As we approach the Covid endgame

Right after the election, I speculated on the prospect of a bad interregnum. I’d say a coup attempt by a sitting president and a horrific increase in Covid deaths counts as bad:

But now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The pace of vaccinations is speeding up and a big chuck of old people will likely be vaccinated by the end of February (including me?!?!?) So the IFR should fall sharply during March. By summer the economy may be booming. We don’t need fiscal stimulus; we need a faster vaccine rollout.

Another good sign is that the daily case total has finally peaked and is trending downward. That might reverse, however, if the UK variant becomes very widespread. Thus vaccination is a sort of race against time.

Nonetheless, I think we finally have a pretty good grasp of what the final US death toll will look like, something in the ballpark of 1/2 million. And the US doesn’t look good when compared to other parts of the world:

There’s certainly more underreporting in Latin America than in the US, but even accounting for that we are doing far worse than the world average. Don’t forget that there’s also underreporting in the US.

The vast majority of humans live on the three “A continents”, and thus for most people Covid was not a major health problem. But even there the economic effects were substantial (much worse in India than China, for reasons I that am not able to fully explain.)

There could be more surprises. I’ve consistently underestimated how bad it would get, but I think we finally have a picture of how it’s playing out. One thing is clear, the commenters who told me “don’t try to stop it, everyone will eventually get it” were almost laughably off base. I don’t expect them to admit they were wrong.

New Jersey lost at least 0.236% of its population to Covid (and rising), and would have lost many more without social distancing. So people who suggested the IFR was 0.25% were way off. Without social distancing, America would have lost more than a million lives, perhaps much more. And the deaths would have almost all bunched up in March, April and May (before improved treatments were available), creating a complete disaster in our hospital system.

Of course, there was zero chance of that happening. Even if the government hadn’t encouraged social distancing, the public would have done it anyway.

Rule #1 of social science: Most people don’t want to die.


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43 Responses to “As we approach the Covid endgame”

  1. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 01:18

    “…underreporting in the U.S.”

    Well, that is what happens when the CDC changes the way death certificates are to be filled out last March and counts a death as a Covid-19 death when if that appears anywhere on the certificate: you get significant underreporting that way.

    The Imperial College “study” predicted last March that even if there was enhanced social distancing and shielding the elderly then there would be 1 million deaths in the U.S. by Oct 20. Without that, then 2.2 million deaths. There were 215,000 with/from Covid-19 deaths on October 20th.

    U.S. Covid-19 deaths dropped 10% last week over the previous week, which was likely the peak. (Covid-19 deaths fell 15% last week if using Worldometers.) Too few had been vaccinated for that to be any contribution.

    In Germany, all cause deaths were normal in 2020.

    2016 1,180 per 100,000
    2017 1,187
    2018 1,196
    2019 1,150
    2020 1,177

  2. Gravatar of xu xu
    26. January 2021 at 01:27

    Thanks to Trumps efforts, and operation war speed, we do have a vaccine.

    That vaccine has also caused numerous deaths globally – including a young man in California last week.

    To reiterate, because you like to dodge the issue at hand:

    In less than a week of the Sumner/Biden/Harris communist regime:

    1. 11,000 jobs gone
    2. Increase in oil prices nationally. Not only would the pipe have lowered the cost, it would also be greener in the long run than transporting by train, but of course the politically & economically illiterate “green new deal” activists consistently ignore facts in favor of promulgating their “religion”.

    3. The removal of Assad continues under Biden, as military enters Syria: Trump believed in the “shining city on a hill”. Biden believes in “don’t comply with our one world govt, and we will remove you by force”. Sumner believes in the latter.

    4. Reentry into Paris accord which allows the CCP to continue polluting at no cost, while forcing the USA to pay taxes. Hint: CCP pollutes a lot more.

    5. CCP can continue to exterminate Uighurs, and threaten Taiwan without any pushback, but Biden asks Putin to please release Navalny as if that is worse than exterminating an entire ethnic group.

    6. A young white girl, age three, was brutally beaten to death by two blacks. Their legal defense claims “white privilege” as the predication for mutilating this girl. They were also BLM fanatic’s. No news coverage by the left wing radical mob. Would the media cover this if the child was black?

    7. Will Sumner finally admit that he was wrong to support BLM. He wants to dodge the issue. He wants to pretend in his blog, and in the comments, that he never spoke of such things. He’s wrong! He did. And his support for a racist and communist movement is dangerous.

    Will Sumner publicly support Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Jimmy Lai?

    We are waiting with bated breath.

    Sumner = Owned by CCP!

  3. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 01:28

    “I feel confident that by summer we’re going to be well on our way, heading toward, heard immunity.” – Joe Biden

    The CDC and WHO changed their previous definition of herd immunity in Mid-November, right after the election, by eliminating natural herd immunity, which was included for decades.

  4. Gravatar of foosion foosion
    26. January 2021 at 05:02

    “We don’t need fiscal stimulus; we need a faster vaccine rollout.”

    We do however need disaster relief and increased public health expenditures.

  5. Gravatar of Jonathan Jonathan
    26. January 2021 at 06:46

    The vaccination campaign completely failed to stop Covid-19 deaths in Israel, although we are world leaders. 85% of the old population got at least one shot and 60% of them got the second one. but you see no clear easy-to-spot change in parameters like hospitalizations or deaths.
    It’s a mystery and I still have not heard any reasonable good explanation for that.

  6. Gravatar of sean sean
    26. January 2021 at 07:24

    A million still seems too high for deaths to me.

    But it depends on whether you measure death rate pre dexemethasone or post. That made a big fall in the ifr.

  7. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 08:18

    Jonathon: “The vaccination campaign completely failed to stop Covid-19 deaths in Israel, although we are world leaders. 85% of the old population got at least one shot and 60% of them got the second one. but you see no clear easy-to-spot change in parameters like hospitalizations or deaths.”

    The NY Times makes it seem that cases went down immediately.

    Israel Covid-19 cases a day increase on average:

    Dec 15 to Dec 21……0.8%
    Dec 22 to Dec 28……1.0% vaccinations begins
    Dec 29 to Jan 4…….1.3%
    Jan 5 to Jan 11…….1.6%
    Jan 12 to Jan 18……1.5% 30% have had first shot, 5% both
    Jan 19 to Jan 25……1.1%

  8. Gravatar of Philo Philo
    26. January 2021 at 08:40

    “[T]he commenters who told me ‘don’t try to stop it, everyone will eventually get it’ were almost laughably off base. I don’t expect them to admit they were wrong.” They have to admit they were wrong: they were wrong about the prospect for quickly getting an effective vaccine. But that wasn’t a laughable mistake: it was a quite reasonable view that turned out to be wrong.

  9. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 08:50

    For whatever reason, Scott has never mentioned lockdown deaths, which will be over 300,000 over time and ignored that they do nothing to slow the virus by any notable amount.

  10. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 09:12

    Scott: “Rule #1 of social science: Most people don’t want to die.”

    Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff:

    “#1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease like #COVID19. It is important to also consider harms from public health measures.”

    “#2 Public health is about the long term rather than the short term.

    “#3 Public health is about everyone. It should not be used to shift the burden of disease from the affluent to the less affluent, as the COVID19 lockdowns have done.” (Scott has written he is affluent.)

    Bonus: “#8 A case is only a case if a person is sick. Mass testing asymptomatic individuals is harmful to public health.”

  11. Gravatar of Randomize Randomize
    26. January 2021 at 09:26

    “We don’t need fiscal stimulus; we need a faster vaccine rollout.”

    I agree that we don’t need to send everybody a check but some targeted bailouts would be much appreciated. It’s easy to imagine that the eviction bubble that’s been building over the past year could be absolutely massive and all the small “non-essential” businesses that have been ordered to shutdown without recompense could really use a hand.

  12. Gravatar of Carl Carl
    26. January 2021 at 09:28

    Jonathan
    I think it looks like the Israel COVID numbers leveled off a week ago and are starting to trend down. That was around the time they hit 25% vaccinated with the first dose. They are now up to about 15% on the second dose. https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general. Considering incubation times, I would expect the trend lines to start turning down considerably in the next couple of weeks.

  13. Gravatar of Anonymous Anonymous
    26. January 2021 at 10:05

    Todd,

    Why pick out Germany? They had an aggressive, effective response, right?

    Excess deaths are the key, why try to hand-waive about death certificates? We likely have 450,000+ covid deaths in the U.S. already.

    As far as Israel, I understand that currently reported deaths are actually deaths that occurred over the last several weeks, so perhaps that could be the explanation? I believe Sweden is the only country that actually allocated deaths to the date they occurred instead of the date they were reported, which is why their historical data is always changing.

  14. Gravatar of Scott Sumner Scott Sumner
    26. January 2021 at 10:23

    Philo, Yes, but even if the vaccine had taken 18 months, countries like Australia and Japan would never have come close to herd immunity.

    Anonymous, That was my reaction too. Todd picks Germany, a country that was hit far less hard than others in 2020, and then takes all of 2020, ignoring that deaths were running well below normal in the first few months, before Covid kicked in. He just can’t help himself.

    Not sure the point he’s making about Israel. Is he saying vaccines don’t work?

  15. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    26. January 2021 at 11:09

    I know we cannot believe a lot of what we read—-but Israel has publicly stated that hospitalizations have declined 60% after one shot—even though it is a two shot vaccine. So it seems to be working there. Why wouldn’t it work? That would be a nightmare—–Britain seems to be the only country that believes in the extreme danger of the new strain—but empirically (don’t know how they would know so soon)supposedly the vaccine has been working on all strains.

  16. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    26. January 2021 at 11:14

    @Jonathan

    It’s a mystery and I still have not heard any reasonable good explanation for that.

    It’s not a mystery, it’s just too early. You are overly impatient.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00140-w

    Scott has never mentioned lockdown deaths, which will be over 300,000 over time and ignored that they do nothing to slow the virus by any notable amount.

    That’s a really funny fantasy statistic from a nutcase who says Covid-19 patients basically didn’t die from Covid-19, even if the virus was verified.

    We need to start highlighting the positives of social distancing, lockdowns, and masks more: Todd is removed, Todd is confined, Todd’s face is hidden and his mouth is covered. These things alone easily outweigh the negative sides by a factor of approximately 100,000. “Only” Scott’s blog has to suffer all the more.

    And there is clear excess mortality in Germany because of Covid-19. Obviously. One can cover up everything if one extends the time periods (or the geography) long enough. Not to mention that Todd’s numbers are rarely ever correct. Germany’s bureaucratic mills grind slowly, so it’s hard to imagine that they already have finished the death figure statistics from 2020 completely.

    A death certificate has to be filled out by a general practitioner, then it ends up with the undertaking company, they pass it on to local authorities, they pass the information on to the state agency at some point, and they pass it on to the central federal agency at some point. Covid 19 death figures are said to lag 3 weeks behind, and they are on a special fast lane. Normal death figures will take even longer.

  17. Gravatar of Student Student
    26. January 2021 at 11:18

    We are on pace to eclipse 500k by a long shot. Look at the chart, not even considering the fact it’s not a if the new variants will take over but whether it will be in March or April or May. The trough is like half the previous peaks. So deaths will prolly dip to like 2000 a day before bouncing back to at least as high once the new variant takes over. Even if we get to 50% vaccination rate by summer (we are not even close to on pace to do that), that’s still 750k deaths plus but say July. If we see a 50% increase in transmission under the new variant, at the same morbidly rate, we should hit a peak of 6,000 deaths at day given the next wave. We are a little more than half way to the total deaths from this. Unless we increase the current vaccination rate by like 500%

  18. Gravatar of Student Student
    26. January 2021 at 11:21

    Just wait until Easter… my bet is that around that time we have 5000+ deaths a day and about 25% people vaccinated. Much to slow to top out at 500k US deaths.

  19. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 12:30

    The German numbers were recently calculated so put them up but no, they did not have particularly aggressive measures against coronavirus for a European country. The U.S. and U.K. were testing more per capita and at the height of the pandemic last spring mask use in Germany went from 15% April 6 to just 60% by May 4 and stayed there into autumn. Mask use went to 73% in late November as cases and accelerated into December.

    Japan had the least amount of testing per person, never locked down, and had 3,400 Covid-19 deaths last year – the same as a typical flu season – and no excess deaths last year.

  20. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    26. January 2021 at 12:43

    @Student:

    Your posts on Covid have tended to be more pessimistic than how the reality played out I’ve noticed. It didn’t get as bad as you thought up until now, and I doubt many would agree with your projections here.

    You’re the anti-Todd LOL. Blend your takes together and you probably have the reality…

  21. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 13:07

    Student: “Just wait until Easter… my bet is that around that time we have 5000+ deaths a day and about 25% people vaccinated. Much to slow to top out at 500k US deaths.”

    The good news is that it looks like the peak in Covid-19 deaths has past, but we are still near it, and the 10% drop last week happened before vaccination could have had an effect. (16% Drop last week if using Worldometers.) Cases per day peaked from Jan 1 to Jan 14 and fell 18% the week of Jan 15 to Jan 21 and the past 7 days are 25% below the first half of January.

    When the bad flu season hit in 2017/2018, deaths peaked around January 11 so looks similar.

  22. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    26. January 2021 at 13:50

    Student, Any old person that wants a vaccine should have one by the end of February. Most of the deaths are old people.

    Having said that, yes, it could be more than 1/2 million. Indeed it might already be over that figure, if you base it on excess deaths, not official deaths.

    msgkings, Student may be too pessimistic, but at least he’s grounded in reality.

  23. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 14:01

    Excess deaths include lockdown deaths which Scott counts as Covid deaths for some bizarre reason.

    Anyway, U.S. Covid-19 “cases” per day on average – includes a ton of false positives due to PCR testing way above the FDA guideline of using under 33 cycles.

    Dec 27 to Jan 2…..191,000 a day
    Jan 3 to Jan 9……225,000
    Jan 10 to Jan 16….198,000
    Jan 17 to Jan 23….160,000 30% below early January

  24. Gravatar of bob bob
    26. January 2021 at 14:21

    While we’d have had plenty of economic deceleration without government induced closures, government action forced the hand of many a business: I am surrounded by companies owned or managed by republican “libertarians” that refused to let people work from home until governments started to mandate it. This isn’t just bars and restaurants: white collar work, done with a computer and a phone. People would have to threaten to quit en-masse, at a time where getting another job was not exactly easy.

    So systematic shutdowns probably saved us some deaths on the margin vs a full denial approach.

  25. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    26. January 2021 at 14:27

    @ssumner:

    No doubt, Student’s pessimism is more realistic than Todd’s pollyanna act.

    But not every old person is getting it that fast. I’ve talked to several who can’t get an appointment for the vaccine until March.

    Personally I think the numbers are way down and under control by summer, and by fall everything is back to normal. Much will be by summer.

  26. Gravatar of Gene Frenkle Gene Frenkle
    26. January 2021 at 14:42

    Randomize, I agree we need laser focused bailouts at this point because we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and so many have actually done better during the pandemic. Also because everyone was in agreement in February 2020 that economy was fundamentally sound, and that right now inflation isn’t a concern but aggregate demand is a concern, we should be thinking BIG for summer 2021. My big idea is actually an old idea that was never implemented due to the persistent and pervasive racism in America—pay a trillion dollars in reparations to descendants of American slaves. So instead of $2k checks to everyone we need $40k checks to descendants of slaves ages 30-50, with $10k going to descendants of slaves outside that cohort. I would also follow the lead of Denmark and offer $150k interest free mortgages to all Americans. So if a house costs $160k then one has to take out a mortgage from a bank and deduct interest, but if the house costs $150k then the mortgage is interest free and very easy to qualify for as long as the person actually lives in the home for 5 years before selling. So Republicans know exactly what happens to the $2k checks they are proposing and so everyone should understand reparations dollars will very quickly end up in the pockets of productive Americans and turbocharge the economy and job market in 2021.

  27. Gravatar of Student Student
    26. January 2021 at 15:40

    Scott,

    35-45% of the at risk old people don’t want it. When the new strain hits, they gonna get it. We shall revisit in April-May. Hope I am wrong.

  28. Gravatar of Student Student
    26. January 2021 at 15:43

    Msgkings,

    I have been more pessimistic than most, but check this blog, I put the over and under at 1 million in March 2020 based simply on IFRs and Ro, relative to h1n1 2009. So far, better better than the skeptics. U watch by august will be above 750k with a million in sight.

    We will revisit in April/may.

  29. Gravatar of Mark Z Mark Z
    26. January 2021 at 15:58

    “Final death toll…”
    Scott, people will still be dying of covid in significant numbers in 20 years. Optimistically, it’ll become sort of like the flu, and kill a few tens of thousands of people (in the US) per year with most people getting vaccinated, with a whole new industry producing new covid vaccine cocktails eery year. *Gradually* it will probably become less deadly, but whenever even smart people talk about it like it’s a storm, kills a certain number of people, then goes away, I feel like I’m crazy for being the only one who’s thinking this. Of course everyone is going to get covid, eventually. Even people who get the flu vaccine every year typically get the flu at least once every few years. It’ll likely to be similar with this. Not a reason for everyone to go out and get covid obviously, as getting it every 2 years is worse than getting it every 6 years. But what magical thinking leads people to think it’s going to be eradicated anytime soon?

  30. Gravatar of Cartesian Theatrics Cartesian Theatrics
    26. January 2021 at 16:03

    Chiapas pretty well summarizes Sumner’s legacy on covid:
    https://twitter.com/jjchamie/status/1334228581870931968

    Ditto on Natal, Itaji, Sergipe, Paranaguá, etc.:
    https://invest.medincell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Experience-of-Ivermectin-in-COVID-19-Treatment-in.pdf
    Not to mention India.

    And that’s with a highly imperfect, first-iteration roll-out of just one of many effective therapeutics. Still no recommendation on Vitamin D.

    Oh and the 50+ completed trials: https://c19ivermectin.com/

    I’m reminded of Hayek:
    “The curious task of economist is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

    Don’t let anyone tell you they have a grip on the limits of what’s possible and what’s true.

  31. Gravatar of Anonymous Anonymous
    26. January 2021 at 17:44

    “deaths will prolly dip to like 2000 a day before bouncing back to at least as high once the new variant takes over. Even if we get to 50% vaccination rate by summer (we are not even close to on pace to do that), that’s still 750k deaths plus but say July. If we see a 50% increase in transmission under the new variant, at the same morbidly rate, we should hit a peak of 6,000 deaths at day given the next wave. We are a little more than half way to the total deaths from this. Unless we increase the current vaccination rate by like 500%”

    Already 25-30% have natural immunity from infection, with some 10-15% having inherent resistance according to some studies and vaccination up to 5%+. By Spring, most elderly will be vaccinated. Worst case scenario we’ll have 50%+ immune by that time which is a huge damper on any resurgence. Look at Gu’s projections, he’s been the most accurate I think.

    Todd K,

    Is your point that some countries did better than others for reasons we don’t fully understand? If that’s the point than I agree but not sure how relevant it is.

    Why do you think most excess deaths are “lockdown deaths”? You know there are studies on that and they say they are not. Any deaths from lockdowns will likely come in the future from excess unemployment and the like. What is your belief as to the source of these 400,000+ excess deaths, and don’t tell me “lockdown” since that’s not a cause of death.

  32. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    26. January 2021 at 18:49

    Herd immunity is not binary.

    Herd immunity is not linear.

    People most likely to contract the disease contract it sooner on average so the remaining pool of people becomes increasingly unlikely to get the disease because they were less susceptible to start with. (Same reason an aerosol can becomes cold after you spray it for a while.)

  33. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    26. January 2021 at 19:55

    “What is your belief as to the source of these 400,000+ excess deaths, and don’t tell me “lockdown” since that’s not a cause of death.”

    I never said 400,000 lockdown deaths but there have clearly been over 100,000 lockdown deaths by excess drug over doses, suicides, not getting emergency heart/stroke help delayed cancer treatments, etc.

    For those like Scott who can’t see the bigger picture, those deaths are irrelevant.

  34. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    27. January 2021 at 09:24

    Mark, I realize that it will be around indefinitely; I was looking at what the death toll will be by the time the economy returns to normal. Let in the year, the death toll will be extremely low, as R0 will fall below 1.

    dtoh, You said:

    “Herd immunity is not binary.”

    As I’ve said dozens of times.

    Todd, Just give up. Nobody’s interested in your wild conspiracy theories. We don’t care.

  35. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    27. January 2021 at 11:25

    I am recapping the positions of the last weeks and months from the Toddmeister for humoristic reasons:

    Social distancing, lockdowns, and masks do not work.

    Basically, all methods that reduce contacts via the respiratory tract do not work, because respiratory diseases are transmitted via telepathy.

    Vaccinations, by the way, do not work either.

    If someone coughs, you just have to run away before someone coughs, which makes total sense. Todd also uses the pull-out method with a Pearl index of 4 to 18.

    What also works besides pulling out are certain nutritional supplements, whose name Todd will soon mention and praise without ever being asked.

    If ambulance services and physicians no longer treat heart attacks and strokes in a timely manner in every single individual case because they are swamped by Covid-19, then the methods that reduce Covid-19 are to blame.

    All serious guidelines of physicians and corona researchers, including all superior medical institutions in all relevant western countries (and beyond) recommend the mentioned measures, which is only proof that they are wrong.

    The real Covid-19 expert is the Toddmeister. He is also the only person on this Earth who can read studies. And all that as a complete layman with the largest Dunning-Kruger effect that was ever observed in a living human being.

  36. Gravatar of TAFKAA TAFKAA
    27. January 2021 at 17:50

    I just skimmed this thread and won’t comment except to again point out that I’m only posting as TAFKAA now (The Artist Formerly Known As Anonymous) and the Anonymous above is someone else (and I think there may be multiple others across different posts) though from skimming I agree with the posts above 🙂

  37. Gravatar of TAFKAA TAFKAA
    27. January 2021 at 17:51

    Christian: 🙂

  38. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    27. January 2021 at 19:26

    Christian List spouts out again…

    I never said social distancing doesn’t help, although obviously only in the shorter run for a country, nor that vaccination doesn’t help but like Scott, Mr. List is an emotionalist who just makes shit up.

  39. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    28. January 2021 at 10:34

    “Mr. List is an emotionalist”

    So says Todd. LOL.

  40. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    28. January 2021 at 10:52

    Todd,

    I’m sorry for being so emotional in your eyes. Your answer is just great. It speaks for you that the social distancing part in my statements has offended you as wrong. I mean yes, that was the critical part.

    You know what, I give you the social distancing, although only in the shorter run. Obviously.

  41. Gravatar of Student Student
    28. January 2021 at 11:07

    Natural immunity lasts like 4-9 months, so I think it’s a mistake aggregate them like Gu is doing. It also seems like the new variants might lessen how well the vaxs currently being used works. That would presumably implies prior infections would provide less protection for new strains as well. I don’t think we get to herd immunity by summer.

    Assume the new variant is offset by having less and less at risk people unvaccinated and we get down to 2,000 deaths a day through July 2021… thats still 360,000 more deaths or about 800,000 by July. This is also likely an undercount.

  42. Gravatar of Student Student
    28. January 2021 at 11:08

    People, 22,400 or so people have died in the last week!

  43. Gravatar of Student Student
    28. January 2021 at 11:13

    About 100,000 people will have died from covid in January 2021 alone. I don’t see a vaccination pace even close to getting us down to 1000 daily deaths a day by summer. It’s way way way to slow.

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