The Trump recession

[billvon 2,379]

48 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Again, that's not the problem.  The problem is with meaningless, and subsequently irritating comparisons to the U.S:

Why New Zealand’s Coronavirus Elimination Strategy Is Unlikely to Work in Most Other Places

Not meaningless at all.  The article says it would be difficult and expensive to do here; definitely agreed there.  Certainly not impossible.  And had we done so, we would now be coming out of a lockdown with thousands, instead of 90,000, dead.

[olofscience 420]

 1 hour ago, Coreece said:

The biggest problem for the most part was in our execution, not in the plan.

Sigh...I was NOT criticising the PLAN at all, because I'm not a mind reader, and I don't make stuff up like you do.

New Zealand and South Korea have approached this quite differently, but you know what they have in common? They both managed to control the outbreak, they managed to keep their deaths down to very low. Why shouldn't anyone applaud their performance?

Do you know what else they have in common?

13 hours ago, olofscience said:

a government that takes it seriously and responds quickly to the outbreak. That's what the sucessful countries have in common.

The comparisons are meaningful, because the US has a leader who is saying "it's just the flu", "it will magically disappear" (which he is STILL saying believe it or not) and has now decided to ignore the rising death toll to focus on Obamagate.

As I've told other posters before, the US is the best* country in the world!

*As long as you don't compare it to other countries.

[olofscience 420]

Also:

1 hour ago, Coreece said:

The biggest problem for the most part was in our execution, not in the plan.

Almost every single athlete who goes to the Olympics plans to get a gold medal.

Every company founder plans to be the next Apple.

But when 90,000 people are dead, what you planned is a lot less important than your execution.

[wolfriverjoe 1,339]

7 hours ago, olofscience said:

Also:

Almost every single athlete who goes to the Olympics plans to get a gold medal.

Every company founder plans to be the next Apple.

But when 90,000 people are dead, what you planned is a lot less important than your execution.

Well, to be fair, while the execution really sucked, a huge part of the failure was a complete absence of ANY PLAN.

 

Trump's entire plan at the beginning of February was that 'it will just go away, like a miracle'. 

Oh, and keep cruise ships away, so that they wouldn't increase the number of positive cases. 

While bringing back exposed US citizens from China on regular airline flights. That were chock full of other people. And not quarantine any of them.

Awesome plan. 

[olofscience 420]

Just now, wolfriverjoe said:

Trump's entire plan at the beginning of February was that 'it will just go away, like a miracle'. 

...unbelievably, that STILL seems to be the plan now. wtf...

[Coreece 189]

9 hours ago, olofscience said:

Sigh...I was NOT criticising the PLAN at all, because I'm not a mind reader

You don't have to be a mind reader to know what the plan was, just click the link I posted since you couldn't be bothered to find it yourself.  I mean ffs, if you're going to continual criticize the U.S for it's mediocre response and compare it to your favorite cherry picked countries, the least you could've done was check to see wtf the plan was to begin with.

 

9 hours ago, olofscience said:

I don't make stuff up like you do.

Give me a break, I didn't make anything up - you're just making a big deal over me claiming that you said "shutdown" rather than "travel restrictions," as if it's such a stretch to think that travel restrictions would be part of a shutdown, especially when New Zealand (the country whose response you've been touting as an example for the U.S) had one of the strictest shutdown plans in the world.

And I didn't make up your comparison of the U.S to South Korea and New Zealand and how the U.S should've emulated them.  The problem is that those two countries have completely different approaches, so you have to pick one - and that's all I was really asking you when I said "which one is it?"  To shutdown like NZ or not to shutdown like SK?

 

9 hours ago, olofscience said:

New Zealand and South Korea have approached this quite differently, but you know what they have in common?

Yes, we've already discussed their similarities, along with their similarities to the U.S.  The problem is that there are vast differences to the U.S in size, population, density, tourism, travel, the number of citizens abroad, how we enforce quarantines, etc.  All these factors play a significant role in the transmission of covid, and because of that, what works on some small isolated island in the south pacific, will not necessarily work for the U.S.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Coreece

[Coreece 189]

10 hours ago, billvon said:

11 hours ago, Coreece said:

Again, that's not the problem.  The problem is with meaningless, and subsequently irritating comparisons to the U.S:

Why New Zealand’s Coronavirus Elimination Strategy Is Unlikely to Work in Most Other Places

Not meaningless at all.  The article says it would be difficult and expensive to do here; definitely agreed there.  Certainly not impossible.

Not impossible, but as I posted earlier, studies suggest that manual contact tracing in countries like the U.S are not feasible due to presymptomatic transmissions and multiple unknown transmission chains.  It eventually gets to the point where it becomes more beneficial to allocate the extensive resources involved in contact tracing to other mitigation efforts.

It's likely that South Korea's tracing methods would've eventually been overwhelmed if they didn't  build a massive digital tracing and surveillance infrastructure, which apparently was needed to contain the virus as they did.

New Zealand is small enough where manual tracing can still be effective, especially in combination with their lockdown and aggressive level of testing, but even they see the necessity in having digital tracing apps. 

It's likely the U.S will need to adopt some form of digital tracing as well if we're ever to contain outbreaks like this without resorting to such restrictive shutdowns. 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Coreece

[olofscience 420]

1 minute ago, Coreece said:

I mean ffs, if you're going to continual criticize the U.S for it's mediocre response and compare it to your favorite cherry picked countries, the least you could've done was check to see wtf the plan was

I am indeed criticising the US for its terrible (not mediocre) response. I'm not criticising it for its plan, and why does it matter? "It's the thought that counts"? Do you want points for the plan?

[billvon 2,379]

8 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Not impossible, but as I posted earlier, studies suggest that manual contact tracing in countries like the U.S are not feasible due to presymptomatic transmissions and multiple unknown transmission chains.

And yet we are starting to do it.

Quote

It eventually gets to the point where it becomes more beneficial to allocate the extensive resources involved in contact tracing to other mitigation efforts.

Here's an idea - do both.  We are at historic levels of unemployment.  Instead of giving checks to unemployed people, hire them as contract tracers.  Want to restart the economy?  Start with a massive hiring wave, followed by reopenings as contact tracing gets Re well below 1 in a given area.

Quote

It's likely that South Korea's tracing methods would've eventually been overwhelmed if they didn't  build a massive digital tracing and surveillance infrastructure, which apparently was needed to contain the virus as they did.

Agreed.  We already have massive digital tracing and surveillance infrastructure.  If we have a digital tracking system so good that Target knows women are pregnant before anyone else does, we can use that capability for something far more useful.

[olofscience 420]

10 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Not impossible, <snip>.  It eventually gets to the point where it becomes more beneficial to allocate the extensive resources involved in contact tracing to other mitigation efforts.

It's likely that South Korea's tracing methods would've eventually been overwhelmed if they didn't  build a massive digital tracing and surveillance infrastructure, which apparently was that was needed to contain the virus.

New Zealand is small enough where manual tracing can still be effective, especially in combination with their lockdown and aggressive level of testing, but even they see the necessity in having digital tracing apps. 

It's likely the U.S will need to adopt some form of digital tracing as well if we're ever to contain outbreaks like this without resorting to such restrictive shutdowns. 

I at least agree with most of this, except for the snipped part.

South Korea was massively set back by one infected person breaking quarantine and attending a religious service with 9,000 other people. But they still scrambled and ramped up their response to get it under control.

It's not the absolute size of New Zealand that was the factor - all outbreaks start small. But exponential growth means that if you don't stop it early, the tracing methods would be overwhelmed as you said.

[wolfriverjoe 1,339]

Just now, billvon said:

Agreed.  We already have massive digital tracing and surveillance infrastructure.  If we have a digital tracking system so good that Target knows women are pregnant before anyone else does, we can use that capability for something far more useful.

Oh, please.

Are you suggesting that anything is more important and useful than tracking consumer's buying habits in order to more effectively target them, and get them to buy more useless shit made overseas?

What are you, some kind of commie? 

Although, I do find it rather amusing how well cell phone tracking data has been utilized to see how well people are following the 'stay at home' orders in various places.

For example, the rich folks have pretty much vacated NYC. (NYT had a story).

[jakee 1,254]

 

23 minutes ago, Coreece said:

You don't have to be a mind reader to know what the plan was, just click the link I posted since you couldn't be bothered to find it yourself.  I mean ffs, if you're going to continual criticize the U.S for it's mediocre response and compare it to your favorite cherry picked countries, the least you could've done was check to see wtf the plan was to begin with.

That's the plan for Americans returning from overseas. Are they not talking about the plan for everything else?

[wolfriverjoe 1,339]

Just now, jakee said:

 

That's the plan for Americans returning from overseas. Are they not talking about the plan for everything else?

Nope. As far as I can tell, the plan for 'everything else' is "OPEN THE COUNTRY NOW!!!!".

Texas opened up some stuff a couple weeks ago. The governor and AG recently made it clear that local entites cannot implement any rules more restrictive than the state ones.
So they've now seen 1000+ cases per day for the last three days. We'll see what the next week brings.

Wisconsin (my home) removed ALL RESTRICTIONS last week after a state Supreme Court ruling. It's kinda funny (not really). The authority for the governor to issue 'emergency orders' was passed by the legislature in 1982, in response to the AIDS crisis.

So the Republican controlled legislature complained that the rules were put in place without their input, and were too haphazard and confusing. 
That lawsuit was ruled on by the conservative controlled Supreme Court (WI SC races are suppposed to be 'non-partisan', but that's a fucking joke), who decided they didn't like the law that was passed, and ruled that the governor shouldn't have utilized his legislature defined authority. And conservatives complain about 'liberal activist judges' who 'legislate from the bench' (the dissenting opinion addressed this rather scathingly).

So now there are no rules. And the Republicans, who claimed the wanted a "seat at the table", are now refusing to act on any restriction orders, saying that they want to let each county set it's own rules. Because statewide rules were 'too confusing and haphazard'.

So far, only 2 counties have put rules in place (the ones that Milwaukee & Madison, the 2 biggest cities and biggest outbreaks are). Other counties are too afraid of more lawsuits, and the reality that having restrictions in one place but not another is like having a swimming pool with a 'No Peeing" section. a

Of course, a lot of places opened up for 'business as usual. Bars all over were packed. The bars along the borders with Illinois & Minnesota were packed with people from those states, that still are pretty much closed. 

Yay. Give it a few weeks and we're gonna be really fucked.

[Coreece 189]

2 hours ago, billvon said:

2 hours ago, Coreece said:

Not impossible, but as I posted earlier, studies suggest that manual contact tracing in countries like the U.S are not feasible due to presymptomatic transmissions and multiple unknown transmission chains.

And yet we are starting to do it.

Oh, I thought it was a given that I was talking about initial tracing to say ahead of the spread and contain it like S. Korea.

Obviously any tracing in areas where it makes sense, such as areas with minimal infections, will be beneficial.

 

2 hours ago, olofscience said:

I am indeed criticising the US for its terrible (not mediocre) response.

I'd say that European countries with death rates that are 2-3 times higher than that of the U.S had a terrible response.  The U.S was mediocre (not good), Germany was good, and places like NZ and SK were exceptional.

 

2 hours ago, jakee said:

That's the plan for Americans returning from overseas. Are they not talking about the plan for everything else?

That's part of the plan, but yeah, much of everything else like shutdown orders will be decided by the States, so I suppose a bit of mind reading actually would be necessary, my bad. 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Coreece

[olofscience 420]

25 minutes ago, Coreece said:

I'd say that European countries with death rates that are 2-3 times higher than that of the U.S had a terrible response.  The U.S was mediocre (not good), Germany was good, and places like NZ and SK were exceptional.

I'd mostly agree with this one, but the hardest hit European countries' rates are now at the tail end with lowering rates. The worrying bit is some areas in the US haven't reached their peak yet. Unfortunately I'd also put the UK at the bottom as well...I really wish we weren't, I live here. But hey, we voted an incompetent government in.

[Guest]

On 5/16/2020 at 8:20 PM, billvon said:

I think you are once again missing the point.

You have several choices.

You can do absolutely nothing.  Keep partying, going to bars, getting tattoos, eating at Chuck E Cheese with a bunch of kids.  Then we have between 500,000 and a million deaths.  If all you care about is money this is absolutely the way to go.  As one Trump supporter put it, "sacrifice the weak" - those are mainly the older takers anyway.

You can shut down forever, until the virus is gone.  That saves a lot of people.  It also wrecks the economy.  If all you care about are lives, that's the way to go.

You can do what New Zealand did - test everybody, contact trace everybody, shut down until the contagion is contained, then reopen.  They are now reopened and their economy is recovering fast.  If you care about both money and people, and have the intelligence and will to pull it off, this is the way to handle it.

You can do what we did - test almost nobody, suppress test results so that "the numbers look better," delay and minimize the problem, then shut down for a little while, then reopen in some places while the number of infections is still on the rise.  This will require either another shutdown, or will cause tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.  If you don't have the intelligence or will to make the hard calls this is where you end up.

Which option do you choose?

 

Bill, you're comparing apples and Giraffes. New Zealand is an island country in the middle of nowhere with a tiny population. Of course they can manage something like that. The population and GDP of California alone is bigger than much of Europe.

[billvon 2,379]

4 minutes ago, markharju said:

Bill, you're comparing apples and Giraffes. New Zealand is an island country in the middle of nowhere with a tiny population.

They have a tiny population - which means the job is a lot easier and they have far fewer resources to use to get the job done.

We have a huge population - which means the job is a lot harder, and we have far more resources to get the job done.

If you have to dedicate 1% of your population to doing contract tracing, it will be the same effort (per person) in both countries.

And it's not just New Zealand.  South Korea pulled off the same thing.  There are now less than 1K active cases there, and cases have been declining since March.  The big differences between the response of those two countries and the US?  Early action, competent leadership and a will to protect the at-risk.

[DJL 232]

5 minutes ago, billvon said:

They have a tiny population - which means the job is a lot easier and they have far fewer resources to use to get the job done.

We have a huge population - which means the job is a lot harder, and we have far more resources to get the job done.

If you have to dedicate 1% of your population to doing contract tracing, it will be the same effort (per person) in both countries.

And it's not just New Zealand.  South Korea pulled off the same thing.  There are now less than 1K active cases there, and cases have been declining since March.  The big differences between the response of those two countries and the US?  Early action, competent leadership and a will to protect the at-risk.

I think a lesson these examples point to is that pandemic responses need to be organized in a regional manner.  A very big issue we had is that we were so dependent upon a centralized decision making process that left us behind the curve.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, billvon said:

They have a tiny population - which means the job is a lot easier and they have far fewer resources to use to get the job done.

We have a huge population - which means the job is a lot harder, and we have far more resources to get the job done.

If you have to dedicate 1% of your population to doing contract tracing, it will be the same effort (per person) in both countries.

And it's not just New Zealand.  South Korea pulled off the same thing.  There are now less than 1K active cases there, and cases have been declining since March.  The big differences between the response of those two countries and the US?  Early action, competent leadership and a will to protect the at-risk.

Bill, I understand all that, really. However, I don't think we will ever see anything close to a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem (and are their metrics reliable? Peer-reviewed? It seems like a lot of science just gets overlooked or ignored). And I doubt the 1% of population for tracing is going to scale up successfully, especially when there are 50 states, each with a different plan of attack. Maybe I'm missing something here but it *appears* that there are cases of enclaves or states doing little to nothing about C-19 and not seeing much in the way of noticeable ill effects, and at the same time there are those which have implemented strict, perhaps even draconian measures, and are still being devastated. But I sure don't have any answers, and it looks like many of the alleged experts don't either.

I can only hope that we all come out of it wiser for the experience and better prepared for the next time.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Guest

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, DJL said:

I think a lesson these examples point to is that pandemic responses need to be organized in a regional manner.  A very big issue we had is that we were so dependent upon a centralized decision making process that left us behind the curve.

I think there is some truth and logic to that. More than anything though, the endless blame game has to stop because it's just wasting bandwidth and energy that could be put to better use coming up with creative ways to overcome this crisis. But no one can admit that they may not be right, nor that they may be wrong. It's a shame, really. All this pettiness when what's needed is less hot air and more action.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Guest

[Bigfalls 110]

4 hours ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Nope. As far as I can tell, the plan for 'everything else' is "OPEN THE COUNTRY NOW!!!!".

Texas opened up some stuff a couple weeks ago. The governor and AG recently made it clear that local entites cannot implement any rules more restrictive than the state ones.
So they've now seen 1000+ cases per day for the last three days. We'll see what the next week brings.

Wisconsin (my home) removed ALL RESTRICTIONS last week after a state Supreme Court ruling. It's kinda funny (not really). The authority for the governor to issue 'emergency orders' was passed by the legislature in 1982, in response to the AIDS crisis.

So the Republican controlled legislature complained that the rules were put in place without their input, and were too haphazard and confusing. 
That lawsuit was ruled on by the conservative controlled Supreme Court (WI SC races are suppposed to be 'non-partisan', but that's a fucking joke), who decided they didn't like the law that was passed, and ruled that the governor shouldn't have utilized his legislature defined authority. And conservatives complain about 'liberal activist judges' who 'legislate from the bench' (the dissenting opinion addressed this rather scathingly).

So now there are no rules. And the Republicans, who claimed the wanted a "seat at the table", are now refusing to act on any restriction orders, saying that they want to let each county set it's own rules. Because statewide rules were 'too confusing and haphazard'.

So far, only 2 counties have put rules in place (the ones that Milwaukee & Madison, the 2 biggest cities and biggest outbreaks are). Other counties are too afraid of more lawsuits, and the reality that having restrictions in one place but not another is like having a swimming pool with a 'No Peeing" section. a

Of course, a lot of places opened up for 'business as usual. Bars all over were packed. The bars along the borders with Illinois & Minnesota were packed with people from those states, that still are pretty much closed. 

Yay. Give it a few weeks and we're gonna be really fucked.

 

[kallend 1,618]

1 hour ago, markharju said:

Bill, I understand all that, really. However, I don't think we will ever see anything close to a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem

One size that does fit all is an early response.  Exponential growth is very unforgiving of delay, dithering and denial (all of which we saw in the UK and the USA).

[billvon 2,379]

1 hour ago, markharju said:

Bill, I understand all that, really. However, I don't think we will ever see anything close to a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem (and are their metrics reliable? Peer-reviewed? It seems like a lot of science just gets overlooked or ignored).

Have a common plan of attack.  Let each state implement it their own way.

Quote

Maybe I'm missing something here but it *appears* that there are cases of enclaves or states doing little to nothing about C-19 and not seeing much in the way of noticeable ill effects

Of course.  There are places that haven't seen it yet, or are so small that the .3% of people who die will make up a small absolute number.  There are places where the vast majority of people are the demographic most resistant to the disease.  There are places where the normal separation of people is significant and thus gets the Re number below 1 without any big shutdowns.

Quote

I can only hope that we all come out of it wiser for the experience and better prepared for the next time.

If we come out of this with the idea that "well, no one knows what to do, New Zealand's plan won't work for us, South Korea's plan won't work for us, our response was fine, just repoen as fast as possible" then the next one will be just as bad if not worse.

[DJL 232]

16 hours ago, markharju said:

But no one can admit that they may not be right, nor that they may be wrong.

I think it's important to agree that any response we had was wrong.  That's because this was a first shot deal and we were never going to do everything perfectly right.  So, that leaves us with making a decision based upon the best information available to us and sticking with it.  The lessons we learn from this will be available for the next occasion which could be 5 years from now or another 100.

[kallend 1,618]

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase:

“Unfortunately, low-income communities and people of color are being hit the hardest, exacerbating the health and economic inequities that were already unacceptably pronounced before the virus took over.

“An inclusive economy – in which there is widespread access to opportunity – is a stronger, more resilient economy.  This crisis must serve as a wake-up call and a call to action for business and government to think, act and invest for the common good and confront the structural obstacles that have inhibited inclusive economic growth for years.”