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2020-03-23 Home Front: Politix
What changed from 2009 to 2020? Dr. Fauci in 2009 re. deadly H1N1 pandemic: Don't ‘isolate yourself for the whole flu season‘
[AmericanThinker] Two differences: in 2009 the feds had warehouses full of supplies stored by President Bush that they handed out to the medical facilities hardest hit, and considerably fewer doctors had retired. But after H1N1 President Obama ignored advice to replenish stocks... and an awful lot of doctors decided dealing with Obamacare was not worth fighting — so they retired.

Stanford Epidemiologist John Ioannidis: COVID-19 overreaction "may be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco

Is It Worth It? "Is there any limit to the damage we are willing inflict on the world economy to mitigate the infection?" - Heather MacDonald in City Journal
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ]  Top

#1 Note to mods: just curious - why combine into one thread these three distinct articles on three different topics, written by three different authors from very different backgrounds?
thx,
L
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 01:11||   2020-03-23 01:11|| Front Page Top

#2 From my perspective, Lex, they all fall under the heading of “We’re overdoing all this quarantine stuff to the point of causing harm.”
Posted by trailing wife 2020-03-23 02:16||   2020-03-23 02:16|| Front Page Top

#3 This way the different aspects of the discussion can be corralled in one place, instead of people becoming frustrated because they to repeat arguments in three separate comment threads.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-03-23 02:18||   2020-03-23 02:18|| Front Page Top

#4 I agree with TW.

When the new daily edition rolls out early in the morning hours it is of a decent size and concise. However by 8am central time it has morfed into a huge mass of links that on my lap top requires 3 scrolls to get from the top kubj ti the final link.

Sensory overload!

I have been hoping for an opportunity to say something about how I see it. Many of those links are important but can be consolidated into titles that readers can click and drill down to various related stories, something TW is very good at organizing.

It is good house keeping and renders the site more attractive than a huge mas of spaghetti, of many, many links at the top level.
Posted by Marilyn Uloling5420 2020-03-23 02:33||   2020-03-23 02:33|| Front Page Top

#5 We have enough data - we see what happens in Italy & Spain.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 03:28||   2020-03-23 03:28|| Front Page Top

#6 All responses are not created equal, and it's impossible not to note that the majority of those who are so determined to inflict economic damage are also the least likely to feel the after effects, not their skin in the game.
Posted by Cesare 2020-03-23 08:31||   2020-03-23 08:31|| Front Page Top

#7 Meanwhile, Switzerland is about to catch up with South Korea, Iran is closing in on Germany, and the U.S. is just over half the cases of Italy. I look forward to understanding that data.
Posted by Bobby 2020-03-23 08:45||   2020-03-23 08:45|| Front Page Top

#8 You know Cesare, this argument could be turned around. However, there's no need. Just ask yourself how much economy will Italy have when it all plays over?

p.s. Shutdown doesn't bankrupt businesses - competition with other businesses bankrupts businesses.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 08:50||   2020-03-23 08:50|| Front Page Top

#9 From the second link: Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes.

Last week, my daughter's mother-in-law was refused testing for a cough and fever because her fever wasn't high enough*. She's 70. If we had more testing, we'd have more data on which to base decisions.

*I believe she caught something from our grandson, who made 3-4 trips to the doctor the previous week, and was finally diagnosed with bronchitis.
Posted by Bobby 2020-03-23 08:55||   2020-03-23 08:55|| Front Page Top

#10 Let us note: just for the sake of perspective that all the measures ushered in by Trump's admin in USA are practiced in other places in the world. In fact, places that initially refused to use such measures (like Italy) are now on the brink of martial law. Mark my words, it's just a matter of time until soldiers in Italy and Spain will begin shooting people who break quarantine.
Not every f*cking thing in the World is due to responses to your MSN!!!
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 09:05||   2020-03-23 09:05|| Front Page Top

#11  g(r)omgoru

Italy had 4 confirmed cases a month ago. I (almost) give them a pass because they might not have realized what was coming.

But now we know. Germany's response wasn't stellar either. In Munich, 2 weeks ago, we had a football match with 70,000 spectators. The club managers of Bayern Munich pushed this through.

I phoned them the next day, called them f*** morons and cancelled my membership.
Posted by European Conservative 2020-03-23 09:21||   2020-03-23 09:21|| Front Page Top

#12 Fair enough, but I would think that the same logic should apply to the opposite argument-- which is less of a proper argument based on careful study of the empirical evidence than a hodgepodge of anecdotes whose intent seems in the main seems to be to reinforce the general sense of panic.

Can we combine some of those threads as well?
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 09:28||   2020-03-23 09:28|| Front Page Top

#13 as opposed to commenting the same thing in 48 96 different threads, Lex?
Posted by Frank G 2020-03-23 09:37||   2020-03-23 09:37|| Front Page Top

#14 ^Exactly! It's not a uniquely American problem! Just look around, for G*d sake, Americans! See what happens to countries who cared for "protecting businesses" ubber alles like Italy with tourism! Ask yourself, you Friedrich Hayeks, what will happen to restaurant business USA wide when somebody's corona infection is traced back to a restaurant!
Ask yourself what will happen on GM assembly line when one of the workers collapsed with corona!
No, instead, you accuse the other side of "having no skin in the game" (just so you know, my main businesses of writing term papers for students and math tutoring are dead right now)/end rant
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 09:43||   2020-03-23 09:43|| Front Page Top

#15 #14 response to EC's #11.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 09:45||   2020-03-23 09:45|| Front Page Top

#16 Trump actually did the right thing (yes I said this) with his early China ban. Unfortunately it was poorly implemented because American citizens returning from China were not forced into quarantine.

But pretty much the same happened in Europe. The problem for politicians is: Drastic measures must be understood. Try explaining a shutdown when you have 50 cases in the country. It doesn't work.

People now (mostly) understand. If you have many millions of infected people and 15% are seriously ill, not 1% will die but 10% or more because they can't be properly treated.

Overreaction is only for people who don't understand exponential curves.
Posted by European Conservative 2020-03-23 09:57||   2020-03-23 09:57|| Front Page Top

#17 Overreaction is only for people who don't understand exponential curves.

There also should be density dependence in the the death rate in the standard equations.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:03||   2020-03-23 10:03|| Front Page Top

#18 Shutdown doesn't bankrupt businesses - competition with other businesses bankrupts businesses.

I really don't want to respond to you but this is just too much. The above statement is a prime example of the extreme foolishness that is so annoying to so many of us here who understand how firms in market economies work.

As anyone who has run a business or worked in finance or accounting knows, a firm's cash flow is its oxygen.

In a market economy the cash flow cycle depends heavily on many actors working in concert: consumers trading cash for the firm's goods or services; banks lending cash to firms so they can buy supplies from other firms and produce inventories in advance of purchases by consumers; employees who receive cash weekly or bimonthly and then use that cash to purchase necessary goods; etc

When you kill off consumer demand -- not reduce it, as in a typical contraction, but shut it down altogether, as we are now on the brink of doing, for MONTHS -- when you do this, you starve these firms of oxygen.

Without cash flow from one or another source -- no consumers, no floating of the notes owed to their banks, and all their suppliers experiencing the same cash-starvation -- without cash flow, firms in a market economy DIE. And the effect cascades throughout the economy, which will not recover FOR YEARS.

A little more than half of the US workforce is employed in small businesses, many of which are "mom and pop" businesses with 1 or 2 proprietors.

These are not owners of football clubs or stadium owners. These are tiny businesses which don't have million-dollar credit lines from banks. They don't have large cash reserves. And they are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN to die if these mass lockdowns - no going out for a pizza or a haircut or visiting shops - if this absurd overreaction continues, as we are told it will, for months. you will surely plunge at minimum 60 million Americans into bankruptcy and despair. Minimum.

Sorry to be so pedantic about such an obvious issue but this is why those of us who are deeply into the business world see a calamity coming that is far, far greater than the inevitable 20,000 or 30,000 additional deaths.

The suicides alone from bankrupting millions of mom and pop and other small business owners will top that figure.

This is what's at stake. So please stop insulting people here with ignorant remarks about a fantasy world in which a months-long "shutdown doesn't bankrupt businesses."

Please respect logic and respect other Rantburgers. No one is attacking you. We all simply want what's best for our families, and I'm sure most of us have family who are at heightened risk from both this virus, because of old age and/or lung or other preconditions, AND from the (in my view far far greater) coming economic calamity that is being visited upon us by our leaders' decisions.

We all understand why elders and people with pre-existing conditions need to be subject to extra precautions. Travel bans for a minutes time, fine. But killing the backbone of ordinary local social interaction with small shopkeepers is not wise.

Sorry to go on at such length but we just need to stop this habit of rubbing salt in others' wounds by means of mindless pronouncements like the one above.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 10:05||   2020-03-23 10:05|| Front Page Top

#19 * Travel bans for an extended time, fine.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 10:08||   2020-03-23 10:08|| Front Page Top

#20 Ever heard the expression "can't see the forest for the trees", Lex? If you actually stopped and thought about what I said ... Unfortunately, economists don't understand economics - as demonstrated by Nobel laureate Krugman.
IMO, the first thing USA should do to restore it's economy is to send most MBAs to work in fruit picking.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:18||   2020-03-23 10:18|| Front Page Top

#21 ^Don't tell me they will bad at it - a few beatings will fix the problem.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:27||   2020-03-23 10:27|| Front Page Top

#22 ^Will be bad
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:29||   2020-03-23 10:29|| Front Page Top

#23 Please stop. Stop posting annoying, irrelevant and mindlessly insulting comments. You're ruining this thread.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 10:32||   2020-03-23 10:32|| Front Page Top

#24 I see your posts as ignorant demagoguery, Lex.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:36||   2020-03-23 10:36|| Front Page Top

#25 Its really stupid to compare Italy to the United States. We knew so much more by the time the virus came here, and our demographics are entirely different.
Posted by Crusader 2020-03-23 10:51||   2020-03-23 10:51|| Front Page Top

#26 And what kind of moron would state that shutdowns don't cause bankruptcies? Please tell me you didn't mean that like you typed it?
Posted by Crusader 2020-03-23 10:54||   2020-03-23 10:54|| Front Page Top

#27 #25 No response.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:54||   2020-03-23 10:54|| Front Page Top

#28 I meant it exactly as I said. You're entitled to your opinions. And I'm entitled to my opinions about yours.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 10:56||   2020-03-23 10:56|| Front Page Top

#29 Shutdown doesn't bankrupt businesses

Bullll shit.

Gotta keep the heat on, the air circulating, taxes, insurance, the normal wear and tear of critical components breaking, you have good employees there should be a retainer program, cost of goods sold increasing. These are all expenses before you even unlock the door and turn the lights on.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-03-23 11:16||   2020-03-23 11:16|| Front Page Top

#30 You don't have all these expenses in shutdown, SW. All the businesses that compete with you are shut down as well. Look at the forest, not the trees. And, your business will be shutdown anyway: Detroit Car Makers to Temporarily Close U.S. Plants Over Virus Concerns. Nobody is forcing them to close. That's what happens when you have a plague. Fact of life. Saying "USA is not Italy" is for missing links.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 11:27||   2020-03-23 11:27|| Front Page Top

#31 Yeah, actually I do.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-03-23 11:33||   2020-03-23 11:33|| Front Page Top

#32 Do what, accept the facts of life?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 11:35||   2020-03-23 11:35|| Front Page Top

#33 Ultimately, isn't this what the question is about?

The problem with y'alls back and forth is both sides are right. But to say businesses enter some sort of stasis like pausing a video game is as wrong as saying anyone over the age of whatever should be written off.

So yeah, as I'm sitting here writing checks for bills for services I used, gas electric trash employees building and auto insurance plus property tax and accrued sales tax, expenses. Plus, every day which goes by is one day closer to a hole in the roof, the AC going out, an out building collapsing, a vermin infestation, or some punk siphoning the gasoline out of a vehicle.

On the flip side, there is always competition. Always. Big box stores, see they are also grocery stores and pharmacies. Even larger than that is the internet. I can spend five minutes right now and have two gallons of gumbo on my doorstep in two days in time for dinner. It is history's largest market and it is always open. And a close second is the black market.

In business, if you aren't making money you are losing money.

Argue your sides, but don't poo poo the sacrifices these business owners are going through.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-03-23 12:17||   2020-03-23 12:17|| Front Page Top

#34 That escalated quickly. Personally, I was not taking a side of do nothing and hope for the best. For the most part I do not endorse an either/or approach to most things. Assuming a realistic and clearly stated time component I would also very much agree that shut downs ought not lead to bankruptcies.

Getting back to my point about bureaucratic skin in the game, they seem to increasingly view the population...you know the ones who do most of the living and dying, making and transporting as some kind of inconvenience. A problem to be tolerated, so no, I don't have but so much confidence in their conclusions. Let's not forget everybody's favorite 'special agents', the covert mastermind Sztrok and his main squeeze Page. You think they're some kind of rare bureaucratic anomaly in an ocean of sober competence?

Further, this is uncharted territory economically. Again personally, I tend to believe there will be a fairly robust if spiky recovery, no doubt with the odd setback.

Sorry to hear about the business, g(r)omgoru, I've had a couple of pretty big months. Hope it lightens up for you. Mrs Cesare is a teacher and reacted with pity and amusement when I asked her if she thought she'd back after Spring Break. She has taken a different tone of late as it increasingly appears spring break may well last until August.
Posted by Cesare 2020-03-23 12:21||   2020-03-23 12:21|| Front Page Top

#35 Guess the kids get a little cranky when they can't go out for recess.
Posted by Skidmark 2020-03-23 12:26||   2020-03-23 12:26|| Front Page Top

#36 To be fair, it will be the older folks who can guide us through this, the farmers, ranchers, miners, smokers who have seen the shit, everyone right in the envelope. The farmer whose left pinky has more experience than 20 man bun soccer coaches, the systems analyst of 3 decades, the grandmother who remembers her mother's stories of living through the dirty thirties, the holy men who know their flock so well he can tell by the way someone is walking if something is wrong. The financial advisors and bankers who can guide a business through a rough spot. We should be doing everything we can to protect them.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-03-23 12:34||   2020-03-23 12:34|| Front Page Top

#37 I said it yesterday and I'll take this opportunity to say it again:

Whether or not the current shutdown is justified, we cannot do this every time some new bug gets loose in China. Changes need to be made. IMHO, we need to quarantine that whole country until they start behaving like civilized human beings.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2020-03-23 13:01||   2020-03-23 13:01|| Front Page Top

#38 #33 Argue your sides, but don't poo poo the sacrifices these business owners are going through.

I'm sorry to hear about your business problem, SW. But, isn't the basic idea of business is that you take responsibility AND the risks? Nobody promises you success AND nobody OWES you success.
And don't tell me I don't know that I'm talking about because my father run his own business. And, I myself, had to chose between being an employee (lab tech) with all the social rights or to try for an academic position (which is a lot like running a franchise) some years ago. Made the same choice as you - don't regret it even now.

#34 Sorry, but you know who got my goat with "not Italy", "exponential - smeksponential".
Think of shutdown this way.
When I was a wee lad, and an apple in the eye of my platoon sergeant (a horse apple, but that's just details), I was was taught that when you shot at - you first take cover, THEN identify the source of fire and decide that to do (depends on the distance).
So that's what all the (responsible) governments are doing. They are taking cover. They can't tell you how long the shutdown will last because they still evaluating and working on plans of action (yea, I'm stretching the metaphor).
By the way, did you notice that in Israel (article I posted yesterday) the lockdown is approved for a week and will have to be renewed?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 13:02||   2020-03-23 13:02|| Front Page Top

#39 In the interests of moving forward, here are two many leaders leaders - elected officials, top medical and public health experts, economists, business leaders - who in the last 72 hours have publicly pushed the strategy that I'm recommending.

That's to do two things at once: get more care and direct more resources to the truly vulnerable part of the population - the elderly - and ALSO - both, 'and,' got it? - also relax this lockdown ASAP and get healthy people under 65 back working again, with reasonable precautions about washing hands etc.

Governor Cuomo - reported at 1pm ET today - "We have to have a plan to 'pivot back to economic functionality'" - key quote: "There has to be a balance, or parallel tracks ... At some pint you have to open the valve ... because that is oxygen for the economy and this is not sustainable"

Dr. David Katz, Founder and director of the Yale Preventive Medicine Center, editorial, "Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic" - key quote: "If we were to focus on the especially vulnerable, there would be resources to keep them at home, provide them with needed services and coronavirus testing, and direct our medical system to their early care. I would favor proactive rather than reactive testing in this group, and early use of the most promising anti-viral drugs. This cannot be done under current policies, as we spread our relatively few test kits across the expanse of a whole population, made all the more anxious because society has shut down"

Trump is voicing support for this dual track approach now, so is Mnuchin, so are Senators speaking right now on the floor of Congress, as are more and more business leaders.

Both. And.

Please cease with nasty attacks on fellow Rantburgers. We're just trying to take care of our families.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 13:41||   2020-03-23 13:41|| Front Page Top

#40 The Israeli approach is much more along the lines of what I'd like to see in this country. Plainly at this point in time most of what is known is the exponential aspect. Mortality rates, severity and such remain opaque so, by all means take cover...always been a big believer myself, btw. I don't mind big even draconian steps as long as they leave the option open to change course when more is known; go ahead and allocate $8 Billion but with the proviso that you're only going to spend maybe a quarter of that for now and see how it all develops.

In other news, no sorry's necessary, G.
Posted by Cesare 2020-03-23 13:42||   2020-03-23 13:42|| Front Page Top

#41 #40 On the other hand
Coronavirus restrictions upped: Go to work, supermarket only or face fines
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-03-23 13:44||   2020-03-23 13:44|| Front Page Top

#42 "after H1N1 President Obama ignored advice to replenish stocks." Trump has been President for 3 years. Unless the person in charge of this is a hold-over from the Obama years Trumps team owns some of the blame.
Posted by rjschwarz 2020-03-23 13:56||   2020-03-23 13:56|| Front Page Top

#43  Can we combine some of those threads as well?

That’s what the Coronaplague Roundup is intended to do, Lex. Until I fall asleep after the midnight rollover I continue to move short articles into it, but by the time I am functional in the morning a lot of the subsequently posted articles have appeared and been commented on. It will relieve you to know that I saw the following at the Jerusalem Post:

President Donald Trump on Sunday said the United States will make a decision at the end of a 15-day period on "which way we want to go," to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

"We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself," he said in a tweet.

Trump issued new guidelines on March 16 aimed at slowing the spread of the disease over the following 15 days.

No doubt more detailed articles are being published as I type.

Also, that emergency bill the Democrats have stopped up in the Senate reportedly includes measures to provide stopgap funding for businesses as well as laid off workers, so the situation will perhaps not be nearly so dire tomorrow as it appears today.

One hopes that in future both businesses and individuals will build up larger reserves against the next emergency, because there will indeed be something else coming down the pike. Still, at least shortly the world will have a great many more ventilators than it does today, and probably countries like Italy will revise their spending priorities to be able to reopen some of the hospitals they previously closed as a cost-saving measure.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-03-23 14:28||   2020-03-23 14:28|| Front Page Top

#44 Thank you for all you do, TW
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 14:36||   2020-03-23 14:36|| Front Page Top

#45 Fortunately what sets the US apart is we have a business man in the Oval Office who was never a politician, a rare event. Unfortunately, Congress is a different story.

Business men settle their disputes in court, and Trump has stacked the courts in his favor, while Congress dims have stacked MSM. We will see who wins for the people.
Posted by Marilyn Uloling5420 2020-03-23 14:36||   2020-03-23 14:36|| Front Page Top

#46 Thanks for your insights Lex and everyone else. A dynamic population here.
Posted by Marilyn Uloling5420 2020-03-23 14:38||   2020-03-23 14:38|| Front Page Top

#47 Thank you for your kind words, Marilyn Uloling5420. My mind is not terribly organized, unlike many here, so I try to physically organize information to offset that.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-03-23 14:39||   2020-03-23 14:39|| Front Page Top

#48 Shutdown doesn't bankrupt businesses - competition with other businesses bankrupts businesses.

He doesn't understand and doesn't want to. No sense in arguing with him.
Posted by Vespasian Ebboting9735 2020-03-23 14:53||   2020-03-23 14:53|| Front Page Top

#49 You don't have all these expenses in shutdown

Surely not a business owner. The only expense you have not been floating is your payroll. Which is the ONLY thing you have control over....by firing everyone.
Posted by bbrewer126 2020-03-23 21:37||   2020-03-23 21:37|| Front Page Top

#50 bbrewer126,
Property tax doesn't go away, rent if you don't own doesn't go away. Mortgage, utilities, contracted services, truck/auto/bus payments, employee insurance, just to name a few don't stop. What does stop is income, the ability to cover non payroll expenses. Some of us will pay an extra two week wages (or more) for laid off staff. They are like family to us small businesses. I know their spouse, kids, parents. I have shared meals with these people who Governor Dewine thinks they can live on unemployment. Small business are more than just a name on a google page, they are real people with lives, family, responsibilities.
Posted by Thimp Clusort2035 2020-03-23 22:01||   2020-03-23 22:01|| Front Page Top

#51 Real people.
Real destruction.
Real calamities if this lockdown continues much longer.
Ten times greater, in terms of real damage and destruction, than the loss - as terrible as it will be - attributable to the spread of this virus.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 22:49||   2020-03-23 22:49|| Front Page Top

#52 #50

My point
Posted by bbrewer126  2020-03-23 23:54||   2020-03-23 23:54|| Front Page Top

#53 Those of us who've been responsible for others understand this well. Almost none of our political class gets this. Therein lies the tragedy.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 23:57||   2020-03-23 23:57|| Front Page Top

#54 Maybe Susan Collins gets it.
Posted by Lex 2020-03-23 23:59||   2020-03-23 23:59|| Front Page Top

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