I don't dispute your reasoning, my take is different. Firstly I don't see the global recession as so destructive. Rather economies have been put on hold and should bounce back when the restrictions are lifted. The less developed countries are already poor, for them this will be a public health disaster, although I expect there will be some famine, where the agriculture was already in trouble due to climate change. The poor healthcare they have was already not being supported much by wealthier countries.

Secondly I don't think that by relaxing the social distancing measures now imposed by most countries, the depth of the recession would be reduced. We don't know yet how far the health crisis will go and as it is an exponential contagion, halting that growth will mitigate the worst effects of the rapid increase in infection. This is the reason why these countries have adopted these measures. Presumably their governments have been advised by specialists as to how bad it could be without action.

The only country we have as an example which has not imposed social isolation is Iran, but we don't have accurate figures coming out of Iran. Perhaps some reports will emerge soon as to how it has affected their economy.

As for the over/under reacting question. I think it’s extremely important to pay attention to the global implications of prolonged lockdown - especially for less developed countries who simply don’t have the economic fluidity to sustain the kind of blows nations like France, UK, Germany, South Korea and China can

I agree, the less developed countries are in for a rough ride for a few years. They are helpless and the West will not be in a position to help. Perhaps China will.

But in reality nothing anyone does is going to prevent this. Whether wealthy countries self isolate or not, it will not make any difference in the poorer countries, they are doomed regardless.

I don't see a problem with wealthy countries printing money, because this crisis will not result in uncontrollable inflation due to the way in which the economy is in life support. I can't comment on what will happen afterwards, hopefully people will realise that money is not the The be all and end all. The fact that real things and lives have been given a monetary value may have to change.

I am aware of your position and do agree in principle with some of what you say, but I don't want to get into a discussion about social planning around reproduction, aims, or demographics here.

It looks as though, as I said before, that nature is going to reduce the size of the population for us now. Also that this pandemic will shine a light on the corrupt practices hidden behind the cool aid.

Sky News has just reported that the epicentre in New York has overwhelmed the healthcare system and infections are increasing 5,000 per day. Meanwhile Trump's brain is self isolating.

There are reports of many hundreds requiring hospital treatment in London rising each day this week. The lockdown in London is much better now, but was introduced to late. It's only been effectively in place for 4 days.

actually agree with you, and them. But what this brings up is the whole point of the economic system. The "neoliberal" philosophy would say that profits, even for the very wealthy raises all boats (if we are assuming non-corrupt actors). Thus profits are the key to success for everyone, even (apparently?) in the midst of a pandemic.

This does work to a degree, but the greed of those who dwell near the top of the pyramid poisons the whole system eventually. This results in exploitative practices and systems and social norms designed to hold the people at the bottom (below that privelidged top layer) down and to remain subservient. This is followed by the development of decadence in the privelidged resulting in absurdities and arrogance from fools drunk on power and privelidge.

Which is just another way of saying they have no idea.

Iran has no idea.

So the world is going to stand around and let this happen to Italy?

Wow.

It's worse in Spain and a lot worse in Iran. I was listening to an epidemiologist earlier who had been estimating the extent of the epidemic in Iran. He concluded that it was actually a couple of magnitudes higher than they are letting on. Somewhere between 700,000 and 7 million cases. Apparently they have been observed digging massive trenches around the city at the epicentre, by satellite.

Agreed

Based on the numbers, the UK is about one week behind Germany and France. They seem to be taking the same measures those countries took a week ago.

Yes, although it is not enforced and a bit vague. I am pointing to London as a hotspot, it is still spreading freely, on the Underground, in shops, petrol stations etc.

I think the figure of 600,000 is an underestimate, because we don't yet know what the mortality rate would be were the virus to become concentrated in communities and the social effects that would have.

There have been reports that healthy doctors in China and Italy have died due to receiving a high dose on infection. Presumably the virus incubates more quickly in this case overwhelming the immune system before it has a chance to develop anti bodies. Where the virus becomes concentrated in a community there will be more cases of high dose infection, higher mortality and the resultant panic, in which people overwhelmed with fear will flee leaving the whoever is left to die. This social reaction has already happened in Spain in a number of care homes. Where dead people (presumably not dead when they left) were found abandoned by their care workers.

I'm not sure how your response relates to anything I've said. I'm not taking a position on whether some countries are or aren't over reacting. I'm just watching how this thing unfolds. I do however think that the virus will cause more havoc than many are considering. We haven't thus far observed a society where it has become endemic yet, that might not be a very nice place to hang out. And places where it does become endemic will have to be isolated from the rest of the global community. Unless an effective vaccine is produced.

The predicted spike in London is showing now with a rapid increase in confirmed cases and hospital admissions. And yet, the underground (metro) had packed commuter trains this morning. Packed with key workers and critical healthcare workers, presumably spreading it amongst themselves. The hospitals will be overwhelmed within a week.

Brilliant, the best cartoon I've seen in a while.

Ok, how about gun violence? The reaction to gun violence vs coronavirus is down to mythology. I'll stand by that.

I think that the conversation moved on from here overnight. I can't think of another social scourge which has an equivalence to the pandemic. Simply because the pandemic is an exponential threat, so a stitch in time saves nine.

With just 102 cases, New Zealand is ordering a full month-long lockdown. This is the hammer. This is intelligence applied to policy. And this will work.

Good on them, I almost moved there a couple of years ago, love the place. I just couldn't get used to all the rugby and beer, no antiques and the lack of culture.

Edit: If you look at Chart 13b - NPI Measures Per Country, you'll see that South Korea had very few travel bans and closures. That's because they were ahead of the virus in their testing and contact tracing

Also, their people are sensible and do the right thing when asked.

But I doubt they have in anyway defeated the virus, only managed to control it. Let's see how it fights back when they try to go back to business as usual.

So the UK is locked down. We're only allowed to leave our houses for food, for exercise once a day, and if we can't work from home and our work is essential.

Yes, except they didn't say only if your work is essential. But only if the nature of your work means you can't work at home.

I miss the days where I was just worried about Brexit.

Yes, bring back the proroguing of parliament, those were the days.

Who is that debt owed to?

To each other.

What they could do is right down their debts and see how many noughts there are and then agree to cross off some of those noughts.

Problem solved.

Teams of experts could easily be assembled to tell the headless chickens what to do about climate change. What gives one crisis traction and the other none? Covid-19 is not a threat to the vast majority of humans, but the lockdowns affect everyone. Why aren't we this selfless regarding other issues like inequality and climate change?

The main difference is that governments think that they have to act immediately and comprehensively to respond to this threat. If climate change was going to happen in the next six months then they would act to the same degree.
Also there is the image of bodies on morgue tables, which doesn't play well with your electorate.

I think at least part of the answer lies in our myths and fears.

Yes, there is an innate fear of pandemic, whereas climate change is some distant idea for many people.

There is a consideration which I am sure was in the minds of the experts and politicians, at the point when more severe restrictions where contemplated. Which is that it would be impossible to avoid social and civil collapse in cities and then in the wider area if no action had been taken and there were many thousands of seriously ill people in tents and sports halls. So I think the measures are more to prevent this collapse than to avoid the death of a few million old and vulnerable people.

Such collapse would inevitably result in many more deaths than one would expect from the virus in isolation.

This is rather tedious.

Yes, its similar in the UK too, I don't know if the figures used in the graph are estimates, or confirmed cases.

I do know who has lost their livelihoods, I have been listening to talk radio, and have heard it directly from them.

The poor are the folk who have just lost their livelihood. The other points are not worth playing ping pong with right now.

I'm surprised that the Iranian curve is not steeper than this, I wonder how much testing is going on there, or if it is a gestimate.

But your point about Chinese crap is one of those slogans. The poor require a basic income to survive. By right wing, I mean countries where there is low regulation free markets and small welfare state. The left wing countries. Have more regulation, unions, more comprehensive welfare state.

Better to give it to the rip off merchants and billionaires instead. The poor can't be trusted with money, they just waste it, by spending it in the real economy. Better to put it in an offshore account where it never gets near the real economy.
NOT.

Well said, its only a problem in the right wing countries. Most European countries are better than that. The UK is somewhere in between, they have pledged to fund 80% of income for employees, but seem to be hanging sole traders and small businesses out to dry.

The politicians are headless chickens following what their experts tell them. There are teams of experts assembled in each (wealthy) country to manage the crisis.

Socially most people will follow the guidelines as best they can, but if a tighter lockdown is required it will have to be enforced. Some countries are already doing this. Once many thousands of extra ventilators have been manufactured and thousands of temporary health workers prepared each country will eventually be able to relax the controls in a managed way.

In terms of nature, yes it might be a collapse of civilisation moment, although gradual, I don't see anything sudden happening. I think more likely is that we will pull through over the next couple of years with improving treatments, maybe a vaccine and a new way of interacting, which was needed actually.

There will be a big bill to pay, but if every country had the same kind of bill to pay. Presumably they could all right it off in tandem.

Oh and by the way, take care when it gets bad where you are, avoid getting a high dose infection.

P.s. I've just seen a report that obesity and Corona don't mix, especially for folk who are borderline diabetic.

Yes, like Boris's idea to shut the schools and restaurants on the same day, when the shops already had empty shelves. Such a stable genius.

That is just your TDS speaking here. Trumps initial over-optimistic public statements were bad PR, but at the same time he acted fast and correctly. There is nothing concrete to critiziise here, you are just parrotting the Trump-hating "mainstream" media.

We were discussing the situation in the UK, not the US.

Get a grip.

To me that looks like it'll peak before 100,000 cases.

Hopefully the number of people recovering will out number the number of new cases, but I doubt the number of new cases will stop. It would require everyone to isolate against everyone else, which is impossible. Also there is the risk that the virus will exist dormant in carriers and emerge randomly in the future. So as soon as isolation is relaxed it will peak again.

Perhaps these stop and start episodes will reduce in intensity over time until some longer term strategies are developed. In the meantime, such things as economy's will be a thing of the past.

There is a food crisis in the UK today, the PM announced yesterday that all pubs, restaurants, cafes, etc must close Friday night. Also the schools closed the same day, resulting in panic buying. People who would have eaten out, had to go and buy food to cook and parents went out to buy more food to feed their children out of school. As the shops were already struggling, this resulted in panic buying, which is worst in towns and cities.

Fake news.

I think the quaranteening movement actually can stop the virus from spreading. If all people who have got it are quaranteened for three weeks, the virus will die in them. Some will die with the virus, but the virus in the survivors also will die.

Yes hopefully this is true, but it's not that simple because the virus might go into out of the way parts of the body of some people and become dormant and then emerge again later on.

You can do all the exercises at home anyway. With a bicycle inner tube, a door frame and a hammer.

Makes a change from reading about the pestilential virus threatening civilised life. He's a completely different shape and size. :wink:

I am already thinking of a cartoon in which Cummings is a corona virus.

That is everybody's strategy. We just want it to spread in slow motion.

Yes, everybody knows it will have to spread through the population. But if the UK government wanted it to happen in slow motion, they would lock down London. But they won't. Most supermarket shelves around London are already empty. Many people particularly in the Gig economy are carrying on regardless.

Accidently witty

It tickled me.

Everyone calm down.

I dont think folk here are uncalm. Or do you mean they are exaggerating?

In the UK, London is the hotspot, the Prime minister has instructed Londoners to carry out the required social distancing and self isolating when they have symptoms. But he has not closed all cafes, restaurants, pubs, metro lines etc, or banned people mingling in the streets. But many people are just ignoring the instructions and carrying on as normal. It is clear that the virus is spreading freely around the city.

There are still many who think that the government is allowing the virus to spread, so that the people will develop heard immunity. But this is folly, as it will mean that a large proportion of Londoners will become infected at the same time over the next few weeks. Resulting in a chaotic mess.

Watch this space.