The guy who ran on a platform "the US sucks" and we should make it great again is naturally optimistic?

The guy who ran on a platform "the US sucks" — Benkei

Who ran on a platform of "the US sucks"?

Agreed, but the issue then becomes how does a country remain free of the virus when other countries have pandemics, or it is endemic? Surely there would have to be multiple travel bans. I realise that this might not be so much of an issue once a good vaccine has been produced, but there is no certainty that this will save the day. — Punshhh

Yes, the effective action would have been stopping nearly all international travel, with strict quarantine for necessary repatriation or other necessary travel.

Going back to the apparent welcoming of the pandemic, this is also evidenced in the lack of provision for asymptomatic subjects and the spread via them. It seems that it had been accepted from an early stage that the pandemic can't be avoided and that it is better to preserve economies than fight its spread dramatically. — Punshhh

Yes, very early Western governments decided to stop any effective containment.

That it would be "best for the economy" to do so, however, is wishful and fallacious thinking which I'll get into in my response to (but short answer is that letting hospitals get overloaded followed by mass quarantine measures shutting down a large part of the local economy, is much worse economically than shutting down air-travel and related industries; staggering the epidemics in time, with adequate preparation, by shutting down air-travel would have been a big hit to the airlines and related industries, but simply bailing those out is much cheaper than the complete economic meltdown we're now facing due to the choice to never do reasonable containment; large scale local travel restrictions is a much larger economic impact affecting all industries and of course the worldwide simultaneous spread and crisis results in crash of air travel anyways).

It was explained today by the UKs chief medical officer that the greatest risk in the UK is if the health service becomes overwhelmed. So the strategy is to ensure that the peak infection occurs during the summer when the health service is best placed to cope.[/quote]

This is not the strategy. To do such a strategy (a good idea) requires stopping nearly all international travel, which they are not even stopping from Northern Italy. UK officials simply kept us updated in real time of how useful idiots go about reasoning. They have not, as will be clear in a couple of weeks, chosen a path "good for the economy but at the cost of some lives", rather they have chosen to maximize cost to both the economy and lives. That they presented their complacency to themselves as a some sort of choice, with pros and cons on both sides, does not mean that analysis is correct.

Italy went from a few cases to country wide quarantine measures in 3 weeks; all other countries in Europe will follow suite unless they take the same measures preemptively. All of Europe under quarantine conditions has a far higher economic impact than had all travel been stopped from China early on, rigorous quarantine measures for all remaining international traffic, scale-up of testing, and rigorous contact tracing implemented for cases that slip through the net. What Italians are now living, and soon the rest of Europe and US, is far more disruptive than aggressive travel restrictions early in the outbreak. Although China certainly realized early on the scale of the problem and that the best national security response would be to infect the rest of the world while doing intense travel restrictions internally, the rest of the world (in particular Europeans that do have some leaders capable of basic reasoning) did not have to play along; they chose to because they are weak-willed and the useful-idiot reflex to downplay threats to the public is so strong that they were unable to reason to the logical conclusion that letting things play out would be much worse for the status quo than a few more weeks of complacent status quo.

I agree with this, I don't think that western governments were prepared for such an outbreak. Appropriate contingency plans had not been developed and so were not going to be imposed. Also I suspect that the virus was spread beyond China to a number of locations before western governments knew about it. Where were the CIA, or MI6 when the first cases were emerging in China? It required strict limits on travel from that early stage.

Hopefully this pandemic will be a wake up call for the future, as worse virus's may come along in the future.

I'm not confusing anything. On the contrary you seem to be completely discounting the real negative effects, leaving entirely aside considerations of the share markets, that curtailing all international travel would have on economies. Effects which would arguably be so great that governments would have no hope of propping up all those who would otherwise become bankrupt. You seem to be blithely ignoring the inter-connectedness and fragility of the global economic system. — Janus

The explanation you propose of why you are not confused, is exactly the confusion I am talking about.

The economy, viewed as thing that keeps people alive, is not complicated. People need food, water, shelter, clothing and a list of things diminishing in difficulty to provide in a short term crisis.

Shutting down international travel simply doesn't have the crazy affects that you describe, especially temporarily. And all the negative affects, because it is temporary, can be easily dealt with by simply allowing the companies affected to temporarily lay off employees with the government paying unemployment through existing or new schemes. Without employees to pay, costs are very low to simply put a business on hold and whatever ongoing costs can't be avoided, could be just bailed out.

Such a travel freeze could have come into affect at first for a period of, say 3 weeks, time to come up with an effective containment strategy for the outbreak. Travel bans and strict quarantine measures would then be in place when travel resumes.

The current attitude is that "containment was never possible, so it wasn't a mistake not-to-try". This is wrong. Not only was containment possible full stop (as was achieved with Sars, Mers and ebola), effective containment could have radically slowed the spread of the virus globally.

Without simply stopping international travel, however, then yes, containment is impossible.

So, had travel been stopped, the cost of paying unemployment, bailing out airlines and tightly related industries, extending low-interest loans to severely affected industries, etc. is quite low. By having an effective containment strategy, international travel could then resume between countries with no cases. So a lot of the world gets back to normal with very little disruption to the business of the airlines.

More critically, entire sectors of domestic economies would not be essentially arrested simultaneously around the globe at the same time.

Italy has just implemented severe internal restrictions on gatherings, shopping, restaurants, etc. (what the news calls a quarantine but is not really a quarantine, just lot's of restrictions). The economic impact of this is extremely high.

For the sake of trying to keep things normal for airlines, these intense measures will be soon essentially global,, affecting all sectors simultaneously.

This is orders of magnitude (several orders of magnitude) higher economic damage and far harder to deal with than simply bailing out a few large airline and air-related companies (like airports etc.).

Instead of a few dozen billions of dollars, maybe a few hundred depending on how early and effective the plan was put into place, to deal with temporary disruption of shutting down international travel (essentially insignificant problem for central banks) now the damage is likely a worldwide economic depression.

So, by not making the hard decisions of stopping international air travel for 2-3 weeks the time to get a handle on things, followed by a travel ban of all countries that have cases in that time, followed by a gradually restarting travel with effective containment and testing measures ... a big cost but far lower than the economic impacts in just Italy (which is just a single country).

Time would have also allowed for far better understanding of how the virus transmits, what treatment strategies are effective, and most importantly scaling up production of the items, starting with simple masks, that could be first distributed to medical communities around the world and second distributed to the population, so that when epidemics to arrive in a country, transmissibility can instantly lowered through everyone wearing a mask and the medical community would not be powerless against themselves becoming infected, infecting others, lowering moral and care workers available (a ridiculous thing to let happen when there was a window of opportunity to avoid it).

Right now we don't know if reinfection is possible (reports but no way to confirm compared testing errors), nor do we know the long term life-cycle of the virus (it could lay dormant in other organs), nor do we know of the long term health consequences (it could cause long term damage to lungs and other organs). Without such knowledge there's no way to calculate the cost benefit of favouring "the economy" compared to lives to begin with. Nor do we know how exactly the virus propagates and with what relative probabilities (such as surfaces, asympotamics etc., all critical to know to have an effective containment strategy). Stopping global travel to get a better understanding has all sorts of benefits along with slowing things down to enable better preparation.

Claiming "well we didn't know how it spread so of course we couldn't contain it" is not an argument, as it could have been much better contained the time to figure those things out.

Finally, effective global containment, even if it did transition to a pandemic, would have staggered the peak in each region and country, allowing the global medical community to help each other and human and equipment resources moved around from peak to peak. This is a massive benefit for dealing with the pandemic our leaders decided to forego in favour of simultaneous, short term, medical overload and for much worse economic effects. Staggering the epidemics in each region would have not caused a economic crash, as the global economic affect of only one region being disrupted at a time is far lower than all regions simultaneously.

Our leaders listened closely to airline CEO's, as Trump and Pence are simply proud of, but it turns out airline CEO's didn't have any understanding of epidemiology nor the massive economic consequences of their desire to ignore the problem as long as possible. Our leader listened to neoliberal economists who provided the non-containment case of "it's only old people", but it turns out none of them had ever teamed up with an actual scientist and mathematician to model the "let's let it go out of control" fallout (because economists aren't real scientists that expect their propaganda to ever have meet up with facts that are shot term enough for large amounts of people to notice).

It's true, with a fatality rate of "only 1 to 4" percent, from an economic perspective we could just let those people die and continue as normal, maybe even good for the stock market at resources go from older spend-thrift people to their younger spendy inheritors.

However, people simply don't accept "just letting a few million people die in our country" as public policy, and, despite the complacency and bravado of their leaders at first, quickly demand action is taken when their loved one's start dying in terrible conditions. As I mention in an early comment, complacency was also political suicide. People aren't going to be happy about "choosing the stock market over lives" and that goal wasn't even achieved due to no epidemiologist ever bothering to investigate under what conditions might it seem just letting people die is a good idea economically but actually is a really bad idea when model things things through competently. Epidemiologist thought their job was to save lives, not the stock market, and that's why they failed the politicians in conveying in the perspective of the stock market (that letting thing run rampant is actually worse for the stock market; had leaders understood this, action would have been swift, immediate and effective).

The basic problem, that which is creating the conditions for runaway capitalism, industrial farming practices, resource depletion, soil, land and ocean degradation and pollution, is overpopulation. It is the continuing growth of the human population that necessitates endless growth economies. It is also arguable that such a growth would never have been possible without fossil fuels, the supply of which has already peaked. — Janus

Yes, I agree with capitalism being the basic problem. With a social safety net, these "hard decisions" are not even that hard decisions, as the institutions are in place to make sure no one dies of economic disruptions.

However, I disagree that population is the problem. Of the equation "Impact = Population x Technology x Affluence" there's no feasible way to lower population significantly (to 0.1 - 0.2 of current levels) without collapsing the ecosystem ... which is what we're trying to avoid. However, our technology and affluence can be easily (compared to global genocide) reduced by a factors on the order 0.1. Indeed, I would argue it's possible to reorganize economies to benefit nature and have a positive impact overall (through radically different ways of living). This is a discussion for another thread though.

The current epidemic will help the environmental movement I believe, but only because it will unmask neoliberalism as an incapable governing ideology. If world leaders did not have this ideology they would have moved instinctively and decisively motivated by the preservation of human life (and in turn, preserved the global economy though they would not have known that at the time); therefore, the disease of neoliberalism would not have needed to be cured by a world wide pandemic due to incompetence, corruption, and a deluded neoliberal inspired belief that "getting it over with" would be good for the economy even if a few old people die.

We're about to witness a significant (i.e. noticeable decrease in capacity) part of the medical community die for no reason around the globe, which isn't good for anyone.

The "wet" (or live) trade in wild animals for food is pretty bad idea. A lot of the problem is rooted in bats, which have very tolerant immune systems. They are able to carry all sorts of novel viruses and bacteria in their blood without getting sick. Bats interact with other animals, sucking blood, and dropping germ laden feces around, contaminating other animals. Then we catch and sell the bats and other animals, and periodically get sick with ebola or corona virus and worse. — Bitter Crank

Clearly its not just a bad idea but a catastrophe in waiting. This kind of interaction of so many species, including ones as you describe should be just as high a priority as other things like climate change. The same goes for bushmeat practices in Africa. But a lot of the exotic animal trade also goes back to China. Clearly, interaction with animals in the wild in such an unsanitary way what is causing these diseases. That's not to say that they are not also caused by domestic animals, but they seem to be more stable being they have been around humans for 10,000s of years. But species such as bats and the like are not at all like that. Where's the outcry on this type of practice and its consequences?

Also, a great consequence is also the benefit to the animals themselves who wouldn't be confined, tortured, and killed off the planet for bizarre and ancient ideas about the "benefits" of eating these animals, or crushing up their body parts for whatever supposed remedy. This is not only something on behalf of animals, but humans too, if that matters to anyone.

Case in point:

2h ago:

British Airways has cancelled all flights to and from Italy, Reuters is reporting. — BBC

The travel bans are happening anyway (since letting people die for preventable reasons to protect the economy only sounds good as a neoliberal sound bite, but isn't viable public policy in the short term; it works well when consequences are longer term and propaganda can intervene in the interim to make people believe obvious lies).

The travel bans are now simply too late to have a big game changing effect (still helps a bit though).

So what did the "bring on the virus bro! policy of BJ" accomplish? Two, maybe three weeks, of normal (but increasing abnormal as time went by) flight operations.

Is that really a big benefit compared to the massive costs of importing an epidemic as soon as possible in a sort of "man against the elements, fist shaking into the wind" proud-to-be-ignorant pseudo-moral stand?

Rhetorical question of course, I will let the next few weeks verify this claim for anyone with any doubts.

...sounds good as a neoliberal sound bite... — boethius

In your usage, how would you define "neoliberal"?

In your usage, how would you define "neoliberal"? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is probably best to split off in another thread, but I use neoliberal to refer to the broad western (and now global) governing consensus based on three main pillars: A. GDP growth is the top priority metric determining policy, B. that globalized free-trade of goods and capital, and also people to an extent, is a policy goal C. most importantly that corporate profits should be prioritized over any given concept of the public good (that the idea of the public good should be removed from public discourse whenever possible, and simply replaced with corporate profits as the metric of the public good, such as viewing the increase in the stock market index as the increase in the public good)

Based on these objectives, whenever the environment or people's health or threats to democracy due to the concentration of power is in conflict with corporate profits then those ills should ideally just be accepted, and if not, then policy should err on the side of corporate profits and only changed with overwhelming evidence, intense and high-effort public mobilization and as many obstacles in the judicial and political system as possible, and the bare-minimum policies put in place for the strictest minimum public or environmental welfare reasons (which is always denied to be related things even when it's necessary to accept that the public welfare exists from time to time).

There are then many different variation to justifying this governing framework. For instance, some may truly believe laissez-faire free trade not only works but current economies approach that ideal as an explanation for anything viewed as "good" and anything that exists that is "bad" is truly believed to be caused by non-laissez-faire government interventions.

However, mostly the justifying framework is "there's no other choice" and different ways to justify that position.

Well, most of "us" aren't catching and eating bats, it's mostly "them", but...

Ebola, Marburg (both hemorrhagic fevers), HIV, Zika virus, SARS, MERS, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and the corona virus are examples of recent animal-human disease transfers. (in the midwest a wasting disease has infected a lot of the deer population. As far as I know, there hasn't been a deer-human disease transfer, but hunters are getting the carcasses tested (state mandated) before they eat them.)

Influenza is another disease from animals, with a complicated bird/hog/human cycle. (Viral genes get rearranged in birds and hogs, then to us.) Every year there is a chance for the most dangerous genetic arrangement to show up (like the 1918 version).

A friend went on a gay cruise, and said it was like being locked up in a gay bar for a month. I might be in the right age group, but I don't have the requisite gregariousness, nor the budget. Nor the appetite for daily drinking and wallowing around the buffet.

I mean, what's the point? You get on a boat; most of the time there is nothing to see outside but water, sky, and a horizon. Maybe a much smaller ship on the Inland Waterway between Vancouver and Juneau, with the chance to look at bears and whales would be OK. or a riverboat cruise in Europe. Or maybe paddling a canoe around Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis--more my speed.

Luxury cruises sound like a colossal bore, anyway. — Bitter Crank

They have all-gay ones.

The travel bans are now simply too late to have a big game changing effect (still helps a bit though). — boethius

Why do you say that? I do think they have a big game changing effect.

When has the pandemic started to spread out of control? Besides, it's obvious it is far less contagious than your average flu. Ireland has 24 cases, my country 40 cases whom all have gotten the virus outside the country (usually in Northern Italy). I don't think that the situation is lost and travel bans now are futile.

I know, there are many businesses which are already on the edge, prior to the effect of the virus. I don't expect economic collapse though, governments will just print money and bail critical businesses and services out. — Punshhh

Injecting more money into the system will cause inflation, particularly if there is a shortage of available goods in the market.

Latest diagnosis is an educational centre about 500 meters from where I work.

Wuhan to my front door in 61 days - impressive!

Your overly long analysis simply ignores the fact that economies are part of the natural ecology of the Earth. The financial economy is really a function of the energy economy, regardless of how much wishful thinking goes into portraying the system as otherwise. And the idea that the economy is not complicated is absurd.

The idea that reducing the human population would collapse the ecosystem is also absurd; as I see it the real situation is precisely the opposite. (Collapse the present economic system (if reduced radically over a short period) yes).

Human overpopulation and the consequent overuse of resources, transporting stuff and people (and diseases) all around the globe has created an overly complex and hence fragile global economic system, that could unravel in any number of ways. Have you never heard of the "domino effect"?

The one point I do agree with you about is that shutting down all air travel from China as soon as the very first cases appeared there (given that those first cases could have all been identified and that the Chinese would have been honest in their assessment of the situation and sufficiently concerned for the welfare of the rest of the world's people) might have succeeded in stopping the virus from spreading beyond Chinese borders. But if even one case escapes the net then the only way to be certain to contain the future spread would be to shut down all international travel (and perhaps even shipment of goods, given that the virus can apparently remain viable on surfaces for up to nine days).

There's no point arguing over this, though, since insight generally cannot be instilled via argument. Let's wait and see what happens.

Your overly long analysis simply ignores the fact that economies are part of the natural ecology of the Earth. — Janus

I don't think this is meaningful. Environmentalists, biologists, ecologists and economists would not agree. You're just saying that everything on Earth is part of nature. Sure, but that doesn't add anything when it comes to discussing pollution, climate change and the impact humans have.

If humans weren't here, there would be no plastic, no concrete jungles, no monetary systems. The fossilized plant material would remain in the ground. And the climate would be different.

You missed the point; all effects on the natural environment carry costs that are not generally factored in by economists. Also the natural energy economy underpins the money economy; the real costs (apart from the merely human costs) in everything we do are ecological costs, energy costs and entropic costs. I am simply arguing for looking at human economies in the larger context of ecology and energy. What do you think I am saying that "environmentalists etc....would not agree", and why do you think they would not?

I misunderstood your point based on previous discussions about all human activity being natural.

Shutting down international travel simply doesn't have the crazy affects that you describe, especially temporarily. — boethius

Well surely if "international travel" includes "international trade" then I think those "crazy affects" are almost certain...eventually (you are right that temporary measures may not have a huge impact, but if temporary is 1 year or more, it seems that more than 3% of the worlds population would die as a result (about 34 countries are dependent on food imports, for example).

Hey, a ship full of old faggots like myself would be QUITE BOOOORING.

C. most importantly that corporate profits should be prioritized over any given concept of the public good — boethius

Do any human beings actually support this principle?

Have you been on Earth recently?

Unfortunately because of the nature of share markets a large part of the common human good, in simply economic and lifestyle (including healthcare) terms at least, has become dependent upon corporate profits.

:ok:

Unfortunately because of the nature of share markets a large part of the common human good, in simply economic and lifestyle (including healthcare) terms at least, has become dependent upon corporate profits. — Janus

But this is to make corporate profit into the public good, it is not to prioritize it "over" the public good. See the difference? One says corporate profit is more important than the public good, while the other says corporate profit is the public good. But even the latter is just an illusion anyway because the profit is not shared equally by the public.

It doesn't make corporate profit into the public good, per se, but it has become a part of the public good, given that, even apart from ordinary investors, so many people have superannuation that is invested in the share markets.

It's obviously true that profit is not shared equally, but that goes for most business profits, not only corporate profits. Don't get me wrong, I think corporate salaries generally are obscene. I also think that superannuation should be invested, not in share markets or property, but in government bonds or the like, so as to disentangle the public good from corporate profit.

But it ain't going to happen...

Governments actively pursue GDP-growth at the expense of general well being (pollution, living space).

Injecting more money into the system will cause inflation, particularly if there is a shortage of available goods in the market.

They will go to a war footing, prices would be fixed to a degree and there would be some means of rationing.
For example in Italy yesterday, there were reports of people queuing outside supermarkets, at least one metre apart, to buy food. They weren't allowed into the shop, the attendants would bring out the food individually and some items were restricted, or rationed.

The idea that reducing the human population would collapse the ecosystem is also absurd; as I see it the real situation is precisely the opposite. (Collapse the present economic system (if reduced radically over a short period) yes).

I can't speak for Boethius, but if there is a collapse of civilisation, there could be some quite adverse effects in the short term, like mass fires, nuclear explosions, wreckless destruction of ecosystems.

It is remarkable how quickly it has spread across the world. My nearest documented case is in Ipswich about 30 miles away, but I expect there are people infected without knowing closer than that already. We only have about 400 cases in the UK as of today, but they are evenly spread out across the whole country. Once those have had time to incubate, there will be a rapid increase. I see reports that our health minister tested positive yesterday.