Today in is social distancing worth it, lets check in on Sweden.
I think its important to have an educated discussion about social distancing and its value, I tried to do that yesterday and think it was somewhat successful and I'm going to keep trying. I should note, if you watched plandemic and think it made some good points just don't bother posting, you are stupid and your views are worthless. Now that we've gotten that out of the way lets check in the natural experiment Sweden has provided to see if the partial re-openings many states are moving towards right now have a strong evidence of support.
For comparison purposes throughout I will compare Sweden to Norway, Denmark, and Finland since those countries most closely resemble Sweden in terms of culture, density, average health of citizens, and economy which provides a good baseline of comparison. Trying to make Sweden look bad by comparing it to South Korea doesn't make much sense from a natural experiment, neither does trying to make it look good by comparing it to Italy.
First lets check on the economic impact. Obviously one of the arguments about re-opening is it is necessary to save the economy. Recognizing that we live in a global economy every economy was going to shrink, including Sweden's regardless of what they did. However, with more domestic activity the hope would be that Sweden's economy shrank by less and showed lower unemployment than its neighbors. That is could things being open with social distancing provide enough economic value to those places to really matter. Lets check the numbers.
Sweden: GDP expected to shrink by 7%
Norway: GDP expected to shrink by 5%
Finland:GDP expected to shrink by 6%
Denmark: GDP expected to shrink by 6.5%
So not a great start but I haven't done all the research and maybe Sweden had a uniquely export based economy even relative to its neighbors. However, at the very least Sweden's economy is not doing significantly better than its neighbors as the result of staying partially open.
So lets move on to the public health impact. Since total positives is really a testing driven number, the most accurate way to track the virus's impact is through deaths and deaths per million.
Sweden: 3,175 deaths and 314 deaths per million
Norway: 217 deaths and 40 deaths per million
Finland: 260 deaths and 47 deaths per million
Denmark: 522 deaths and 90 deaths per million
So these are pretty ugly numbers. Sweden has 3x the number of deaths as Norway, Finland, and Denmark combined. It is pretty clear from these numbers that aggressive social distancing has an impact on the total number of deaths in a country. Whether that trade-off in deaths is worth it for what society is giving up can be debated, whether or not it saves lives can't really be.
There is going to be a lot of retrospective looks at things once this is all over and much of the story has yet to be written including the potential of a second wave, but for now the natural experiment that Sweden and its nordic neighbors provide has given us these numbers. In my opinion its pretty clear that in a globalized economy, staying partially open isn't enough to have a meaningful impact on the economy and it does cost lives. In contrast to Sweden, Norway announced today a plan to essentially re-open the entire economy by June 15th, meanwhile Sweden had more deaths yesterday than Germany.
Most of the economic damage could have been mitigated by the feds.
Instead of shoveling cash to corporations and buying insane amounts of securities to keep the markets afloat, they should have just paid everyone out of work 80% of their salary. Business keep everyone on staff, but don't have to pay them.
At the appropriate time, everyone has a job to go back to and the economy can start right back up.
Isn't this kind of already happening?
A lot of people I know are actually making more money - and have more money in the bank - now than they ever have in their lives.
Yes and no. I have more familiarity with the PPP loans than most people, and I can tell you they're not being used as intended. If a business uses 75% to pay their employees the entire amount become a grant instead of a loan. If they use the money to buy whatever and fire their staff? Now it becomes a loan. At 1% interest.
Guess what a lot of companies are doing?
Navigating the PPP loans for both the company I work for and a small hospitality business my friend owns, I can attest that this is absolutely correct. The main issue with the loans are that you have to use them within 10 days of receipt for that initial 8 week period. This is while many businesses in the hospitality industry are closed and have zero sales so instead of him being able to hold onto this money until it is best for him to move and use that to staff his business for that initial 8 week period and use any money made to pay down his AP, he has to use it now, while closed for any type of forgiveness.
The PPP loans primary use were to minimize those filing for unemployment, there is a reason why the Wall Street Journal referred to the loans being 'Legalized Fraud.'
Also, for small business owners who have personally guaranteed debt, what incentive do they have to not use the PPP loan funds in paying down that personally guaranteed debt when the loan itself is not personally guaranteed?
The fed made the businesses the middleman instead of doing what they should have done, directly.
Show me where you need to use the PPP money within the first 10 days. I'm pretty sure that's not correct. I don't even know what "use them within 10 days of receipt for that initial 8 week period" means.
For forgiveness, you must start to use it within 10 calendar days from receipt, from the SBA website:
Eight Week Forgiveness Period
The amount of forgiveness of a PPP loan depends on the borrower’s payroll costs over an eight-week period; when does that eight-week period begin?
The eight week period test begins on the date that the lender makes the funds available to the borrower. The lender must make the disbursement of the loan no later than ten calendar days from the date of the loan approval.
This is important as many businesses have furloughed or laid off employees they can re hire them and use the PPP program for its intended use of maintaining payroll and hiring back employees who have been laid off and covering applicable overhead.
This says the lender/bank has to make the funds available to the borrower/business within 10 days of the SBA's approval of the loan. It doesn't say the business has to use any or all of the funds within 10 days.
EDIT: And the link you provided is not the SBA's website. It's SBA.com, which says at the top of the page that it "is not associated with SBA.gov."
My apologies, for forgiveness, you don’t need need start the use of funds within 10 days, but you must use the entire amount elective for forgiveness or 75% of the entire loan within 8 weeks of receipt from your lender, to receive full forgiveness:
When does the clock start running on these eight-week loans?
The day the money is deposited into the business’ bank account, said Paul Merski with the Independent Community Bankers of America. Businesses that want to delay using the money right away because they don't think they'll be able to open in eight weeks don't have that option.
Right, that's what I thought.
I was speaking more about stimulus checks + unemployment increases.
For a lot of people, that combination is paying them more than they've ever made in their lives.
In theory, businesses can re-invest loan money into the business (or as you said buy whatever else) at a low interest rate while their employees make more at home due to the stimulus + unemployment.
I'm one of them. Still making my regular salary, saving money by working from home, and I'm not rich, so we got the full $2,900 payment from the feds. Thing is, I didn't really need it. Sure, it was nice to be able to pay down some credit card debt, but I could have gotten by just fine without it.
A stimulus payment is only really effective when the economy is open. If that money came when things were getting back to normal, we probably would have spent it on a new couch and some Botox for Mrs. Hatter.
Yes, but Hatter, you're biased towards believing companies want to misuse this, so you're finding occurrences and extrapolating the response you expect. You're also making conclusions WAY too early.
2 years from now, if companies that normally have 5-10% turnover yr on yr suddenly show a spike to 40+% in 2020 who accepted this loan, then yes, those companies are "misusing" the funds. If they fired some people so they could go take part of that unemployment bonus funds but then they re-hire all the same people, and get a cheap loan in the process... Well, that's not misuse, it's just not how you want them to use it - but the world's not a perfect place.
I'm biased because the first fraud case related to the program came across my desk last week. And there would be a ton more if anyone was actually looking into it.
I'm in full agreement. Policies along these lines are working in much of the world; meanwhile our politicians are quickly heading towards gridlock... once again.
We read Carl Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" for one of my philosophy classes at UM. It was an excellent, inspiring, and informative read that's helped me through my career as a scientist. One of the passages from it has been making the rounds on social media:
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."
Sagan wrote that in the early 90s. It is clearly prescient.
The federal response to this has been an abject disaster mitigated only by most governors (both Rs and Ds) stepping up and most Americans (both Rs and Ds) eventually realizing how bad this could be...sadly a vocal minority continues to be seduced by astroturfed civil unrest campaigns financed by far-right extremists.
It's astonishing that more Americans will die from COVID-19 than were killed in Korea, Vietnam, and probably even WWI all because of how hyperpartisan our country has become.
'The good thing about a democracy is the people get what they deserve, and they get it good and hard.' - Mencken
Here is where I post that gif of what's his face passionately slow clapping in a standing ovation in that one movie.
rosebud
I'm putting that book by Sagan on my "must-read" list once libraries reopen. Sagan clearly anticipated correctly the direction this country was heading decades before most.
It's astonishing that more Americans will die from COVID-19 than were killed in Korea, Vietnam, and probably even WWI all because of how hyperpartisan our country has become.
No. More Americans will die from COVID-19 because it's a virus. This is what viruses do. They spread. People are dying from this all over the world.
Hmmm... Then why have so few died of the virus in New Zealand and South Korea?
It is because they had better polices and leaders than the U.S. The U.S. is getting a comparatively bad result because our leadership and policies for dealing with the virus have been comparatively poor.
I like your post until the end. Comparing COVID deaths to war deaths is not even close to an apt comparison. Even saying that its apples to oranges would be a stretch. More people die from:
1. Heart Disease (~650k/year)
2. Cancer (~600k/year)
etc etc. Why not compare these to war deaths?
Why not cancer? Because cancer has been with our species for at least 1,700,000 years. (I was on the team that found and published that fossil!) It is not new, and we've understood cancer reasonably well for decades. Especially how to prevent many forms of it - like not smoking, not sitting out in the sun for hours without sunscreen if you're white, etc. My line of work (anatomy professor) inherently exposes me to carcinogens - but I take precautions in the form of wearing appropriate PPE to mitigate my risk. Anatomists have also changed how we embalm animals and humans over the decades (today's chemicals are MUCH safer than old school, formaldelhyde-heavy brews).
Why not heart disease? Because heart disease is also not new, though it's really only been with us as a plague for decades, not millions of years. We know how it happens. We know how to prevent it. Each of us takes appropriate steps to avoid getting it - or not - I certainly could get more exercise.
To most living Americans, neither cancer nor heart disease are traumatic and novel. They've been with us as long as we've been alive. Wars, on the other hand, are traumatic, and each one is novel. They require the tools to win. Americans also frequently view every challenge through the lens of warfare. We all know relative death counts from our major wars...whereas most Americans don't think about public health policy at all. Which is why our country did not have the right tools to fight a new virus - all of the PPE is made overseas, federal PPE stockpiles were allowed to rot away, we didn't have the best tests (or even very good tests). We got caught off guard and unprepared. Does that sound more like 9/11 or cancer?
With regards to your first 2 paragraphs, thank you for proving my point.
With regards to the first sentence of your last paragraph, WTF!?!? Cancer or heart disease is not traumatic or novel?!? You must have a heart made of stone.
Well Trump did say you should consider him a war time president.
Sagan was wonderful, beautiful passage.
I'm not sure he would agree with you in terms of who has been deceived, based on the data.
Lockdown was fine. Based on what we now from the data, intensely quarantining the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, while allowing more freedoms to all others (especially young children on which this virus has virtually no substantial effect) seems to be optimal.
I applaud your effort, but I can't even get a group of lifelong friends to talk rationally about the topic. Not much chance strangers on a public forum are going to do it, despite their common ties to the greatest academic institution on earth.
True, but at least so far, the posts on this topic have been lucid and constructive. Although the gif posted above of pulling up a chair may be apropos . . .
Sorry, but projections about things like how much the economy is expected to shrink aren't worth the bytes they're written on.
Also, we know for a fact that different countries have different standards for reporting COVID deaths, making comparisons across different countries completely meaningless unless you can be sure you have a way of presenting apples-to-apples data.
There is no healthy economy without healthy people. I don't understand what the "reopen the economy" people don't understand about this.
It's largely because, when led by a narcissist, their behavior got even more like his. For many of them, their lives are based much more upon a "me me me!" philosophy rather than built upon empathy and ethics.
It's another example of sacrificing long-term strength for short-term gains. Reopening the economy yields a tangible improvement NOW, even though it will have negative long-term consequences. It's wishful thinking at best and cynical bet hedging ('we just need to keep the shit from really hitting the fan until election day') at worst.
I also question whether this push to reopen the economy is actually aimed at improving the economy - or if it's aimed at keeping Americans from realizing that robust, functional social safety nets are potentially preferable to our widespread cultural norms prioritizing independence.
See, for example, conservatives' concerns that too much stimulus money given to individuals would make people realize they were better off not working than working for minimum wage. That's a nice deflection away from how abysmal a minimum wage standard of living affords millions of Americans, isn't it?
Likewise, there is no point to saving all these lives if we drive ourselves straight into another Great Depression. Human misery was unimaginable. Meanwhile, the last pandemic in the US - a flu pandemic in 1957 and 1958 that killed as many as 116,000 people (equivalent to about 225,000 today) - barely registers in the history books, and certainly not on the economy.
Forgive the callous-sounding statement that will follow, but from a purely economic standpoint, we can withstand the loss of 200,000 people, who are mostly in nursing homes or otherwise already using a great deal of our health care resources, far more than we can withstand 6 months (let alone 18) parked at home until a vaccine comes out - if a vaccine comes out.
This take is absolute fucking garbage.
First of all, shove your moralizing up your ass.
Second of all, there is nothing in it that's wrong. Our economy did go through a pandemic, which killed over 100,000 people (again, more than twice that in today's equivalent) and barely suffered a blip. Growth exploded the next year to make up for it. Was that because we didn't outlaw the vast majority of economic activity? Probably had a lot to do with it.
Third, what is the goal? To minimize death and misery from COVID-19 only? Or minimize it overall? We now officially have unemployment at levels not seen since the Depression. We have documented a huge rise in domestic violence. We have not documented, but we can say for sure, that people will die because we closed down the medical system to practically everything but coronavirus treatments.
I don't care if it sounds callous or it makes you feel uncomfortable, because it's the truth. We know our economy can withstand people dying from a pandemic, because it has in the past. Said pandemic does not make a dent in the history books. If we accidentally create another Great Depression with these lockdowns, we know what will happen, because that already happened as well.
You and others spinning the same narrative keep making that same two mistakes.
1. Apples and oranges comparisons: You compare U.S. COVID-19 with fatalities to some other thing (this time a pandemic from the late '50s) that is not comparable.
COVID-19 is far more lethal than '57-'58 pandemic. You compare '57-'58 fatalities over more than a year, and without the kind of shut downs and social distancing we are doing now, to COVID-19. If we all behaved now as they did in '57-'58 pandemic, fatalities would be 1-2 million in the U.S over 12 months.
2. False trade off between lives saved and economic growth: You think that the economy will normalize if we just 'open-up.' It won't, because if people return to January 2020 economy and behavior, exponential growth will return and destroy the economy anyway. The data in the OP illustrates this. Sweden is "open" but has an economic contraction similar to 'closed' Norway.
In this case comparing COVID to the 57-58 flu pandemic is perfectly valid. The point is not over whether one is more likely to kill you if you get it than the other. The point is over whether we can still have an economy if X number of people die. The 57-58 flu pandemic didn't stop the economy and the Spanish flu did not stop the Roaring 20s from taking place. A statement that we'll have no healthy people left unless we keep the economy closed is just a strawman argument.
Also, there's no real data in the OP, as far as the economy goes....it's just a projection by people who have made a range of assumptions and stuck them into a model. Models aren't data. Without knowing the assumptions, the projections are no use.
No, you are wrong. The '57-'57 flu pandemic was not as lethal. Not even close. THAT is why it did not stop the economy. It is your apple to oranges comparison that is the straw man.
As for the economy...you don't like OPs data, so you dismiss it as 'just projections.' Do you have better data that shows that the economy in Sweden is doing substantially better than the numbers the OP cites? If so, please provide the data.
You are avoiding the main flaw in your argument: The false trade-off between opening up and economic growth.
I will say it again. We will not see anything but a terrible economy until the virus has been suppressed. And opening up just moves us further away from suppressing the virus.
Removing formal government orders will not return us to a decent economy until the virus has been beaten back enough that people feel safe consuming and engaging in normal commerce. That is consistent with the numbers in the OP. If you have better data, please produce it.
Norway's GDP shrank by 1.3 percent in the first quarter. Sweden's shrank by 0.3 percent. THAT is data. Projections are not data.
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/gdp-growth
https://tradingeconomics.com/norway/gdp-growth
Everything is a moving target so you can only be so confident but the economic projections are using the same tools. So while I think its likely they could be completely wrong, I think if there were major differences between Sweden and its neighbors it would still be reflected. So the exact number doesn't carry a ton of information, the fact that they are closely grouped does, I think provide something valuable. It could be wrong but doesn't mean its useless to consider.
Same with deaths, while countries do report differently, the difference between Sweden and its neighbors is big enough that you can say with some confidence they have had a higher per capita death rate than their neighbors to this point even if the specific gap is fuzzier. We won't know to what extent social distancing saved lives for years, I think its clear that at some level it does save lives in the short term mitigation phase.
Yes, Sweden's classifications of COVID deaths are more liberal ("any death within 30 days of a positive test") than some others. You are right, that's not necessarily apples-to-apples vs. other countries.
The thing is, we can debate Sweden and their initial response, but as much of the world starts emerging from the lockdown, they are moving toward their standards anyway.
One thing we agree on: U.S. is moving closer to the Sweden model, at least a little.
My predictions:
1. The more we open up the higher the ultimate death toll.
2. Not very clear how much we will actually open up. Lifting formal restrictions may, or may not, get people to change their behavior a lot. It will probably vary a lot in different parts of the U.S., but my guess is that the economy will remained very bad because a lot of consumption/commerce is just not going to happen, even if it is permitted.
I realize that you or others may claim that it would end up with the same fatality numbers no matter what we do (open more; close more), just over a shorter vs. longer time period.
But that is a talking point. It is not a fact. It may, or may not work out that way.
Just one of the reasons I believe that is wrong is that the more we open up, the more we will multiply hot spots. So, if flying rebounds, COVID-19 will be moving from hot spots to other metro areas a lot more, and turning low infection areas into high infection areas.
Piqued my interest with "educated discussion."
Lost me at "you're stupid and your views are worthless."
That isn't how things work man lol.
EDIT: No, I haven't seen the video you speak of, nor do I have intentions to.
Some views are stupid and worthless.
My PhD is in human anatomical evolution. I've been dealing with creationists for decades, and one of the most important lessons of that 100+ years culture battle is that creationists' arguments are simply not worth discussing. Their facts are not facts - they are feel-good falsehoods. If you can't agree on facts, you can't have an educated discussion.
Why? Because you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason into!
People often conflate their right to free speech with a right for their views to be taken seriously.
There actually is a question as to the impact of social distancing/lockdowns on lives saved. By "crushing the curve", as they say, you're not necessarily lowering the impact of the virus, you're just elongating the time frame and lowering the amplitude of hospitalizations/deaths, not necessarily lowering the magnitude.
This iteration of this virus has some true IFR, and therefore, if left unchecked, should kill the same number of people in a finite population, whether 100% infectivity happens over 3 months or 9 months. Sweden has simply chosen the higher amplitude, shorter term situation. If the lockdowns in the US are mostly eased before there is a vaccine (which, the original purpose was never to lock down until a vaccine was available), we will probably see very similar deaths per million to Sweden. It will simply be more drawn out.
Now, the obvious factor that could change this is a major breakthrough treatment before lockdowns are eased. Remdesivir looks helpful in recovery speed, but it's not really a "major" breakthrough as it relates to mortality rates. Ivermectin showed really good numbers in a small-sample observational study (8% mortality in hospitalized patients on Ivermectin vs. 17% not), crushes viral load in vitro, and is now getting clinical studies. Japan hopes to approve use this month. Discovering a treatment that cuts mortality in half in hospitalized patients while in lockdown is the actual thing that would make lockdown worthwhile, not the lockdown per se.
Exactly right. I don't see how people are so dense as to compare these strategies by current deaths, as opposed to looking at it a year or two years from now and showing the total numbers at that point.
A rough anaology for the two mothods is buying a car with cash or financing it. Sweden has bought in cash, so they paid big time up front, where the lockdown countries are financing it and paying it over the long term. If you compare the two bank accounts today, obviously it looks like Sweden made the wrong move. However, compare at the end of the finance period and Sweden looks at least even.
Nobody knows exactly how this will play out but to assume that the lockdown is without question the best strategy, not taking into affect the economic and psychological effects that come with it, is just blind and crazy.
That's a pretty good analogy actually.
This has been debunked. It is not true. Not at all true that the only two choices are 'X deaths over 3 months' versus 'X deaths over 24 months.'
Not at all true the the only thing flattening the curve does is spread out the same number of infections/fatalities over more time. False. Fiction. Flat out bull shit.
The real way to do this is to achieve suppression of the virus. Flattening the curve is just a step that must be achieved before suppression of the virus. That is what South Korea did.
Yeah can someone please explain to me where this notion that no matter the shape of the curves the total number of deaths is the same? That makes no sense, there’s no reason the deaths have to remain constant.
The only way that is possible is if the virus survives indefinitely inside human bodies at a large enough viral load to remain contagious for all eternity.
As you flatten the curve you spread out cases such that the infections run their course and become treated. People who recovered 4 weeks ago aren’t out infecting people. Flattening the curve means we don’t have to infect 100% of society. Therefore less deaths
The only way that it doesn’t is if you lockdown until there is a vaccine, therefore you limited the spread then prevented the spread completely. But that assumes there will be an effective vaccine AND it will come in a reasonable amount of time.
From your perspective, when does lockdown end ? The absolute best case scenario is we get a vaccine in September- the country’s economy will be ruined by then. Plus, odds are it will be next March or later for a vaccine.
So it comes down to one question - WHEN can we end the lockdown and trust people to be smart (distance, mask, sanitize)? Easy to say lockdown with no plan.