Mean time in Spain

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Mean time in Spain

I'm not sure. But if I were king or emperor, I'd hang you by your ankles and let my palace guard go to work on you for lèse-majesté. And then I'd finish my breakfast.

I like to wait until after lunch before I am tortured to death by the emperor of the United States. It looks like you are dodging the question. You like to complain about the infringement of your civil liberties but you don't have a better plan. Yesterday Trump gave a speech in which he said that an acceptable level of deaths would be 100000. I thought that was shockingly honest for a politician but not out of line. This is a difficult moral issue and pretty much any answer will be wrong.

[Woodsman]

Re: Mean time in Spain

Get over yourself. Your authority on this matter begins and ends with Chris Martenson's latest grift and you're no position to interrogate anyone.

[GRG55]

Re: Mean time in Spain

...This is a difficult moral issue and pretty much any answer will be wrong.

Not the first day nations are faced with this question. Some (rhetorical) questions for the forum.

Is a preventable death from a coronavirus a greater or lesser moral failing than a preventable death from any other cause?

If preventable deaths are immoral then shouldn't every nation on earth be devoting 100% of its surplus from national output to its medical system and other policies in an effort to prevent these from any and every cause?

Is it moral or immoral to divert resources from, say, education budgets for the young to saving more retired folks whose families have decided they are too much bother and placed them in managed care facilities (aka "old folks homes")?

So far most governments are still reacting, rather than leading. Most developed economy governments are spending money they don't have while simultaneously eliminating large amounts of the tax sources that fund them. Without wishing to debate whether the outcome is "good" or "bad" I see two inevitabilities from all this; increasing taxes and increasing direct government involvement in the economy. Both in substantial amounts.

[Woodsman]

Re: Mean time in Spain

Politics ends at the trough's edge:

Corona Cash Grab: Pelosi, US Agencies Compile Lists For Phase 4 Stimulus: "Pelosi's bill will also focus on infrastructure - with broadband and water resources a central focus, as well as more funds for state and local governments, paid family and medical leave, direct payments to the American public, and free treatment for coronavirus - not just free testing."

Trump Calls For $2T Infrastructure Package In Phase 4 Stimulus: "With interest rates for the United States being at ZERO, this is the time to do our decades long awaited Infrastructure Bill. It should be VERY BIG & BOLD, Two Trillion Dollars, and be focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once great infrastructure of our Country! Phase 4,"

[jk]

Re: Mean time in Spain

the combination of a sudden stop in the u.s. economy, enormous and rising unemployment and the fact that we have been relying on ill-maintained infrastructure constructed 60-70 years ago provides an enormous opportunity to FINALLY do something about our roads, bridges, airports, electrical grid, internet service and so on.

the issue for me is how much is going to be raked off by white collar criminals.

[Mega]

Re: Mean time in Spain

hmmmmmmm

[GRG55]

Re: Mean time in Spain

Everything old is new again? Sounds like a reprise of the Works Program Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corp.

Your concern about the "take" might result in a replay of the short lived Civil Works Administration.

[Mega]

Re: Mean time in Spain

If it comes to pass that the Virus is no worse than Flu, GOD HELP THEM!
History a 100 years from now will discuss it.

Mike

[jk]

Re: Mean time in Spain

If it comes to pass that the Virus is no worse than Flu, GOD HELP THEM!
History a 100 years from now will discuss it.

Mike

all you can do is make the best decision possible based on the information available at the time. unfortunately, none of us are blessed with clairvoyance,

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Mean time in Spain

If it comes to pass that the Virus is no worse than Flu, GOD HELP THEM!
History a 100 years from now will discuss it.

Mike

Italy’s ‘true’ death rate is a warning for Britons who want to end lockdown




The Italian federation of doctors has a message for those who build castles in the air based on theoretical modelling of Covid-19, and for those credulous enough to base policy on such models.

“Whoever is handling the numbers is either incompetent or living in a parallel universe,” said Dr Paola Pedrini, head of the federation’s Lombardy chapter, currently facing the pandemic onslaught.

Those dying at home or in care homes are not being recorded as coronavirus deaths. The true death toll is multiples higher. “We don’t want data confusion to hide the general responsibility for the ‘Caporetto’ of the Italian health system.”

The Battle of Caporetto was where the Italian front across the Isondo collapsed in late 1917 under a combined Austro-Hungarian and German attack, despite General Cadorno’s policy of "decimation" for underperforming regiments.

By all means let us have a lively national debate over the rights and wrongs of shutting down normal economic and social existence for three to six months in order to save lives, but let it be based on reality. Only then can we make an informed moral decision.

We have a "real time" laboratory before our eyes. What is happening at the Italian coal face is not remotely consistent with claims being made by some that the death rate from Covid-19 is akin to seasonal winter flu at about 0.1pc.

Many have jumped on the Oxford University study led by Prof Sunetra Gupta to claim that we already have herd immunity reaching 50pc or 60pc of the population. It merely explores a hypothesis. It concludes that a high level of early spread is theoretically possible, and that therefore we should go for antibody testing quickly to find out who has had the disease. We can all agree to that.

The Gupta analysis is not peer-reviewed but you can get a flavour of reactions in the scientific world from the PubPeer page and from named experts at the Science Media Centre.

The mayors of Bergamo and Brescia – two Covid-19 hotspots – say the reported deaths in their cities are a small fraction of the true numbers. An epidemiological portrait is easy to construct. You compare deaths since January with seasonal averages over recent years. Corriere Della Sera has done exactly that.
Coronavirus live map

The small town of Nembro has 11,600 inhabitants. Typically it would have 35 deaths over the first quarter. This year it had already had 158 deaths by March 24. Yet the official data counts just 31 Covid-19 mortalities. The implication is that the real pandemic death rate has been four times higher.

The same method showed that deaths were 6.1 times normal in Cernusco and Pesaro, and 10.4 times higher in the city of Bergamo. This is partly because Covid-19 care is crowding out treatment for other diseases. But that changes nothing in practical terms. It is all part of the same drama.

The much higher death toll conforms with the grim accounts by doctors facing a lack of beds, ventilators and other vital equipment. They are forced to separate young from old, sending the over-70s home to take their chances.

This is taking place in the richest part of Italy with world-class hospitals. It is what happens if governments delay and let their health care systems break under the strain of exploding Covid-19 cases. Italy was taken by surprise. Britain had weeks of prior warning.

The Corriere analysis also conforms with estimates of a 1.4pc death rate in China published by the University of Hong Kong in a widely praised Nature study (this one peer-reviewed).

You can look at the Italian figures another way. La Stampa reported on Monday – for example – that registered Covid-19 deaths in Alessandria have reached 155. That is already 0.16pc of the entire 94,000 population of the town even if you accept official mortality data – and we know that they are not all infected. It is the same story for nearby Biella and Verbani. The flu parallel is obvious nonsense.

South Korea has done more than 300,000 tests and kept up a rigorous policy of tracing and isolation. Its mortality rate from Covid-19 has been creeping up as slow deaths come in. The country records 158 fatalities out of 9,661 positive cases, a ratio of over 1.6pc.

The Koreans have undoubtedly missed cases. The tests often give false negatives. But it would be unwise for Britain to base policy on the premise that they are massively wrong.

The recorded death rates in countries that test widely is: Norway 0.7pc, Germany 0.9pc, Austria 1.1pc, and Switzerland 2.1pc. They all have good health care systems.

Arctic Iceland has a much lower ratio at 0.2pc. This is interesting but it would be folly for any major state to rely on signals from that one tiny nation. How efficiently does the viral load transmit in glacial temperatures at 63 degrees latitude? There may be variables that make extrapolation dangerous.

The question I have for those in Britain who argue that we should call off the lockdown and restart the economy is what would happen if the virus were allowed to run wild and the death ratios were to track Lombardy.
Business Briefing Newsletter REFERRAL (Article)

You would be looking at a weekly death rate in late Spring that was four, five, or 10 times normal and that would overwhelm the critical care facilities of the NHS many times over. There could be an extra 500,000 or 600,000 deaths before the pandemic burnt itself out.

The tragedy – or scandal – would shatter the reputation of this country. We would no longer have any claim to moral leadership. Authoritarian regimes would have shown more care for their people. The credibility of this Government would be destroyed. This is the tail-risk – not a prediction, nota bene – that policy-makers must ponder.

One has the impression that the Government’s original strategy of herd immunity was crafted in the bureaucratic hothouse of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee during those crucial wasted weeks in late January and February without regard for reality on the ground, first in Wuhan, and then in Italy.

Boris Johnson overruled bad counsel in the nick of time. This was a crucial decision that may just have saved the NHS and his own political future. My advice to the Prime Minister now is simple: don’t recoil and repeat the error; don’t listen to those who urge capitulation to "save the economy". The emergency measures of Rishi Sunak have already saved the economy.

The worst thing this Government can do to commercial businesses now is to pursue a half-baked policy of partial containment that causes the pandemic to drag on for six months.

The sooner this virus is contained – and then managed with the East Asian formula of "test, trace, isolate" until we have a vaccine – the sooner the economy will come roaring back.

The article from the Corriere Della Serra :
«The real death toll for Covid-19 is at least 4 times the official numbers»

Nembro, one of the municipalities most affected by Covid-19, should have had - under normal conditions - about 35 deaths. 158 people were registered dead this year by the municipal offices. But the number of deaths officially attributed to Covid-19 is 31

In the hypothesis - not at all remote - that all citizens of Nembro have caught the virus (with many asymptomatic, therefore), 158 deaths would equate to a lethality rate of 1%. That is precisely the expected and measured lethality rate on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and - made proportionally by demographic structure - in South Korea. We have made exactly the same calculation for the municipalities of Cernusco sul Naviglio (Mi) and Pesaro using exactly the same methodology. In Cernusco the number of anomalous deaths is equal to 6.1 times those officially attributed to Covid-19, also in Pesaro 6.1 times. But even more staggering are the Bergamo figures, where the ratio reaches 10.4.

It is extremely reasonable to think that these excess deaths are largely elderly or frail people who died at home or in residential facilities, without being hospitalized and without being swabbed to verify that they have actually become infected with Covid-19. Given the decline seen in the last few days after the peak, flock immunity has likely been attained in Nembro. To a certain degree, Nembro represents what would happen in Italy if everyone were infected by CoronaVirus, Covid-19: 600,000 people would die. The numbers of Nembro also suggest that we must take those official deaths and multiply them by at least 4 to have the real impact of Covid-19 in Italy, at this moment.

[Mega]

Re: Mean time in Spain

[Mega]

Re: Mean time in Spain

[Southernguy]

Re: Mean time in Spain

Just a "little flu" as Bolsonaro says

[Mega]

Re: Mean time in Spain

Its not...................... its an major outbreak.......but just how bad?......are we right to react this way?
With in 3 weeks we have most of the data required......

[Woodsman]

Re: Mean time in Spain

Its not...................... its an major outbreak.......but just how bad?......are we right to react this way?
With in 3 weeks we have most of the data required......

The arrogance and intellectual hubris of some folks here is simply astounding. Yesterday I was asked what I would do in response to this crisis were I a national leader. The question was posed, not to gain insight or out of any interest in understanding my point of view, but rather as a back-handed insult intended to put an ignorant rube in his place. I gave it the consideration it deserved at the time, so too for the person who posed it.

But it got me to thinking just how arrogant some of us here - not to mention those leading the various nation-states and the international public health agencies - are to imagine that they can reduce the complexity of this issue to a single set of answers and responses. And should anyone disagree with a proposal that threatens to seriously disrupt all the national economies everywhere at once, those here and elsewhere so filled with hubris inevitably throw out a line intended not to further debate or advance knowledge, but to shut down dissent:

They pose it in terms of "well, just how many people are you willing to see die in order to save the economy?"

I'm sure these interrogators feel a surge of satisfaction at uttering these words, exceeded only by their delight once it's clear to them that their target refuses to play along. "See, you have no plan and so therefore shut up." But what they fail to understand is that the global economy is a delicate ecosystem analogous to a rain forest. All the scientific genius of the world could not create one acre of rain forest, despite their vast experience and impressive credentials. There are billions of interactions by countless millions of actors most of whom we don't possess even the faintest knowledge of their existence. We could not hope to create such a complex system because we lack complete knowledge.

This is similarly true for the billions of interactions by countless millions of actors that make up the ecosystem of the global economy. In the same way dispensing with an otherwise insignificant microbe might lead to the inadvertent destruction of a biome, so too is the global economy similarly interconnected that rash decisions in one part of the world will have dire consequences in another. Those who ask "how many people would you sacrifice" arrogantly assume that the choices they advance are free from similar consequences. Shutting down whole economies might be just as likely to cause more deaths than the present virus stalking the world. It may lead to mass starvation or a longer term increase in mortality due to malnutrition or mental illness, which in turn might mean even more deaths due to decreased resilience against common and ordinary ailments or some other novel disease yet to arrive.

The myopia of those here and elsewhere who have convinced themselves that theirs is the only rational approach is staggering to witness. These are complex and dynamic systems with many multiple inputs, most of which we do not even recognize. To imagine that they can be reduced to simplistic formulas and simple cause and effect equations would be laughable if it were not for the tragedy it portends. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Of course what comes immediately to mind is the debate - if that is the proper term for it - regarding climate change. I won't rehash that here, but as is true with that controversy, there are no shortages of individuals here and elsewhere who simply are incapable of countenancing any debate or dissent. Anyone who dares is considered unserious at best and hopelessly ignorant at worst, never mind the social stigma and ostracizing.

We are told to stay home, distance ourselves socially, close our businesses, cease our activities, all to "flatten the curve." But there is a political element at work here, despite attempts by some to deny it. Those on the far and center left immediately use it as another cudgel against the dreaded, hated Trump. Those on the center and far right see it as another lever of power to wield toward their desired ends. All centers of power see this lockdown as aiding their power games. And clearly some imagine the benefit of keeping us locked down as long as possible for their election plans. But nobody seems interested in what comes after that.

What exactly will unfold when and if this quarantine is fully lifted? What other of our remaining liberties - with so many now long gone following 9/11 - will be demanded from us in the name of our safety. These viral events come in waves, generally. So what happens in the next wave, particularly if the hopes for a vaccine are not realized? Do we subject ourselves to another round of isolation and quarantine and the subsequent economic disruption? Do we submit to a genuine form of authoritarian government, particularly in response to civil unrest arising from economic and social dislocation? Then there are mutations of this virus that will inevitably come to the fore and start this process over again. What then?

We are told we must do this even if the effects of this virus are generally mild for the vast majority of sufferers so as to save the healthcare system from inevitable collapse. But what is to prevent us from expanding our system, building greater capacity, training more workers, applying creative solutions in technology, logistics, and management to keep the system resilient? Instead, we take the opposite approach as if that is the only solutions available to us. This makes no sense to me. Red China is only now starting to emerge from calamity after two months of lockdown. If we follow a similar path, must we contend with an economic cratering until June or later? What if the Chicoms experience a second wave? Will the authorities keep us locked down even longer?

And then there are the politics. We can never be free of it. What if the more cynical in authority see this as their best and final chance to rid the world of the Trumpian scourge and choose to keep it going? What if those who are the beneficiaries of the current system see this as the solution to their diminishing effectiveness and influence (the Democrats, the GOP, the European neoliberal elite, the far right, the far left, the Remainers, the EU technocrats, the climate activists, the finance elite, name your devil)? Our mutual distrust of each other, stoked by the Democrats and Never Trumpers in the wake of Clinton's defeat has already strained the social fabric and put us all off balance and at each other's necks, all the better that we might be manipulated. Will not this social distancing exacerbate that even more? This seems to be what is happening, this time at the instigation of a venal and corrupt political leadership by a single-minded/linear thinking medical and scientific elite seemingly without interest or concern for the economic destruction they have triggered or the societal wounds that will remain after the virus subsides. To flatten the curve, it seems we must flatten our economy and the society which it enables. To flatten the curve we must undermine the authority of the current administration. To flatten it, the press must dispense with the last of its credibility and objectivity and make themselves cheerleaders for doom.

It is my opinion that a world wide economic depression has been set in motion by the response to this biological event. The rationale for it baffles me, for either the smartest minds in medicine and science are completely ignorant of economics and politics, or there is some god awful political agenda at play the details of which we are not able to determine as yet. Whichever of those or some other is the case, the effect of it is akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater. And yet those who raise such questions are asked by a cynical few, "how many lives would you sacrifice?" But they never ask themselves the same question. It doesn't occur to them that 30% unemployment, the destruction of retirement wealth and pensions, the loss of homes, and all the rest might lead to mass death. Death through despair, death through suicide, death through homicide, death through civil unrest, death through government overreach.

For the policy decisions forced on us without debate, without discussion, and presented as the singular and only viable approach will have in a few weeks wiped out more jobs, more businesses, more wealth - except of course the wealth of the favored few who somehow managed to go to cash in advance of the crisis - than any event surpassing war and the great depression. The longer we are locked down, the deeper the economic destruction, the greater the likelihood of massive civil unrest. Already in the larger cities, police have been told to let felons go with a citation, the jails are being emptied, and the courts are not in session. Soon predatory criminals will take this as a license for mayhem. And then there is the more quiet form of civil unrest that goes unreported but hand in hand with the despair these decisions have brought - the broken marriages, the domestic violence, the child abuse, the crushing loneliness of the elderly.

All those casualties are never considered by the arrogant few who cynically ask "how many would you sacrifice to save the economy?"