Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Legbiter]

It also isn't obvious why the relevant comparison is just 3 or 4 sparsely populated neighbors rather than the larger european community.

Oh that's just me comparing what I consider to be peer countries. There's a lot of friendly rivalry between us. Covid is no different really.

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh, if to get a positive assessment of an approach you need to have an accurately assessed starting premise, absolutely no one will have a positive assessment by that standard. No one nailed the starting premise.

I'm not saying that and obviously everyone operated on certain assumptions based on the information they had. No-one will have got that right and it will have changed as the crisis went on. But I think it's fair to say a policy is a mistake if it leads to significantly more deaths (and economic damage) because one of the assumptions you made was wrong, that you didn't correct it once it became clear a virus was on the horizon (so you had new information to revise it) and when it was counter-intuitive/counter-majoritarian.

Part of the UK's early mistakes was the scientific advice was based on this disease behaving like flu. It doesn't so that needed to be shifted. If we were still treating it like it's a variant of flu that would be a wrong decision.

[alfred russel]

But I think it's fair to say a policy is a mistake if it leads to significantly more deaths (and economic damage) because one of the assumptions you made was wrong, that you didn't correct it once it became clear a virus was on the horizon (so you had new information to revise it) and when it was counter-intuitive/counter-majoritarian.

I completely disagree with any linking of a determination of whether a policy was a "mistake" to if the assumptions underlying the policy were counter-intuitive or counter-majoritarian.

I also see no reason to link the evaluation of policy outcomes with initial assumptions. In this case I'm not sure the initial assumptions even differed between countries. Every nation had roughly the same information at hand, with a range of interpretations and assessments from virtually every discipline. Policies may have been justified with a handful of assessments (and those chosen may have differed between countries), but they also weren't made in vacuums with just that information. 

[Valmy]

Here's the bottom of the list for the last 7 days, for models to follow.

Madagascar continues to show the wisdom of shutting down everything.

[Threviel]

The nordic economies are quite different frome one another. Norway is oil and hydro-power, Denmark is agriculture, shipping and some manufacturing. Sweden is steel, forests, banking and the automotive sector. Roughly. Finland is a lot like Sweden.

So differences in how Covid affects the economies at large might be down to how it affects each sector. Volvo sold a lot less cars and trucks for instance. I imagine that the Finnish shipbuilders building cruise ships might have seen a downturn.

GDP might also be affected by what actions the governments have taken which might differ.

It's far too early to say, but I do not believe that the Swedish measures with regards to the economy has been anything special and I believe Sweden will, in general, be as affected as other countries.

Not that economy hs played any role in Swedish measures. They have been based on scientific advise from the specialists at the health ministry and have only tried to lessen the effects of Covid.

[Admiral Yi]

Listening to NPR.  Looks like failure to pre-order more Pfizer vaccine means we could hit a wall in March or so after 50 million Americans have gotten vaccinated using Pfizer and 50 million using Moderna.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DOWd04iNFM

Side effects of vaccine.

Fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain, fever.

[jimmy olsen]

 
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1337228026636099586

CDC Director Robert Redfield on COVID-19: "Probably for the next 60 to 90 days, we're going to have more deaths per day than we had on 9/11" or at Pearl Harbor -

[Razgovory]

What D-day in 1942 are they talking about?

[Admiral Yi]

Proven to be FAKE!

[Syt]

What D-day in 1942 are they talking about?

I'm concerned about the hurricane in 2500AD.

[Valmy]

What D-day in 1942 are they talking about?

Dieppe. The American casualties were vastly under-reported.

[Zanza]

Germany just had its worst ever day in both new cases and deaths.

[viper37]

It is premature to say "it just didn't work out." In terms of deaths from covid-19 on a per capita basis, Sweden will likely finish well ahead of its nordic peers. However, its death toll is currently 0.072% of its population. Its incremental deaths versus its nordic peers is obviously less. It also isn't obvious why the relevant comparison is just 3 or 4 sparsely populated neighbors rather than the larger european community.

But that aside, if we deduce that a response more in line with european norms would have even eliminated its death toll, it still isn't obvious that the obvious cost to the 0.072% that died isn't more than offset by the cost of the countermeasures to the 99.928% of survivors. It would be redundant at this point to list all the costs, many of which will carry an increase in mortality to the surviving population as well.

Sweden can't be compared to France or Belgium, it's about as sparsely populated as its neighbours and shares a similar culture, which makes the comparison more apt, imho.
Death isn't the only problem with this disease, again.  I feel like I'm repeating myself.

[viper37]

But economically Sweden has been the worst hit of the Nordics too. Looking across Europe the economic hit seems to depend less on whether you lock down or not, but whether lots of people die or not. Which makes sense - I've always said lockdown is secondary to how people change their behaviour based on the news/their sense of risk. If you have a bad outbreak even without strict state led countermeasures people will adjust their behaviour more than if you had a small outbreak.

So you're saying the USA's focus on increasing the sheer number of deaths might not have been a great strategy?   

If only your wise amongst the wise leader had known, he might not have tried so hard to kill people

[viper37]

The nordic economies are quite different frome one another. Norway is oil and hydro-power, Denmark is agriculture, shipping and some manufacturing. Sweden is steel, forests, banking and the automotive sector. Roughly. Finland is a lot like Sweden.

So differences in how Covid affects the economies at large might be down to how it affects each sector. Volvo sold a lot less cars and trucks for instance. I imagine that the Finnish shipbuilders building cruise ships might have seen a downturn.

GDP might also be affected by what actions the governments have taken which might differ.

It's far too early to say, but I do not believe that the Swedish measures with regards to the economy has been anything special and I believe Sweden will, in general, be as affected as other countries.

Not that economy hs played any role in Swedish measures. They have been based on scientific advise from the specialists at the health ministry and have only tried to lessen the effects of Covid.

Oil prices have fallen pretty low at some point, it certainly affected Norway too.  Banking was less affected than other industries.  I think on average, things balanced themselves.