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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A Journal Of The Plague Year. The politics of Covid-19
According to this model all humans on earth will be infected by Corona Virus ( Started from Wuhan in China ) by Sept. this year.#coronavirusindia #coronarvirusSCARY. pic.twitter.com/SM4s2vcOkP
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https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1229961052999254016
Don't take my word for it, but the Singapore health minister. A country with world class experience in managing new viral disease, a transparent government and the most number of cases outside China to study and draw conclusions from.
"While there is no evidence of widespread transmission of Covid-19, it is important for us to be prepared...over the past the past week, we have learned more about the nature of the virus based on emerging trends … and it is clearly emerging that the Covid-19 is different from Sars. In fact, it’s closer to H1N1 [swine flu] or influenza.
Please help me stop the rumours. It is difficult enough, challenging enough for us to try to stop the spread of the virus. I want to say, categorically, that we have no plans to go to Dorscon red."
1) The politics that really matters here is China's politics. What's going on over there? Is Anatole still around?
2) The economics also affects the politics. A lot. What's going to happen to the world economy? Tell us, @rcs1000
We could instead all sit here and scare each other round the camp fire.
Quite a lot of people will regrettably die from this outbreak. Some of those will be far too young. But the balance of data suggests nothing like the hyperbolic statements coming from some.
https://www.gov.sg/article/what-do-the-different-dorscon-levels-mean
"People like me". "Xenophobic". "behaved disgustingly".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnd1jKcfBRE
As I said before, you've written some cracking headers in your time. I've even read some of them out aloud to friends, long before I stopped lurking here.
I guess I'll leave it there because mud slinging does no good
Simply, the current primary system is designed to whittle down the number of challengers rapidly. But that hasn't happened this time.
I'm off Asia on Friday for a work-holiday. Hugely looking forward to it. My brother's been in Hong Kong and says the media over here are panic-whipping.
Meek's 'best case' is probably the worst case and there are plenty of alternatives that the virus has peaked and continues the decline it has shown. Outside of mainland China and floating petri dishes (cruises) it's not the doomsday scenario some would have us believe.
Wouldn't that just be Box Office?! Apart from the fact it's a serious business, it would be huge fun.
By the way I never replied to you about weather: big apologies. I do indeed use the NW site, if you can remember the message you sent. Hope your work is going well.
I think the next few days of figures from Japan are going to be key to how this story plays out. The long, infectious, incubation period quite probably means it’s already too late to contain it globally, and almost certainly across Asia.
OPEC estimate that demand for oil from China is 30% down on the start of the year, which gives possibly the best estimate from outside as to how much of the economy there is shut down. Hyundai has suspended production at three Korean car plants already, due to lack of parts supply from China, and effect probably going to cause shutdowns elsewhere as parts in tight supply chains run out. In the medium term, it could affect things like the new Apple iPhone launch, which a multi-billion dollar annual event across most of the developed world.
I think there’s a serious threat to the Olympics unless the Japan outbreak is quickly contained, and as you noted a lot of international sporting and cultural events have already been cancelled across a lot of Asia.
From the political view, we are probably looking at a global recession by the end of this year, and western nations are going to look carefully at how reliant they have become on outsourced production in Asia generally and China specifically - where there is a chance of a reaction against the government over their handling of the virus.
Buttigieg
Sanders
Warren
Klobuchar
Biden
In addition, there are another *two* candidates who either are polling well nationally, or are likely to gain delegates in Nevada or South Carolina: Steyer and Bloomberg.
So... there are currently seven candidates of note. (And Tulsi Gabbard.)
Of these seven, four are in the moderate lane (Baemy, Biden. Bloomberg, Buttigieg) and two in the left lane (Warren and Sanders), and one in the "who the fuck knows lane" (Steyer). There is also some cross-over, in particular I would reckon Klobuchar (who's on the left side of the moderate lane) and Warren (who'd on the right side of the left lane).
Of the seven, three have absolutely no money worries: Bloomberg and Steyer are billionaires, while Sanders has been a money raising machine.
Behind these three is Buttigieg, who has consistently ranked second behind Sanders for money raising. (And who has been relatively frugal with his spending.)
And then there are Warren, Klobuchar and Biden.
Biden's staff bills alone are $1m/week. Klobuchar and Warren's will be little less.
If Biden bombs in Nevada (and he may not), then I believe he will be in serious financial trouble. He might be able to soldier on to SC. But that's it.
Warren is also struggling.
Klobuchar has little money, but at least her operation is cheap.
My forecast: Warren, Klobuchar and Biden drop out before Super Tuesday. Buttigieg immediately after,
The things that have most been occupying my mind is (1) how it may lead some Western firms to diversify their supply chains away from just China alone, which seems to manufacture everything - just turn over hard product to see it’s “made in china” mark - and (2) how the UK might keep going under a lockdown, with consultants like me largely doing remote-working and teleconferencing, but others in health, freight transport, power, food supply, police and the emergency services really do have to go in. And the military will need to help too. I imagine there will be designated routes with permits and cards, plus protective wear and care guarantees for families at home. And extra pay.
Economically, schools remaining open are critical. If they close a lot of parents like me simply won’t be able to work, because you can’t do it from home when you have a toddler to look after.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/02/18/2357221/why-are-hiv-drugs-being-used-to-treat-the-new-coronavirus
We are due to get Trumps tax returns early in the summer, are we not?
I'd say it has the potential to seriously put globalisation into decline. That's the best case.. I'm puzzled how Moonshine is claiming the balance of data shows this is all going to be OK. Please can you point us in the direction of this data?
F1: testing starts today. My predictions:
1) Journalists get overexcited by Ferrari.
2) Mercedes revive their annual classic "Gosh, we might not win this time".
3) Everyone's a little bit sad the Williams isn't better.
What we are currently seeing is a decline in both the number of new cases in China both for new infections and for deaths. The former may be because public health is simply overwhelmed but the latter is a lagging indicator and is consistent with the virus having peaked at some point in late January. So far deaths outside China have been completely trivial and there has been a significant level of infection for a month now. This is a bit mysterious but yesterday this was linked to on here: https://www.eturbonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/risk.jpeg
It suggests that there is a genetic predisposition in Chinese and east Asian populations to have more ACE2 blood cells which are an important element in the transmission of the virus.
Whilst there is clearly going to be economic disruption from supply chains in China I am not sure that this will cause an economic recession, especially by the end of the year. The disruption is now and should show in Q1 figures. It is very likely to put Germany into a formal recession given their dependency on exports. In the UK the effect is so far mainly in retail with the like of Bicester suffering.
My tentative conclusion is that the worst case is indeed upon us: Liverpool are going to get to be champions.
But he does rather come across as the sort of person who lives to shout “fire!” on a submarine.
I think there is reasonable evidence that the rather draconian containment in Hubei is working, with only 77 fatalities at last count outside that province, and decreasing numbers of new cases. How sustainable the restrictions are in the medium term is debatable.
While on a population level the worst case scenario of 400 000 UK fatalities would be in the same order as the Spanish Flu, and a fairly substantial economic hit for a couple of years, this is not an extinction level event. Potentially personally very tragic to many individual families though.
This is supposed to be a democratic contest, not a reality show. That a candidate could well be able to buy the nomination is not so much fun as depressing.
That's been done exactly once before, during the GFC.
The Piper will have to be paid. Better it is Trump than anyone else.
But, I think Democratic primary voters and delegates would baulk at Bloomberg becoming nominee so it’d also boost Sanders.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2001899
In addition to the preplanned multistep process of screening for signs and symptoms of infection and observing the asymptomatic cohort in quarantine, we decided to offer a throat swab to test for SARS-CoV-2 in each of the 115 travelers who had passed triage. A total of 114 passengers consented to the test.
Two of the 114 persons (1.8%) in this cohort of travelers who had passed the symptoms-based screening tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR (cycle threshold value in the two samples, 24.39 and 30.25, respectively). Testing with a second protocol consisting of two commercial sets (LightMix Modular SARS and Wuhan CoV E-gene, and LightMix Modular Wuhan CoV RdRP-gene, both produced by TIB MOLBIOL) and retesting of the positive samples at the Institute of Virology, Philipps University Marburg, in Marburg, Germany, confirmed the results. In addition, the isolation of SARS-CoV-2 from both samples in cell culture of Caco-2 cells indicated potential infectivity (see the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this letter at NEJM.org).
These two persons were subsequently isolated from the cohort and transferred to the Infectious Disease Unit at University Hospital Frankfurt for further evaluation and observation on the following day. After a thorough evaluation in the hospital ward, a faint rash and minimal pharyngitis were observed in one patient. Both patients remained well and afebrile 7 days after admission....
That isn’t bad. I wouldn’t quit if I were in that position and still had funds.
But, Bloomberg’s money is crowding everyone else out.
He really is a pest.
Does everyone remember the international recession in 2009/10 caused by Swine flu? Thought not.
(In a normal year, being first in delegates after two states would make you favorite...)
The most apposite comparison would appear to be the major flu epidemic during World War One, about which there is relatively little in the media consciousness because it happened during wartime and censorship.
The remarkable thing, so far, is how the world’s stock markets have assumed this will turn into another false alarm like SARS. Yet it isn’t so long that even a worry about a China-specific downturn was enough to produce falls in the FTSE and Dow. I’d suggest that the panic alone has the potential to bring about a major sell off, when it reaches Wall Street, and if so then there are investment risks and betting opportunities.
The mad annual rush for golden week was 4 whole weeks ago. In the days before Wuhan was placed on lock down, the numbers that left the city (or transited through it) were likely In excess of a million. The incubation period is a max of 14 days but typically shorter. We should by now be at tens of thousands of serious cases outside of Hubei and internationally if the apocalypse was coming. We don’t see that.
Put simply the lock down is a show of authoritarian force, the “hospital” built in 6 days what we would call a dead cat, to disguise policy and governance failures in Wuhan. They had to fill wechat with videos of something other than dead bodies lying unattended in hospital corridors.
You will look back with wonder that you really thought this could “seriously put globalisation into decline”. In terms of attributable deaths, it’s worse than SARS (2k). One can suppose it will end up being as bad as 2018 influenza (60k deaths). Perhaps it will be as bad as 2009 swine flu (650k deaths). Perhaps it will be even worse. But the level of hysteria is a consequence not of the progression of the disease so far but of the policy response from China.
And because few seem to properly understand how and why the communist party does what it does, you are all shitting your pants that this is Dustin Hoffman’s Outbreak meets Winslet’s Contagion. Relax. And I speak as someone living in Singapore that has a 2 year with a yet be fully diagnosed respiratory complaint that required a late night A&E visit this week.
We will know in about a months time if the containment is working. If it breaks out across Asia then it is probably going to hit us big time by the summer.
2% of people, mostly the elderly and infirm, are going to die. That's bad. But the 98% who go on living need a functioning economy to survive.
Treating it like the black death when it is in fact more like a particularly nasty flu is going to tank the global economy for years, leading to far worse consequences for the living.
Those of you who think you are going to be able to work from home... for who? Who will you work for if the company that employs you goes belly up because nobody is there to man the factories or the shops or buy the products?
If we're all going to get it anyway, keep calm and carry on is the only way forward. I suppose it has a better ring to it than "keep working until you drop dead" at least. Although that would be more in keeping with late capitalism.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Mainland China has - we are told - 74,186 cases of COVID-19.
Out of a population of 1,435,000,000.
Good to see the total recovered number finally getting some momentum.
And the number of cases outside China not.
I imagine you walk round a busy hospital every day. How exactly can that system cope, when it is currently teetering, when you chuck into the mix a deadly new virus.
In terms of containing the thing if it kicked off here. Does the UK have the social capital and trust in government to put up with a draconian containment policy? Does the US under Trump?
So yes not an extinction level event(!) But 400,000 deaths and extreme disruption to public life. That would make the 2008 financial crash look like a pathetic joke.
What is also clear is that most health systems in most countries run at capacity most of the time, sometimes a little over. A virus like this that is not all that deadly but does require significant numbers of elderly people in particular to have extended treatment has alarming resource implications.
I am not seeking to trivialise this but some of the coverage borders on the hysterical.
THERE IS NO MAGIC MONEY TREE
I doubt, however, that would be the response.
You should know better than to write this kind of fact-light scaremongering article on this platform
Covid-19 is an nv coronavirus. These are well known. Zoonosis is a well understood phenomenon. Contagion in China was bad in one province because the Wuhan politicians were idiots.
The Diamond Princess contagion rates are pleasingly low given that they are in a confirmed area with vectors that can transmit the virus between passengers
In the U.K. 8 of the 9 infected individuals have already been released from hospital.
Fundamentally this is less severe but more contagious than SARS. We are going to be fine.
That said, the cancelling of the big party meetings next month doesn’t help the argument that everything’s getting better, suggesting, “go back to work it’s perfectly safe for the workers, but not for the leaders”.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1229897933786615809?s=20
It is likely that the disease will spread to many parts of the world, as it is highly contagious. In most countries it is likely that the outbreaks will not be so extreme. The whole world is observing and learning from the quarantine experiments and the medical and pharma labs are focusing a lot of attention on the pathology. In rich countries the ability to treat symptoms preventing the worst of the cardio-pulmonary problems from developing will have a large effect, as will warm and dry housing, and by the time the disease sets roots down in the UK it will already be middle of spring.
The worst case scenario is possible but by definition is unlikely. Much more likely is a disease that infects as many people as swine flu did, but the symptoms being for most people like a bad case of flu.
If it were down to me, I'd pay MPs a bit more, say £100k to bring them into line with doctors and head teachers, and increase (and professionalise) their staff, but realistically no government will pay to create more informed, troublesome backbenchers. Governments want lobby fodder, and prefer to force through flawed legislation than risk headlines about U-turns.
Even on the more optimistic scenarios there is likely to be a great buying opportunity coming along, as proved the swine flu dip of March/April 2009.
Serious questions need to be asked of that chap from Imperial College with his "400k UK deaths" scaremongering on live tv.
I don’t earn that now, but I would be much worse off financially taking on those responsibilities than I am now.
Brexit isn't to blame for all this?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/
#itsprobablynotcovid19