Posted on 10/09/2020 5:29:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
Now that Donald Trump exited from Walter Reed Hospital and the vice presidential debate aired, let's turn to an apolitical analyst to understand what's happening. Vaclav Smil, 76, native of communist Czechoslovakia and former University of Manitoba professor for four decades, has written 39 books on energy, technology and demography. "Nobody," says Bill Gates, who has read every book, "sees the big picture with as wide an aperture as Vaclav Smil."
What Smil sees now, he writes in a characteristically terse IEEE Spectrum essay, he finds puzzling. The COVID-19 death rate per million is about one-fifth that of the 1957-58 Asian flu and one-third that of the 1968-70 Hong Kong flu. Yet these earlier pandemics had only "evanescent economic consequences" and did not "leave any deep, traumatic traces in memories" of the 350 million people who, like Smil (and me), were 10 or older during both. "Countries did not resort to any mass-scale economic lockdowns, enforce any long-lasting school closures, ban sports events, or cut flight schedules deeply," Smil writes.
Why not? "Was it because we had no fear-reinforcing 24/7 cable news, no Twitter, and no incessant and instant case-and-death tickers on all our electronic screens?" asks the non-cellphone owner Smil. "Or is it we ourselves who have changed, by valuing recurrent but infrequent risks differently?"
Some of both is my tentative answer. As I've written before, Americans' child-rearing practices, as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have documented, are increasingly risk-averse. But not entirely consistently: Kids are kept in car seats till age 9 and then encouraged to ride bicycles in heavy traffic a few years later.
And some Americans are more risk-averse than others. Polls show that political liberals are more likely than political conservatives to wear masks and support extended lockdowns (except for "mostly peaceful" demonstrations against police).
Partisan politics and personal distaste for President Donald Trump play a role. As ProPublica's Alec MacGillis documented in a searing New Yorker article, teachers-union members didn't adamantly oppose reopening schools until Trump called for it. A Trump tweet saying that the sun rises in the east would, it seems, move many Americans to head out to the Pacific coast and wait for it to rise there.
But one-dimensional risk aversion has produced extended lockdowns with significant public health costs: reduced cancer and cardiac screenings, fewer childhood vaccinations, undue skepticism toward any COVID vaccine. And it's plainly damaging liberals' own causes.
Thus, Democrats, unlike Republicans, have been refraining from door-to-door campaigning -- until Oct. 1, when Democrats decided they needed the personal touch.
Similarly, Democratic pols encouraged their voters' aversion to voting in person, until they realized that there would be many spoiled or undelivered ballots in states with voters and officials unfamiliar with postal voting.
Lockdowns, more stringent in Democratic states than Republican states, have produced higher unemployment and greater drops in state revenues. Keeping unionized public schools closed is driving parents to private schools, home schooling and improvised pods.
As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat notes, schools are now open for approximately half of white pupils but only one-quarter of black and Hispanic pupils. For many minority children, he writes, "a key legacy of 2020 may be a well-intentioned liberal betrayal of their interests, a hollowing-out of the institutions that protect and serve them, and the deepening of America's racial inequalities." But extreme risk aversion imposes few costs for affluent liberals who can work comfortably and for full pay on home computers.
Which leads back to Vaclav Smil's question: Why do we have economic lockdowns, school closures and empty stadiums and airliners when we didn't before? My answer is a paraphrase of former President Bill Clinton's explanation for his sexual adventures in the White House: Because we can.
In Clinton's 1990s, we didn't have smartphones, Wi-Fi, Zoom. Now we -- the affluent "we" have been the lockdown's biggest backers -- do. In my email today, I got an ad for a $16 million house in the Hamptons, complete with home office, gym and sauna. No need to go into Manhattan.
Meanwhile, in Baltimore, 12-year-old Shemar, whom Alec MacGillis had been tutoring, is staying up late watching TV and sleeping in, unable to log in to the virtual classes the city's unionized public schools are providing. "Broadband internet," wrote a respondent on MacGillis's Twitter feed, "is actually sabotaging our kids. Without it, there wouldn't even be 'virtual learning' as an option, and every school in the country would have no choice but to take every kid back and just make the best of it."
Vaclav Smil is right in documenting how technological progress has vastly improved ordinary people's lives. But excessive risk aversion can make for exceptions.
People want to live in a “safe” society where no bad thing ever happens to anyone. It is not only a bad goal, it is not an achievable goal.
Ping
My husband and I went through the Hong Kong Flu. Funny no one complained about the name, did they? January 1969 - we were off work for a week, very sick, ate a lot of oranges but didn’t go to a doctor. What for? It was the kind of flu where you thought you were going to die and afraid you wouldn’t. By Monday of the next week, we were back at work. Can’t remember being down with the flu any other time, at least nothing like that.
7 Oct: NBC Bay Area: Stanford Professor Warns COVID Shelter-in-Place Orders Are ‘Killing People’
by Bigad Shaban, Robert Campos, Tony Rutanashoodech, Mark Villarreal and Jeremy Carroll
Dr. John Ioannidis is among a growing number of scientists who believe the current shelter-in-place orders in California continue to impose excessive and potentially harmful measures on most of the population, while failing to adopt strong enough restrictions to adequately protect those who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
“We can take even more draconian measures to protect people and locations and settings that we know at very high risk,” said Ioannidis, a Harvard-trained doctor of internal medicine, infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at Stanford University...
At the same time, Ioannidis is convinced that shelter in place orders are doing great harm to the rest of society.
“We know that 95% of the population has practically minimal risk,” he said, adding “It’s unlikely that in the current situation we are really saving lives. I think that probably we’re killing people by following some of these measures for forever.”
According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, 29% of Americans are avoiding or delaying medical care due to fear of catching the coronavirus...
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/stanford-professor-warns-covid-shelter-in-place-orders-are-killing-people/
9 Oct: The Star, Kenya: Corona to push 40 million in Africa into extreme poverty - World Bank
by VICTOR AMADALA
Coronavirus is threatening to push 40 million people in Africa into extreme poverty, eroding development gains of the past decade, World Bank has said.
In its The global lender revealed this in the latest Africa’s Pulse report released Thursday, saying the continent’s economy will decline by 3.3 per cent this year, the region’s first recession in 25 years.
Titled ‘Charting the way to recovery’, the report indicates that while the health consequences of the Covid-19 have been less devastating than expected, the combination of domestic lockdowns and related spillovers from the global recession significantly impacted economic activity...
In Nigeria and South Africa, the region’s two largest economies, growth declines were particularly pronounced, with sharp drops by 6.1 percent and 17.1 percent year-on-year, respectively...
https://www.the-star.co.ke/business/kenya/2020-10-09-corona-to-push-40-million-in-africa-into-extreme-poverty-world-bank/
22 Apr: NYT: ‘Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.’ A Global Food Crisis Looms.
The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year.
By Abdi Latif Dahir
In India, thousands of workers are lining up twice a day for bread and fried vegetables to keep hunger at bay.
And across Colombia, poor households are hanging red clothing and flags from their windows and balconies as a sign that they are hungry...
The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat...
Altogether, an estimated 265 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Mr. Husain (chief economist at the World Food Program) said. “It wasn’t a pretty picture to begin with, but this makes it truly unprecedented and uncharted territory.”...
Already, from Honduras to South Africa to India, protests and looting have broken out amid frustrations from lockdowns and worries about hunger. With classes shut down, over 368 million children have lost the nutritious meals and snacks they normally receive in school...
The curfews and restrictions on movement are already devastating the meager incomes of displaced people in Uganda and Ethiopia, the delivery of seeds and farming tools in South Sudan and the distribution of food aid in the Central African Republic...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-hunger-crisis.html
Hunger could be more deadly than coronavirus in poorer countries
WaPo - 14 May 2020
No amount of fiscal stimulus can help the unemployed people feel good about their lot, causing a death-spiral of depression and financially-induced suicide etc. Meanwhile, Cuomo et al killed Nana anyway.
But hey, Thurston Howell IV never got COVID.
7 Oct: BBC: Coronavirus: Health experts join global anti-lockdown movement
Thousands of scientists and health experts have joined a global movement warning of “grave concerns” about Covid-19 lockdown policies.
Nearly 6,000 experts, including dozens from the UK, say the approach is having a devastating impact on physical and mental health as well as society.
They are calling for protection to be focused on the vulnerable, while healthy people get on with their lives...
But the movement - known as the Great Barrington Declaration - mirrors some of the warnings in a letter signed by a group of GPs in the UK.
Sixty-six GPs, including TV doctors Dr Phil Hammond and Dr Rosemary Leonard and a number of medics who have held senior roles at the British Medical Association, have written to the health secretary, saying there is insufficient emphasis on “non-Covid harms” in the decision-making...
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54442386
Reminds me of the “Spacers” from Asimov’s Robot series; they first struck out into the unknown and did great things. Later, they developed to live very long, very comfortable lives and stopped.
bkmk
*Psst... that is the point...
The America, IMO, that survived big trouble before will realize- sooner or later- the economy and spirit of this nation cannot be destroyed no matter how hard Rats exploit fear. Their patron saint, FDR, is rolling over in his grave at their cowardice.
Bkmk
What did schools do when there was a measles outbreak back in the day?
Not sure what the schools did, because I was too young to go, but I was 4 when I got them, and my older brother was 5-1/2. He and I were quarantined together in one bedroom. Not sure where the rest of our siblings slept. The boys shared a room and the girls shared a room. I only remember seeing my brother and Mom on occasion to bring us food and to take our temperatures. I slept a lot. I remember waking up one day finally feeling better and seeing my brother was already playing with his army men. I think it lasted 10 days or so, but I don’t really know.
Did they close the schools? My guess would be no.
No puzzle. It's because TDS hadn't been invented back then and 24/7 "news" wasn't trying to damage the economy as much as possible.
What did schools do when there was a measles outbreak back in the day?
School was held for those that didn’t have the measles and after 4 or 5 days the person who had measles went back to school and did make up work.
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