Priorities

Here are some high priorities, in my view:

1. Test-trace-isolate

2. Masks

3. Challenge studies for a vaccine

4.  Voluntary social distancing

5. Level targeting (Preferably NGDP), plus “whatever it takes”

Low priorities:

1. Travel bans, unless community transmission has been addressed.  Then require 14-day quarantines.

2.  Ventilators

3.  Closing beaches and parks.

This tweet caught my eye:

China also had 4 new cases today (the 30th). Australia had 7. Iceland had zero. New Zealand had 2. Hong Kong had zero. Taiwan had zero. Vietnam had zero. Thailand had 7.

The US? Over 29,000 and still counting. Just today. We’re 35% – 40% of global new cases and new deaths each day, with 4% of the world’s population.

Even if you exclude China, the combined population of the countries I mentioned is about 270,000,000, 80% of the US population.

PS. Yes, I do understand that we need to get the caseload much lower before we can do some of the things that other countries have done, but there are parts of the US where the caseload is already low enough to think about the adopting some of these approaches. In places like Alaska, Hawaii and Montana new cases are running at only about 2 or 3 per day.


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44 Responses to “Priorities”

  1. Gravatar of bill bill
    30. April 2020 at 15:18

    You probably mean that closing beaches and parks is counterproductive?

  2. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    30. April 2020 at 15:41

    The country to look at for clues may be Singapore. What does Singapore teach us about immigrant housing?

    What causes high infection rates among meatpacking plant employees? Is it the meatpacking facility, or immigrant housing?

    If Singapore cannot control its infection rates, a small nation state generally well administered, I see zero chance for the United States.

    In addition, it is estimated about 3,000 people a day cross into the United States from Mexico without papers. How on earth do you test trace and insolate with a large and illegal immigrant population?

    Given the realities on the ground, the US would be best off following the Swedish model.

  3. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    30. April 2020 at 15:43

    Scott,
    Please explain Japan.

    2/3rds of the per capita mortality of Korea despite having a substantially older population

    Virtually no testing (1/10 of Korea on a per capita basis.)

    Minimal and very late government mandated social distancing.

    15 million daily unmasked subway riders in Tokyo.

    If the data don’t fit your model then your model is wrong.

  4. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    30. April 2020 at 16:16

    Bill, Yes.

    Ben, You said:

    “If Singapore cannot control its infection rates, a small nation state generally well administered, I see zero chance for the United States.”

    And if Australia can control its infection rates, do you see zero chance that the US will fail? Is that your way of thinking?

    You said:

    “Given the realities on the ground, the US would be best off following the Swedish model.”

    Sweden? You mean “a small state generally well administered”? Like the US?

    Why not follow Faeroe Islands?

    dtoh, You said:

    “If the data don’t fit your model then your model is wrong.”

    Wait, didn’t you make exactly the opposite argument in the previous comment section? There are lots of countries that don’t fit your model either. Are you now saying BCG doesn’t matter?

    I will say that recent per capita death rates in Japan are much higher than in Korea, and eventually the overall cumulative death rate may also be higher.

    To answer your question, I attribute the worse performance of Korea to the unusual case of that religious cult. Japan has fewer weird religious cults.

    I didn’t include Japan on my list as I was considering countries with only a few new infections each day. But Japan has undoubtedly done much better than the US or Europe.

  5. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    30. April 2020 at 16:31

    Scott

    Here’s my model (in terms of mortality)

    Things that help.
    Warm weather
    Low population density
    Commutation by car
    BCG (unless you can come up with a better explanation for good results in Asia, Eastern Europe, Germany, and Austria.)
    Voluntary social distancing
    Good workplace policies

    Things that hurt
    Cold weather
    High population density
    Public transportation
    High average household size
    No BCG vaccinations
    Innumerate politicians and newscasters

    Things that don’t make much difference
    Testing
    Masks
    Government regulation
    Walking around out doors

  6. Gravatar of uhoh uhoh
    30. April 2020 at 17:05

    This is why I think it’s ridiculous to think that this is going to end in the US with anything but herd immunity. The popular will is only strong enough for halfway measures. This may also be true elsewhere, but some of those countries (Australia) had the fortunate of getting the virus after awareness had been raised and so the halfway measures were started earlier relative to the local infection timeline. Handled with a bit of skill, they turned out to be sufficient.

    The US made the best attempt it could, but in the end it was too little too late. Time to open back up! A lot of people will die, granted, but it’s now clear that they will die anyway on the road to herd immunity (since nowhere was hospital capacity overwhelmed, as reasonable a fear it was at the time). Buying them a few more weeks or months at such a huge cost is not worth it.

  7. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    30. April 2020 at 17:17

    Scott,

    I agree with most of your points, except of course:

    Travel bans, unless community transmission has been addressed.

    It’s actually both ways. Suppose New Zealand had a lot of cases and would not be able to keep up with the community transmission. So your suggestion is that they should not ban travel, because they are in so deep shit, that they can easily afford to sink in even deeper.

    What do you suggest in my scenario, should they open the borders for tourists from Europe? Why, so that they can get even more behind the curve? This makes no sense at all. And why did they close their borders in the first place?

    This constant separation into “travel bans” and “test-trace-isolate” is done for purely political and ideological reasons.

    In reality it is “travel-ban-test-trace-isolate” from the very beginning.

    This dishonest discussion is really amusing. So many governments, especially in Europe, America, China, have been claiming for weeks how useless travel bans are, but China has closed down Wuhan pretty soon, which is nothing else but a travel ban, and even these mendacious EU countries have closed their borders.

    This corona crisis reminds in parts very much of the jokes from the USSR:

    There are no shortages in the supermarkets, there are only goods you cannot buy.

    Masks do not help, but we all have to wear one.

    Travel bans do not help, but we closed all borders and you are not allowed to travel. Don’t visit anyone, not even your grandmother down the block.

  8. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    30. April 2020 at 18:03

    Scott Sumner said,

    “Ben, You said:

    “If Singapore cannot control its infection rates, a small nation state generally well administered, I see zero chance for the United States.”

    And if Australia can control its infection rates, do you see zero chance that the US will fail? Is that your way of thinking?

    You said:

    “Given the realities on the ground, the US would be best off following the Swedish model.”

    Sweden? You mean “a small state generally well administered”? Like the US?

    Why not follow Faeroe Islands?”

    ===30—

    I do not think the US can successfully mimic the response of certain island nations, especially given de facto open US borders and a large quantity of dense immigrant housing. Even Singapore cannot successfully respond to C19 outbreaks in dense immigrant housing.

    There is also a lack of clarity if infection rates are declining in Sweden, and, say the UK, due to lockdown policies or increasing natural immunity. Those two nations are obtaining similar results. In fact, some have suggested that what infection rate Sweden does have is elevated by the presence of dense immigrant housing.

    As an aside, it might be worth pondering if the re-creation of Third World living standards within First World nations is a wise policy, in an age of global pandemics.

    Evidently, in Singapore there are dorms with 20 Indians to a room, providing low-cost labor to the rest of Singapore. If someone bunks in a room with 19 other individuals…

  9. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    30. April 2020 at 18:16

    (1) Yes, the US should obviously follow a differentiated approach, that’s what federalism is for.
    (2) Travel bans are the classic “it depends” factor. The more you have good track and trace, the less useful travel bans are likely to be. A wild disproportionate number of Australia’s cases came from one mishandled cruise liner where they were neither blocked nor tracked and traced.
    (3) The CDC/FDA screw ups seem to be key to the US’s response being a lot less effective than it could have been.
    (4) As the UK, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain are all doing considerably worse than the US (especially the US outside New York), Germany remains the interesting comparison.
    (5) General lockdowns do seem to have encouraged insufficient targeting of vulnerable populations — notably nursing homes.
    (6) The billions of dollars spent on Western health departments (far more than we spend on defence, even in the US) do not seem to have been very good resilience spending to deal with sudden spikes. Starting with all the stockpiles and thought out responses we didn’t have.

    What is conspicuous about Taiwan and South Korea is they already had thought out responses. Australia and New Zealand less so, but we already have a default quarantine mentality.

  10. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    30. April 2020 at 18:18

    Let me add a No. 6 to Scott Sumner’s list of high priorities:

    No. 6: That every virology lab anywhere on the planet operate under complete and total transparency, open to unannounced international investigation at any time, and with complete, unhindered and open dialogue among international media, and social media, and lab employees.

    Nations that do not comply with such obviously basic and minimum necessary requirements should lose Most Favored Nation trading status and be subject to trade sanctions.

    We now know the huge economic costs of even a mild virus as global pandemic. Imagine if the next time is worse….

  11. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    1. May 2020 at 03:05

    The tweet states there was no lockdown in South Korea but the government asking people to stay at home as much as possible has had a similar effect since compliance has been so high. That request came when South Korea already had 3,000 known cases.

    The only policy Japan had until April 16 was to close most schools while keeping kindergartens open. People in Tokyo were already starting to stay at home much more a week before the Japanese government asked people to stay home just as South Korea had done. By April 16, Japan had had coronavirus for several weeks yet there have been 415 deaths despite one of the oldest populations in the world.

  12. Gravatar of Bob Bob
    1. May 2020 at 04:05

    In the US, no one is explicitly saying “herd immunity” but that seems likely to be our implicit strategy. Absent Federal coordination, a national testing regime just isn’t feasible. If we’d rushed key components and personnel to hot-spots, we could’ve kept overall numbers lower, but now every state is going to hoard its resources since we’re all on our own.

    Closing parks/beaches and travel restrictions seem more political than practical: low impact but high visibility. And getting people to abide by distancing in public spaces seems like a trivial problem: put some tape down on walkways to mark pedestrian lanes, cordon off specific walking lanes on the beach, place temporary bollards in high-traffic areas, make side-walks one-way (where possible), etc. Even if you only get 80% compliance, that’s going to be orders of magnitude better than when people were cramming into restaurants/bars etc.

  13. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    1. May 2020 at 07:30

    Scott et al. I politely ask all SSumner followers to please read the following. Ignore my interpretation speculations—-but just read the stats.

    Just because something is consistent with what a conspiracy might look like, of course, does not mean that a conspiracy exists. Yet, the statistics on Covid-19 look like what a conspiracy might look like. Conspiracies can include anything from ignoring weird distributions and never bring it up publicly to more extreme versions worthy of international thriller movies.

    I viewed these two areas of the “West” and “Asia” as a reasonable cut. I predefined it—-before counting—-only because superficially it just suddenly hit me that the numbers Scott mentioned seemed so unlikely—although are official. I picked these two areas to favor Asia—-plus I chose the major economies and the eastern non-island outer rim in Asia and the obvious picks of NA and Western Europe for the “West”.

    No matter how one critiques my comparative blocks—-the differences are too extreme to pretend they have no meaning.

    Western Europe, which consists of 10 countries (Worldometer’s definition) if you include U.K. and exclude Scandinavia, has a population of 260mil. The 3 countries of North America has about 500 mil. Combined, they represent 9.6% of the global population. This 9.6% of the global population has 67% of total Covid cases and about 80% of global Covid deaths.

    East Asia (China, Taiwan, The Korea’s and Japan) and SE Asia (excluding the Philippines and Indonesia) have 2 billion people (1.7 bil is population of what is called East Asia by Worldometer) or 25% of the global population. They together have 4.1% of all cases and 2.5% of all deaths.

    On a per million basis, the “West” has 2930 cases per million. The ‘West” has 253 deaths per million. “Asia” has 68 cases per million (about 1/50th of “West”and 3 deaths per million (1/85th of West.)

    Putting aside any one of the 5 million theories that can explain this, one that we can safely exclude is “randomness”. Having never looked at these numbers before, it had never occurred to me that this magnitude of difference was remotely plausible.

    I look forward to some thoughts on this, besides Asia is better at this than we are. They may be better—-maybe a lot better. But know way are they this much better.

    The least paranoid of conspiracy theories is we count differently. The most paranoid of conspiracy theories is this was done by design. My recent binge watching of “The Americans” does make the latter seem more plausible to me.

    But—-had anyone noticed this before? Does it bother anyone. I am going to bet Scott is not bothered in the slightest and I will also bet he will say something like “everyone but morons already knew this”. Both may be even true. But such answers have no explanatory value

    To repeat—-the one thing we can say that is unquestionably true—-this is not random—and we don’t need “p-values” to tell us.

  14. Gravatar of BB BB
    1. May 2020 at 07:54

    Scott,
    I think this is a mostly sensible list. A few notes:
    1. Test and trace will not be easy. There are a number of credible plans for reopening now, and they all envision many millions of tests per day. Effective leadership from the White House can help this cause by adjusting regulatory enforcement in smart ways and providing incentives/inducement for firms to support higher volumes of testing. I also think we need antibody testing, which is currently suffering from too little regulation with many of the tests on offer in the US providing unreliable results to include one test with a false positive rate of 16%.
    4. I disagree on voluntary social distancing. It’s not individuals accepting risks for themselves, they are putting countless others at risk. We should have smart social distancing. I agree on regional choices as not all part of the US is the same. I also think that localities should have discretion. The mayor of Atlanta should have the option of opting out of the Georgia state plan, because the rest of Georgia may not be at as high a risk. Also, what about schools? Voluntary is too simplistic an answer to this question.
    6. Improved treatment. I expect that we will beat this with a combination of measures. Holding out for a vaccine is too simplistic. We need therapeutics and a better understanding of how to treat people, such as putting patients face down instead of on their back.
    7. We need to provide support for people and some firms. This has already placed tremendous hardship on folks and we are only getting started.
    8. Effective government. Most folks who read this site strike me as libertarian. I think there are libertarian principles that can be applied, but how effective government is at all three levels will determine how well we fare in my opinion. Thus far, I feel vindicated.

  15. Gravatar of Carl Carl
    1. May 2020 at 08:46

    I’d add a couple of things:
    6. Anti-virals and immunotherapies We might end up with a partially effective vaccine like the flu vaccines and even that may take a couple of years. In the meantime, we need to give our doctors more tools.
    7. Hand-sanitizer stations. It’s great to see that my local restaurants are starting to put them out for pick-up. Every place where you might be touching anything common should have them nearby so we can all have confidence that we’re touching common items with virus-free hands.

  16. Gravatar of Todd Ramsey Todd Ramsey
    1. May 2020 at 08:58

    Prof. Sumner-

    An honest question, mostly off topic:

    If prior to Coronavirus the Fed had adopted an NGDP guardrail regime and followed it through a foreseeable future of 10-20% real GDP decline, would that by definition produce a 15-20% price level increase?

    If so, would you still advocate the guardrail approach, even today?

    I have been advocating your guardrails to anyone who will listen, but I am cinderned they will produce high inflation in the face of a giant real shock.

    Thanks!

  17. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    1. May 2020 at 09:08

    dtoh, Sorry, but doesn’t the recent data out of Europe pretty much puts a nail in the BCG theory? It’s no longer just Italy. France, Spain Belgium, the UK; lots of countries are getting hammered just as hard.

    uhoh, You said:

    “This may also be true elsewhere, but some of those countries (Australia) had the fortunate of getting the virus after awareness had been raised and so the halfway measures were started earlier relative to the local infection timeline. Handled with a bit of skill, they turned out to be sufficient.”

    Nope, they were hit early. Get your facts right before commenting here.

    You said:

    “The US made the best attempt it could”

    Well I’ll say this, you have quite a sense of humor.

    Christian, I’ve already written a whole post on why the US travel ban from China failed. If you don’t plan to address my specific arguments, then don’t bother replying.

    Todd, When I visited Japan in 2018, I saw lots of people wearing masks even though there was no Covid-19.

    Michael, A month ago, I did a couple of posts pointing out that almost 99% of deaths were occurring in “white” countries (broadly defined to include Latin America.)

    Old news. And no conspiracy.

    BB, So far, government has mostly made things worse through restrictive regulations, making it more difficult to do tests, produce PPE, etc.

    Agree that good drugs would be helpful. But challenge studies for vaccines is a no-brainer.

    We need a far lower case load so test and trace can work. But some states are already low. Montana and Hawaii and Alaska can already do what New Zealand is doing.

    Carl, Agree.

  18. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    1. May 2020 at 09:26

    Scott wrote: “Todd, When I visited Japan in 2018, I saw lots of people wearing masks even though there was no Covid-19.”

    I’m not sure which Todd this is directed to but “a lot of masks” in Japan is pretty vague. There are a lot when you compare to the near 0% in America. Japanese usually don’t wear masks all fall and winter but when they think they are sick and still go to work and to the store. There was a Yougov poll that showed 67% of Japanese were wearing masks in February, which is much higher then what I’d see in Japan, around 10% and maybe 20%+ in January. Those who work in jobs where they are in contact with the public, for example at train stations, wear masks more.

  19. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    1. May 2020 at 09:51

    Scott—yes, it is old news——but, other then some consistent comments on how Japan and SKorea have done well, little explains such a dramatic difference. My comment/question is how can we have such a discrepancy? Due to incompetence in Whitelandia versus hyper competence in Asia? That, to me, seems impossible. A little better or even a lot better , but 80 times better? Something is very wrong. It could be data on our side or their side or both—-and since it began there, it makes no sense we are the ones 50-80 times worse. I guess I cannot understand how something is so out of whack—-yet no one seeks to explain it. This difference is not possible by competence or randomness—-so something else is causing it. It need to be a “Goldfinger” conspiracy but our collective lack of interest makes no sense. Asia is better than our best state—by far.

  20. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    1. May 2020 at 10:57

    It is weird to hear how well Japan has done, when all the government did was close schools for weeks was close schools but not kindergarten or day care. That explains why people including some epidemilogists never mention Japan and single out South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore as if the nation of 126 million people where the virus was early to spread is not mentioned.

    A similar outcome happened in 2009/10 with the Swine flu, H1N1: The U.S. had 12,500 deaths whereas Japan had 100 to 200 and Korea had 300.

  21. Gravatar of bb bb
    1. May 2020 at 12:00

    Scott,
    I disagree. Ineffective government has made things worse. Effective government in S Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, California, Maryland, Ohio, Washington… has saved countless lives. Ineffective government in Trump Admin, Italy… has cost lives, ceteris paribus.
    As for the testing, we are hobbled by ineffective leadership, not simply regulation. The diagnostic test was delayed by regulations. However, the executive branch has considerable discretion to loosen restrictions during an emergency, but failed to do so. Then after a backlash for delays in diagnostic testing, they went full wild west with the antibody tests and now we have multiple offerings of unreliable antibody tests on the market. Competence matters and the Trump administration is entirely staffed by incompetent people at the top. S. Korea ramped up testing faster than anyone and has had more success than any large country because private companies were directed by the federal government. I don’t think you can find an example of a country that has had an effective response to Covid without effective government actions. And I can provide plenty of successful responses that were directed by effective governments. Public health is a public good.

  22. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    1. May 2020 at 12:15

    Michael, I tried to create interest with several posts. But people told me “nothing to see here, move along”.

    Todd, I think that people don’t tout Japan because they worry that caseloads could explode right after being touted, making them look bad. Less fear of that happening in Korea.

    bb, You said:

    “I disagree. Ineffective government has made things worse.”

    I agree!

    But while Trump is by far the worst President in American history, and someone else would have done somewhat better, we’d still be sitting here with almost 60,000 deaths.

  23. Gravatar of bb bb
    1. May 2020 at 12:32

    Scott,
    I disagree. If Obama, Clinton, George HW, and possibly even GW, were president we would be sitting at 30,000 deaths, and that would be much better. And we would be adapting and correcting some or most of our early mistakes, which we are not doing now.
    Anyways, it’s Friday night, time for me to head to a different room. have a great weekend.

  24. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    1. May 2020 at 16:30

    Michael Rulle:

    It is difficult to explain the low infection rates in Thailand, a favorite destination of Chinese tourists until the lockdowns.

    People in Thailand today wear masks but not so much in rural areas and enforcement of lockdowns is what you would expect in Thailand, a country where the practical or immediate need trumps rules.

    I doubt the leak from the Wuhan lab was intentional; I assume the Chinese Communist Party is smart enough to stage an intentional leak far from the lab, so as to avoid suspicion.

    The overriding concern now is that there be complete transparency in the operation of virology labs, as certified by international inspection and cooperation.

  25. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    1. May 2020 at 16:38

    MR:

    If bat coronaviruses are common and have been around for millions of years, it may be the native peoples of Southeast Asia have adapted. That is, the people who were particularly susceptible to coronaviruses died and were bred out of the population.

    Another possibility is that the people of Southeast Asia were coincidentally inoculated against Covid-19 by a previous, related but less lethal coronavirus.

  26. Gravatar of agrippa postumus agrippa postumus
    1. May 2020 at 16:46

    sticky wages? check out what’s going on it the law industry right now; reduced partner draws; staff pay reductions; lateral hiring put on hold. and that’s just one industry. the whole theory rests on an idea not able to be observed.

  27. Gravatar of aram aram
    1. May 2020 at 17:20

    I agree with your PS but we need to start setting up the contact tracing programs immediately since they take a nonzero amount of time to set up. Also they are much more efficient during lockdowns since everyone has fewer contacts.

  28. Gravatar of Todd Kreider Todd Kreider
    1. May 2020 at 17:41

    “Todd, I think that people don’t tout Japan because they worry that caseloads could explode right after being touted, making them look bad. Less fear of that happening in Korea.”

    There was never a chance that cases could explode in Japan after cases were building there for weeks with essentially no government action. Pandemics don’t work that way.

  29. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    1. May 2020 at 18:55

    It appears that taking your cod liver oil to get your Vitamin D levels up may be a good idea, particularly if you are someone with dark skin living in far-from-the-equator latitudes.

    See these two shortish discussions, using linked scientific and health authority sources:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwTBF14Plc&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3llmdCAdYlHNsMEgrichvVXGLl2rlpbzYf-NaXK7hZ1xSRCxVv90OLIIs

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCSXNGc7pfs&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR22Z3lcVfoRic3E0dfAPwTkL-mUYfpI7Kns2JqBfkbI8fW0U8zxwA-maAY

    The latter has a nice, clear explanation of the mechanism by which Covid 19 kills.

  30. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    1. May 2020 at 20:18

    Scott,

    “Sorry, but doesn’t the recent data out of Europe pretty much puts a nail in the BCG theory? It’s no longer just Italy. France, Spain Belgium, the UK; lots of countries are getting hammered just as hard.”

    There are a lot of factors (climate, urban density, etc.) involved but by and large, the countries that are getting hammered the worst (highest per capita mortality) did not have universal mandatory neo-natal BCG vaccination polices or only had them for a short period of time. The big cold countries that seem to be doing well all have had long term ongoing mandatory neo-natal vaccination policies.

    Portugal is the only West European country with a mandatory neo-natal vaccination program.

    Every East European country has a mortality rate that is 1/10 or less of Italy/Spain. They all have (or have had until very recently) neo-natal vaccination programs.

  31. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    1. May 2020 at 20:31

    @bb

    You said, “S. Korea ramped up testing faster than anyone and has had more success than any large country because private companies were directed by the federal government. I don’t think you can find an example of a country that has had an effective response to Covid without effective government actions.”

    Absolutely NOT true. Japan has been MUCH more successful. Lower per capita incidence, lower per capita mortality (2/3rds of Korea), later and lower peak in spite of earlier introduction of the virus into the country. All with minimal testing (1/10th of Korea on a per capita basis) and zero government mandated closures, lock downs or stay at home orders.

  32. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    1. May 2020 at 22:51

    Scott,

    I don’t have the link to your other post, so I can’t read it. On the other hand, it’s predictable what you have written.

    If you know how exponential chains of infection behave, every single traveler who is stopped is very helpful. “Test-trace-isolate” might be great in theory (or not), but in practice Western countries obviously have their substantial difficulties with it since months.

    This is reminiscent of religious delusions. “The Messiah will come, the Messiah will come, just wait one more week.” It’s better to take measures that can be implemented immediately, rather than waiting weeks and months hoping for a complicated miracle solution that saves the day.

    One of the most important measures in China was certainly the complete quarantine of Wuhan, which is nothing else but a complete travel ban. And albeit a bit too late, it was still very helpful. Even isolation and social distancing are “travel bans”, we just call them differently, and vice versa.

    Travel restrictions a few days before the Chinese New Year, rather than after, and most cases might have been avoided.

    The NYT writes that 430,000 people have traveled to the US since SARS-CoV-2 surfaced, and these are just the numbers from China. The bulk of the passengers arrived at airports in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit. Do you see a pattern there?

    40,000 of them came after Trump’s “travel ban”. The numbers should have been closer to zero to be completely successful, including entries from Europe, Canada, Mexico, but it was still way better than just doing nothing.

    One would have to plot all countries in a graph: date and/or extent of travel restrictions on one axis, severity of the corona epidemic in this country on the other axis. Then one could check how strong the correlation really is.

    In places like Alaska, Hawaii and Montana new cases are running at only about 2 or 3 per day.

    Oh great, then these states can lift their travel restrictions tomorrow morning, it’s of no use anyway.

    @Benjamin Cole
    Good points. The question remains why a disease like SARS-Cov-2 has occurred in our days. Did this happen before quite a few times and we didn’t realize it? Or does it happen more often now? And if yes, what has changed in people’s behaviour? Do they perhaps climb around in bat caves and collect thousands of viruses, which are then stored in laboratories in Wuhan. What else has changed?

  33. Gravatar of lin tiang lin tiang
    1. May 2020 at 22:59

    I think you are comparing apples and oranges. South Koreans are very respectful, very disciplined, and very educated people. When the government tells them to stay home, they do it. Americans on the other hand were seen partying at Spring break in March, and this was after Dr. Faucci and President Trump told them to please stay at home. People in the US do not like authority. They call policemen “pigs” for simply doing a noble job of trying to protect the community. When the President and leading experts tell them to do something, they do the opposite because they really like “gangster culture” and want to be “hard” whatever that means. So culture is really important. The U.S. has implemented very similar policy to Korea, but it is not effective because the people in America do not like to follow directions and take responsibility. So please listen to your govt, and stay at home. The cases will begin to drop, and less people will die if you do this. Thank you.

  34. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    2. May 2020 at 00:58

    @agrippa – OT you hit upon a theme I’ve made in the past but went unanswered: Sumner depends on national income (Y) models that are dated, where wages matter, hence sticky wages are a big deal, but in fact in today’s economy, Y is a function of capital not labor, so if things go bad, firms cut wages by firing people, not by reducing their salary. So we don’t really have ‘sticky wages’ anymore.

    @ everybody- Sumner bravely faces all comers, like a caged bear, bravo performance, but Christian List and Benjamin Cole score big points.

    @Michael Rulle – good stats, but put this into your calculator and smoke it: 21M closed Wuhan phone accounts, in a country that never shows such a decline before, where closing a phone account is a “big deal” (same in Greece actually, lots of government paperwork to even close an account much less open it) and to be avoided (unlike say the PH and TH where you just buy a new SIM card, no big deal). Connect the dots: 21 M dead due to C-19 in Wuhan. As for Thailand, recall C-19 is a chimeric virus and lab created viruses are always temperature sensitive. That’s also why Africa and Brazil have escaped C-19.

  35. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    2. May 2020 at 01:18

    @Ray

    “so if things go bad, firms cut wages by firing people, not by reducing their salary.”

    That’s the exact definition of sticky wages.

  36. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    2. May 2020 at 10:11

    Todd, So the recent Japanese lockdowns were foolish? If you try to defend the Japanese government, you have to confront the fact their their own policy has shifted over time. (BTW, I’m not opposed to the Japanese approach.)

    https://time.com/5826918/hokkaido-coronavirus-lockdown/

    dtoh, I’ve seen some academic studies, and the correlation is really weak. It’s not a major factor (although it might play a tiny role.)

    Christian, You said:

    “If you know how exponential chains of infection behave, every single traveler who is stopped is very helpful.”

    Yes, if the US had tried to stop the epidemic when it arrived. But if you wait until there are 10,000 cases then every single traveler MAKES NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. How hard is that to understand?

    And of course we did wait until it was out of control.

    lin Tiang, You said:

    “South Koreans are very respectful, very disciplined, and very educated people.”

    As we’ve seen in dozens of Korean films screened in the West.

    Seriously, culture probably plays a role, but there are many other important factors. Australia and New Zealand are doing even better than Korea, with cultures more similar to America.

    Ray, You said:

    “Connect the dots: 21 M dead due to C-19 in Wuhan.”

    What does “M” stand for? I had thought it was “millions” but obviously that can’t be what you mean.

  37. Gravatar of Carl Carl
    2. May 2020 at 10:22

    Just thinking through the challenge study implications…My understanding is that COVID-19 primarily kills people with immunosenescence. The participants in the challenge studies will presumably be people with strong adaptive immune systems. If a vaccine is found that works for the challenge study participants, what will we know about how well the vaccine will work on the immunosenescent? For all we know the most effective vaccine may require a live attenuated virus with an adjuvant kicker. Do we risk a trial with a vaccine like that on the immunosenescent? Or do we still keep them sequestered while we innoculate the rest of society in a bid to protect them indirectly via herd immunity? Or are we hoping that we’ll have a strong enough arsenal of virostatics in place by that time to mitigate the risks of life-threatening vaccine-initiated cases of COVID-19 in the immunosenescent?

  38. Gravatar of Bb Bb
    2. May 2020 at 12:23

    Dtoh you wrote
    “ Absolutely NOT true. Japan has been MUCH more successful. Lower per capita incidence, lower per capita mortality (2/3rds of Korea), later and lower peak in spite of earlier introduction of the virus into the country. All with minimal testing (1/10th of Korea on a per capita basis) and zero government mandated closures, lock downs or stay at home orders.”
    True on percapita, wrong about peak- Japan is accelerating so we don’t know what the peak will be
    You’re right about testing
    You’re wrong about lockdowns- they were ne of the first counties to shut down school doing so in February
    But I asked for an example and you provided one, so I tip my hat too you.

  39. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    2. May 2020 at 13:12

    @bb

    In Japan school closures were not mandated, they were a request from the central government, and the Japanese government’s own expert panel has said school closures are of very limited effectiveness because they they make detection and contact tracing more difficult.

    7 day moving average for new cases has declined 12 out of the last 15 days, and is now down 43% from the peak.

  40. Gravatar of bb bb
    4. May 2020 at 05:15

    @dtoh,
    I go by deaths, as I think we have no idea how many cases there truly are in countries without sufficient testing. And by that measure, Japan does not appear to have passed a peak. South Korea does appear to have past a peak.
    That said, I still acknowledge that you provided a good example. I would classify Japan’s response to date as poor, by my personal criteria, so if Japan continues to have success I will need to adjust my priors.

  41. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    5. May 2020 at 02:58

    @bb
    Completely agree that confirmed cases is not good measure because it is dependent on testing, but as long as you have an unchanging test regimen, then changes in confirmed cases will be a nearly perfect proxy for changes in actual cases. And as we all know deaths are a lagging indicator so the drop in confirmed cases should presage a drop in deaths.

    The real question is how did Japan achieve an outcome equal or better than Korea with such a “poor response.” To me it suggests that we are not correctly evaluating what is a “good” (or “bad”) response.

  42. Gravatar of bb bb
    5. May 2020 at 15:51

    @dtoh,
    I agree. There are many things we don’t understand yet, which makes this difficult. Japan has features that make it different, such as a high willingness to comply with government recommendations and it is a particularly low immigration country for it’s size (I believe that is still true), but I would not present those as explanations. It is interesting that NY is so much worse than other equally dense cities. Warmer climates seem to be doing better, but with lots of exceptions. Italy is dense, but Spain is not…
    My main point is that we have well established best practices for dealing with epidemics which can include lock downs, travel restrictions, social distancing, directing medical supplies to hardest hit areas, and assisting early outbreak countries with there response… and all with a goal to support case management to include testing and contact tracing. We made mistakes early on, which is damning. But why are we still making so little effort to facilitate testing. I believe that George HW or Obama would have competent people assigned to CDC and FDA, and would have listened to them. And I believe the result would have been much higher volume of testing, which would both save lives and better prepare us to open up. While Japan is a valid exception(as of now), I believe Trumps response has been bad. Even now, he could decide to take the steps he failed to previously take. I have not seen a reputable plan for opening up without massive amounts of testing, and I don’t see the administration taking steps to work towards that outcome.
    But, I still admit that you owned my argument with the Japan example. Unfortunately, we will get to see how Japan plays out over time.

  43. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    5. May 2020 at 18:07

    @bb
    IMHO contact tracing and travel restrictions are very important. OTOH, testing has become like a mantra, and I don’t really see the mechanism by which it can significantly reduce transmission (i.e. cases), but I’d be interested in having the discussion with you.

    A couple of BTWs
    1. One million Chinese visitors to Japan…. per MONTH.

    2. Thailand and Vietnam also have very low testing rates and very low mortality.

    3. I’m a Director of a U.S. manufacturing company in an essential industry so we’ve continued normal operations. We put in place strict protocols in late February. So did every other company I know. We’ve had 2 employees infected but zero workplace transmission. This happened long before any government mandates. It was done more professionally and systematically than any action by any government action I’ve seen in the world. We talked to many other companies to coordinate. Every company was doing the same sorts of things. IMHO, it doesn’t take government direction to restart the economy.

  44. Gravatar of bb bb
    11. May 2020 at 06:36

    @dtoh,
    I think “testing” is short hand for test and trace, and that has been how we have beat epidemics in the past. I have no explanation for Japan, but I don’t recommend following their path.
    It does appear that some countries are having success with lower levels of testing- S Korea and Germnay are the two countries that I’m tracking. My takeaway is that contract tracing can be achieved with a low volume of testing. At this point, the US is not doing contact tracing which makes me skeptical of opening up.
    BTW: I’m an IT director. I’m in DC, not sure where you’re located. I’m lucky that I was able to let 90% of my staff work remotely starting in early March. Roughly 75 percent of my staff take the Metro or trains to work- i’m much more concerned about their commute than time in the office. Larry Hogan was out front on implementing various “lockdowns” and Northam and Bowser followed his lead. There’s no way of know, but I think we would look like Boston if it weren’t for the aggressive measures. I also think that different states and localities should take different measures, and should be free to do so.
    And I’ve had one employee on my team infected, and it was most likely workplace. He and his family fully recovered.

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