Category: Coronaplague

Will the post-plague world change the work-versus-welfare tradeoff?

by philg

Some of my friends were discussing whether adjustments due to coronapanic will make it irrational for more Americans to work, rather than to set themselves up for welfare (means-tested public housing, Medicaid, SNAP, and Obamaphone). As with child support profits, there is a a lot of variability from state to state. From Cato’s work-versus-welfare trade-off 2013:

What’s changed with coronaplague? The desk jobs are less fun: sit at home and stare at a screen all day. The non-desk jobs are more dangerous: work in a supermarket and be exposed to hundreds of people every day, any one of whom might kill you with a breath.

What about spending? An MBA friend’s perspective:

I guess the worst-hit people will be those who earn $80-150k

They used to be able to afford a lot of “near luxury” stuff despite not being eligible for the good welfare gravy train and despite the high taxes that the government hits them with to support the welfare gravy train. but now they will be stuck at home. Near-luxury goods such as restaurant meals, airline tickets, theater tickets, and theme park tickets all go way up in price due to mandated de-crowding measures,

Everything will cost more. so the difference between their lifestyle and a welfare family will become minimal. since they won’t be able to afford meals out anymore. they would be better off not working, playing Xbox and swiping EBT card for food. do some cash labor for luxuries (if cash isn’t outlawed under the pretext that it spreads coronavirus!).

Readers: What do you think? Except for those who can earn well above the median, will working be a completely irrational choice for an American?

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Rich college kids immune to coronaplague?

by philg

A friend who is a professor at NYU told me that so far they’ve found only five students who test positive for coronavirus. He says that this is a population of 24,000 undergraduates who converge from all corners of the U.S. (there are additional foreign students, ordinarily, but presumably they are being barred from entry to the U.S. due to the Trumpenfuhrer’s cruel entry bans that were imposed in February and March).

From an official NYU update:

7,772 COVID-19 PCR diagnostic tests were performed on students (including those who arrived early for quarantining) at the two NYU testing centers — Gould Plaza and 6 MetroTech — established for testing students. Five tested positive; all are in isolation, are being monitored by the COVID-19 Prevention & Response Team, and will not be permitted to enter NYU facilities until cleared.

and regarding the prison camp that they’re running…

Last week, some 2,700 students moved into residence halls to begin a two-week quarantine period, which the University sought to support by opening the residence halls early and delivering meals (both at no cost to students).

The move-in went well; the meal service less so. The food service was an unprecedentedly complex undertaking for the University and its food vendor, Chartwells, involving delivery of three meals per day to the door of each of the 2,700 students’ rooms, a substantial percentage of which were individualized, specialized meals. We fell short of the plans we had in place. Chartwells has taken a number of measures to correct the initial missteps — including doubling the food preparation and delivery staff — that have helped, and we are continuing to make efforts to improve meal service for the quarantining students in the residence halls.

So the $80,000/year “hybrid” education starts with two weeks of incarceration!

American Pravda says that the U.S. has roughly 40,000 new cases per day. That’s nearly 300,0000 per week (reasonable length of infection for a 20-year-old?). Assume that there are two people who would have tested positive, but didn’t get a test, for every actual positive test? That’s close to 1 million. Based on a U.S. population of 330 million, we should have at least 1 in 400 people currently infected with coronaplague, right? But NYU had at least 7,772 tests and only 5 positives, only 1/4 the expected rate. What can we infer from this? The U.S. actually is testing everyone who might conceivably be positive? Asymptomatic infection is less common that we thought? Families that are rich enough to pay $80,000/year for an education that is no better than what is available at the local State U are not infected? What?

(How does the $80,000/year education actually work? Roughly one third of the students show up in person to any given lecture. The teacher tries to manage a forest of newly installed Zoom monitors so as to be able to interact with the two thirds of the students who are present via Zoom. There is a tech support hotline number in case the teacher is not a desktop computer system administration wizard. Classes start today.)

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Why are we still out of paper towels and spray cleaner?

by philg

It has been six months since coronapanic started. Why is the local Target still out of paper towels, spray cleaners such as Formula 409, cleaning wipes, etc. People are actually using way more of these items? The Chinese can build a hospital for 5,000 patients in 10 days, but American factories can’t expand production in 6 months?

From August 26, 2020, the Target store in Watertown, Maskachusetts:

(shoppers were continuously reminded via the overhead audio system that wearing a mask was required, a bit like being at an airport and hearing warnings about unattended baggage over and over again)

Maybe AOC and Ed Markey are right? Capitalism is a failure?

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U.S. retail will have permanently shorter European-style hours as a result of coronapanic?

by philg

With tens of millions of Americans on the “$600 per week and chill” plan, a lot of retailers shortened their hours. In theory, things should be getting back to normal (it was a brief shutdown to “flatten the curve,” right?), but at least our local supermarkets seem to have kept their new shorter hours.

Are we on track to become more like Europe, where if you don’t want to conform to the standard hours you won’t be able to get meals, food, etc.? (walk around Paris and see if you can find a 24-hour CVS!)

Readers: What have you seen in your regions of the country? Are hours still curtailed?

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COVID-19 kills the malls

by philg

Some of our recent helicopter flying has been with a photographer tasked with getting pictures of shopping malls in the context of highways, cities, etc. What are these for? “Everything is for sale now,” he said. “They’re all going bankrupt.”

Is it actually too late for these spaces? If schools need more square footage to do in-person learning, why not rent the vast department stores to local school districts? Because the schools aren’t actually willing to pay? In Shanghai, a typical mall might have half the space devoted to after-school programs for children, e.g., dance or English-language instruction. Perhaps that can’t work in the U.S. because at any time a governor can make it illegal to operate the after-school program.

Readers: What else can be done with these spaces? If retail and most other forms of gathering are outlawed, what is the value of a lot of climate-controlled space?

Related:

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Shutting universities due to plague and the Cat in the Hat

by philg

Just as the Swedes said back in March and April (interview with an MD/PhD), since coronavirus is now a permanent companion for humankind, if ye seek ye shall find. American universities have embarked on massive testing programs and are discovering that young humans can be and are infected with coronaplague. To protect our delicate society, they’re virtuously shutting down.

Does this make sense? Let’s refer to the infamous racist tract, the Cat in the Hat:

‘that is good,’ said the fish.
‘he has gone away. yes.
but your mother will come.
she will find this big mess!
and this mess is so big
and so deep and so tall,
we can not pick it up.
there is no way at all!’

If the students are sent home, yes, why won’t we find a big mess of coronaplague wherever they decide to live? Instead of gathering with fellow students at College A and possibly infecting middle-aged Professor B, they’ll gather with their high school friends and possibly infect their middle-aged parents, with whom they will be stuck living indefinitely. Is it plausible that the net result will be reduced overall plague?

Evidence in favor of shutdown: the Swedes closed their universities back in March, one of only a handful of things that they did other than simply giving the finger to the virus. But the idea there was to slow down the virus and avoid overwhelming the medical system (the Swedish government overestimated the need for ICU beds by more than 3X). The Swedes never said that closing universities would make the virus go away or keep young people from spreading it to each other within a few months.

Evidence against the effectiveness of any shutdown: “‘Do you really need to party?’ WHO asks world’s youth” (if old people are telling young people to do something “for their own good” we can almost always win by betting against, right?)

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American schools will have to stay closed even after an effective COVID-19 vaccine is available

by philg

Turbine-powered Shutdown Karens: “A Vaccine That Stops Covid-19 Won’t Be Enough” (New York Times). Even if we have a vaccine that prevents coronavirus infection from turning into COVID-19 disease, it won’t be safe to leave our bunkers:

But even if one, or more, of those [vaccine development] efforts succeeds, a vaccine might not end the pandemic. This is partly because we seem to be focused at the moment on developing the kind of vaccine that may well prevent Covid-19, the disease, but that wouldn’t do enough to stop the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

A vaccine’s ability to forestall a disease is also how vaccine developers typically design — and how regulators typically evaluate — Phase 3 clinical trials for vaccine candidates.

Yet the best vaccines also serve another, critical, function: They block a pathogen’s transmission from one person to another. And this result, often called an “indirect” effect of vaccination, is no less important than the direct effect of preventing the disease caused by that pathogen. In fact, during a pandemic, it probably is even more important.

That’s what we should be focusing on right now. And yet we are not.

Stopping a virus’s transmission reduces the entire population’s overall exposure to the virus. It protects people who may be too frail to respond to a vaccine, who do not have access to the vaccine, who refuse to be immunized and whose immune response might wane over time.

Preventing the very transmission of SARS-CoV-2, no less than stopping it from turning into Covid-19, should be a main priority of current efforts to develop the vaccines to end this pandemic.

So… the shutdowns will continue even after people stop getting sick and/or dying from COVID-19.

In other recent coronaplague news:

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Covid paranoia will lead to inflation

by philg

Franklin Templeton manages about $700 billion in assets. What does their Chief Investment Officer for Fixed Income think Covid-19 will lead to? Inflation!

An article by Sonal Desai:

Americans still misperceive the risks of death from COVID-19 for different age cohorts—to a shocking extent;

The misperception is greater for those who identify as Democrats, and for those who rely more on social media for information; partisanship and misinformation, to misquote Thomas Dolby, are blinding us from science; and

We find a sizable “safety premium” that could become a significant driver of inflation as the recovery gets underway.

How can a virus drive inflation? I think that her argument is that Americans with money will spend like crazy to protect themselves from the virus, e.g., buying first class airline seats or choosing airlines with blocked middle seats. Meanwhile there will be contraction in supply. We’ve already seen this in real estate. The rich are spending even more for country estates and for fixing up country estates. It is impossible to get a contractor because they’re already hired and the additional workers they might want to hire are relaxing on $600/week (but maybe that will change soon?).

These misperceptions are destroying our economy:

This misinformation has a very concrete adverse impact. Our study results show that those who overstate deaths among young people are more cautious about making purchases, more reluctant to travel, and favor keeping businesses and schools shut.

I.e., the Swedes who gave the finger to the virus are likely to do relatively better than Americans (but we stole a bigger piece of land from the Native Americans than they did, so we might still be richer).

What does the cower-in-place nation look like, emotionally?

How did the misperceptions arise? Facebook Shutdown and Mask Karens: “People who get their information predominantly from social media have the most erroneous and distorted perception of risk.” Traditional media was also responsible, says Desai:

Fear and anger are the most reliable drivers of engagement; scary tales of young victims of the pandemic, intimating that we are all at risk of dying, quickly go viral; so do stories that blame everything on your political adversaries. Both social and traditional media have been churning out both types of narratives in order to generate more clicks and increase their audience.

Stories that emphasize the dangers of the pandemic to all age cohorts and tie the risk to the Administration’s handling of the crisis likely tend to resonate much more with Democrats than Republicans. This might be a contributing factor to why, in our survey results, Democrats tend to overestimate the risk of dying from COVID-19 for different age cohorts to a greater extent than Republicans do.

Related:

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Coronavirus tests accelerate the spread of coronavirus?

by philg

We’ve done more than 70 million coronavirus tests in the U.S. so far (CDC). Yet the plague rages, even in virtuously masked Trump-free states such as California. What’s the solution? More testing: “‘We’re Clearly Not Doing Enough’: Drop in Testing Hampers Coronavirus Response” (NYT, August 15).

Does this make sense? What if Covid-19 tests actually accelerate the transmission of coronaplague? Consider that a swab from an infected person who is asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic is unlikely to contain any virus. Even with perfect machines and technicians, therefore, any test will return a false negative. (perhaps about 70 percent of tests on the infected, but not-sick or not-very-sick, will be false negatives)

Suppose that we enter the American technocrats’ dream world. We have unlimited testing capacity with the current testing technology. The person who doesn’t feel 100% goes in for a test. It comes back negative a day later. Buoyed by the test result, even though the person feels a little worse, he/she/ze/they decide to go shopping, go to work, etc. Thanks to the negative test result, this person can be fairly sure he/she/ze/they is suffering from a cold or some other minor virus, not the dreaded Covid-19.

Imagine a world in which no testing is available. Fever or just not feeling well? Stay home in isolation because there is no way to know whether it is Covid-19 or not.

Readers: What do you think? Is all of the testing not only a waste of time and money, but actually counterproductive if the goal is to slow down the spread of coronaplague?

Potential evidence: A bunch of American universities were reopened recently. This was partly due to faith in (a) masks, and (b) testing. Some of them have already shut down for in-person instruction. The explanations in the media that I have seen are that not every student wore a mask at all times and that not enough testing was done. It could have worked if only mask habits had been better and perhaps if testing had been stepped up to every day instead of every three days. These media articles are typically accompanied by a photo of students wearing masks and standing or sitting fairly far apart.

Related (sort of): if cowbell isn’t working… More Cowbell

Related:

  • Stockholm University: “The Public Health Authority urges everyone with symptoms of a respiratory infection, even a mild one, to avoid social contact, as they pose a risk of spreading infection. Everyone with symptoms of illness should stay at home.” (i.e., don’t come out coughing even if you have a negative test result to show!)
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Church of Sweden versus Church of England branch of the Church of Shutdown

by philg

“Sweden’s success shows the true cost of our arrogant, failed establishment” (Telegraph, August 12, sadly paywalled, by Allister Heath, the editor of the sister Sunday Telegraph):

Shocking incompetence has unnecessarily wiped billions of pounds from the UK economy

So now we know: Sweden got it largely right, and the British establishment catastrophically wrong. Anders Tegnell, Stockholm’s epidemiologist-king, has pulled off a remarkable triple whammy: far fewer deaths per capita than Britain, a maintenance of basic freedoms and opportunities, including schooling, and, most strikingly, a recession less than half as severe as our own.

Our arrogant quangocrats and state “experts” should hang their heads in shame: their reaction to coronavirus was one of the greatest public policy blunders in modern history, more severe even than Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial crisis, Suez or the ERM fiasco. Millions will lose their jobs when furlough ends; tens of thousands of small businesses are failing; schooling is in chaos, with A-level grades all over the place; vast numbers are likely to die from untreated or undetected illnesses; and we have seen the first exodus of foreigners in years, with the labour market survey suggesting a decline in non-UK born adults.

Tegnell is one of the few genuine heroes of this crisis: he identified the correct trade-offs.

Good news: Britain has no “systemic racism”; bad news: it does have “systemic incompetence”.

This is a catastrophically high price tag for the British state’s systemic incompetence, the uselessness of Public Health England, the deep, structural failings of the NHS, the influence of modelers rather than proper scientists, the complacency, the delusion, the refusal to acknowledge that the quality of the British state and bureaucracy are abysmally poor.

The author notes that “panic and hysteria were the only possible outcome.”

(Coronavirus hasn’t been a problem for people who live on alimony and/or child support, but the article describes “cancelled weddings” and therefore a delay in being able to file a divorce lawsuit in one of the world’s most lucrative jurisdictions. (see “International Divorce, Custody, and Child Support Systems” for how profitable a short-term marriage in the U.K. can be).)

Tough to imagine an editorial this harsh in a major U.S. paper! The NYT might publish something that attacks Donald Trump, but not an attack like this on the competence of the federal and state governments!

The article is paywalled, but I uploaded a PDF that a reader graciously created.

What are the numbers? The U.K. has a higher death rate than Sweden or the U.S., but it would appear that the U.K. and the U.S. will converge. In other words, both panic-stricken and shut-down-for-months countries will end up with more deaths per capita than never-shut Sweden. The U.K. line is the top of the chart below.

The Friday W.H.O. report shows Sweden with 2 deaths from/with Covid-19. Here in Maskachusetts, with a smaller population, there were 14. With a fully-masked population that is 4X Sweden’s, California is suffering 150-200 Covid-19-tagged deaths per day.

Related:

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