Coronavirus - Overall
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@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
Much cheaper for the EU & UK to poach clinicians from poor 3rd World countries rather than train their own.
Whilst charging Chinese et al megabucks to train theirs in UK! Colossal brainf**k.
Keep Africa poor by making it hard to export to the EU, then damage Africa's farming by dumping subsidised food in Africa.
Then feel virtuous & smug by praising the great work done by African medics in the West fighting Coronavirus - while patronisingly lecturing Africa about poor governance & corruption.
What could go wrong?
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
Much cheaper for the EU & UK to poach clinicians from poor 3rd World countries rather than train their own.
Whilst charging Chinese et al megabucks to train theirs in UK! Colossal brainf**k.
Keep Africa poor by making it hard to export to the EU, then damage Africa's farming by dumping subsidised food in Africa.
Then feel virtuous & smug by praising the great work done by African medics in the West fighting Coronavirus - while patronisingly lecturing Africa about poor governance & corruption.
What could go wrong?
I have been told French economy remains quite reliant on [fleecing] former African colonies?
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@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
I have been told French economy remains quite reliant on [fleecing] former African colonies?
Anything to stop them competing. The EU put high tariffs on flower imports flown in from Africa on the pretext the flights were contributing to global warming. The demand was taken up by flowers being grown in gas-heated greenhouse in the EU.
On the plus side, some western companies are regretting putting all their back-office stuff in countries in Asia during this crisis, while some of the smarter companies had also been outsourcing stuff to more stable African countries like Botswana & Kenya which seems to have paid off. Could be good for African development.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
I have been told French economy remains quite reliant on [fleecing] former African colonies?
Anything to stop them competing. The EU put high tariffs on flower imports flown in from Africa on the pretext the flights were contributing to global warming. The demand was taken up by flowers being grown in gas-heated greenhouse in the EU.
On the plus side, some western companies are regretting putting all their back-office stuff in countries in Asia during this crisis, while some of the smarter companies had also been outsourcing stuff to more stable African countries like Botswana & Kenya which seems to have paid off. Could be good for African development.
Good to hear. FWIW Botswana on my bucket list.
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Now it's personal.
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@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
FWIW Botswana on my bucket list.
Big success story. Minimal corruption and money from mineral wealth and diamonds pumped into education, science & health. GDP per Capita growing rapidly & now greater than Brazil etc.
Tons of good stuff going on in Africa - much of it unreported.
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I've experienced the Japanese hospital system first hand, and it seemed to be far better resourced than NZ. This is what our government worries about
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@MajorRage said in Coronavirus - Overall:
UK numbers still catastrophic. Suspect will take over Spain and Italy unless they fall off a cliff soon.
I’m going nowhere for a long time yet.
Tracking very much in line with Italy, which has massively underreported CV deaths. But plateau could perservere a fortnight, so can only expect modest relaxation on 7 May.
Schools will be back in June.
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@pakman I think I get part of that. The paper estimates the infection rate is 50-85 times more widespread that indicated by the number of confirmed cases.
If true this obviously has impacts on controlling spread (would be next to impossible as it suggests massive numbers are asymptomatic / presymptomatic).
It may conversely suggest the CFR (don't you love how we've become epidemiologists ... bit like America's Cup time and we suddenly know yachting) is incredibly low. (But because it has spread so wide lots of peeps are in the firing line.)
But don't quite get your your point about "received wisdom"?
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@booboo said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@pakman I think I get part of that. The paper estimates the infection rate is 50-85 times more widespread that indicated by the number of confirmed cases.
If true this obviously has impacts on controlling spread (would be next to impossible as it suggests massive numbers are asymptomatic / presymptomatic).
It may conversely suggest the CFR (don't you love how we've become epidemiologists ... bit like America's Cup time and we suddenly know yachting) is incredibly low. (But because it has spread so wide lots of peeps are in the firing line.)
But don't quite get your your point about "received wisdom"?
That's basically it.
If correct, current estimates of numbers who've had virus far too low, which would mean fatality rate much lower that estimated, and a lot closer to herd immunity than expected.
The 'received wisdom' is that in most places maybe 5% of population have had virus. If this was a representative sample that number would be far too low.
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In Typical fern fashion, I didn’t read that article, but if it is the same story as BBC this morning, it’s just two groups warning that CVD could make big problems for ppl with other diseases. There is also the common problem of ambulances not having hospitals ready to take ppl (this is a bit of a long story, but with so many hospitals it’s better to make sure you know which hospital you want to go to, as if they are full or busy, they sometimes say no. To illustrate, when I had my stroke, my wife rang the hospital who then told her to take us to them, which she told the ambulance, who called to confirm).
So it’s not a perfect system here and Covid is starting to get established, but ppl have been pretty good, and as long as it stays out of old people’s homes and hospitals, it hasn’t really been bad at all given the demographics.
Given the number of ppl in a country this size, that could all change pretty quickly, but ppl are also generally very healthy, and there are fewer with complicating factors such a obesity (although diabetes prevalence is higher than I thought).
We’re on pretty serious lockdown here now, although movement isn’t really restricted - there is just nowhere to go - shops are closed, supermarkets are busy and horrible, parks and zoos etc are all closed, so since there is nowhere to go, everyone is just staying at home. People fear infecting others or getting it from others, so it’s not like that has been replaced by big ‘home’ parties either (and those sort of events aren’t a part of culture here anyway).
Overall, I’m happy enough to to be here now, although both my wife and I would rather be in NZ - despite the poorer healthcare (like, way way worse access to fast service), the natural distance between ppl (population density and use of mass transport etc) makes it so much harder for the disease to spread quickly if ppl just minimally practice distancing. We could be at my parents farmlet having a blast (we hardly leave the property when are there on holiday) rather than stuck in our 80 sq.m apartment.
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Coming soon: the great debt monetisation
ALAN KOHLERA bit more than $13 trillion has been committed to fiscal rescue by the governments of 15 major countries, most of it by the US and Europe.
Scores of smaller countries are being forced to increase health spending and are doing what they can to support those thrown out of work by lockdowns and illness, so add a couple of trillion to the total cost to world governments of the coronavirus.
Global government debt going into the crisis was $107 trillion, so the increase due to the coronavirus is about 14 per cent … so far. None of it is going to be repaid.
Most of the debt will be owned by central banks and they will either quietly make it disappear, or roll it over and decorate their balance sheets with it forever, like pictures of past governors on the hallowed walls.
There were a few attempts after the GFC to impose fiscal austerity to return budgets to surplus and start repaying debt, especially in Europe, but these mostly proved disastrous and had to be offset with feverish monetary easing.
That was what happened in Australia, although the monetary easing here was more stately than feverish, and the return to surplus a brief but lovely fantasy.
As a result, global government debt has doubled since 2009. In Australia it has more than tripled from $147bn to $556bn, so it’s a good thing we had a conservative, anti-debt government these past seven years.
After the coronavirus crisis there will be no fiscal austerity and no attempt to rush back into budget surpluses, unless of course the virus lets us get back to normal in time for the AFL grand final, which would be nice but unlikely.
Nevertheless, that appears to be what the IMF is assuming in its quarterly World Economic Outlook issued this week, in which it forecasts a 3 per cent contraction for world GDP in 2020, followed by a whopping 5.8 per cent expansion in 2021. For Australia the forecast is minus 6.7 per cent this year, followed by plus 6.1 per cent next year.
Understandably Treasurer Josh Frydenberg quickly spruiked this as evidence that his fiscal stimulus packages are “decisive”, which is a bit like saying the budget has returned to surplus next year.
The IMF also offers three “alternative scenarios” that are worth some attention: 1. The outbreak lasts longer this year; 2. There’s a new outbreak in 2021; and 3. Both of the aforementioned. If any of these scenarios is what actually happens, then global GDP growth remains negative for as long as IMF forecasts, which is until 2024.
In other words, a four-year global depression. I’m no epidemiologist, but it seems to me as likely, if not more likely, that one of those three alternative scenarios prevails rather than the IMF’s base case, which is that we’re eating pies at the footy within six months.
Of course if Australia’s real GDP does grow by 6.1 per cent in 2021, and nominal GDP by 7.9 per cent, as predicted, the Morrison government will be rolling in cash and austerity won’t be required.
If it doesn’t, and one of the three alternative scenarios prevails instead, then any attempt to return the budget to surplus would be both catastrophic and pointless.
To be clear, it’s binary: either the virus goes away quickly, which means happiness and renewed prosperity next year, or it’ll be depression and government deficits for so long that unemployment will reach 20 per cent and central banks will have to monetise the government debt to pay everyone living incomes — that is, they will print money to buy it and then cancel it. Or perhaps they will end the pretence and directly fund government spending, as the Bank of England is already doing for the British government.
Governments are basically spectators as central banks and COVID-19 fight it out.
Well, it’s not a fight — the virus will do what it does, lockdowns and social distancing will either work or not, and central banks will pick up the cost, whatever it is. Most governments still cleave to the fiction that they are borrowing the stimulus money, to be repaid, but that has not been true for a decade.
The assets of the four major central banks — Fed, ECB, BoJ and PBoC — now total $US21 trillion, $US14 trillion more than in 2008. The assets are mostly government bonds, but especially in Japan, include some corporate debt and equities. Both the Fed and the ECB have now started buying corporate debt as well.
By the end of this year we’re talking well above $US30 trillion, and to misquote what US congressman Everett Dirksen is supposed to have said (but didn’t, he was misquoted): “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Next question: will all that extra money cause inflation? Yes, of course it will, but it’s a story for 2025, or beyond.
It is not the first time the state has used the money-printing presses to pay for huge spending. It happened in the French Revolution, Germany’s Weimar Republic, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and more recently in Venezuela.
Consumer price inflation is a function of supply and demand. Money tends to inflate demand, but if supply is insufficient, or controlled by cartels, prices rise.
After the GFC, the money creation (quantitative easing) of central banks inflated the demand for assets but not consumption, because it mostly found its way into the hands of those who buy assets, but consume comparatively little (the rich).
This time the political classes are in control of the process, rather than banks, and are trying to ensure that those who consume (the poor) will get the cash.
If the demand so generated precedes supply, prices will rise, but not for a while.
As my friend Jonathan Pain wrote of the United States in his market commentary this week: “Which would you rather have … a nation of 330 million people with 500 million guns (I have no idea what the number is) in a state of total anarchy and mass depression, both economic and psychological, or a nation with 5 per cent inflation?”
Actually it’s 400 million guns, Jonathan, still more than one each, and there have been lines outside gun stores lately, as well as food banks.
I say: go inflation.
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@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@booboo said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@pakman I think I get part of that. The paper estimates the infection rate is 50-85 times more widespread that indicated by the number of confirmed cases.
If true this obviously has impacts on controlling spread (would be next to impossible as it suggests massive numbers are asymptomatic / presymptomatic).
It may conversely suggest the CFR (don't you love how we've become epidemiologists ... bit like America's Cup time and we suddenly know yachting) is incredibly low. (But because it has spread so wide lots of peeps are in the firing line.)
But don't quite get your your point about "received wisdom"?
That's basically it.
If correct, current estimates of numbers who've had virus far too low, which would mean fatality rate much lower that estimated, and a lot closer to herd immunity than expected.
The 'received wisdom' is that in most places maybe 5% of population have had virus. If this was a representative sample that number would be far too low.
I had a read of the paper.
What they did was asked for people in Santa Clara county to volunteer to take the test, got 3300 volunteers and had 50 positive results. From that they extrapolate that the actual infection rate in Santa Clara county is between 1.4% and 4.2%. This result is being used to claim (it appears) that the actual rate of infection is 50-85 times higher in general
They admit that there is no allowance made for the self selection aspect of the test. Obviously people who come forward asking for a test will have a higher rate than a random sample.
I note also an unverified comment that the test has about a .6% false positive rate (2/371). Noting that 1% of 3300 would be about 20. The authors don't mention a false positive rate in their paper that I noticed.
I have no idea why this is paper (which hasn't been peer reviewed yet) is being presented as a game changer. I suggest we wait for the peer review before we get carried away.
That's not to say that the actual rate of infection is not a lot higher than the tests show in many countries; esp. those that have high death rates. That is a given in my view. Whether this can be extrapolated further to countries with low death rates I would dispute.
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Sounds promising