On what basis? I am not sure how you would detect that using just the top-level figures.
Not sure. It was posted on twitter by someone at Leeds University. I bookmarked it to look at when I had more time and will dig it out later today.
The thing that terrifies me is that a Biden administration would be sworn in at a time when we might expect to be at the peak of a second wave/flu peak combination. In the likely political climate of a Biden win, the actions a responsible administration would take to combat that are likely going to play really badly with a large segment of the population, and I’m really concerned about what the response to that will be.
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For the US, I think it might actually be worse than that. US cases are climbing aggressively again. If you project forward perhaps a month, the case level is going to be about the same as early July, quite possibly worse. Inauguration day is January 21, meaning that it is very likely that the US will be seeing a peak well before that. If Trump’s administration has been inept in dealing with covid in the past, one can only imagine what it will be like in the transition period.
Crises of any form during that long transition have always been problematic, and have been addressed largely by a set of norms that Trump and his coterie have repeatedly shown they simply don’t care about. The US could face a serious crisis if the federal government is paralyzed for two months in the face of another peak, but it is almost impossible to envision any sort of real cooperation. By the time Biden can actually take any actions, the US may be facing its worst crisis since 1861.
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If you read @Arminius’s post above, you will feel better about living in England. As for my part, I was thankful a loaded pistol wasn’t nearby as I breezed through it.
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In Canada, this autumn’s ‘toilet paper’ item is Mason jars for preserving vegetables, completely out of stock everywhere. A lot of people are really nervous about what might happen across the border. Crazy stuff like that Michigan incident doesn’t help either.
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I do think if we can merely have a decided election without widespread violence, we will have done well, corona pandemic be damned. If Biden is elected, he will be lucky in having such a crisis at the beginning of his term. The pandemic will be in the history books by 2024, one supposes. Having said that, the Republican playbook would be clear, especially if Dems win the Senate. Republicans will refuse to vote for any type of pandemic funds in order to blame the Democrats for blowing up the deficit. Suddenly, they will become the party of fiscal responsibility again, not that they ever actually are.
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The Republican playbook is more or less already clear, the Senate GOP is sticking at a stimulus of $500B, way off what Trump has now done a 180 to demand.
What I find frightening about that is that I think state and local governments are going to be truly critical over the next few months in getting the virus under control, and in resource terms, a lot of them are in really rough shape.
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A fair bit more are getting infected now compared to under lockdown, but when I look at other countries, we are doing very well. Of course, I think this is probably not chiefly down to the political leadership, but probably more due to favourable geography and less mingling (though here to be fair, one must commend political leadership since they have stressed the importance of not mingling I guess).
We have 40 new infected today, most cases of new infections have come from 1-2 superspreaders.
In Bergen it has been bad among the students that started class. But it is getting better now. In Oslo people have just started to wear masks. When I traveled to Oslo 2 weeks ago, no one wore masks but the odd person (I traveled with one since you have to on planes and express buss, but honestly took it off when I came to Oslo and took the tram since I was the only guy with it, I needed to change mask anyway but realised that there wasn’t a point with bothering), but now there are new directives on public transport. Good. No one likes being the only guy with a mask on. But in any case, we have relatively low infection rate (we are no longer green, we are yellow, but everyone else in Europe is red so I guess we have it better than most everyone else like that), and masks will probably be more a psychological aid than a real big help, but everything helps I guess if done right. Many more wear masks in Oslo now in any case.
Anyway, we have 275 total dead. 22 in hospital. 3 in intensive care and 1 on a ventilator. These numbers are fairly stable, fluctuates some what. We have had higher infection since everything started up obviously, so more in hospital (some of you may remember that I posted on TIA that we were down to 5 in hospital etc.), but these numbers are still relatively low and our health sector is not under very high stress.
As for England and many other countries, I am very sad to see the developments. More and more regional lockdowns and a very high infection and death rate. Must be awful for you guys.
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I have a shimmer of hope amidst the general doom and gloom that maybe in the long run more people will realise that there are benefits to having a functioning government and institutions and yes, that includes funding that shit instead of undermining it from the inside.
Maybe not though, because freedom.
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Agreed. Several more characters.
Hardly. Johnson and his cronies are doing a fantastic job at playing catch up. We could be in an awful position right when Brexit comes to pass. The numerous tasks that are needed prior to leaving the EU will only be made significantly more difficult by this and they are already behind.
By making a complete hash ofthe first wave and then not addressing those failures they are purely reacting. It should have been proactive.
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Yeah. To me i think this proves that small government doesn’t work. Wel certainly not in the wy the UK does it.
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At least your people aren’t heavily armed. It’s the intermittent gunfire which makes a pandemic unbearable, I find.
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Would Biden be willing to (and able) use presidential orders to bypass Senate (i recall Krugman openly calling for Obama’s government to do so during the financial crisis but they opted not to).
If you’re referring to funding, the answer would be no. The Constitution gives sole spending authority to Congress. Presidential orders carry little authority relating to spending. The president can attempt to move funds among programs, as Trump has done with some success on the border wall (amid many court cases over it). But Congress must approve any fiscal stimulus by a spending bill approved by both houses.
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It’s complicated, so in a nutshell isn’t really possible.
Major factors are that in general the population being infected is generally younger and healthier than in the 1st wave. Testing means the cases are generally caught earlier. The virus is understood much better so outbreaks are better ‘controlled’. The hospitals are better equiped and more experienced. Even so inFrance hospitals are chocablock so there’s a lot of acute patients just no where near as many requireing ICU.
The way deaths are counted seems to have changed over the crisis (effectively reducing the number (however as Mascott keeps saying a lot of these will be pick up by looking at excess deaths over time). Important to say that the way Covid deaths are counted is probably now nearer how most deaths are counted in that most deaths are grouped, natural, pneumonia, heart attack .;; etc it’s rare that for example flu numbers are known as these deaths fall under pneumonia mainly (and they don’t test for flu so number of actual cases can not be known) it’s a clinical diagnostic.
The experts know a lot more now and there’s a lot more preparation.
The discussion over why a higher proportion of young and healthy are getting it this time round could be interesting (and long).
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A beer brewing friend of mine who is on staff at the ER at a local hospital was saying this morning that he is both optimistic and pessimistic. Optimistic, because six months ago he had no damn clue what to do and now has a toolbox of measures. Pessimistic, because for any of that to really work, it needs time and attention, and their staff levels are more or less what they were in April.
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How do you evaluate the Swedish experience/experiment?
So far Sweden has 98,451 infections and 5,894 deaths while all their neighbors (Norway, Denmark and Finland) combined have 59,926 infections and 1,290 deaths.
Sweden didn’t go for a lockdown and kept things as normal as possible, so presumably their economy is in a better shape than their neighbors.