RichardGibbons

Well, the thing is, I don't believe you. Because people have told you at least 10 different concrete things that Trump did that were terrible, and you disregarded them all in order to cheer for Trump and repeatedly trumpet the one thing he did properly. So, I don't buy that the problem is that people aren't giving you enough concrete information. I think the problem is that you don't care at all about concrete information, but rather care about defending your favorite team to the exclusion of reason. So, let's go with the per-capita deaths metric. It's not really fair, but it's clear that you don't care about ways it's not fair except insofar as it bolsters your case, so I'm OK with ignoring unfairness, and just assuming that it balances out between countries. (It doesn't really, but it's very clear that any for any discussion that involves any degree of analysis of what leaders did right and wrong, "Trump blocked flights from China" is far more important to you than "Trump went on National TV, and said only 15 people had it, it wasn't a big deal, and it would vanish by April". My hypothesis is that the numbers will show that the latter is more important than the former.)

OK, cool! All those countries are doing better than the USA, but I understand that you're not actually concerned about analysing which countries did better than the USA. So instead, I'll take this as your commitment that the only metric that matters is per-capita COVID-19 death rate. Let's revisit this thread in a month or two, and see how many countries USA did better than. I imagine that delights you, as you think Trump has done a superior job and the outcome from here will be nothing but rainbows and unicorns, and the privatized American healthcare system is superior to all others! It's a no-brainer that USA will do better than basically everyone else, right? Now remember, no shifting the goalposts!

Well, you seem to think Trump handled the disaster well. So on that basis, I'll assume that you'd be satisfied with the name of any leader who handled it better than Trump. I'm pretty bad at naming world leaders, but if I'm allowed to look them up, Italian Prime Minister Conte has handled this disaster better than Trump. Really, the hardest part of this game is naming the leaders, because almost every country's federal leadership did better than the USA. So let's add Trudeau, Ardern, Moon, Tsai, Obrador, Merkel, Frederiksen, Macron, Sanchez, Abe, Johnson.... Maybe that's a better game--who did worse than Trump? Perhaps Xi, but unlike most leaders, he didn't have 3 months warning about the effects of the virus before it attacked his country. Maybe Rouhani, but I'm not that sure about Iranian response. Really, if we're allowed to use the Internet to look up world leaders, I'm not sure why you think this is a challenge. If not, then it's pretty close to the challenge of "name world leaders who have bankrupted fewer casinos than Trump."

Evidence supporting the "it's impossible to isolate the vulnerable" theory is BC long-term care facilities. They're trying really hard to avoid it in long-term care facilities including shutting down against visitors, stopping staff from moving between facilities, doing remote diagnostics when possible, and taking the temperature of everyone who enters the building. Yet 21 facilities have it. (The lower mainland--an area with about 55% of BC's population--has about 55 facilities.) And overall, BC has been fantastic at dealing with the virus, cutting off exponential growth very early (see the yellow line, and note that the Y-axis is linear, not logarithmic, unlike almost every other chart like this you'll see).

To me, this is a very odd thing to say, assuming that these really smart people who have spent decades of their life focusing on this problem are completely missing something so simple, that they need some everyman to direct their efforts. That said, I think there would be value in epidemiologists explaining the consequences of adopting the model you describe, because I've wondered about it, too. I suspect the answer is that it's essentially impossible to isolate the vulnerable population if everyone else gets sick.

The two-week and one-week lag analyses are deceptive because of 1) the staring points and 2) the logarithmic Y-axis. For instance, you wouldn't say that UK and Canada were on the same line, but one week offset, if you looked at this graph instead: Canada was better at responding to COVID-19 initially. So on these graphs that start at, say 100 on the Y-axis, that means that the X=0 point for some countries--including Canada--was pushed weeks out in time. It looks like we got the disease way later, when actually what happened was we got the disease at the same time, but measures we took slowed things down so much that it now looks like we're weeks better than others. What's more, the exponential growth on a logarithmic axis minimizes the difference between countries, making it seem like Canada has a better slope, but only a bit better slope. But over time, that means a massive difference. (e.g. What's $1 compounded at 15% per year for 50 years verses $1 compounded at 25% per year for 50 years?) I agree with you that Canada's curve is likely to flatten because of social distancing, and the fact that the growth was flatter up to now will likely mean way fewer (per capita) deaths. Effectively, I think the net result will be flatter curves initially (this is where our "test and track people" stuff really helped), allowing us to get to the social distancing up at the right time to flatten curve before overloading our hospitals too badly (now that "test and track" becomes less feasible because of too many cases). I also agree with you that it's the untested people that is really worrisome. On Mar 30, we had done about 222K tests, while today USA has done about 1065K tests (still well behind Canada per capita.) But I think this (and the PPE, as you mentioned) is where the supply chain stuff will really start to bite. I feel like the game would be completely different if there were a 5 minute drive-through covid-19 test, and I think USA will get these way before Canada. I guess the other thing that both countries did wrong was not tell everyone to wear masks. If they did that, I imagine both our curves would be way lower. But I think the authorities in both countries didn't encourage that because the supply of masks was too limited.

Nope, I don't have a timeline, but if you want to spend a couple hours putting one together, I'd love to see it. I vaguely recall the restaurant thing. It was a long time ago, probably associated with Chinese New Year on Feb 2, not late Feb/early March. The primary things Canada's done very well is data collection, testing, and tracking cases--for weeks at the beginning of the outbreak, BC was ahead of USA, and as of March 16, Canada had done 50% more testing than USA. Second, Canada did the lockdowns at roughly the right time. The combination of these two things has had the result that nowhere in Canada is completely overloaded now, with per-capita cases way lower than the USA, and growth rates lower, too. Closing the border against the primary country where COVID-19 is skyrocketing (USA) was also well-done, both in terms of timing and diplomacy. In terms of actions the countries will take over the next few months, I'd expect that USA will ramp up faster/better than Canada, both because USA will be better at ramping up supply chains, and because USA will need it more.

Nope. I'm not a Trudeau fan, but what he did was mostly right. The biggest mistake he made was waiting too late to close the borders (perhaps taking into account the recommendations of the WHO, under the influence of China). The second biggest mistake was shoving support for Canadians through the EI system, but he rectified fairly quickly with the 75% salary thing. In contrast, other than the smart closing of the border to China, Trump has done more than anyone else on earth, except possibly Xi, to maximize the deaths caused by the pandemic.

4 or 5 labs outside France really need to duplicate this experiment. https://techstartups.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-cure-new-results-french-study-shows-combination-hydroxychloroquine-plaquenil-azithromycin-successfully-treated-80-coronavirus-patients-significant-dr/ If this works, I think this is hugely important, not just because it would reduce deaths, but because it would greatly reduce loads on hospitals. Heck, Trump would even be able to claim he discovered the cure, since one of the two drugs is hydroxychloroquine. :)

Cool, this is misunderstanding #2 on my list of misunderstandings. (#2: It takes weeks between infection and hospitalization and death.)

Well, the hysteria increases the chance that people will practice social distancing, which is a very good outcome if you're worried about overloading hospitals. People making more phone calls doesn't worry me much. (One potential ironic political outcome of this is that as a result of Trump's actions, a bunch of old people will die. Old people tend to be Republican, so this could potentially result in Millennials superseding Boomers as the dominant political demographic. Sure, Millennials don't vote, but then again, neither do dead people.)

Yep, I agree completely and have said this from the beginning. If one is a complete psychopath who cares nothing about people, and only about the economy, doing nothing is the optimal response. In fact, "coronavirus + no response" might have better economic outcomes than "no coronavirus at all" because if COVID-19 kills retirees now, those retirees won't be unproductively consuming resources for years or decades. (The Logan's Run guide to maximizing the economy.)

Yeah, I think the people that have this view are basically misunderstanding five things: [*]Exponential growth [*]It takes weeks between infection and hospitalization and death [*]Hospitals are not infinitely expandable--if enough people come in, hospitals run out of resources [*]If you're in the ICU with this, you are likely in there for weeks [*]That without ventilators, the death rate increases dramatically Everyone I've seen who's taken a "there's no problem" position seems to have basically missed at least one of these points. In that post, he's certainly completely misunderstanding points 1 and 2. He'll probably miss points 3, 4, and 5, but hasn't got to that point yet, because he's so busy missing 1 and 2.

That's not why he was treated roughly. He was treated roughly for ignoring evidence and continuing to push a narrative that was completely refuted by the data. On message boards, encouraging people to draw obviously incorrect conclusions almost always leads to people being attacked, and even more so during stressful times when incorrect conclusions can cause people to die or lose money. That said, I agree we should try to be nicer. I try, and often fail. :(

Yeah, everything you say in this paragraph after the first three sentences is pretty silly, so it's good that you don't care about people disagreeing with it. I find it very strange that some people are convinced that in a massively complex environment, shades of grey do not exist.

This is an extremely good question (though I think you really mean "counter productive"), and is totally right. It's a hard one to answer. I'd certainly say that stocking up on PPE makes sense, as PPE is relatively inexpensive, and there could be large stores of PPE that get cycled through before expiry. Devices, not so much, but I think going forward, 3D printers could actually solve "just in time" device problem for most countries. I think it's pretty clear that the AOC crowd who seem to be saying "no price is too high for a life" doesn't make any sense. And it's clear that the "don't do anything" crowd has also been wrong, since USA could look like South Korea or Taiwan, but by not doing anything has ended up in a situation where the economy has crashed.

Come on, you weren't at all right, and the evidence has proven it beyond a doubt already. The main interesting thing now is that "character development" story, whether or not you'll recognize that and concede that you were completely off base. (That said, you were adding value, just different value than what you thought you were adding. It's useful to understand the perspectives of people in the front line.)

I'd agree with you except the real issue is the healthcare system getting overloaded causing the morbidity rate to skyrocket. I think that's one of the big problems in Italy. With the cruise ship, everyone who needed access to ventilators got them, because the system wasn't overloaded. If the healthcare system were infinitely expandable, this pandemic wouldn't be a big deal. Oddly enough, I agree with you on this one. The government reaction, particularly in the USA, was terrible, and that's going to kill the economy. Yeah, this is what I meant when I said on the coronavirus thread that Trump was doing the standard playbook, encouraging his supporters to focus on the "us vs them" and rally around him rather than focus on his incompetence.

Well, it could be second-order thinking--by creating an enemy, he might hope his supporters will focus on "us vs them" rather than the actual crisis, as they have been trained to do. (But I don't think he's actually sophisticated enough to do second-order thinking any more, so I agree that it's best to take him at face value.)

FWIW, I agree that the optimal economic solution was the South Korea/Taiwan solutions, but I don't think that solution is available now. The optimal all around solution is the hammer one described in the Medium article, or maybe there's a third, hybrid way, which would be to close state borders, and attempt to do a South Korean solution in the states with low cases, and a hammer in states with high cases. If that were possible, maybe that would actually be best. (I actually think you do pretty well at lowering the R0 just by giving everyone masks and telling them to wash their hands.) WRT herd immunity, I have no clue, and no good basis for an opinion. But if forced to opine, I'd say that herd immunity will work for the same virus, and even with mutated versions, it may confer a reasonable degree of resistance. Even with mutations, I suspect the odds are low of getting perpetual waves of mutated viruses with similar infectivity and morbidity as COVID-19. But I have no basis for that suspicion except an observation that that non-manmade things which change the natural world forever are unusual.

I'm pretty optimistic about the medium term. However, the way to look at Iceland is that we're dealing with a disease that has exponential growth and takes 3-4 weeks to kill people. Few enough people are infected that most of the cases are likely to have happened in the last few weeks, which means that it hasn't had enough time to kill people. Using the number of deaths as a numerator and the number of infections as the denominator to figure out a mortality rate doesn't make sense early in a pandemic.

Well, not totally--some businesses won't survive. But if we literally get everyone infected in 2 months and all those infections resolved in 3 months, then there really isn't anything to worry about (economically speaking) after that. I think the faster this happens, the smaller the economic second-order effects, and the more businesses will survive. Even if bad stuff remains economically, it's much easier to, say, do bridge financing after it's clear the pandemic has run its course and customers have returned to the business. I'm putting aside the millions of deaths as not mattering that much to the economy, and not having that many second-order effects. (Also, I'm not suggesting this is what should happen. I'm saying, "if I were a psycho trying to do nothing but maximize economic outcomes and taking nothing else into account, that's what I'd do.")

Yeah, I'm more bearish on the USA, because--regardless of what no_free_lunch seems to be saying--the Canadian response has been far superior to that of the USA. BC, Ontario, and Quebec have put in preventative measures that will cause the infection numbers to fall, peaking probably next week or sooner. Trudeau's economic response has been mediocre (he shouldn't have tried to shove payments to individuals through the EI system), but I think over the next few weeks, the virus numbers will be driving things, and Canada has done way better than the USA on the virus. The economy's going to suck for everyone. (Of course, all this is speculative--I'm betting on the SPY, but I'd also bet that the divergence between the S&P 500 and the TSX won't be huge....) I agree that it's a terrible time to be converting CAD to USD. It's also worth noting that I see light at the end of the tunnel. So I'm only very short-term bearish based on future infection numbers, but medium- and long-term bullish.

LOL, it's kind of ridiculous, but also kind of true. Do you remember in late 2007/early 2008, when a bunch of people on this board were saying "all this crap is happening, and the market is barely reacting negatively. Are we insane, or do we just not get it?" Then in summer 2008, everything collapsed. This felt the same way in February--all this bizarre stuff was happening in the world, but the market remained high for no apparent reason. I could've put 5% percentage of my portfolio in VIX calls and doubled my portfolio. I wouldn't do more than 5%, because you don't need to, timing is hard, and I could be wrong. But it was really obvious from around mid-February that we were in trouble (basically, once containment failed and the virus started popping up all over outside China.)

More likely. The optimal outcome for the economy is to get everyone sick over the next 2-3 months, let all the old people die (they don't contribute much to the economy anyway), and then have life revert to normal when everyone has herd immunity.