. It's really hard to say how any of this will shake out in the end.
If people stay calm, keep about 2 weeks of food/water as a normal point (don't stockpile for months), you can easily overcome any logistical issues. Panic only exacerbates the problems. In the end, some will suffer, but it's like we're overestimating the impact.
Worst case, this will probably be similar to the 1932 flu... I don't think it will get even that bad in practice (which was pretty bad). Within a year or 3, it should be fully recovered, unless too many people, do too many stupid things and panic too much, making wierd economic shifts.
What I'm not doing is flying my kids, with my 74 year old mother, so we can go to Disneyworld in Florida. I'm not taking my young children to Disneyland, which is local, because it's an international destination and if we run across a bug they will catch it because young children have no ability to not constantly stick their fingers in their mouth.
We could just say "we aren't going to see grandma anymore" but my sister in law also just had a baby. Should I tell my wife she can't see her newborn nephew because we could transmit it to the grandparents through visits? Or maybe we can just not go to Disneyland for a little bit? I understand that the odds of this chain of events playing out is low. But I would feel really, really stupid if it happened to.
I also talked my mom out of going to Vegas. Why? Because the US has tested damn near no people. If we had been testing aggressively like South Korea I could justify saying "there's been no found cases in Vegas, you should probably be good". Instead I have to say "No found cases in Vegas, no fucking clue what that means".
FWIW, most parents I talk to think this is a big nothing. One is keeping their trip to Italy this month. Another is immune compromised and as of yesterday, still flying into Seattle for some reason. I think it's a poor choice.
This wouldn't be an issue if society just encouraged people to save 10 or 20 grand to have a "just in case" fund to last a few months, and if people got healthcare even when they didn't go to work.
At some point they'll need groceries or some other form of care - and cannot maintain sufficient isolation for what you're describing.
I'm sure it'll all look pretty silly in 24 months time, when this recedes into a background seasonal and we finally finish our personal stockpiles of toilet paper, but we might learn important lessons too.
Yeah, everyone will be so happy the environment is cleaner. They won’t care that they are laid off, lose their house and the economy spirals in a recession.
Silver linings!!
You would think, but you would be wrong.
Here is the fundamental math. There is a number called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number which is how many people the average infected person infects in turn. If that figure is above 1, the epidemic spreads and some nontrivial fraction of the total population will get sick. The exact number who catch it is impossible to calculate since the relationship between the basic reproduction number and how many people eventually get the disease is chaotic.
But if that figure can be reduced below 1, the disease dies out on its own. It took draconian measures, but this is already happening in China.
Public health officials have a variety of strategies available depending on the situation. But the choices from most desirable to least is as follows.
1. If possible, get the basic reproduction number below 1.
2. If not possible, encourage at risk groups to get extra protection so that as the disease sweeps through, as many as possible don't get it.
3. Be overwhelmed.
The current strategy is focused on the first option. As noted, the basic reproduction rate is already below 1 in China and the disease is dying out there. If it escapes, the second option will be tried. But an epidemic that hospitalizes 20% of victims and kills 3% will, if we accept #2, leave us quickly at #3.
And as much as a temporary slowdown of the economy loses us all, figuring out how to some up with a reasonable substitute for hospitalizing 20% of the country when we don't have medical staff (knowing that a failure to figure it out will result in much higher casualty rates) will have much greater economic impacts.
It turns out that we can quantify it. Based on https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statis... it is reasonable to say that we value a human life at about $8 million. If half of 327 million Americans get sick and (as current rates have it, 3.7% of them die, the economic impact is about $48.4 trillion. That is about the same as the US economy for 2 years. If losing 1/4 of our economy for 6 months, and then suffer similar economic damage on the path to recovery, gives us even odds of preventing this, we absolutely should panic.
And, as China demonstrates, it IS still possible to prevent this outcome. It will take heroics. But it is possible.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
> it is reasonable to say that we value a human life at about $8 million
We're talking about the very elderly dying a bit earlier than they would have otherwise. Before you accuse me of being heartless, I agree that that is indeed sad and worth mourning. But, no, it is not the same economically as a working-age person or younger dying in large quantities.
And keep in mind it's March, and flu season will naturally be on the decline this month.
Your logic has the same faults as "I don't need the flu vaccine, I'm not at risk because I'm healthy/young."
The alternative idea, is that you should just tell people to wear gloves.
This will prevent them from touching their eyes, nose, and mouth. Because ideally, they won’t touch their mouth if they are wearing an outdoor glove.
(don't have to wait for a vaccine, we can return to life when there's a reasonable therapy which should be 2-4 months... unless all 50+ late-stage drug trials all fail...)
"There's another infected person in [YOUR_COUNTRY] - 10 ways COVID-19 can kill you! You won't BELIEVE number 3!"
This is a conversation between two respected journalists, from NBC and the New York Times, quoting Twitter as fact, and failing the most basic of simple math questions.
I'm simply saying that, at least for the US according to the CDC, 260 people have become ill and 14 people dead... which is nothing compared to 300,000,000 entering a state of unreasonable fear.
I know people who don't get a yearly flu shot (50,000 dead/year), don't wash their hands before eating (most viral and bacterial infections aren't airborne), smoke (400,000 dead/year), drink (80,000 dead/year) and regularly drive late at night when tired (35,000 dead/year)... yet they are taking every possible precaution against corona virus, because they don't want to be the 15th death. It's so weird.
Again, not saying it isn't an issue or doesn't exist or can't become a bigger issue. Just that the fear is so disproportional to the threat, it's mind blowing for me. It feels like some mass psychotic event. I'm just disconnected enough from most people's reality that I can't seem to share in it, so I stand a contrarian outsider like I've always been, scratching my head.
But if I get the virus, sure I'll probably be ok. Others that I pass it to might not.
I'll need to self isolate, which means I'll need to stay away from my children and parents for two weeks? four weeks? That's going to be very hard to do. Maybe I could stay at home with my children and they will be fine, but then they will need to be kept isolated. How long will the stigma and fear around them last, six months? How long till the rest of my family are comfortable letting my kids see their grandparents again. If I get the virus, it will be very difficult to do all the things I'll need to do as a responsible adult.
It would be magnificent if we all treated this like a natural disaster and for the next two months, not in a state of panic in which we're all gunning to be the last player standing, but from an intention of mutual aid - do what we can to make it very difficult for viruses to transmit - wash our hands, wear masks and disposable gloves out in public, clean surfaces with disinfectant wipes. In two months this might be gone.
It's a small, thin hope, but what if we can use this current enigmatic and existential crisis, to practise co-operating to handle the much bigger crises that loom further ahead in the century?
As paulg tweeted the other day (I'll update his number)... There are 20.5k cases outside of China. That number doubles every 3 days. That means there will be 2.6 million cases in 3 weeks.
We have to do everything we can to slow it down, buy us time to try antivirals, buy us time to get to summer where heat, humidity and mass doses of Vitamin D can help keep numbers down.
Sadly, this is true for so much of American culture re: our current politics and social fears. We live in a culture that explicitly governs on and trafficks in fear. I don’t think we ever got out of fear mode after 9/11, but reasonable people can disagree here.
Also, people aren’t just thinking about themselves, they’re taking into account the risk of transmission to a loved one who’s in a higher-risk age group. I’d hate to contract coronavirus and pass it on to my parents who’re in their 60’s.
People freak out at things that are different; not normal. It absolutely is irrational. The fact that smoking marketing smoking is still legal is all the proof you need that numbers and death rates are meaningless.
None of the annual death counts you cite are exponential processes (with unknown growth rates) at the beginning of the growth curve. So either you don't understand exponential growth or you are being intellectually dishonest in acting as if these numbers are in any way comparable.
In the face of a pandemic that may kill an unknown percentage of the population the precautionary principle absolutely applies, and even if the total cases in the US never goes over 1000, the measures now being taken will have been the right choice because the risk of uncontrolled spread is unacceptable.
I understand why you might feel that way. I used to feel the same. But I think at this point if you're not panicking, you might not have fully absorbed the literature.
From my point of view here in Seattle, we're already seeing some minor effects: No one can find any toilet paper. Sounds minor, right? But it won't feel so minor when it's food rather than TP.
The virus isn't the issue. The issue is people. Everyone wants to maximize their chance of being completely unaffected by this disease. When everybody does that simultaneously, we're in trouble.
Suppose a million cases do happen. Who will care for them? Do we even have a million hospital beds? We just surpassed 100k cases today.
I recommend watching https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... over the next week or so. It's quite astonishing to see the numbers climb. I remember when South Korea hit 100 cases. That was about two weeks ago. Now they're at 6.5k.
People are going crazy on this one.
Deleted Comment
If we take dramatic measures we have a good chance of heading off that outcome. This is worthwhile even though it will hopefully look like a crazy overreaction to the actual fatalities.
I agree that most of the people who are reacting are way overreacting to the actual facts and risks. But I strongly preferring them erring in the direction that they err than having them dismiss the risk based on few current fatalities as you are doing.
If more companies are forced to shut down or cut/postpone spending in response to sharp drops in revenues, their suppliers and employees will react by cutting or postponing their own spending, leading yet others to do the same, in the worst case fueling a sudden and self-reinforcing feedback loop of global contraction in economic activity.
It's possible that stock markets worldwide are now pricing such a scenario. Let's hope it doesn't get that bad.
But hope is not a plan. Please make sure you're well positioned to survive a sharp economic downturn, just in case!
See also: https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/coronavirus-the-black-swa...
Also, 10 year treasuries are at a record low today below 0.7% [3]. This is unheard of, and an indicator that capital markets are seeing an unprecedented flight to safety [4].
Not intended to be alarmist, these are simply observations (although I heard someone say very recently, "the bond market is basically signaling that all hell is going to break loose."). It appears macro econ policy folks are trying to engineer a soft economic landing, but monetary policy only goes so far. Be prepared, make good personal finance choices in the near term.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed/in-an-emergency-m...
[2] https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to...
[3] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/bond/tmubmusd10y?count...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight-to-quality
That said, the economy was an extremely fragile condition before all this began so this might be an exception.
The prices of air travel in the US are laughable at the moment. I can fly roundtrip from Chicago to LA for $140.
All is like orange agent poured over the economy wherever you look.
Just the cross-fire? Weren't they also being directly targeted themselves?
That’s not to say this virus isn’t affecting the economy but the government’s decision not to offer a loan is what pushed Flybe over.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/10-year-treasury-yield-falls...
If I was a lobster (they can live over 50 years, so its not impossible given I'm old now) I'd be delighted if people stopped pulling me out of the sea for no cents.
> Dirt-cheap because they were so copious, lobsters were routinely fed to prisoners, apprentices, slaves and children during the colonial era and beyond. In Massachusetts, some servants allegedly sought to avoid lobster-heavy diets by including stipulations in their contracts that they would only be served the shellfish twice a week.
https://www.history.com/news/a-taste-of-lobster-history
In which case, it does actually taste better as a group. It probably finds better recipes as more experienced cooks take a stab at it (whereas before, it was so low-class few would likely even consider doing anything with it beyond the simplest/cheapest combinations).
These kinds of things are usually compounding, or even feedback loops; it's rarely useful to only look at a single step of impact. Though I wouldn't doubt cost isn't a part of the explanation (and ofc it goes the other way too -- good things made cheap, cheapen the perceived value. Perhaps they were also good when it was cheap... But cost was so low you wouldn't accept it as good-eatings)
Nothing like a fresh lobster roll on the Eastern seaboard!
I for one loved lobster long before I had any concept of the meaning of money.
Edit: wow, falling to $25 already, I saw this same site for $42/lb last year.
https://store.catalinaop.com/products/live-whole-california-...
California's lobsters had the finest flavour, are more dangerously deceiving to naive fishermen (crushing's fingers creature), and much more challenging to catch and put in a table. They have a bad habit of losing legs at the slightest opportunity (and nobody wants to buy a three legged lobster).
It's a smaller fishery too, they aren't that common north of Point Conception.
And here's a little bit more detail on it: https://www.norwayexports.no/norways-introduction-of-salmon-...
- america and some european countries. we haven't tested anybody in the US and are basically treating it like it's nothing, but it's clear that this thing has been spreading already. still yet to be seen how it plays out in terms of overwhelming the system.
- contrast this to a place like korea which is aggressively testing 10k people per day, finding a low mortality rate, but still trying to balance hospital resources.
- compare that to italy and iran, where they are struggling w/ resources and people seem to be dying at an alarming rate (imagine if like 3 politicians just dropped dead from this thing).
- now compare that to china, where they literally quarantined tens of millions (and still are), had to build extra hospitals in a matter of days, and are still implementing draconian measures to manage it. they basically had to shut down their production briefly. and even then the actual numbers might not be clear.
if someone could help enlighten me with an explanation that would fit all these cases that would be much appreciated. right now it's too black and white, that this is some world ender or "just the flu, bro".
https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-covid19-pan...
Korea is next door to China, so it's alerted early on.
Tiny countries like Singapore cannot survive a quarantine. So containment is not an option, they have to work out an effective mitigation plan.
Different countries also have different demographics, population density, and confidence about their healthcare system.
A significant proportion of people over 60, a non-negligible proportion of people ages 40–60, and still some proportion of people aged 20–40 need to be hospitalized and put on supplemental oxygen. In severe cases people need support from a mechanical respirator. In the WHO report from China 20% of positive cases needed hospitalization. This might be a substantial overestimate if there are many mild cases not caught by tests, but even if that estimate is off by a factor of 5 or 10, if there are many cases this can overwhelm hospital capacity.
When treated aggressively by a capable healthcare system (caught early before severe symptoms start, treated with antiviral meds, patients put on supplemental oxygen as soon as blood oxygen starts to dip, hospitals have enough respirators for severely affected patients) so that people don’t die while waiting for their immune systems to fight the virus off, many fatalities can be avoided, as is happening in Singapore or some wealthier provinces in China. But this depends on social distancing in the community, widespread testing, aggressive isolation and contact tracing of infected people, and efficient triage of cases.
If cases are not caught early and treated aggressively or if medical systems get overwhelmed, it is bad news. If this virus is not checked and spreads throughout the world quickly, the death toll could be in the millions.
Beyond being very dangerous to a substantial proportion of infected people, it is also extremely contagious, and has been spreading very rapidly. It is contagious even among pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic people. Perhaps most dangerously, its early symptoms are close enough to ordinary cold/flu symptoms (and some of the infected seem to not advance to the more serious stage) that people who are shedding the virus continue to go about their everyday lives without realizing they are infected with novel coronavirus instead of a typical cold or flu.
What we do not know, and can only estimate, is the “IFR” or the overall infection fatality rate, and the overall infection hospitalization rate.
Imagine the flu was a brand new virus which we didn’t have any test for. In 3 months we would see 100,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths from this new virus.
Only after testing became inexpensive and widespread would we come to realize that actually 32 million people were infected with this virus, but only 200,000 per year went to the hospital, about 20,000 of which end up dying.
My point is, we do not know the infection hospitalization rate, nor the infection fatality rate of COVID-19, but its upper bound is the CFR and it’s reasonable to suspect the actual value is at least an order of magnitude lower than the current CFR data might indicate.
It’s not reasonable to state anything definitively about the overall hospitalization rate of COVID at this time without the qualifier that it’s based on only known cases and therefore overstated by some unknown amount.
You may find this letter (written March 4th) from doctors specializing in Emergency Medicine more compelling than my own summary:
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m606/rr-5
Also for “just the flu”: it’s a coronavirus. A cousin of common cold. So it gets you like common cold, you usually don’t know when or where or how you got it. Most effective prevention, not vaccination, not facemasks or spacesuits, but washing hands often, facing away from people when sneezing, eating more vegetables, getting good nights’ sleep, those mom of 5-year-old kid items. There are not many effective meds save for NyQuils and lab experiment Ebola shots. I think “just the common cold” is a technically accurate description regardless of whether it’s world ending or not.
The lobster fisher has boat payments, fuel ($1,000 to fill the tank per trip), wages for helpers, insurance, zone license. Now more rules to prevent right whales from getting caught in ropes. Which means new rope or new ways of handling the traps and equipment. And there is a quota so you can only catch so many.
Meanwhile that $6 lobster goes for maybe $50 or $100 in a restaurant in a large city.
Those same chicken lobsters will cost you 20+ at a restaurant, and would be 15-20 for a lobster roll. Restaurant prices haven't moved (up or down) in more than decade.
Places that aren't going to soak you will put a price and that price won't be insane. Like places in Maine that say
"Surf and Turf - $19"
"Add a lobster - $9"
"Twins - $14"