Our benefactor writes that there will likely be one million cases + 60 thousand deaths by the beginning of May.
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Category: health care Page 18 of 35
Deaths aren’t going to wind up as only 60K, in fact, pretty safe to assume the US is already there when uncounted deaths are added in. However, the curve seems flattened, but as yet unwilling to decisively curve down.
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This is not exaggeration for effect.
I am awed by the American handling of Coronavirus. Truly awed. I’ve been writing about the slow-motion American collapse for ages. Heck, last year I wrote an article about how the US is a failing state:
The US is a gold-flecked garbage heap slowly rolling towards the ocean. On fire.
Yee-hah!
So, right now we have five states in the US that never bothered to self-isolate.
We have the Governor of Georgia announcing he will allow gyms, barbers, and fitness clubs, among others, to reopen on the 24th.
We have the Governor of Florida reopening Florida’s beaches. Good thing Florida doesn’t have a lot of old people!
There are astroturf protests asking for an end to isolation. “Let us die, let us die, let us DIE!” (Also, let us kill others.)
Virtually all the relief money has flowed to the top, not the bottom. Landlords and tenants are in crisis. Unemployment is going over 30 percent and in many places higher. A vast swathe of US small business will be destroyed, and they are unlikely to recover in a generation. Firms which borrowed money to do stock buy backs, or to give money to their private equity purchasers are slopping at the trough, but many of the actual businesses on the ground (like Neiman Marcus) will go under.
PPE can’t be found for hospital or logistics workers. Important pieces of the logistics hub, like meat packing plants, are shutting down. Warehouse workers are protesting, truckers are scared, etc.
The US is unable to make or procure an adequate number of masks or prioritize who gets them (though, really, everyone should be). The ventilators made by GM are inadequate, because Trump wanted to keep the price down.
Hospitals not only don’t have enough PPE, they’re going bankrupt because they haven’t been given enough money.
And so on.
Failing state. Cannot actually do really basic things. New Zealand did everything right, the US has done almost nothing right, and when it has, it is undone by some drooling, incompetent, ideological stooge or corrupt businessman or politician: “Get them back to work! I’m losing money!”
Here’s one simple issue: New York and other states are turning the corner. Stats are difficult, but it can be seen in the reduction of new cases in the hospitals. It will take some time to really get the curve down, but it’s being done.
Meanwhile, there are still accelerating pockets of infection in states that never shut down and other states are re-opening too soon.
How do you handle this? Well, what I would do if I were governor is get together with other governors who aren’t completely evil and corrupt and close the borders between states. Shipped goods from lunatic states gets put in depots on the border and is picked up by local shippers, everyone from a state which hasn’t isolated correctly doesn’t get in unless they go into quarantine.
To do this, the Governors will likely have to call up the National Guard. The US will be divided into groups of states which have shut off almost all travel between themselves.
All assuming Trump doesn’t get in the way and make it impossible, in which case, reinfection! More isolation, etc.
A complete clusterfuck.
Iceland, which has handled this pandemic in exemplary fashion, has noted that they have done what they were taught to do by Americans. Americans can no longer do these things. Jane Jacobs, in her book “Dark Age Ahead,” said that the key sign of the oncoming Dark Age was old knowledge being lost; that things which we could once do, we no longer could. She actually used the CDC as an example, and that was decades ago.
This is genuinely awe-inspiring to watch. I am truly amazed. I imagine it’s like watching the late Roman Empire, muttering to oneself, “We were never as great as they say, but we we could get things done.”
But the American elite reaction to anything these days is to see it as a looting opportunity. Pump up the stock market, let the peons starve and run out of rent money, shovel money to the rich, and buy up distressed assets. That’s what both DC Republicans and Democrats are doing and okay with. Yes, yes, Democrats are okay with it. They could actually play hardball and have not, and instead have capitulated after token protests.
There are clusters of competence, of course, but they are overwhelmed by incompetence, corruption, and callous disregard for anyone who doesn’t make at least seven figures a year. The elites are inbred, out of touch with actual production and only capable of playing political games. They get money by manipulating politics, not by genuine production.
The masses are little better. If New York Governor Cuomo had put New York on isolation even two weeks earlier, he could have saved thousands of lives. He has been behind the ball on everything all the way down the line. Of course, his approval numbers are soaring. (He’s an inbred incompetent, but less incompetent than Trump, so I guess he’s graded on a scale.)
It’s impossible to keep up with this, but the bottom line is that the US is broken. You’ve off-shored too much production capacity, your elites are incompetent, out of touch, corrupt, and trained to make their money by hurting other people. Your population refuses to vote for anyone who does the right thing, and instead keeps choosing (with the aid of the media, yes) people who are evil and so impaired that a sensible person would be aghast at the thought of even hiring them to walk their dog or babysit their kids. (Tell me that you would tolerate either Biden or Trump doing either job. But those are the people you want to be the most important person in the country.)
All empires and great nations end. With almost no exceptions, they rot from the inside, and any outside push is secondary–such as from threats they could easily have defeated in their prime (as Rome was able to keep the Germans on the other side of the Rhine for centuries).
America is a failing state. It can’t even handle problems for which the solution is well-defined. It can’t resist turning every crisis into an opportunity to make its elites richer. Its population prefers incompetent and depraved leaders who have spent their entire lives demonstrating contempt for the people who vote for them.
Failing state.
But awe inspiring to watch. Surreal. Amazing.
edit (April 23, 2020): Replaced “New Zealand” with Iceland for the quote about who they learned from. Both countries have handled Covid far better than the US to date.
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Our benefactor notes that the mortality rate has flattened at 5.4 percent. Because of limited US testing, this isn’t the real percentage; subtract a little bit and you still get a sense of mortality rates for those severe enough to get tested and, in many cases, to wind up in hospitals.
Deaths per day is meaningful because this is effectively a count of deaths in hospitals plus other obvious Covid deaths (in some states). If it’s declining, less people are dying in hospital.
I don’t want to be premature, but the curve is bending. The problems comes from those states which have never moved to isolation and those states moving to quickly to remove isolation (such as Florida re-opening beaches and Georgia’s announcement of opening various businesses on the 24th). Reopening, in particular, causes a delayed effect; remember that Covid is asymptomatic at first and, for some people, symptoms never occur, but during that time the disease is spreading.
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In response to the Atlantic article on how limited testing is affecting the Covid-19 statistics, our benefactor writes:
Our positivity rates at 20 percent are extremely high and consistent across time. I suspect that low numbers of new cases in the South are partially a reflection of a lack of testing. If you only have so many tests and beds, you will only get so many cases. Most early estimates were that the coronavirus would have to infect up to 60-70 percent of the population in order to reach herd immunity. We currently have .2 percent of the population with known cases. That’s tiny. Current states with the highest increases (over eight percent) of new cases are IA, KY, MI, ND, NE, OH, and WV. That’s not as large a sample as NY, but it tells you where testing has increased.
In addition, the mortality rate was expected to be one to two percent. We keep climbing every day and are well past 5 percent mortality rate. Sweden is at a 10.7 percent mortality rate. If we were testing a much larger population, our mortality rate would be dropping… Finally, though, I am hearing reports of declining ICU populations in NYC. That’s fantastic.
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Our benefactor writes:
No new news. From other news sources, measurable numbers of deaths are happening at home in other states. No one seems to know if they’re being counted.
One important thing to note is that the amount of testing in the US is constricted. As a result, the numbers of confirmed cases are also constricted. It may well be, as the Atlantic argues in this article from the 16th (which you should read) that we just don’t know the number of cases.
But there is another way to interpret the decline in new cases: The growth in the number of new tests completed per day has also plateaued. Since April 1, the country has tested roughly 145,000 people every day with no steady upward trajectory. The growth in the number of new cases per day, and the growth in the number of new tests per day, are very tightly correlated.
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Our benefactor writes:
New format.
There are significant percentage increases in cases in lots of states. In terms of new cases, one-third are from NY. There is also a significant increase in deaths–again, possibly a restating of deaths at home in NY, not sure. Over half came from NY. The long tail persists. I’m having a hard time not seeing us reaching 60k deaths by end April.
Ian: Florida has re-opened its beaches. This is hilariously stupid and evil and is going to end so, so, well. Good thing Florida doesn’t have many old people.
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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole
Covid is one of those disasters which tests whomever it happens to. Countries like Vietnam and Taiwan and even Germany stayed on top of it, or got ahead of it, and are doing fine. Those who mishandled it are taking some hard hits.
This isn’t primarily about deaths, though those are awful, it is about the mishandling of the economy. In Canada, there’s a benefit of $2,000 dollars per month for which most people who lost their jobs qualify. Other countries have done even better: freezing mortgage payments, rent, and so on, and organizing food delivery.
In the US, we have predictions of a 30 percent unemployment rate. I just saw that less than half of Los Angeles county still has a job.
The bailout for regular people is $1,200. In a place like Los Angeles, that won’t even cover most people’s rent.
There’s been a vast bailout, mainly–though not exclusively–through the Fed, for the rich. Basically, as much free money at the trough as they can gorge on.
But small businesses are toast. A third of households, at least, are on the verge of not just homelessness but not being able to eat.
Meanwhile we have a lovely display of typical US business incompetence. The US’s logistics system is a wonder of the world, but it was created in the 80s and 90s by people who are retired or dead now. Meat packing plants are shutting down because of multiple cases, truckers and warehouse workers are getting sick and scared. Farmers complain of problems getting workers. The price of beef for farmers has crashed through the floor, but they can’t get the animals to consumers.
Meanwhile, multiple states have not instituted isolation, and there are “protests,” backed by Republicans, to reopen states that have.
Not isolating nationally means there are pockets of plague which are still expanding exponentially, and which can reinfect the areas which did isolate. Coming out of isolation too soon will mean that cases will explode again a month to a month and a half after self-isolation ends.
The job issues mean trouble. People who can’t afford food become violent. Food riots bring down nations.
Assuming these storms are weathered, or that Americans are so beaten down they won’t riot even when starving, when the economy does re-open, many of the jobs will be gone. People who did not earn during the time down will still have to pay back-rent. At best, their spending is crippled, at worst they get evicted.
Many landlords will lose their property in any case, many small businesses will go bankrupt and never re-appear. The likely scenario, longer term “after” the Coronavirus is another ten-year depression, except this one is likely to be a deflationary depression: No one but the rich has money, and no one is spending.
But imagine the fairly standard scenario of multiple waves of coronavirus with multiple waves of self-isolation. No national policy, so some states stay open as others are closed. People in warehouses keep getting hit, logistics people get hit, migrant workers get hit or can’t even get into the country.
The system, already drawn tight to extract maximum profit and efficiency, starts breaking. Prices surge, there are actual shortages in many places.
This is some months out, I’d guess, although this is the sort of scenario that goes from “eh, it’s OK” to BOOM very, very fast when it does go.
The US is fragile. The choice to not freeze mortgages, rent, interest payments and so on, and to not bail out ordinary people as I instructed is going to explain to the rich that it is everyone else who makes the actual economy run.
There is a real economy, Virginia, and if it freezes up, there will be hell to pay. Logistics workers need PPE and they need them now. Freezes of rent, mortgages, interest payments, and so on, need to be done now. If a complete idiot wasn’t running the country, taking national control of when states close and reopen should happen now. I would suggest that if Americans don’t want their country in a new great depression, that they find a way to depose Trump now, and if Pence won’t be competent, ditch him too.
There is a chance that the US will fumble through, as governors and mayors who aren’t complete incompetents (and the rare, actual competent governor, which doesn’t include New York’s Cuomo), plus the rare competent CEOs, manage to hold thing together–barely.
But right now, this is looking like an epic clusterfuck.
Remember, however, when the riots come, if they do, if you won’t just die quietly for the peace of your masters, to go to where they live, or where the Fed employees live, and riot there. Explain to them about what people do to fat, happy, rich people when they can’t eat.
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