Suddenly, Neither Liberty nor Civilization Is Assured

The two biggest uncertainties about the post-COVID-19 world are whether any privacy will survive and whether China or the United States will dominate. With regards to the first, the Guardian rhetorically asks whether you would  trade the total loss of your privacy for safety from the coronavirus, even if it meant entering a "cybergulag." That's what Russia is planning to do and China already did.  As the City Journal put it, perhaps the only way out of the lockdowns  is to voluntarily submit to 24x7 electronic tracking.

The responses adopted by governments around the world seem to fall into two main categories. Those countries able to leverage new and emerging technologies to fight the virus have done better in limiting the number of cases and fatalities, while managing to keep most of their economies and societies operational. The countries unable to use technology had to rely on lockdowns, quarantines, generalized closures, and other physical restrictions—the same methods used to fight the Spanish flu more than a century ago and, in many cases, with the same slow, painful results. In Singapore and South Korea, individuals are digitally monitored, but life is almost normal. In Spain, they are not monitored—but they cannot leave home.

Western publics seem willing to submit to previously unthinkable levels of government control in the name of public health. New York governor Andrew Cuomo is able to say with considerable support that "We do not have enough ventilators. Period. I am signing an Executive Order allowing the state to take ventilators and redistribute to hospitals in need. The National Guard will be mobilized to move ventilators to where they are urgently required to save lives."

Residents are now officially encouraged to inform on each other. "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said this week that 'snitches' in his city will get “rewards” if they tattle on neighbors who could be violating the stay-at-home order put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus," Fox News reported. "Google will help public health officials use its vast storage of data to track people’s movements amid the coronavirus pandemic, in what the company called an effort to assist in unprecedented times."

The effort is just a fraction of what Google has on tap for the global pandemic. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Alphabet Inc. unit is among companies that have cooperated with a White House task force looking at controversial technologies such as individual location tracking to enforce distancing guidelines. Such technologies that have been effective in some countries are out of bounds in many democracies because of privacy concerns.

Privacy concerns are likely to be swept aside by the understandable fear of disease. As a fictional CIA agent explained to an idealist, people in distress will let government do anything to make the problem go away. "Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em."

Although such measures might be sold as temporary expedients, power once obtained is rarely relinquished. After all, it's a chance to remake the world:

[California governor] Newsom said, “forgive me for being long-winded, but absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern. And that shouldn’t put shivers up the spines of you know one party or the other. I think it’s an opportunity a new for both parties to come together and meet this moment and really start to think more systemically, not situationally, not just about getting out of this moment, but more sustainably and systemically to consider where we can go together in this historic moment if we meet it at a national level, in a state, and sub-national level. So, the answer is yes.”

The City Journal writes:

"if you think that the measures being tested in China grant too much power to public authorities, different ideas can be found elsewhere. The uses of technology are, by definition, plural and creative. In Singapore, for example, the government has launched a new app for contact-tracing that both increases its effectiveness and keeps each individual in charge. The app works by exchanging Bluetooth signals between phones to detect other participating users in close proximity. Records of such encounters are stored on each user’s phone. If a user is interviewed by the medical authorities as part of the contact-tracing efforts, he can consent to share his data. The app does not collect or use location data and does not access a user’s phone contact list or address book. Importantly, no data are uploaded to a government server."

Privacy issues will become the centerpiece of Western domestic policy debates. The public can try and reclaim its privacy but they shouldn't get their hopes up.

Foreign affairs will be dominated by the rivalry between China and the United States as each country vies for which can most successfully recover and regroup from the disaster. Beijing is already claiming the title. "Beijing is bolstering its soft power and taking the lead in a global response to the coronavirus public health crisis. The moves come as China’s daily number of new infections decline while those in the U.S. rise."

On social and state media, China continues to promote its shipments of medical supplies to hard hit countries in Europe and Africa. China’s officials have also used Twitter — blocked in the country — to trumpet China’ssuccess in containing the outbreak domestically, even though the virus was first reported there and was met with missteps initially. Through the efforts, Beijing is touting the superiority of its governance model and tapping into patriotic sentiments at home.

The Chinese rivalry loomed, like the proverbial elephant in the living room, over the relief of the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt by Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly over a complaint sent to the newspapers about the coronavirus without consulting the chain of command.

When the Commanding Officer of the USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT decided to write his letter of 30 March 2020 that outlined his concerns for his crew in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak, the Department of the Navy had already mobilized significant resources for days in response to his previous requests. On the same date marked on his letter, my Chief of Staff had called the CO directly, at my request, to ensure he had all the resources necessary for the health and safety of his crew. ...

But there is a larger strategic context, one full of national security imperatives, of which all our commanders must all be aware today. While we may not be at war in a traditional sense, neither are we truly at peace. Authoritarian regimes are on the rise. Many nations are reaching, in many ways, to reduce our capacity to accomplish our national goals. This is actively happening every day ...

The nation needs to know that the Big Stick is undaunted, unstoppable —and that you will stay that way as we as a Navy help you through this COVID-19 challenge. Our adversaries need to know this as well. They respect and fear the Big Stick, and they should. We will not allow anything to diminish that respect and fear as you, and the rest of our nation, fights through this virus. As I stated, we are not at war by traditional measures, but neither are we at peace. The nation you defend is in a fight right now for our economic, personal and political security, and you are on the front lines of this fight in many ways.

The most intriguing aspect of the naval press conference is the linkage of the virus to deterrence in the new cold war. The natural world is setting the agenda in domestic and international politics. As City Journal notes "the coronavirus proved that our natural environment continues to be as dangerous and hostile to human life as it has always been. ... climate change seemed to show that human activity was the problem ... Nature is once again the problem ... almost as if humanity is once again discovering the Neolithic."

Suddenly, neither liberty nor civilization is assured. Once again it is about survival. Survival of the fittest.

SOURCE 

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Modern society is 'so afraid of death' no one asks if lockdown measures to battle coronavirus are the right approach, says former Supreme Court judge

Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathon Sumption believes that the public's 'irrational horror of death' has lead to unnecessarily 'costly' measures surrounding coronavirus.

Writing in The Sunday Times Lord Sumption, 71, a former judge turned author and medieval historian, stated that the strict governmental measures will bring 'even greater misfortunes of a different kind'.

He wrote: 'We have acquired an irrational horror of death. Today death is the great obscenity, inevitable but somehow unnatural. In the midst of life, our ancestors lived with death, an everpresent fact that they understood and accommodated.' 

Lord Sumption went on to list a number of historic epidemics such as Bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera, typhoid, meningitis and Spanish flu, reminding people that such outbreaks with higher mortality rates were met with less 'hysteria'.

Adding: 'Fear is dangerous. It is the enemy of reason. It suppresses balance and judgment. And it is infectious. (...) Is the coronavirus the latest and most damaging example?'

He stated that earlier generations would struggle to understand the current hysteria over Covid-19, due to it having 'milder symptoms' than previous outbreaks.   

The former judge believes it is the public's 'risk-adverse' attitude which has lead us to not accept 'the wheel of fortune'.

Lord Sumption said current government measures are inflicting suffering on other less obvious victims of the coronavirus, such as future generations who will be left to deal with 'high levels of public and private debt' and the one fifth of businesses being pushed into bankruptcy.

He believes it is fear which has prevented governments and the public from thinking about 'remote costs' of the measures brought in to avoid tragic coronavirus deaths, and adds that we do not know enough about the Covid-19 mortality rate, which he hints is lower than stated due to limited testing.

Making the comparison to cars, which he calls 'the most lethal weapons ever devised', as they kill and injure thousands every year, he states that society has accepted that fact as a 'Faustian bargin' in order to drive in comfort - suggesting we may have to take the same approach to coronavirus.

Meanwhile Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, warned that certain cancers which were until now thought survivable are to become 'inoperable' due to delays in the current crisis.

He told The Sunday Times: 'We know that if you operate in most early stage cancers, there is a high chance of a cure.

'If we wait too long before we operate the disease may spread beyond the primary site rendering cures less likely. Delays to surgery are of huge concern for many cancer charities.'

Currently 90 per cent of those with breast, bowel and ovarian cancers, survive when the disease is caught early.

This is due to early diagnosis and quickly scheduled surgeries.

Professor Swanton added: 'There is a risk that trusts may have to make a choice between ventilatory support for an acutely unwell patient with Covid-19 at the expense of an elective admission for primary surgery for a potentially curable tumour requiring a short post-operative stay in intensive care.'

A source close to The Department of Health told The Sunday Times that it was possible more people, including cancer patients, could die from delays to their treatment caused by the virus than from the coronavirus.

SOURCE 

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Leftmedia Trump Derangement

Media pundits are frustrated that his approval rating has risen during this national crisis.

A clear majority of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the China Virus pandemic — 60% according to Gallup polling. That’s even better than his 49% overall approval rating, which matches the highest of his presidency. But one would think just the opposite is true given the mainstream media’s incessant negative coverage of the president’s handling of this national crisis.

One example that typifies the MSM anti-Trump coverage was the reporting on an Arizona couple who ingested fish-tank cleaner thinking it would prevent them from getting COVID-19. Sadly, that stupid decision led to the death of the husband and put his wife in the hospital. Yet the Leftmedia saw fit to blame Trump for “misleading” people into doing demented things, all because he mentioned a malaria drug that some medical professionals believe could be helpful in combating the virus. The only explanation for this level of journalistic malpractice is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

However, as mentioned above, even with the negative media coverage, Trump’s approval ratings have been rising. Why might that be? The most likely reason is due to Trump’s daily national briefing in which he speaks directly to the American people on what he and his administration are doing to combat the pandemic. Millions are tuning in to watch, due in large part to the fact that many Americans are quarantined and are looking to the president for information and leadership. And that is exactly what Trump has provided, much to the dismay of the Leftmedia.

The New York Times laments, “The numbers are continuing to rise, driven by intense concern about the virus and the housebound status of millions of Americans who are practicing social distancing. On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites.” But of course, after reporting the facts, the Times inserts its own anti-Trump spin: “The audience is expanding even as Mr. Trump has repeatedly delivered information that doctors and public health officials have called ill informed, misleading or downright wrong.”

In response to Trump’s rising popularity, many MSM outlets have begun limiting their coverage of his daily briefings, cutting away to their own talkingheads while giving the ridiculous excuse that they must prevent the spread of misinformation. “I would stop putting those briefings on live TV,” pontificated MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “not out of spite, but because it’s misinformation.”

Former ABC News anchor Ted Koppel perfectly expressed this MSM elitist mindset when he argued, “Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context. I recognize that presidential utterances occupy a unique category. Within that category, however, President Trump has created a special compartment all his own. The question, clearly, is whether his status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every briefing live. No. No more so than you at The Times should be obliged to provide your readers with a daily, verbatim account.” In truth, Koppel’s real beef is that he doesn’t like Trump being able to speak freely and directly to the American people unfiltered by Leftmedia spin.

Don’t miss another important reason why MSM outlets have begun cutting away from Trump’s briefing: ad revenue (or lack thereof). Trump’s evening briefings last an average of two hours during prime-time hours — all without commercial breaks. With millions tuning in to watch, media outlets are loathe to lose ad revenue, even during a national crisis when information is paramount.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Coronavirus and Elections — Changes Increase Risk of Voter Fraud

The recent coronavirus relief package will provide $400 million to states for the 2020 elections. Beware: If this pile of money isn’t spent wisely, the integrity of the elections will be at risk.

Residents of some states may not be able to vote in person and may be forced to vote using absentee or mail-in ballots as long as the current emergency continues, with social distancing being the norm and schools, businesses, offices and government facilities closed.

But no one should forget that absentee-ballot voting is vulnerable to intimidation, fraud and chaos as all-mail elections move behind closed doors beyond the oversight of election officials. Not to mention prolonged counting and potentially lengthy delays in certifying questionable results.

Election officials should start taking steps now& to ensure that if a mailed ballot system is ordered, the election itself can be protected from the dangers that will otherwise result.

Georgia, for example, has declared that its June 2020 primary will be conducted by mail. Election officials have taken steps to avoid some of these concerns. Only registered, active (not inactive) voters will be sent an absentee-ballot request form. This will cut down on fraudulent voting, as unauthorized persons won’t be able to send in unsolicited ballots that show up in states that simply mail absentee ballots to all registered voters without receiving a request.

As an added benefit, by sending the request forms first class, election officials will receive valuable information from the U.S. Postal Service, such as whether a voter has moved or died. This will help confirm the accuracy of the voter-registration list.

All states and localities contemplating voting-by-mail should require voters to respond with a request for an absentee ballot in a written form — with a signature. That accomplishes two objectives: active voters are notified of the change in the process, and the signature will allow election officials (and interested citizens) to compare and authenticate voter identity.

For further protection, officials should require a photocopy of an ID or, for example, if they have a state driver’s license or ID card, the serial number of that identification on the absentee-ballot request form.

State voter-registration lists around the country are notoriously inaccurate and out-of-date, with many jurisdictions having duplicate or triplicate registrations, registrants who have died, and registrations lacking full address data. Some counties have more registered voters than voting-age citizens.

Not every new resident at an address will throw out a ballot automatically mailed to the old resident at that address, and where there are no safeguards, individuals may cast votes using ballots originally intended for other voters. It is further tempting to campaign workers and activists to canvas neighborhoods — often poor, minority neighborhoods — looking for those “extra” ballots.

Simply put, automatically mailing ballots to all registrants is an open invitation to fraud.

States should require voters to register prior to Election Day with sufficient time for election officials to validate and verify the information provided by voters of their identity, their residence, their citizenship status, and any other information relevant to their eligibility to vote. Same day or Election Day registration doesn’t allow for such verification.

States should only accept absentee ballots that are officially postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service on or before Election Day. This assures that ballots are not cast after Election Day and after preliminary election results are known, which would otherwise risk giving voters (or vote “harvesters”) the ability to manipulate close races after the polls have closed.

States should ban all ballot “harvesting” by third parties. Only the voter or close family members should be able to hand-deliver a completed absentee ballot. Candidates, political consultants, party activists and campaign guns-for-hire — all of whom have a stake in the outcome of the election — should not be allowed to collect absentee ballots from voters.

Anything else is a recipe for intimidation and fraud, as occurred in the 2018 election in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, and in multiple other cases. Moreover, it is difficult to see how vote harvesting would comply with government orders requiring or recommending “social distancing.”

Election officials must also establish protocols and work with local U.S. postal authorities to ensure integrity in the mail system, to prevent the slow delivery of ballots.

When processing the returned absentee ballots from voters, states must have strong authentication standards. This includes allowing election officials and observers to compare signatures on the ballot envelopes to voter registration signatures.

If states insist on unwisely mailing out absentee ballots automatically, voter rolls must first be reviewed and cleaned. The Justice Department should swiftly file lawsuits under the Help America Vote Act against states with suspected inaccurate voter rolls.

Only accurate voter rolls should be used for mass mailings of absentee ballots, and proper voter-roll maintenance and clean-up ought to include comparisons with other databases. That includes state social service agencies, tax authorities, the DMV, and corrections departments, as well as federal databases at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security to confirm voter information and eligibility.

The Department of Homeland Security must end the roadblocks states currently face in verifying the citizenship of registrants. States and localities should also utilize the National Change of Address system available from the U.S. Postal Service to update addresses of registered voters and remove those registrants who have relocated out of state.

As the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a 1998 report, absentee ballots are the “tools of choice” of vote thieves. Switching to mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus outbreak should only be a temporary measure that is not used for future elections. In the meantime, adequate safeguards to protect the integrity of an all-mail election must be implemented.

The coronavirus has taught us a valuable lesson: election officials should be ever-mindful and actively engaged in ongoing voter list maintenance, year-in and year-out. They should be complying with federal law and ensuring that only eligible voters are on the voter rolls, and that voters who die or relocate are removed in a timely manner.

By engaging in zealous voter roll maintenance, election administrators will be prepared for any changes in the system that might result from emergencies that may interfere with the voting process. Hopefully, the emergencies from the coronavirus will be long since lifted by Nov. 3 and there will be no need for changes in the process for the general election.

The fallout from the disease is a stark reminder, however, that the integrity of our elections can only be protected by the ongoing actions of conscientious election officials committed to ensuring that every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot, with the sure knowledge that it has not been diluted by error, fraud or mistakes that could have been corrected months or years beforehand.

SOURCE 

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How Would Free Market Health Care Respond To The Coronavirus?

John C. Goodman

Have you ever wondered how a free market for health care would handle the COVID-19 crisis?

Most patients would have a health kit in their home, with a temperature gauge, blood pressure cuffs and an oxygen sensor. Patients would have these because doctors, hospitals and health plans would encourage them. Patients with older models would call in the readings to their doctors. Newer models would send the doctor an automatic, electronic alert if there was reason to be concerned.

The initial doctor/patient contact would probably be by phone. If warranted, a virtual face-to-face examination by Skype or similar device would take place. If the services of a specialist were required, that connection would be made – again, remotely and electronically.

If the patient were suffering from a cold or a mild case of the flu (which would be the case more than 90% of the time), the doctor would order a prescription, which would be filled and delivered by a local pharmacy.

In the face of coronavirus indications, a doctor or nurse would arrive at the home (within an hour), take a swab sample and perform a COVID-19 test – with results in, say, 10 minutes.

In the serious cases, patients would go to the emergency room. But that would not be a scene of coronavirus roulette, as it is today. Hospitals would know in advance which patients had the virus. A special team would be there to greet these patients. They would be escorted to isolated rooms with appropriate equipment and safeguards to protect other patients and hospital personnel.

The demand for special masks (with better protection than the masks you see surgeons wearing on TV), ventilators and other equipment would rise dramatically. But it would be a targeted demand, informed by real data. You wouldn’t see hoarding and over-subscribing by providers who scramble to get more than they need “just in case.” The demand would be met by suppliers who would work nights and weekends to step up production because …. well …. because they would expect to get paid extra, just like in any other market.

So why aren’t these things being done now? They are being done. But not as often as they should. The reason: government.

Getting diagnosed in your own home. If you go to a doctor’s office or a hospital emergency room you risk infecting other patients or being infected yourself. So why not stay home? As I wrote last week, telemedicine is being used extensively in China to diagnose the coronavirus right now. Vice President Pence and major health insurance companies say it is “the first line of defense” against the virus. And more than 40 million Americans can currently get doctor consultations by phone, email or Skype. Yet federal and state laws have been major barriers.

Until recently, Congress outlawed telemedicine in Medicare, except for patients in rural areas, and even then they couldn’t be in their own homes. However, with President Trump’s approval, Seema Verma (who directs Medicare and Medicaid), began allowing all Medicare patients to have “virtual check-ins” from their homes to see if a doctor office visit is needed.

After the coronavirus struck, Verma used the president’s executive authority to give Medicare Advantage plans broad discretion with respect to remote diagnosis and treatment. Congress responded with legislation that now allows Medicare to pay for telemedicine in connection with coronavirus. But it imposed an onerous restriction: the doctor must have had a previous relationship with the patient within the past three years.

That requirement is a disastrous barrier to remote medical care. It would make every telemedicine company in the country ineligible. Fortunately, the administration is using its emergency powers to override the restriction in both Medicare and Medicaid.

Getting tested in your own home. The first known person with the COVID-19 virus was discovered in the United States and in South Korea at about the same time. Since then, South Korea has engaged in a massive testing campaign (including drive-through testing) to determine who has the virus and who doesn’t. Overall, that country has tested more than 5,000 people for every one million residents. By contrast, the number tested in our country is 125 for every million residents. In fact, the U.S. testing rate is about the lowest in the developed world!

US officials claim that the tests used in other countries are not as accurate as those approved by our government. Even so, the proof is in the pudding. As Alec Stapp writes in the Dispatch:

South Korea has effectively contained the coronavirus without shutting down its economy or quarantining tens of millions of people…. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have also managed to contain the virus via a combination of travel restrictions, social distancing, and heightened hygiene.

Until early February of this year, all testing for COVID-19 had to be done at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Once the CDC recognized it was ill prepared to handle a pandemic, it sent out testing kits to about a hundred public health centers around the country. Unfortunately, about half of the kits were defective.

President Trump on numerous occasions has made clear his desire to wipe away regulatory obstacles. Along those lines, Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, declared a public-health emergency, on February 4. Since then any lab that wants to conduct its own tests for the new coronavirus can get authority under something called an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the F.D.A.

But although this was supposed to usher in deregulation, the EUA process bought with it a new set of bureaucratic obstacles. The entire process, which is described in great detail by Robert Baird in the New Yorker, reads like an episode of the Keystone Kops.

Meanwhile, the private sector has been responding. Biomerica has developed a test that involves little more than a finger prick. It can be performed by trained professionals almost anywhere – airports, schools, offices, homes, etc. The test sells for $10 per patient.

Another company, Kinsa Health, has developed smart thermometers which are Internet-connected. It has given away or sold a million of them to households in which two million people reside. The company, which can track the flu across the country in real time, says it can do the same for COVID-19 at a time when U.S. health officials have been flying blind.

Exercising the right to try. Another reform championed by the president is allowing patients to try drugs that have not been approved by the FDA if the patient is terminally ill. He now says the same principle should apply even if the patient is not terminally ill. Chloroquine, for example, is an 85-year old drug that is safe for use to prevent malaria and it apparently can work on COVID-19. (It has worked for other SARS viruses.) The president asks, “What have you got to lose?”

Continuing to enjoy the benefits of deregulation. One reason the country is doing as well as it is in defending against COVID-19 is that President Trump began deregulating the health care market early in his presidency. Those efforts have laid the groundwork for further deregulation.

Donald Trump is the first president in over a century who has understood that in health care, government is not the solution; it is the problem.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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The coronavirus recession will shift British politics – but not to the Left

The economy’s collapse will prompt profound and unpredictable changes to people’s political priorities

It is hard, for us moderns, to grasp what is happening to our world. We are the children of the most technologically advanced civilisation of all time, and yet are plunged into a pre-modern health crisis, forced to revert to equally pre-modern tools as the death toll spirals horrifyingly. Quarantines, lockdowns, field hospitals: as we wait for tests, protective equipment, high-tech tracing and vaccines, we are stuck with the medieval techniques our forefathers used to control the bubonic plague. We use Zoom and Houseparty, but otherwise are following a 1919 Spanish flu playbook, shutting down society to save lives.

This is also the first pre-modern recession since the Second World War. Downturns since the industrial revolution have normally been about monetary policy errors or bubbles going pop. The coronavirus recession is like a war or a crop failure or a natural catastrophe, events that, together with pandemics, have caused the most savage depressions in history.

Drawing on the Bank of England’s Millenium of Macroeconomic Data, Deutsche Bank reminds us that the worst ever recessions were in 1624 (GDP down 25 per cent the year Parliament voted for war against Spain) and 1349 (down 23 per cent during the Black Death). The current downturn – GDP down 6 per cent this year – will only be slightly less severe than those of 1919 and 1921, both connected to war and flu. No “modern” recession has come close. It is also an exceptionally concentrated collapse: the second quarter will be the worst three month period for the economy since records began.

In 1919, those US cities that reopened too soon suffered a worse overall hit to the economy – after the flu returned with a vengeance in a second peak – than those that waited longer in lockdown, according to Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck and Emil Verner. While the lessons are obvious, if we test and trace on a massive scale, we ought to be able to lift the lockdown more quickly than a century ago. But so far it’s not looking good, implying that this recession will be severe, perhaps continue into the third quarter, many firms and jobs will be permanently destroyed and that the bounce-back, when it comes, won’t be great enough to catch up all the lost output.

It is a golden rule of political economy that downturns of this magnitude have huge political ramifications. But while much will be different AC (After Coronavirus), this doesn’t mean that British politics will automatically shift Left-wards. That would be a lazy assumption.

The NHS was already untouchable and unreformable, and Boris Johnson was already planning to shower it with cash: it will merely get even more. The railways were already being renationalised: the crisis has accelerated this. Other bailed-out entities will be reprivatised.

It will be self-evidently unaffordable for the Government to continue paying for half the jobs in the country when the crisis ends, and some of the abuse of furloughing that can even now be detected will remind the public of the dangers of generous welfare. Rishi Sunak’s superstructure will be dismantled: extremely elevated levels of benefits essential during total war can’t continue in peacetime without massive incentive problems.

The greatest change AC will be to our culture, and this won’t help the Left: we will rediscover the advantages of economic growth and have to relearn to live with unemployment. The BC (Before Coronavirus) obsession with frivolous “first world problems” will be gone: there will be no interest in identity politics, just in hard-headed policies that can boost growth and jobs and put money in people’s pockets. There will be a cost of living crisis, and reduced support for taxes or green policies that hurt the poor and middle class, just as there was in 2008-09. It may delay but won’t derail Brexit: national self-interest is back worldwide. The EU is facing severe strains, with fury at how member states aren’t helping each other and Hungary going fully undemocratic.

Taxes may not go up either, at least not conventionally, despite the massive budget deficit (though the self-employed will be hit). The national debt may be “repaid” without explicitly hammering taxpayers: we may see higher inflation in the years ahead, eroding the real value of IOUs. We could even see actual debt write-offs: a rich world Jubilee.

And why would a Tory government be stupid enough to cripple an economy on its knees with higher taxes? A million businesses could easily have gone bust by the end of this, unemployment will be through the roof and asset values – including house prices – could have dropped by 20-25 per cent. Hurting the rich for populist reasons is something that governments can afford to do in the good years, not when they are desperate to attract entrepreneurs, capital and talent. Taxing wealth will be impossible when the price of mansions has collapsed, and hitting the middle classes politically suicidal. The Tories will have to rediscover their supply-side instincts, and do what it takes to encourage growth.

Any higher inflation caused by the monetisation of the deficit will also infuriate Middle England. Only Left-wing economists believe that inflation is popular: it never is. It always leads to a shift to the Right, sometimes to the poujadiste variant.

Many private sector businesses will have their reputations enhanced by their crisis, including supermarkets and even tech firms. Almost everybody blamed profit-making firms for the financial crisis; nobody is blaming them for the virus. There are some caveats: banks can’t pay dividends or bonuses anymore, which will limit the backlash, but they will face reputational damage unless the cheap business loans promised by the Government can be accessed easily.

Most important of all, Johnson’s plans for a big government conservative spending spree are in tatters. With the national debt at 100-110 per cent of GDP, it will become imperative to keep the finances under control, and only spend more on projects to prevent another pandemic.

Nobody can know for certain how politics will change as a result of this humanitarian and economic catastrophe. But as our shell-shocked society, stunned that it isn’t as advanced as it thought it was, goes back to basics, I wouldn’t bet on a Left-wing renaissance.

SOURCE 

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South Korea's Successful Pandemic Strategy

It effectively limited the virus's spread without shutting the country's economy down.

South Korea only just now passed 9,000 total positive tests for the China Virus, and yet the East Asian nation was one of the earliest outside of China to report infections. Furthermore, South Korea did not engage in a nationwide shutdown to slow the virus’s spread, which has many wondering how it has been able to so successfully keep COVID-19 at bay.

The head of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Program, Mike Ryan, noted, “We’ve seen examples in places like Singapore and [South] Korea, where governments haven’t had to shut everything down. They’ve been able to make tactical decisions regarding schools, tactical decisions regarding movements, and been able to move forward without some of the draconian measures.”

The key, Ryan believes, has to do with widespread testing. South Korea quickly engaged in a vast testing regimen, which allowed it to essentially locate and then target those infected areas for isolation and quarantine, thereby slowing and limiting the spread of the virus to other areas of the country. Thus, those regions of the country free of the virus are able to operate more normally. As explained by South Korea’s foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, “Testing is central because that leads to early detection. It minimizes further spread.”

National Public Radio also reports, “Japan is another Asian country notable for its response. Although Japan has more than twice the population of South Korea and also has strong ties to China, it has recorded only a fraction of the cases that South Korea has. … Japan hasn’t been testing nearly as widely as South Korea, but appears to have fended off significant community transmission by quickly investigating any flare-ups of cases, identifying who exactly is infected and then monitoring their contacts.”

Finally, nothing helps like learning from past experiences. Back in 2015, South Korea was hit hard by a MERS outbreak that brought the nation to a near standstill. Lessons learned from dealing with that outbreak have proven pivotal in guiding its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69655-south-koreas-successful-pandemic-strategy-2020-04-02

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Removal of navy captain 'poor judgment'

Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden says the Trump administration showed "poor judgment" in relieving the commander of an aircraft carrier who sought stronger measures to control a coronavirus outbreak onboard.

"Donald Trump's Acting Navy Secretary shot the messenger - a commanding officer who was faithful to both his national security mission and his duty to care for his sailors, and who rightly focused attention on a broader concern about how to maintain military readiness during this pandemic," Biden said in a statement to Reuters.

"And the Navy sent a chilling message to the rest of the fleet about speaking truth to power. The poor judgment here belongs to the Trump Administration, not a courageous officer trying to protect his sailors."

The commander, Captain Brett Crozier, was removed from command after writing a scathing letter to Navy leadership about conditions on the nuclear-powered carrier. The letter leaked to the public.

But acting navy secretary Thomas Modly said the ship's commander "demonstrated extremely poor judgement" in the middle of a crisis.

On Thursday, Mr Modly told reporters that Capt Crozier was being fired for allegedly leaking the letter to the media.

He said the captain copied too many people into a memo, which was leaked to the California newspaper and then quickly spread to many news outlets.

He said Mr Crozier should have gone directly to his immediate commanders, who were already moving to help the ship.

Mr Moldy said the letter "created the impression the Navy was not responding to his questions".

He also said Mr Crozier created a panic by suggesting 50 sailors could die.

SOURCE 1 ; SOURCE 2 

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IN BRIEF

We need an exit strategy: Weekly jobless claims double to a whopping 6.6 million (CNBC)

So about those declining numbers... Chinese county goes into lockdown amid fear of second wave (South China Morning Post)

In typical communistic fashion, Chinese doctor disappears after blowing the whistle on threat (National Review)

Coast Guard tells cruise ships with cases to stay away from U.S. ports (TPR)

Dr. Anthony Fauci given security detail after receiving threats (Washington Examiner)

Environmentally "woke" San Francisco ironically joins Massachusetts in banning reusable bags from grocery stores (Fox News)

California engineer ran train "off the end of rail tracks" in attempted attack on USNS Mercy in Los Angeles (USA Today)

Trump, in preemptive maneuver, says Iran planning "sneak attack" on U.S. troops, assets in Iraq (Fox News)

"There is a growing threat that ... malign actors will try to exploit the situation": Trump launches massive military offensive on drug cartels (The Daily Wire)

Rep. Adam Schiff drafting legislation to set up 9/11-style commission so Democrats can exploit coronavirus response (The Hill)

Rep. Matt Gaetz proposes commonsense bill blocking funds from Congress to China-owned businesses (Washington Examiner)

America's civilian arsenal grows by some 2.5 million firearms after record-shattering gun sales in March (The Washington Free Beacon)

Massachusetts governor infringes on the Second Amendment by closing gun stores (NRA-ILA)

Florida issues statewide stay-at-home order (Fox News)

Pennsylvania placed under stay-at-home order (NBC Philadelphia)

Policy: We can fight pandemics without the communist-allied World Health Organization (The Federalist)

Policy: Statewide lockdowns and the law (Hoover Institution)
 
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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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The shutdown is excessive

In Italy, all those who die in hospitals with Coronavirus will be included in the death numbers. In the article, Professor Walter Ricciardi, Scientific Adviser to Italy’s Minister of Health, reports, “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity—many had two or three.”

Recording the numbers of those who die with Coronavirus will inflate the CFR as opposed to those that died from Coronavirus, which will reduce the CFR.

And, indeed, in an Italian study of those who died, only three patients (0.8 per cent) had no pre-existing health condition, 99 percent had at least one preexisting condition, half had three, and the average of all was 79.6 years. Those figures give some indication of the difference between dying withcoronavirus and dying of coronavirus. That’s a somewhat technical difference to the deceased and his family, but it’s a significant difference to any judgment of how big a threat the virus poses to our peoples. Ignoring it inflates the total of deaths owing to the virus; correcting it must mean reducing the raw data of Italian CFRs to something nearer the German ones. As the CEBD authors point out, moreover, the various estimates of case fatalities all decline substantially from the start of an epidemic to its final tally. Swine-flu estimates fell fivefold over that period.

Reports in the past few days, moreover, suggest that over the weekend the Italian curve “peaked” and should now gradually decline until it dissipates entirely. That may take some time, and I leave it to the epidemiologists and statisticians to guess where both will end up. At this “peak point,” however, the Italian figures are 69,176 infected and 6,820 deaths, while Germany at an earlier point on the curve is looking at 31,260 infected and 156 deaths. These two countries point to quite different estimates of final fatalities.

Let’s look at a slightly more average case. The U.K. has 8,164 infections and 423 deaths. It has far fewer infection cases than Germany does and three times the number of deaths. And in the report of the Imperial College scientists—the one that underpins the policy of the British government—their estimate is that the coronavirus could lead to the deaths of between 20,000 and 500,000 people, depending on whether nothing is done or a quite draconian “lockdown” is imposed. And Boris Johnson has just done the latter. (Their estimate for the U.S. is between 500,000 and 2,200,000 deaths.)

Their report, though not without its technicalities, is closely argued and readable. My advice is to read it here. I shall not attempt to paraphrase it, since Peter Smith, a former colleague at Quadrant and a fine economist, has done a first-class job of both summarizing and critically analyzing it. But I will make a few points that strike me as relevant and important:

The IC report itself is a balanced and flexible document. Though its authors chose a policy of “suppression” over “mitigation,” that was a matter of emphasis rather than of a strict division. Most of the practical policies to tackle the pandemic—case isolation, voluntary home quarantine, social distancing of the elderly, social distancing of the entire population, closure of schools and universities—are proposed under both headings but in different combinations, timescales, and so on.

The report itself was not a departure from previous government policy—the “U-turn” much touted in the media—but the evolution of policy that was a response in real time to the dimensions of the threat posed by the virus. What led the scientists to propose a move from mitigation to suppression was data from Italy showing numbers of infected people so high that the hospitals were overwhelmed.

Without a policy of suppression—i.e., immediately halting the spread of the virus by quarantining the population—the National Health Service would be overwhelmed, as in Italy. But the virus would remain in the population and resume spreading when quarantine was eased. There would be a second upsurge of infections and deaths in the fall, as has happened in earlier epidemics and may now be happening in China. And so a second lockdown. Or third.

At the same time, a “lockdown,” partial or total, under suppression would gravely damage the economy, perhaps reducing the gross domestic product by a fifth to a third and creating mass unemployment. It would also halt the gradual expansion of “herd immunity,” which under mitigation would have meant that most people would have suffered the mild symptoms of a weakening virus, thereby becoming immune, while the elderly and at-risk groups were protected by quarantine measures reserved for them until the virus had been more or less eradicated.

Great depression or the breakdown of the nation’s health service? It’s not an easy choice, and to be fair to the scientists, they recognized this in the report, acknowledging both that there were crucial social and economic aspects of the crisis and that they could advise only on its medical aspects.
Once the report was released, however, all restraints of practicality were released too. A mass public pandemic of panic took over. The merits of suppression versus mitigation seem to me to lie narrowly on the mitigation side of the argument. But its great failing is that allowing a virus to spread, albeit to sections of the population resistant to it (while protecting the vulnerable), is a very hard sell. That failing was magnified by media that scented government incompetence in the mythical U-turn (a reversal denied by the IC chairman) and set off to prove it. And that press campaign was made as toxic as the coronavirus by the fact that large numbers of pundits, including some conservatives, are in the grip of a wildly irrational “Boris Derangement Syndrome” that leads them to believe the most exaggerated (albeit contradictory) charges against him—“He’s a fascist who wants to control everyone.” / “He’s a libertarian who won’t impose the necessary controls on people.” (Much the same syndrome can be seen in the United States; indeed, some say it was invented there.)

One result is that public opinion has demanded—and governments have yielded to—the imposition of lockdowns that go much farther than the IC report proposed. The report was, for instance, ambivalent-leaning-to-hostile with respect to school closures. They would not reduce transmission of the virus between children, since they would still be mixing outside; if they had been infected, they might transmit the virus to vulnerable grandparents given the task of looking after them by harassed parents; and those parents working in the health sector and emergency sectors, now greatly needed to deal with higher patient loads, would be kept at home. But governments all over Europe—except, to its credit, the Dutch government—have now closed schools in response to public pressure, even though the ministers in them will tell you privately they think this is a bad idea with likely bad consequences. Boris Johnson’s Tory government has gone to extreme lengths in this regard, literally imprisoning people in their homes, with only an hour or so for exercise or shopping every day.

It offers only a little solace that Boris is doing this reluctantly. It is still leading to the deliberate economic ruin of the country. President Trump sees the same thing and so proposes ending or avoiding a shutdown, but without a plausible way of dealing with the threat of the coronavirus in the longer term. There is a basic flaw to this approach. As Peter Smith writes: “The policies being adopted by governments are not tenable. They will bring about unquantifiable and crippling economic and social (and quite possibly serious health) consequences. Make no mistake, governments will be forced to reverse course . . . and adopt a different strategy.”

What he has in mind is a weaponized version of the mitigation strategy.

Recall, this strategy consists of socially distancing only those who fit in the category of being particularly vulnerable to the virus, and quarantining those with the infection and those living in the same households. If that were done, it would cause some economic dislocation—e.g., for the travel and tourism industries—but it would allow most everyone else to get on with life as normal, albeit while practicing good hygiene. That is the economic and social advantage of mitigation.

The medical advantage is that it leads to a rapid spread of the virus and to herd immunity, “leading to an eventual rapid decline in case numbers and transmission dropping to low levels.” Unfortunately, in the meantime, under assumptions about its transmission to vulnerable groups (because of the likely degree of contact despite encouragement of social distancing) and the number of available critical-care hospital beds, it overwhelms health services and causes many deaths.

If we could solve the medical flaw in this strategy—and that might be possible: read on—it would still face a more obstructive flaw. Governments have already committed themselves and their prestige to a bold (if mistaken) policy and invested immense amounts of political capital in it. It’s hard enough to change their minds before they’ve made such a commitment; it’s nigh impossible to do the same when they’ve bet the house on a single number in roulette. Okay, events will force a retreat to mitigation or something like it eventually. But it would require a bolt from the blue to get them to change now.

Amazingly enough, two bolts have suddenly appeared from the blue.

The lesser bolt is that, as we noticed earlier, researchers have only lately begun to point out that the Italian statistics may greatly exaggerate those deaths caused by the virus: They amount to only 12 per cent of the total number of those who died with the virus. Most died, in effect, from other causes. And that smaller death rate from COVID-19 is likely to shrink farther as the pandemic runs its course. These doubts about the Italian statistics are important because governments and the media have been treating Italy’s experience with COVID-19 as a guide to what their own countries are likely to suffer after a time lag. What if it isn’t? This question has particular significance to the U.K. The IC scientists chose suppression over mitigation in their urgent advice to the British government because they were alarmed by data they had just received from Italy. Did that data exaggerate the Italian death rates? Or did it take into account the growing doubts about them? Probably the latter, though the U.K. media have begun to follow this story only in recent days..

Even if the Italian data showed no bias, however, a third factor must be taken into account: namely, the annual death rate in the U.K. In 2018, one full year before COVID-19 was heard of, 541,000 people died in England and Wales, most of them older and less healthy people. That’s almost the exact prediction in the IC report of how many people would die if nothing was done. Are the 510,000 deaths in addition to the annual total? Apparently not. They will be part of the total. Naturally, no one now knows how large a part, since the deaths are hypothetical and the deceased still alive. But since those Brits who died in earlier years are similar in relevant respects to the great majority of Italians who died with the coronavirus rather than by it, it’s reasonable to argue that the deaths from the virus in the U.K. will not add all that many to the annual total of the dead of previous years, since many of them would likely die if the virus hadn’t erupted among us.

That’s not to dismiss the fates of human beings with a claim on us, merely to refine what is at stake. If the main aim of policy is to prevent those deaths from occurring all at the same time and overwhelming the health system, then—yes—it makes sense to adopt suppression. But if the main aim is to save their lives while avoiding an economic dislocation that would put many more lives at risk too, then that might be better accomplished by Smith’s policy of weaponized mitigation. His policy would combine paying the elderly to self-quarantine for a period while organizing industry and the voluntary services to equip hospitals with more beds and better medical technology in real time. And the latter is already happening throughout the English-speaking world.

That approach would work more easily and surely, however, if “herd immunity” were more advanced in Britain, so that fewer people would be at risk of catching the illness and therefore fearful about it. That possibility has just been delivered by the second bolt from the blue, hurled, oddly enough, by the “Pink’ un.” The Financial Times has just broken a story that Oxford medical researchers have developed a model that shows among other things that Britain has already developed a high degree of “herd immunity.” Work by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group suggests that the coronavirus could have arrived in Britain in mid January, far earlier than previously believed, spread widely under the radar for more than a month, and by now infected up to half of the population, most without their ever realizing they had been infected. Sunetra Gupta, the leader of the study and a professor of theoretical epidemiology, told the FT that, if the results are confirmed, they mean that “the vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all.”

If Professor Gupta’s work survives testing and, presumably, some pushback by the scientists at Imperial College, it will be a great and welcome achievement. It would mean that far fewer people are now at risk of a painful illness and death, that the balance of advantage between mitigation and suppression has now changed decisively in favor of the former, and that the destructive policy of closing down the economy to fight the coronavirus at recurring intervals can now be reversed or at the very least put on hold. As Robert VerBruggen points out on The Corner, “this is a possibility the paper sketches out, not an actual finding inferred from the data.” But if that possibility turns out to be true, it would change the entire gloomy landscape we have all felt trapped inside.

Millions of people already feel luckier. Among them, Lucky Boris, who’s been handed an alternative to trudging into a socialist prison (if he’s prepared to take it), and Lucky Trump, who’s been given the justification he needs to close down the shutdown.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

Stocks close historically bad quarter with losses; Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all down between 15% and 24% (The Hill)

Larry Hogan and Gretchen Whitmer: What governors need from Washington during this health emergency (The Washington Post)

How South Korea reined in the outbreak without shutting everything down (NPR)

New Jersey backs down on gun-store closures (The Washington Free Beacon)

An answer to China? Trump calls for $2 trillion infrastructure bill as "Phase 4" of coronavirus response (Fox News)

For the record: Ten insanely wasteful spending items in the relief bill (The Federalist)

"Millionaires don't need a new tax break": In ironic turnabout, Grassley blasts Pelosi's attempt to eliminate SALT deduction cap (National Review)

The rule of men: DOJ IG checked 29 more FBI spy warrants and found problems with all of them (The Daily Caller)

Unconstitutional ban? District court finds bump-stock proscription may constitute a taking, because the federal government lacks a police power (The Volokh Conspiracy)

"Preparing for worst-case scenarios": The U.S. military's dealing with the virus — but keep it a secret (RealClearInvestigations)

With friends like these, who needs enemies? Chinese propaganda is now citing U.S. journalists' and Democrats' coronavirus rhetoric (Washington Examiner)

Marine Corps plans to cut tanks, shrinks F-35 squadrons to confront China (Naval Technology)

Policy: Even during these dark days, it's not all bad news in the jobs market (New York Post)

Policy: Why it's so hard to escape anti-poverty programs (Foundation for Economic Education)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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The Swedish alternative to ferocious shutdowns

Note that the death toll below becomes comparable with other countries only if we take Sweden's small population into account -- 10 million. So the 105 deaths reported below amount to less than 1 per capita, which is less than almost anywhere except Australia

There have been recent prophecies that Sweden will have to crack down soon.  But so far they are just that: Prophecies.  The basis of the claim is that deaths in Sweden have risen a bit recently.  They are however still very low by world standards

In the bright spring sun, flaxen-haired families held barbecues on the beach. Crowds in this provincial Swedish town shopped in ­designer boutiques and in supermarkets laden with toilet paper and pasta.

As much of the world hunkered down at home to hide from the coronavirus, life in Sweden was — for many — carrying on almost as normal last week.

Swedish public health experts argue that the virus can be stopped solely by vaccination or by herd immunity.

Since a vaccine for widespread use is still at least a year away, they say, the only possible way to stop the epidemic is by isolating vulnerable people while allowing the virus to spread as slowly as possible through the healthy population as they build resistance.

Scientists at Sweden’s public health agency say this will also prevent a harsh resurgence in ­infections. “It’s important to think how long can you keep these measures going,” said state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.

“What we’re doing now we think we can do for a long time. Of course it slows down many things in society but we can make it work. We all know that this is going to go on for months. You can’t keep schools closed for months.”

There were 3447 infections in Sweden and 105 deaths by Sunday. Some restrictions have been imposed to slow the spread of the virus and protect the vulnerable.

Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned and colleges and universities are closed. Those over 70, or with pre-existing health problems, have been asked to stay at home except for a daily walk. But restaurants and bars are open and children are going to school.

The authorities say Swedes can be trusted to follow recommendations to socially distance and do not need draconian laws to slow the spread of the virus.

“If the public health agency goes out and says stay home, ­people do stay home,” Dr Tegnell said. “My feeling is that the actual impact of having a law in another country and a recommendation in Sweden isn’t that different.”

Last week The Netherlands, which has been aiming for herd immunity, announced a ban on ­almost all gatherings amid public fears over a large projected number of deaths.

In Sweden, scientists at the public health agency are shaping the national response to the virus together with the government, but — by law — politicians cannot ­intervene in the details of its ­implementation.

“The agencies have the technical and scientific expertise. The government has the expertise in policies and politics,” Dr Tegnell said. “Most experts in the world agree that there’s no way of stopping this any more. It hits almost every country in the world. We can’t get rid of it, that never happened in history — only with smallpox after decades of vaccination.”

Anders Bjorkman, a leading ­epidemiologist who spent years at the forefront of malaria research, challenges the model used by ­researchers at Imperial College London, which estimated that about 1 per cent of those who contracted the virus would die. He ­argues that the estimate is misleading as it does not include those with the virus who exhibit no symptoms.

“They say there’s 1 per cent mortality. That’s not true. They completely discard the asymp­tomatics,” he said. “In all these groups there are some who don’t have symptoms and aren’t reported. In Sweden the average age of all reported corona cases is 56 years roughly. The average age of the population is 40 … and I believe that all age groups have been more or less equally exposed. Among the younger population, those under 40, there are so many non-symptomatics.”

The death rate in Sweden, he said, was likely to be closer to 0.1 per cent than 1 per cent. Hundreds, rather than tens of thousands, would die before herd immunity was achieved.

The public health agency said that in tests of about 5000 people who had returned to Sweden from visits to Italy, the few hundred that were positive all exhibited mild symptoms — implying that there could be a large number of people in Sweden who are asymptomatic — with mild or no symptoms — who have not sought medical treatment.

SOURCE 

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Are We Sacrificing Liberty for Security?

We must evaluate the real price of the near-total economic shutdown.

In the midst of the current China Virus pandemic — and the media-generated panic that greatly exacerbates it — the reality of the above quote remains immutable. And right now, the presumptive default position — for reasonable Americans, at least — is that government is operating in our best interests. One says reasonable because there will always be those incapable of transcending politics. What they’re afflicted with is far worse than coronavirus, because while viruses may be ultimately beaten back, rabid partisanship appears eternal. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (SC) privately told his Democrat Party members that a coronavirus bill supposedly aimed at giving relief to millions of unemployed and sick Americans was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

What kinds of “tradeoffs” were Democrats seeking? Courtesy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who showed her true colors in time of crisis, a hard-left wish list of items wholly unrelated to helping a nation teetering on the brink of collapse. One suspects millions of Americans beset by a crushing combination of self-isolation, unemployment, impending bankruptcy, and fear of death or serious debilitation are appalled by “solutions” that included same-day voter registration, ballot harvesting, gender and racial diversity data requirements for corporations and the government, automatic extensions for nonimmigrant visas, more wind and solar tax credits, or requirements that an already reeling airline industry cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 50%.

Pelosi ultimately caved, but one hopes voters will remember such despicable self-interest next November. Yet that is a topic for another day.

The topic for today was best expressed by President Donald Trump in a tweet: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

It will be interesting to see if he has even that much time. While our media elites have already branded Trump’s since-revised assertion as a choice “between solidarity and barbarism” or called it an “astoundingly boneheaded idea,” there is either a stunning level of naiveté or monumental self-unawareness attached to such sentiments.

First, the difference between solidarity and barbarism is in the eye of the beholder: New Yorkers fleeing Manhattan and hunkering down at well-stocked beachfront mansions in the Hamptons are likely far more sanguine about self-isolation than a single mother forced to wait it out with her two kids in a tiny apartment in the projects. And again, it’s easier to be noble when one is blessed with recession-proof wherewithal rather than facing financial calamity. Moreover, some people can tolerate loneliness, isolation, and adversity; some cannot — not even for a week.

Second, while it is easy to focus on the mortality rate of the coronavirus wholly by itself, to ignore the potential mortality rate associated with isolation-engendered drug and alcohol overdoses, accidents, suicide, or murder is a fool’s errand. In many cases, simply contemplating a future of enduring financial ruination may be enough to push someone over the edge.

Thus, to simply dismiss the idea of what may be best described as a more targeted approach to the dilemma as barbarism or boneheadedness — or, worse, to assume that such an approach is evil — is itself an indication that some types of solidarity are “more equal” than others.

At some point — utterly irrespective of the president’s hopes, expert advice, or a poisonous media thoroughly invested in sowing panic, discord, hatred, and hysteria — the pressure to reintegrate will become unbearable. It’s impossible to say where prolonged purposelessness ultimately leads, but to completely dismiss it as part of the equation is shortsighted.

Another factor? By self-isolating and social distancing, could we be kicking the proverbial can down the road and extending the timeline of the pandemic? We are told such measures are necessary to prevent overloading our healthcare system, but what happens to that same healthcare system when it must deal with a persistent level of coronavirus, coupled with the additional pathologies arising from the scourges of isolation and economic catastrophe? It’s worth remembering that the deaths arising from America’s opioid crisis — largely attributed to economic disruption exponentially less serious than what could happen now — outpaced those arising from car accidents. It’s also worth considering how many healthcare providers would be put out of business by an unprecedented economic catastrophe.

Moreover, when does “an abundance of caution” lead to an abundance of oppression? If it turns out coronavirus is only marginally more deadly than flu, what becomes the “standard” mortality rate for shutting down an entire nation, imposing draconian government controls, and essentially subverting the Constitution?

And not just for coronavirus, but any potential deadly disease going forward?

Already the Justice Department is asking Congress to expand its powers during a national emergency, including the ability to allow chief judges to permanently detain an individual without trial. As columnist Douglas MacKinnon reminds us, such “temporary” power, once given to government, “is rarely returned to the people and often abused.”

Moreover, do the people get a say in the matter? MacKinnon believes — and one suspects millions of other Americans do as well — that some sort of national referendum should be held. Let the people decide whether we continue indefinitely sheltering in place, or embrace a possible “herd immunity” strategy that incorporates a new set of social mores designed to provide safety to the nation’s most vulnerable people. One that can be effected without committing economic suicide.

Unthinkable? With regard to the seasonal flu, it’s a choice we’ve already made, even though millions will get it and thousands will die — year in, year out.

That such a longstanding choice has never been turned into a political issue is telling. There is little doubt that widespread panic is a great enabler of power consolidation, and once the crisis passes — or Americans decide to endure a certain level of risk to put it behind them — the necessity of a thorough review regarding who can essentially suspend constitutional rights “for emergency sake” is absolutely imperative. If we don’t review such power grabs, many Americans will wonder whether we were properly responding to a crisis — or creating a template for totalitarian governance.

And finally, the media. The one that makes a complete mockery of hope, largely because hope doesn’t accrue to its political sensibilities, even when hope may be the only thing keeping millions of Americans from losing their minds. Fueled by arrogance and condescension, the media’s unrelenting effort to divide America during its most dire crisis is the sorriest spectacle of rank self-interest this nation has ever witnessed. This is one American who fervently hopes this contemptible army of doomsayers, panic-mongers, propagandists, and outright liars gets the mother of all comeuppances, as they have proven themselves incapable of embracing simple decency when it matters most.

We certainly hope President Trump’s current desire to reopen America by June 1 can be realized.

SOURCE 

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More on the deceptive coronavirus models

Why is pinpointing the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 into the U.S. so important? Because the Task Force must make decisions based on sound modeling. To avoid deep and prolonged economic harm, we should return to business as usual (excluding those at high risk) in the coming month. And if SARS-CoV-2 actually arrived here between mid-November and mid-January, then the modeling trajectory of its spread and fatality rate is significantly different than what has been projected and reported.

To that point, yesterday Task Force response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx made a remarkable disclosure. She condemned the "Viral Fear Pandemic" fomented by the mainstream media and, though she did not name them, the Democrat leaders who have disgracefully politicized that fear.

Regarding the breathless pandemic modeling that has been promoted by the media, Brix declared: "Models are models. When people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary, but we don't have data that matches that based on our experience." She said the media should not assert "that when people need a hospital bed it's not going to be there, or a ventilator it's not going to be there [because] we don't have evidence of that." She added, "It's our job collectively to assure the American people. There is no model right now [and] no reality on the ground where we can see that 60% to 70% of Americans are going to get infected in the next eight to 12 weeks. I want to be clear about that."

She referenced the "recent report out of the UK ... that said there would be 500,000 deaths in the UK and 2.2 million deaths in the United States." She noted, "They've adjusted that number in the UK to 20,000. Half a million to 20,000. We are looking at that in great detail to understand that adjustment. ... The predictions of the model don't match the reality." That original UK report was widely promoted by the mainstream media.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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The curious age discrimination of coronavirus

The generational effect of the corona-virus is cunning and baffling. By often being so mild in the young and healthy it turns people into heedless carriers. By often being so lethal in the old and sick, it makes carriers into potential executioners of friends and neighbours.

The virus is very dangerous for people who have certain underlying illnesses, which is probably the main reason it is so serious for the elderly. It is almost as if it does not kill people by itself, just worsens other disorders. This is unlike flu, where children are as much at risk as old people. By contrast, in this case, young people in good health, even very young children, generally get such a mild coronavirus infection that they rarely have to seek treatment. An analysis of Chinese cases found that just 0.1 per cent of children under the age of nine who caught the virus needed to go to hospital and only 5 per cent of those needed critical care; just 0.002 per cent died, compared with 9.3 per cent of those over 80.

It is surely this pattern that is making the disease so difficult to stop. People are passing on Covid-19 before they feel unwell, perhaps without ever feeling sick. According to a study of 468 cases in China, where the source of infection could be traced, the average time between one person getting ill and the person he or she gives it to getting sick (the ‘serial interval’) is about four days, with 59 of the infectees getting sick even before the infector felt ill — a so-called negative interval. (This could have been, for example, a young person with no early symptoms giving it to an older person.)

That serial interval is half as long as Sars, and signals how contagious Covid-19 is. In the absence of social distancing, the average person gives the disease to about three people, twice as many as flu. In short, the evil genius of this virus is that it is creating an epidemic of rapid transmission without making most of its victims sick enough to stop getting out and about. That is why its lethality for a few is not such a problem for the germ itself: normally, a virus transmitted by coughing would have to evolve towards not killing people in order to keep going.

The relative invulnerability of the young probably explains the indifference of some people to the government’s increasingly desperate advice that people should keep a distance from each other. On Sunday evening, a television reporter interviewed fit young men using exercise bars in a London park in close proximity to others and -frequently swapping equipment: an ideal recipe for spreading the virus. They were not bothered. ‘I thought, you know what,’ said one, ‘this is even better because I’ve got the fresh air.’ It had not dawned on him that he might pass on the virus while feeling fine.
Many younger people feel invincible anyway, but the horrible truth is that the data from the epidemic has made them more confident rather than less, apparently forgetting their risk as carriers, rather than victims, of the virus.

Typhoid Mary was a cook who moved from one rich employer to another in New York and Long Island, infecting seven households with typhoid between 1900 and 1907 before doctors traced her as the common cause of the infections. The key point is that she was in good health herself throughout. When confronted, she indignantly refused to submit stool samples for analysis, until eventually imprisoned for this refusal.

After three years she was released while promising not to work as a cook. -Unhappy with the low wages of a laundress, she changed her name, resumed cooking and resumed causing typhoid. After a 1915 outbreak in a hospital for women in which 25 people fell ill and two died, Mary Mallon/Brown was again arrested and kept in quarantine for the rest of her life, refusing to have her gall bladder removed. When she died in 1938, an autopsy revealed a thriving colony of typhoid bacteria in her gall bladder. For some genetic reason they had not caused any symptoms in her.

I am not suggesting that people are being as deliberately irresponsible as Typhoid Mary, and of course people are infectious with the coronavirus for only a week or two, not a lifetime. But there is a disturbing echo here, in the crowds that turned up at parks, markets and shops last weekend, of her unwillingness to believe she could have been part of the problem.

There may be another reason too. This was articulated by the broadcaster -Timandra Harkness on Twitter: ‘Is it tactless to -suggest that people who have spent the past 20 years being told not to do anything fun because it’s bad for them may now be less receptive to urgent Public Health advice?’ Don’t drink! Don’t eat sugar! Don’t leave your home! The indifferent may not be very public-spirited, but they are not irrational. Most people’s chances of dying if they get the disease probably are very low. The case fatality rate overall is likely to be well below 1 per cent. It seems much higher right now because most of those being tested are the people who have fallen ill enough to go to hospital. We all now know people who have caught the virus and are showing the symptoms — including that unusual feature of a loss of smell and taste — but have not been tested. And if you are under 70, then you are almost certain not to die unless you have a serious other condition.

Indeed, perhaps that is true if you are over 70 too. The elderly are increasingly plagued with ‘co-morbidities’ — the name for those who have several different things wrong with them, all being treated with separate drugs — and this is perhaps why they are succumbing to the virus. It may have nothing to do with age itself.

Thus, if we really could isolate those with underlying conditions from the rest of the society then everybody else could get the economy back to normal, push on through the epidemic to gain herd immunity. Schools could reopen, businesses get going again and the health service might cope. Once enough people were immune, they could care for those who are more vulnerable. But can that be done? How does a care home operate if some of the staff are spending time out in the rest of the world? Delivering post or shopping to a person with heart problems is itself a risk. Besides, the death of several doctors in Italy implies that the virus can still kill healthy people sometimes — though these individuals probably received much larger doses of the virus than most people would.

With luck a better choice may present itself: test and trace, as seems to have worked in South Korea. Once we have enough test kits, including a serological test to find those who have had it and are immune, then we can test enough people to identify and trace the contacts of every carrier, and we can surely turn the tide. But by then the health service might have been overwhelmed.

SOURCE 

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Poll: 15 Percent of Bernie Supporters Will Vote for Trump Over Biden

A new ABC News/Washington Post opinion poll has some very bad news for former Vice President Joe Biden. If he secures the Democratic presidential nomination -- which he will, of course -- a full 15 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters plan to cast their vote for President Donald Trump's reelection. That's extremely troubling for Biden, because in 2016, only 12% of Bernie's supporters broke for Trump after their guy's historic intraparty fight with Hillary Clinton.

But, USA Today reports, there's some good news in there. You see, the 15% of Bernie-istas who plan to vote for Trump in that scenario represent "just 6% of Democrats and voters who lean Democratic." Meanwhile, "Trump won 8% of Democrats in 2016."

Huh? Wait a minute. How about Democrat or Democrat-leaning voters who supported other candidates in the primaries... or who may not have supported any of them? Isn't it likely that these Democrat runaways will add some percentage points to the stat cited above?

You'd think so. And matters may get even worse for Biden considering the fact that Trump's approval rating is on the rise. That too will convince at least some traditional Democrat voters to go with Trump this time around.

Oh yes, this could get much, much worse for Biden than USA Today anticipates.

SOURCE 

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The Coronavirus Killed the Progressive Left

Covid-19 and the Democratic presidential primaries, the two biggest stories of the year so far, reflect a common theme: the death of the progressive left. Looking back, historians may well see late 2019 and very early 2020 as a kind of high-water mark for American progressivism.

It wasn’t so long ago that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were commanding most of the attention in the presidential campaign, especially among intellectuals. Right before Super Tuesday, Sanders was a clear favorite in the prediction markets. Yet the actual voting showed the strength of Joe Biden, a (relative) centrist; Warren attracted very little support, and Sanders failed to reach the same vote totals he achieved four years ago.

And a big comeback for the left four years from now seems unlikely. Democratic Party success is likely to come from other directions. Covid-19 could well be a front-page story for the next year or two, possibly more. Over the span of less than a week, virtually every major institution in American life has been subject to radical changes to their daily operations, and it is not clear when things will return to normal. Covid-19 may well make a bigger impression on the national consciousness than 9/11 or the financial crisis of 2008.

How will Covid-19 reshape public opinion? I am not suggesting that what follows is rational, much less correct, but here are some guesses:

-- The notion of very open international borders will seem strange and indeed intolerable, as most of the world’s wealthy nations have been looking for ways to keep foreigners out. The new restrictions on movement will not be repealed so quickly or so thoroughly, and for a while the U.S. may restrict movement across domestic states and cities. President Donald Trump will appear to have been ahead of his time, and immigration will no longer be a viable mobilizing issue for the left.

-- The egalitarianism of the progressive left also will seem like a faint memory. Elites are most likely to support wealth redistribution when they feel comfortable themselves, and indeed well-off coastal elites in California and the Northeast are a backbone of the progressive movement. But when these people feel threatened in their lives or occupations, or when the futures of their children suddenly seem less secure, redistribution will not be such a compelling ideal.

I am not saying you have to welcome this change, only that it is likely.

-- A massive dose of fiscal policy has been another progressive priority. Now that even Republicans are embracing stimulus, as a political issue it will cease to be effective for the left.

-- The case for mass transit also will seem weaker, because subways and buses will be associated with the fear of Covid-19 transmission. In a similar fashion, the forces of NIMBY will become stronger, relative to those of YIMBY, because people secure in their isolated suburban homes will feel less stressed than those in densely packed urban apartment buildings.

-- There is likely to be much more government intervention in some parts of the health-care sector, but it will focus on scarce hospital beds and ventilators, and enforce nasty triage, rather than being a benevolent move toward universal coverage. If anything, it will drive home the message that supply constraints are binding and America can’t have everything — hardly the traditional progressive message.

-- The climate change movement is likely to be another victim. How much have you heard about Greta Thunberg lately? Concern over the climate will seem like another luxury from safer and more normal times. In addition, the course of anti-Covid-19 efforts may not prove propitious for the climate change movement. If the fight against Covid-19 suddenly improves (perhaps a vaccine working very quickly?), Americans may come to expect the same in the fight against climate change.

Alternatively, if Covid-19 risk persists, it will distract and seem like the bigger problem. And the various national responses to date also do not suggest that international cooperation is going to be very successful on a wide variety of issues, climate change included.

Again, this is all conjecture. But as Covid-19 continues to spread, it is likely that the list of things it will change — in politics and the world of ideas, much less daily life — is only going to grow.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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