15 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Well, it will give the locals some room to breathe, as it should mitigate the spread being caused by people migrating back and forth from a nearby uncontrolled hotspot. 

It's like being in rural eastern NJ...the proximity of the teeming masses still packing themselves like cattle into public transportation every day in the NYC hot zone is going to make the risk in your rural population much much higher than a similarly sparsely populated county in western Kansas or northeastern NM.

Agreed. But now a walled-off Gallup sounds like a cruise ship to me. Once it's there, it's there. And bound to spread.

1 hour ago, Alan_A said:

IHME has just released a major update to its model,

Thanks for the post, I wonder what this new IHME model projects for new cases moving forward, if the US starts massive testing beyond what they are doing now you will see an uptick in new cases, be interesting to see it they IHME projects something around 200,000 new cases per day.  CDC evidently didn't use this model for the death projections, at least according to the link I posted above, so probably unlikely it used it for new cases. Dr Deborah Birx has projected the US deaths at between 100,000 and 240,000 which suggest they prefer the IHME model which is predicting about the same.

Martin

Edited May 5, 20206 yr by MartinRex007

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

Agreed. But now a walled-off Gallup sounds like a cruise ship to me. Once it's there, it's there. And bound to spread.

So sad and predictable. Best of luck to all affected.

 

Edited May 5, 20206 yr by HiFlyer

On 5/3/2020 at 11:51 AM, dave2013 said:

4. What economic price should we pay to save, for example, 100,000 people, 200,000, 500,000?  A difficult one to answer, but answer it we must.

Dave

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/the-cost-of-reopening-the-economy-in-lives-201007725.html

Looks like your life is worth about $250k on average.

Well, if I had to go with a dollar value I think I'm worth a lot more than that!😉

Ironically, in the comments section of that article a guy is wondering how many people will lose their lives because of cancelled and postponed medical procedures.  You see, his girlfriend's breast cancer surgery was postponed for 6 weeks due to Covid-19, and all the while the cancer was spreading.

When I speak of "cost", I'm not just talking about money.

As a matter if fact, there are a lot of interesting comments there, and a lot of people ain't on board with what's going on.

Dave

Edited May 5, 20206 yr by dave2013

3 hours ago, MartinRex007 said:

Dr Deborah Birx has projected the US deaths at between 100,000 and 240,000 which suggest they prefer the IHME model which is predicting about the same.

In the early days of the White House briefings, I think the IHME was the main model they were using - the projections came directly out of it.  More recently, they've worked with several competing models including the IHME.

I still need to dig deeper into the modeling changes and IHME's explanations.  The IHME did come in for criticism early on, including under their own roof at the University of Washington (here's Carl Bergstrom's critique on Twitter, from earlier this month - he complains that it was too reliant on death data). But as I understand it, IHME was originally designed to project hospital capacity, and people tried to graft other considerations onto it.  Looks as though they might be trying to address some of those concerns and make it useful for more purposes - like dealing with those questions of when, where and how to reopen.

Laurie Garrett had some interesting things to say in a Twitter thread about all of today's new projections.  She digs into some of the results that haven't gotten as much attention - like the continued spread into rural areas.  As usual with her, worth reading.

 

 

5 hours ago, Alan_A said:

...enough political willpower, fiscal firepower, and coordination. 

The Swedish UnHerd interview highlighted that stepping out of a lockdown position would need some careful management.

I am idly wondering: If all the world's governments are borrowing astronomical amounts of money to bail out their economies, who might they be borrowing it FROM??

Or is it business as usual:
"Hello, Central Bank? I need a squillion dollars, let me print some government bonds for you.
Once you've printed the squillion, send it over. Oh hang on, don't bother with that first bit, just do an online transfer, so the commercial banks can also clip the ticket. "

Bored... sleepless... thinking about the public reaction to covid restrictions and the conversation regarding the relative value of the economy versus the value of human life. That led to thinking about human behavior and the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Couldn't quite see how to match it all up, but I did wonder about how games theory might apply to Covid.

Some quick reading shows that several people are studying the situation from that perspective. I wonder what Alan might make of it, in regards to how we as a society are handling the crisis: 

https://news.umich.edu/game-theory-and-covid-19-major-defense-project-pivots-to-explore-how-to-coordinate-safe-behavior/

Edited May 5, 20206 yr by HiFlyer
grammer correction

9 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I wonder what Alan might make of it, in regards to how we as a society are handling the crisis: 

Wow. That's extremely interesting stuff.  Have been trying to think about all the assumptions and behaviors that might change during and after covid.  Seems like this is going in that direction.

I don't have nearly the brainpower to make anything of it now but I'm definitely going to spend some time with it tomorrow.

Thanks so much for sharing that!

The leaders of New Zealand and Australia have agreed to ease travel restrictions between the two countries as soon as it is safe to do so:
https://amp.rnz.co.nz/article/4153b05e-3896-42f0-9405-479d12385f8b?fbclid=IwAR0I_3bWcEyNhVrUwSYMDKEpXTVXXSEaLFKWuUCtbi4D1iJOnm0rn3oWjds

Progress in the right direction, likely they will expand to include some Pacific Island Nations as well

Just bumped into this.

Food for thought: Coronavirus and the Limits of Economics

 

Edited May 5, 20206 yr by HiFlyer

16 hours ago, SteveFx said:

That sounds strange 

Indiana seems to have a dashboard here 

https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/2393.htm

If you select deaths in the demographics it seems to suggest that 74% are over 70?

I've been watching that source for many weeks now, having watched the number of confirmed infected in Lake Co. rise from 17 to the current number of 2098. However the percentages I cited came from the John Hopkins figures, which are somewhat different from those on the IN.gov website.

15 hours ago, w6kd said:

Now, that said, the CFR for the 70-79 yo cohort is still a whopping 16.6%, so I wouldn't suggest that you take up employment as a Walmart greeter or school bus driver any time soon.  OTOH, in the 20-49 yo cohort, the case fatality rate is 0.3%.  And I'm sure that 0.3% group is overwhelmingly populated with people with severe co-morbidities.  A healthy 30-something faces a much lower level of risk when trying to balance cost-vs-risk when deciding what activities he/she can/should engage in.

Yes, the CFR for my age cohort is most definitely governing my personal decision to remain at home and limit excursions off my property only to absolute necessity!

13 hours ago, W2DR said:

The thing about testing is this...just because you test negative today take no comfort. You may well test positive tomorrow, or the day after. The most important thing about a single test is to determine whether, or not, you are asymptomatic and, if so therefore, capable of infecting others.

That so very self-evident that I am astonished at the reluctance of the PTB to mandate universal testing to sort out the asymptomatic carriers for quarantine purposes.

Speaking of testing, the state is opening a drive-through local testing facility this morning, but it is going to be limited to around 100 tests per day and is scheduled to only run for one week. Moreover, it will be limited to only those who present symptoms, which frankly is just plain nuts!

Compared to the unlimited testing taking place in Illinois currently, Indiana's efforts pale in comparison. I suppose that is a result of Indiana not having access to the necessary testing kits for a more robust effort.

On another note, my local VA Clinic has been cancelling appointments for services. I got a phone call yesterday which unfortunately fell into my voice mail that wished to schedule my annual fasting lab and follow up examination. When I called back to try to comply with their call, I was told that they have been instructed to not even attempt to schedule anything until June 1st.

8 hours ago, WingZ said:

The Swedish UnHerd interview highlighted that stepping out of a lockdown position would need some careful management.

I am idly wondering: If all the world's governments are borrowing astronomical amounts of money to bail out their economies, who might they be borrowing it FROM??

Or is it business as usual:
"Hello, Central Bank? I need a squillion dollars, let me print some government bonds for you.
Once you've printed the squillion, send it over. Oh hang on, don't bother with that first bit, just do an online transfer, so the commercial banks can also clip the ticket. "

Totally agree.

Well, there is a great demand for U.S. treasuries by other countries, institutional investors, and individual investors for a few reasons:

1. The bonds are backed by a country with a stable political situation, powerful and diverse economy, and powerful military

2. U.S. Treasury bonds pay a decent interest rate when compared with other developed nations' govt. bonds - many European bonds actually have negative interest rates!

3. The dollar is the reserve currency and is relatively stable and well accepted

There is also no doubt that some of the bonds are purchased by central banks who literally create the currency out of thin air to buy those bonds.  There are those who argue that it would be better to simply fund the govt. with freshly created central bank currency instead of borrowing the money because the central bank has near zero interest rates. Considering that the Treasury debt never gets paid back anyway, I actually agree with that idea, so at least our interest payments would be much lower

The consequence of injecting trillions into the economy from outside, and never really paying back that money to take it back out of the system, is that prices rise steadily year after year.  The economists working for govts. always lie about this and claim that it doesn't cause price inflation, but that is simply not true.  They also don't include food and energy prices in their manipulated inflation calculations, which serves to hide the real increase in prices

There is no free lunch.  You can't inject trillions of dollars into the system without consequences eventually, as once economic activity starts to pick back up all that extra money starts circulating.  Then if things really get going the velocity of money increases and away we go with rising prices.  Just look at how much food prices have increased since the financial crisis 11 years ago.

Dave

@dave2013  can you tell me what you mean by "treasury debt never gets paid back anyway"?

paid to whom?

15 hours ago, w6kd said:

Well, it will give the locals some room to breathe, as it should mitigate the spread being caused by people migrating back and forth from a nearby uncontrolled hotspot. 

It's like being in rural eastern NJ...the proximity of the teeming masses still packing themselves like cattle into public transportation every day in the NYC hot zone is going to make the risk in your rural population much much higher than a similarly sparsely populated county in western Kansas or northeastern NM.

I've lived in eastern NJ. And I've packed myself in the cattle-car going to work in Manhattan every day. But I have to disagree. Just because Gallup isn't eastern NJ doesn't mean their safe. The numbers over the coming weeks will prove me right or wrong.