Coronavirus

[StubbleJumper]

Looks like Sweden's GDP numbers aren't better than neighbours:

 

 

Sweden Q2 GDP -8.6%, Denmark -7.4%, Finland -3.2%

 

Of course there are many variables, but still, it's a data point that doesn't help support the approach.

 

 

A few observations:

 

1) You need to look at both Q1 and Q2 GDP numbers because these are QoQ numbers, not YoY.  Of particular importance, Denmark experienced mild economic contraction in Q1, while Sweden had mild economic growth in Q1.  So, start from January 1 and look at the cumulative contraction;

 

2) Reducing the economic pain was only one of several objectives articulated in the Swedish approach.  To a large extent, Sweden's contraction in GDP is one of the most favourable in the western world.  But, equally important, the psycho-social benefits of maintaining organized schools, sports, and social activities is very important.  The lockdowns have been psychologically very challenging for large swaths of the population in most western countries, but likely less so in Sweden;

 

3) Sustainability of response measures was a key objective.  It's all fine and good to take heroic measures to suppress the transmission of the virus, but can those measures be sustained for a prolonged period until a vaccine or treatment are developed?  A large swath of Europe took those heroic measures and managed to flatten the curve, but it's worth taking a look at where they are 12 weeks after having relaxed those heroic measures (I am talking about you, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands!).  As I noted earlier in the week, Spain and France are one doubling away from having their daily new cases being at the very same levels that triggered their lockdown in March/April.  This summer is merely the first intermission and there is still a couple of periods of hockey left to play.

 

 

It will likely be a couple of years before we can come to a fulsome assessment of the relative success of the response strategies that countries adopted.

 

 

SJ

[Liberty]

 

More good pandemic voting logistics..

 

“ Brian Williams:

"NBC news has obtained an internal USPS document, that reveals plans to remove, 671 high volume mail processing machines, from postal facilities across this country."

[Jurgis]

 

More good pandemic voting logistics..

 

“ Brian Williams:

"NBC news has obtained an internal USPS document, that reveals plans to remove, 671 high volume mail processing machines, from postal facilities across this country."

 

FYI: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/usps-states-delayed-mail-in-ballots/2020/08/14/64bf3c3c-dcc7-11ea-8051-d5f887d73381_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_uspsstates-230pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

 

Though this should be moved into "Politics" section.

[Spekulatius]

Looks like Sweden's GDP numbers aren't better than neighbours:

 

 

Sweden Q2 GDP -8.6%, Denmark -7.4%, Finland -3.2%

 

Of course there are many variables, but still, it's a data point that doesn't help support the approach.

 

Also, since about May, many European peer states are just as open than Sweden. Schools for example opened in late April or May in Germany and Denmark. I don’t know about France though.

 

One of the issue that caused the recent outbreak was travel during the summer. There were issue with crowds in Mallorca (around the infamous Schinkenstrasse etc) and contact tracing showed 25% of thr confirmed cases due to travel and the real number is likely much higher.

 

On the same note, I think father day and 4th of July likely caused the recent surge in the surge that seems to be ebbing no. I expect another surge when schools reopen and on thanksgiving.

 

@Castanza- the protests certainly didn’t help, but most protests were in blue states and that’s not where the surge happened. So, I don’t think the protests were the main reason for the surge.

[clutch]

This likely will be the case in many "model" countries...

 

"The Latest: S Korea fears infections getting out of control"

 

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/latest-man-20s-australias-youngest-052650868.html

 

Countries cannot have lockdowns forever (good luck NZ) and there is fatigue setting in the public which leads to less compliance. And since less people have been exposed to the virus, more likely the 2nd wave will spread quickly.

 

(Not justifying the lack of actions taken by other countries, but pointing out the realities of this pandemic)

[muscleman]

This likely will be the case in many "model" countries...

 

"The Latest: S Korea fears infections getting out of control"

 

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/latest-man-20s-australias-youngest-052650868.html

 

Countries cannot have lockdowns forever (good luck NZ) and there is fatigue setting in the public which leads to less compliance. And since less people have been exposed to the virus, more likely the 2nd wave will spread quickly.

 

(Not justifying the lack of actions taken by other countries, but pointing out the realities of this pandemic)

 

Either countries like Sweden get to herd immunity or countries like Korea and China and NZ that enforced tight control and later get 2nd, 3rd, 4th waves.

 

[muscleman]

Has anyone seen this?

https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-pandemic

 

It seems to be in contradictory of some of the charts that Dalal Holdings posted. Not saying he is wrong or he is right. I need to spend some more time digging into this.

If anyone looked into the above and know if there is anything wrong please let me know.

 

[Castanza]

Is anyone aware of more current studies touching in the correlation between unemployment and deaths? There is an older study often referenced which says for every 1% unemployment goes up, roughly 35k people die. Well sitting at 11% in the US (if true) we’re looking at 300k plus deaths.

 

This is going to be a balancing game longterm. You can only overlook suicides, poor home situations, elderly people locked up wasting away, and general mental health concerns so long. Cabin fever isn’t good.

[John Hjorth]

Looks like Sweden's GDP numbers aren't better than neighbours:

 

https://twitter.com/econhedge/status/1294212933266931712?s=20

 

Sweden Q2 GDP -8.6%, Denmark -7.4%, Finland -3.2%

 

Of course there are many variables, but still, it's a data point that doesn't help support the approach.

 

Also, since about May, many European peer states are just as open than Sweden. Schools for example opened in late April or May in Germany and Denmark. I don’t know about France though.

 

One of the issue that caused the recent outbreak was travel during the summer. There were issue with crowds in Mallorca (around the infamous Schinkenstrasse etc) and contact tracing showed 25% of thr confirmed cases due to travel and the real number is likely much higher.

 

On the same note, I think father day and 4th of July likely caused the recent surge in the surge that seems to be ebbing no. I expect another surge when schools reopen and on thanksgiving.

 

@Castanza- the protests certainly didn’t help, but most protests were in blue states and that’s not where the surge happened. So, I don’t think the protests were the main reason for the surge.

 

With regard to tiny Denmark, what Spekulatius here posted, is true, here, locally.

 

The whole situation here in Denmark is somewhat "messy & blended" :

• Outbreak recently in a meat processing plant [owned by Danish Crown] in Ringsted, about 50 km to the west from Copenhagen [it seems to be under control now, though],
  
• "Messy" situation in the second-largest city in Denmark, called Aarhus, located in Jutland,
  
• Pretty high infection numbers per capita in some municipalities around Copenhagen.
  

- - - o 0 o - - - -

 

Countermeasures disclosed to the Danish population today :

 

Compulsory use of face masks for all citizens using any kind of publicly available transportation. [busses, trains, leight-rails, taxis etc.], starting next Saturday.

[KCLarkin]

Has anyone seen this?

https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-pandemic

 

It is B.S.

 

She cites the CDC as her source. The CDC has their own excess deaths tracker here:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

 

Not worth anyone's time debunking this one since it is very obviously garbage. But aside from the obvious (lags in reporting deaths), I don't think she included any deaths from January, but she includes those weeks (of zero deaths) in her weekly average. The CDC source she cites only include deaths from Feb 1st.

 

Easy way to check her work:

source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/

Total Deaths: 1,671,434

Weeks (Feb 1-Aug 8): 28

Deaths per week: 59,694  (undercount due to reporting lags)

 

In her blog, she calculates 44,752 deaths per week.

 

She can't even do simple arithmetic. Actually, she can't even count. All she needed to do was count the weeks in the CDC data (28 not 32).

 

PLEASE DON"T POST FAKE "RESEARCH". IT IS EASY TO CREATE THIS B.S. BUT IT IS A WASTE OF TIME TO DEBUNK.

 

[LC]

Has anyone seen this?

https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-pandemic

 

It seems to be in contradictory of some of the charts that Dalal Holdings posted. Not saying he is wrong or he is right. I need to spend some more time digging into this.

If anyone looked into the above and know if there is anything wrong please let me know.

 

The first giant quote on that nonsense, "regenerative medicine", book-shilling website you posted is patently false.

 

From CDC data, 2020 has the lowest weekly death rate in a decade - so far

 

Although some of this lower death rate may be due to reporting lag, that lag is likely too small to explain the lower weekly death rate in 2020 than in previous years.

 

Go to the CDC dashboard and you can plainly see the exact opposite.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

[Cigarbutt]

Has anyone seen this?

https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-pandemic

 

It seems to be in contradictory of some of the charts that Dalal Holdings posted. Not saying he is wrong or he is right. I need to spend some more time digging into this.

If anyone looked into the above and know if there is anything wrong please let me know.

...

LC's and KCLarkin's inputs are appreciated. (time saved)

Pseudoscience and especially the growing impact of pseudoscience is fascinating and it appears that counter-arguments with facts and rational analysis may be counter-productive.

On top of the fundamental inputs mentioned above, it is reported that the author is a controversial naturopath who claims vastly superior results in cancer patients over the traditional approach. The founder of the site itself is also controversial (anti-vax movement...). It is reported that his training is in philosophy. The greenmedinfo site implies the possibility to filter the literature for relevant articles about certain topics. Respected sources reveal that the site is deeply affected by confirmation bias. Being controversial, they often react to criticism with lawsuits based on the freedom of speech and it's been mentioned by some that the site is part of the empire of misinformation.

Isn't there some kind of responsibility to check basic facts, analysis and source(s)?

 

Is anyone aware of more current studies touching in the correlation between unemployment and deaths? There is an older study often referenced which says for every 1% unemployment goes up, roughly 35k people die. Well sitting at 11% in the US (if true) we’re looking at 300k plus deaths.

This is going to be a balancing game longterm. You can only overlook suicides, poor home situations, elderly people locked up wasting away, and general mental health concerns so long. Cabin fever isn’t good.

Here's a list inspired by a site that i consult frequently (often for contrarian opinions; i have a feeling the site's line of thought (ideology) correlates with yours quite significantly):

http://www.econ.ucla.edu/tvwachter/papers/sullivan_vonwachter_qje.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4202979/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#!po=2.00000

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831278/

TL;DR: The cost is huge and efforts should be made to minimize the cost (both short and long term).

However, i'd like to leave you with another study that suggests that the reaction to COVID was more "due to individuals’ voluntary decisions to disengage from commerce rather than government-imposed restrictions on activity".

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27432.pdf

i think that political leaning and government actions (or inactions) will have a marginal impact but humans are humans and their destinies are often historical path-dependent, at least to a significant degree. Let's focus on what 'we' can control and that may be why drifts can be so significant.

[LC]

Pseudoscience and especially the growing impact of pseudoscience is fascinating and it appears that counter-arguments with facts and rational analysis may be counter-productive.

 

Ah, I see you are familiar with the politics sub-forum :D

 

Isn't there some kind of responsibility to check basic facts, analysis and source(s)?

 

Yes, in my opinion. I attribute it to "basic human decency". It is akin to asking loaded questions ("are you still beating your wife?") and then hiding behind the "Well I am only asking questions..." defense.

 

In the long run, all it does is waste valuable time and effort for those willing to refute the nonsense, and ultimately costs reputation damage to the person presenting such nonsense. Of course, in this day and age it seems reputation is less-and-less valued. Buffett has spoken on this point quite well.

 

On unemployment:

 

"Compared with individuals not experiencing job loss, mortality risks among individuals losing their job in a recession were strongly elevated (hazard ratio = 1.6; 95% confidence interval = 1.1, 2.3). Job loss during normal times or booms is not associated with mortality

Conclusions. Recessions increase mortality risks among older US adults who experience job loss."

 

We find that for high-seniority male workers, mortality

rates in the year after displacement are 50%–100% higher than would otherwise

have been expected. The effect on mortality hazards declines sharply over time, but

even twenty years after displacement, we estimate a 10%–15% increase in annual

death hazards. If such increases were sustained indefinitely, they would imply a

loss in life expectancy of 1.0–1.5 years for a worker displaced at age forty. We show

that these results are not due to selective displacement of less healthy workers or

to unstable industries or firms offering less healthy work environments. We also

show that workers with larger losses in earnings tend to suffer greater increases in

mortality

 

Forgive me but I am hungover and am not going to read these entire studies. I will say that the language in these conclusions indicate mortality risk is correlated with income loss.

 

It also appears the results are somewhat aligned. Hazard ratio 1.6 falls right in the 50-100% results from the second study.

 

There are some concerns:

As you mention, COVID unemployment is due to voluntary policies - compared to "involuntary" recessions used to drive the conclusions in these studies. It is unclear if the same conclusion is applicable here.

 

I am not sure if these studies include the effect of increased resources (e.g. increased unemployment benefits, one-time stimulus check). Again, not clear if the conclusion will be applicable.

 

Thirdly in terms of impact. The below is very crude analysis, and, quite unpalatable (but important to think about regardless of the taste it leaves, sadly):

 

If we take a 1.25 average reduction in life expectancy per unemployed individual per the above references.

 

In July, the number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job declined by 463,000 to

7.7 million; this measure is 2.8 million higher than in February (BLS)

 

So we have 2.8MM unemployed, therefore about 3.5MM expected years-of-life which have been lost due to voluntary COVID precautions.

 

On those who have died, let's put the weighted average age at 60 - essentially with 18 years of expected life remaining.

 

Now, this implies that if the voluntary COVID precautions saved about 195,000 lives, it is economically "worth it".

 

Actually this number should be adjusted downwards as (1) the marginal individual within those 195,000 is probably younger than 60, (2) there is a "cost savings" of the government not having to provide social security/medicaid to those deceased, (3) the 1.25 life expectancy reduction is probably high as it does not account for elevated unemployment benefits. So you can make adjustments from there.

 

[Viking]

Is anyone aware of more current studies touching in the correlation between unemployment and deaths? There is an older study often referenced which says for every 1% unemployment goes up, roughly 35k people die. Well sitting at 11% in the US (if true) we’re looking at 300k plus deaths.

 

This is going to be a balancing game longterm. You can only overlook suicides, poor home situations, elderly people locked up wasting away, and general mental health concerns so long. Cabin fever isn’t good.

 

Yes, avoiding/mitigating the virus causes lots of issues. There is the other side of the coin which is... the virus itself of course. What are the health (and death) issues for those who get the virus, their family member, their social network, work network and the community where they live? And those who have been around someone shortly before they tested positive?

 

What happens to a family when a member is diagnosed positive. Lots of mental anguish for everyone. First waiting (feeling sick but not knowing if it is the virus). Then getting tested. Then waiting for results (Sometimes a week). Then contacting everyone they have been in close contact with that you may have spread the virus to them and their ‘bubble’. But you do not know.

 

Once results come in, if it is positive, then return phone calls to lots of people. Lots of explanations. Other people then need to decide if they need to quarantine (or physically distance). Testing? Notify others?

 

I can see how individuals can get ostracized over being around a positive test. And it you test positive yourself... not good.

 

Think about all the mental anguish the millions who have tested positive (and their families and their social networks have gone through). And of course there are the tens of thousands who have lost their life to the virus... lots of stress and anguish for everydoby there too. And tragedy of course.

 

Not to mention what all the front line workers are going through every day (health care, food production, grocery stores etc). Soon teachers are going to be in the thick of it.

 

The virus is wickedly complicated. That is why it should be managed by health care professionals and the politicians should stay in the shadows. In terms of how it has been handled by developed countries the US response to the virus is near the bottom of the list. 7 days to get a test result? In August? Gates said delays that long make testing useless. Crazy. But that is what you get with Trump as President. (And yes, it really is that simple.)

 

 

[Castanza]

Is anyone aware of more current studies touching in the correlation between unemployment and deaths? There is an older study often referenced which says for every 1% unemployment goes up, roughly 35k people die. Well sitting at 11% in the US (if true) we’re looking at 300k plus deaths.

 

This is going to be a balancing game longterm. You can only overlook suicides, poor home situations, elderly people locked up wasting away, and general mental health concerns so long. Cabin fever isn’t good.

 

Yes, avoiding/mitigating the virus causes lots of issues. There is the other side of the coin which is... the virus itself. What are the health (and death) issues for those who get the virus, their family member, their social network, work network and the community where they live? And those who have been around someone shortly before they tested positive?

 

What happens to a family when a member is diagnosed positive. Lots of mental anguish for everyone. First waiting (feeling sick but not knowing if it is the virus). Then getting tested. Then waiting for results (Sometimes a week). Then contacting everyone they have been in close contact with that you may have spread the virus to them and their ‘bubble’. But you do not know.

 

Once results come in, if it is positive, then return phone calls to lots of people. Lots of explanations. Other people then need to decide if they need to quarantine (or physically distance). Testing? Notify others?

 

I can see how individuals can get ostracized over being around a positive test. And it you test positive yourself... not good.

 

Think about all the mental anguish the millions who have tested positive (and their families and their social networks have gone through). And of course there are the tens of thousands who have lost their life to the virus... lots of stress and anguish for everydoby there too. And tragedy of course.

 

Not to mention what all the front line workers are going through every day (health care, food production, grocery stores etc). Soon teachers are going to be in the thick of it.

 

The virus is wickedly complicated. That is why it should be managed by health care professionals and the politicians should stay in the shadows. In terms of how it has been handled by developed countries the US response to the virus is near the bottom of the list. 7 days to get a test result? In August? Gates said delays that long make testing useless. Crazy. But that is what you get with Trump as President. (And yes, it really is that simple.)

 

323m in lockdown > 5m positive Covid.

 

Of the 20ish people I know who have had Covid. Not a single one has had “anguish”. Maybe one of them, but they were elderly so it’s understandable as they’re high risk. Perhaps the media should stops making it sound like if you get Covid you have been diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. 13% of the population takes anti depressants. And the AMA agrees that the majority of cases go undiagnosed. 48k people already commit suicide in the US every year.

 

https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa202/5857612

 

Ben Franklin “A working man is a happy man. And idle man, is a most unhappy man.”

 

I’m not saying open everything up. Just saying I think it deserves more attention.

[Liberty]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/15/forty-percent-of-us-covid-19-tests-come-back-too-late-to-be-clinically-meaningful-data-show.html

 

Forty percent of U.S. Covid-19 tests come back too late to be clinically meaningful, data show

 

Experts say results need to be returned in less than three days, optimally two, to be clinically meaningful.

[Liberty]

Potentially good news on testing:

 

(thread)

[Viking]

Castanza, i do agree with you that there are terrible outcomes on both sides of the virus coin. At the end of the day, the virus is one of the great issues every country in the world is grappling with.

 

My point was more that given the terrible outcomes it needs to be managed exceptionally well so you minimize BOTH the negative health and the negative economic impacts. Now if you mismanage the virus BOTH the health and economic impacts get much, much worse (that what they would have been with better management).

[Cigarbutt]

@LC

Around 1988, as part of some kind of training, i had to spend some time in public health, to assist in a few projects. One of the projects was to determine how to improve a road intersection (investment versus utility) which had been associated with quite a few accidents. Sounds simple enough. The team had to come up, in the end, with an NPV which, as an input, used the ‘value’ of a life. How do you value a life?

Politics is about the messy application of core values around complex trade-offs. But it’s also about the efficient deployment of ‘capital’ around compromises.

One difficulty with Covid is that many people (especially if one distrusts sources of data, experts, in general etc) who don’t see it firsthand conclude that it doesn’t really exist. Same with the unintended consequences from collective actions.

Last spring, when some hospital resources came close from being overwhelmed in my area, a decision-making blueprint was produced in order to prioritize the use of life-saving equipment. The committees were to use best evidence and principles recognized by peers and outside people acknowledged for sound judgment.

I would say that those who say it’s easy don’t understand it. There is still so much to learn and adapt. Thanks for the inputs. Answers tend to form out of constructive discussions.

 

[LC]

In many of these cases where, as you point out, the inputs and comparisons are "mucky" (to put it mildly), I would guess that the best solutions are the cheap, widespread ones. The low hanging fruit.

 

Interestingly it is really an investment question - let's follow WB's advice and look for the one foot hurdles. Make generously conservative assumptions, and if the proposition STILL indicates success, that is a good sign.

 

Wearing masks for example - minimal cost, incredible payoff. And you see compounded effects. Masks slow the viral spread which leads to reduced peak hospital utilization, leading to more flexibility when allocating capital (nurses, beds, ventilators, etc.), leading to better patient outcomes. Now instead of scrambling to provide ventilators, you can instead provide testing faster & universally. This leads to self-identified patients quarantining, again reducing the spread. The point - if you get a lot of people do to a few little things (high volume, low margins), the compound effects make it easier to allocate resources to high(er) cost, concentrated efforts.

 

The difficulty I think with COVID, particularly the early months, was a combination of excessive emotion and lack of information, and a "time crunch" to deliver solutions.

 

This of course leads to sub-optimal results. And here is where the politician and the investor diverge. The investor can toss anything in the "too hard" pile, governors and PMs do not have that luxury.

[Cigarbutt]

...

Interestingly it is really an investment question {with difficult to quantify inputs}

...

The difficulty I think with COVID, particularly the early months, was a combination of excessive emotion and lack of information, and a "time crunch" to deliver solutions.

This of course leads to sub-optimal results. And here is where the politician and the investor diverge. The investor can toss anything in the "too hard" pile, governors and PMs do not have that luxury.

Fair enough. Looking at this from the perspective of core values and efficient application of policies is relevant. For the efficiency part, which comes after the definition (negotiation) of core values, i would say that despite the real-time concerns that you mention, governance is important in terms of the capacity to articulate and coordinate the application of policies, the way a competent CEO would do it (financing, capital allocation and especially operations). For the core values part, leaders of democratic countries have to take into account where the critical mass of constituents are and only (only is a relative word here) have a marginal effect on where the current should go (right, wrong or no direction). This is even more important with unexpected shocks and during critical junctures. Covid is small change compared to your Civil War, but the point is that, then, President Lincoln was able to lead and guide (with a component of 'price' discovery in the process) in the right direction despite a divided house. This is also why i think the Sweden posture is interesting. Sweden has been wrong on many things for Covid so far but the plan has resulted from a reasonable collective discussion and gave way to a relatively efficient way to deliver on this plan (process vs outcome).

One way to assess how core values were defined and applied is to do international comparisons. Apologies for using the US again as a reference point but with responsibilities come power and expectations (my jurisdiction did very poorly on some important parameters). The following link comes from the Washington Post (i use the Post as an input source despite some limitations because it tends to produce good work and it tends to moderate my spontaneous conservative opinions on various topics). They do mention the obvious limitations when comparing countries but there may be something to learn vs core values and efficiency. Interesting comparisons: Michigan vs Sweden, Colorado :) vs Denmark, New Jersey vs Austria, Virginia vs Israel. So, it's not reasonable to expect Wisconsin to 'perform' similarly to Singapore for a variety of reasons including some very positive aspects of American exceptionalism but the size of the discrepancy suggests that your Great Country can do better.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/how-the-pandemic-in-each-state-compares-to-countries-of-equal-size/ar-BB17YGD2?ocid=msedgntp

BTW, in this thread, you were early in identifying the usefulness and relevance of the excess mortality statistics (and how to interpret them) and i thank you for that. Excess mortality tends to be more objective and is a useful springboard for discussion (core values and efficiency). Excess mortality may have two meanings. Excess mortality versus the years before. And excess mortality that was/is preventable in a 'cost'-effective way.

 

[Cigarbutt]

Potentially good news on testing:

(thread)

Saliva testing comes with potential advantages but there are residual questions about the ideal collection technique and method as well as sensitivity. Also, even if the saliva process can remove one step (finding a test center that provides the testing material and performs the actual test), my understanding is that people who obtain the home kit still need to send the material to a lab (often by mail...) so it's unclear if this is an avenue that will improve the turnaround time significantly.

Also, from a larger perspective, if the idea is to effectively contain or eventually trace, the last numbers show that states that contribute to 28.9% of US GDP still have positivity rates above 10% and states that contribute to an additional 46.6% of US GDP still have positivity rates between 5 to 10%.

Background info:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.00465/full

[Spekulatius]

My wife drew this picture  describing how she felt about a colleague at work during the Coronavirus surge. Very fitting when you see some of the postings here:

[LC]

Cigarbutt, good point re Sweden particularly in relation to process vs outcome. I think that is a good way to consider the problem not just regarding COVID but any decision-making process where the stakes are very high, the nature of the problem is uncertain, and there is a time-limiting component. It pays to be generally right rather than specifically wrong.

 

Also I do appreciate the link on US States vs Countries, I do have some comments on that because I am hesitant to lend much credit to these types of analyses, at least initially:

 

In terms of comparison, I say this a lot because the topic of causation vs. correlation is discussed often on this board. For a valid comparison to take place, you need both intuitive and empirical evidence. In this case, it is not simply enough to say that Tennessee and Lebanon are similarly populated countries. One has to ask the question, "why is that a valid figure to use as comparison"?

 

To answer that question, we need to understand the nature of the virus. OK, so it is a respiratory virus, it seems to be spread primarily by water droplets from person to person, it can withstand environmental conditions for XYZ length of time, etc. I don't know the answer to all these questions on the virus's characteristics - i.e. how significant does sunlight intensity, ambient humidity, etc. play a role in the virus' survivability, and other such questions. But they are important for a scientist/statistician to know, in order to make valid comparisons of treatment & outcomes.

 

Ultimately, today our limited knowledge leads us to believe that (like most respiratory viruses), close human-to-human contact allows the virus to spread easily. In other words population density would be a significant factor. So personally to do such a comparison I would look at population size, average population density, and also the size of the tails of population density.

 

But, let's look at Colorado vs. Denmark: Denver is 50% less dense than Copenhagen, and Colorado as a State is about 6x less dense than Denmark as a country. And yet Colorado has a significantly greater number of COVID deaths per thousand.

 

So is population/population density not a significant predictor? Or is this just an outlier? Or is the divergence in  due to some other factor (e.g. mask-wearing, weather, or something else?)

 

Now we would need to somehow quantify the impact of mask-wearing. How can it be measured? How can it be compared? Not an easy task. Weather is a little easier, we have existing metrics (temperature, humidity, cloud cover, etc.) to track this. But ultimately these are difficult questions to answer and it goes back to the initial point on process vs. outcome in the face of very serious unknowns - in particular considering core values as you correctly put it.

 

BTW, in this thread, you were early in identifying the usefulness and relevance of the excess mortality statistics (and how to interpret them) and i thank you for that. Excess mortality tends to be more objective and is a useful springboard for discussion (core values and efficiency). Excess mortality may have two meanings. Excess mortality versus the years before. And excess mortality that was/is preventable in a 'cost'-effective way.

 

Appreciate the acknowledgement - it is in my opinion nearly the only useful, dependable statistic we have. At least "early in the game". To me this was quite obvious. What were the other options? Self reporting (too subjective)? Test results (early on the application was inconsistent, there were no control groups, questions on accuracy and timing of test results, etc.).

 

But you make another interesting point on how it springboards discussion (core values). I did not even think of this (collaboration has benefits, it appears :D)  In fact I like using yours & Castanza's references regarding life expectancy. This provides somewhat of an objective (or at least, apples vs. apples) method to measure impact of COVID vs. impact of lockdowns.

[LC]

Some commentary on the day:

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/