‘What the world forgets about Angela Merkel’

[AdamSmith]

https://theweek.com/articles/937721/what-world-forgets-about-angela-merkel-

 

[Greg_blond]

1 hour ago, AdamSmith said:

https://theweek.com/articles/937721/what-world-forgets-about-angela-merkel-

 

She is a "leader" in the true sense of the word, Germany is blessed to have her in these challenging times. Although not all might share this view . . . (and I'm not German)

The corona pandemic, so far, has probably been dealt with in the most efficient and effective way (the German brand) compared to other EU territories.

Despite some flaws (e.g. diesel gate, etc.) she managed to keep the christian democrats in power, rare in the contemporary Europe . . . 

 Wir schaffen das! . . . Although she might need to step up her game given the unresolved EU refugee crisis . . . 

[AdamSmith]

On 9/21/2020 at 4:17 AM, Greg_blond said:

She is a "leader" in the true sense of the word, Germany is blessed to have her in these challenging times. Although not all might share this view . . . (and I'm not German)

The corona pandemic, so far, has probably been dealt with in the most efficient and effective way (the German brand) compared to other EU territories.

Despite some flaws (e.g. diesel gate, etc.) she managed to keep the christian democrats in power, rare in the contemporary Europe . . . 

 Wir schaffen das! . . . Although she might need to step up her game given the unresolved EU refugee crisis . . . 

Just goes to show we need more quantum chemists of whom she is one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chemistry leading the world.

[stevenkesslar]

And, by comparison, President Toxic has made America great again.  Other than the fact that if you're an American, you suck.

U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly

Not surprisingly, 88 % of Germans think their country has done a good job dealing with COVID-19.  9 % of Germans think the US has done a good job.  

Schade!

Citizens in a bunch of the 13 countries polled say they did a similarly  "good job":  Demark (95 %), Australia (94 %), Canada and Germany (88 %), South Korea (87 %), and Netherlands (86 %).  The median for the 13 countries polled is 74 % say they did a good job.  On average, 15 % of people in these 13 countries say the US did a good job.  These countries were all of course poster children for how to attack the virus quickly and effectively with aggressive national leadership.

Germany under Merkel is the opposite of Hitler and authoritarianism.  It's noteworthy that she opened the debate as probably the bluntest of any global leader, saying maybe 70 % of Germans would get the virus.  She is center-right.  But she basically decided to listen to her citizens.  And to science.   Hitler bent over backwards to figure out how to leave his country in a shambles.  Merkel bent over backwards to figure out how to keep people alive and healthy, and get the economy back on track. 

If the US deaths had occurred at the same rate as Germany, adjusted for population, there would be 37,800 dead Americans - as opposed to 208,000.  In effect, Merkel kept it like a particularly bad flu season.  President Toxic is well on his way to making it like World War II in terms of the number of Americans who died in combat.  Germany's economy slowed down less.  Schools reopened quicker.  Their economy is recovering more quickly.  

Merkel is not unique.  That's good news.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist.  Or even a chemist.  A lot has been written about the style of managing this used by female European leaders.  That works for me, if you look at the countries that have done the best. 

That said, it's hard to argue that Scott Morrison is a woman, or a feminist.  But Australian leaders did quickly reach a consensus and acted, as did JT's Canada.  To stretch the analogy, South Korea and even China acted like a country of women.  They were more open to putting the needs of their family and community first.

I have a really tough question to ask you guys that I can't answer.  Why am I completely NOT surprised that in the US the fucked up response that led to unnecessary mass death was associated with men, and guns?

@lookin, there's a question in there you will like about authoritarianism.  Not a shocker, but President Toxic is actually pretty well liked by one type of European:  the ones who are members of the most authoritarian, right-wing party in each country.  I guess authoritarianism is a global language.

Authoritarianism is also still globally unpopular.  It now turns out that these 13 capitalist democracies trust President Toxic even less than Putin or Xi.  Only 16 % said Trump will do the right thing.  That said, all three authoritarian leaders are wildly unpopular.  No surprise, Merkel is far and away the most popular of the bunch, with 76 % confident she'll do the right thing.

This made me think about some other things about authoritarianism, which are mostly just armchair theories.

For several years I've asked a trick question to friends or people I know:  "If you could change history and simply replace Bush with Gore, or Trump with Clinton - but only one - which would you pick?"  Liberals almost always say they'd replace Trump with Clinton.  My oldest brother who voted Obama/Obama/Trump predictably said he'd dump Bush for Gore.  He is a poster child for the "truck driver" brand of Republican.  When I asked him why, he said "the Iraq War."  Here's the trick.  When we had this conversation last year, I surprised a lot of my family by agreeing with him.  I'd replace W. with Gore.  Mostly because it would have wiped out the Iraq War and all the tragedies that followed.

I've now changed my mind.  From 2017 to 2019 I got the fact that the economy was growing and we were not into new wars.  Everything that happened this year now makes me think that President Toxic turned out to be even worse than W.  based on lots of objective standards.  It was probably just a matter of time and luck, anyway.

Those charts about views on the US in each country are interesting.  In France and Germany, the centers of global opposition to the Iraq War, we are now back to being as unpopular as we were under W.  In other countries that were not as opposed to Iraq, like Canada and Australia and the UK, the US is viewed more unfavorably than ever.

I keep going back to John Dean's phrase about how to deal with authoritarians:  "They understand defeat."  We did not "lose" the Iraq War.  But we kind of did.  Just like we kind of lost the Viet Nam War.  One way to understand what President Toxic did is he took a party that was ready to admit Iraq was a sort of defeat and gave them another scapegoat to fear and punish.  In his case, it's more like a Superman comic book.  The list of villains is long, and it keeps changing.  The good news is that lots of Republicans now agree that W. did not "keep us safe" on 9/11.  Like my brother, they don't view the Iraq War as a good thing.  The bad news is that they've kind of swapped one brand of authoritarianism for another.  It goes to your point, and Dean's point, that these people won't just go away.

This begs the question you keep asking:  what do you do with them?  In a sense, they were persuaded that W. and his ideas about safety were wrong.  But getting them to that point did involve a type of defeat.  They did agree W. did not "keep us safe".  They did agree Iraq was a debacle.  And then they chose another authoritarian leader who gives them Muslims and Mexicans and the China virus to fear and hate.

Merkel is an alternative model.  She gave people a feeling of safety and security, and jobs.  More work in factories and shops, less COVID-19.  They still have the AfD.  But they haven't gotten close to taking power nationally.  At least not yet.  As you stated, there was Adenauer.  He had authoritarian tendencies.  He used Marxists as his whipping boy.  But he also got people focused on building Volkswagens.

I think there are lessons in that for Biden.  He is just not going to convince "Trump Republicans" that their fearless leader is the problem, not the solution.  But he can at least try to focus them on another problem:  their safety, and their jobs.  That will happen gradually, if it happens, when he has the soapbox and ex-President Toxic doesn't.  It's 80 years past the start of World War II.  But Merkel does offer a model for how you get there.

All this data reminds me of the story I posted about a week ago about these interviews with people waiting in line for President Toxic's unsafe rally in Nevada.  There was the woman who said it seemed like Trump had done a better job managing COVID-19 than "any other country around here".  Maybe she never heard of Canada.  But my guess is if you showed her the numbers of COVID-19 in Canada and these polls about views of the US, she'd still insist with no hint to irony that America is stronger.  After all, who cares what socialists think anyway?  

Some of these authoritarian followers are just not going to change.  The good news is that President Toxic is getting more desperate.  He went to Nevada because he needs some blue state he can actually flip, since the ones he flipped in 2016 are back to being blue it seems.  When he held his rally on Sept. 14, he was losing Nevada by 5.8 % in the poll averages.  Today he's losing it by 6.5 %. 

Everyone quoted in that article at the rally said it was perfectly obvious Trump was going to win.  How could he lose?  So we'll see.  They are not prepared for defeat.  We'll see if they understand it when it happens.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

Europe now has worse corvid stats than the US. 

[AdamSmith]

1 hour ago, tassojunior said:

Europe now has worse corvid stats than the US. 

What I read says not. Supporting reporting?

[lookin]

3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

@lookin, there's a question in there you will like about authoritarianism.  Not a shocker, but President Toxic is actually pretty well liked by one type of European:  the ones who are members of the most authoritarian, right-wing party in each country.  I guess authoritarianism is a global language.

 . . .

It goes to your point, and Dean's point, that these people won't just go away.

 . . .

This begs the question you keep asking:  what do you do with them?

 . . .

Some of these authoritarian followers are just not going to change.

As I've posted before, I understand authoritarianism as a psychological construct.  And, while it has social and political implications, it's an enduring characteristic of a subset of the population.  I also believe it has a genetic component as (a.) it has persisted throughout human history and (b.) it exists in other species besides humans, although not in all species and to differing degrees when it does.  My understanding is that about 30% of humans are authoritarian followers and the key to activating them is to stoke their fear of "the other".

So, yes, authoritarianism is a global phenomenon and, no, it's not going to disappear from the human race anytime soon, and I think the way to change authoritarian followers is through reducing - rather than fanning - their fears.  

My take is that the persistence of authoritarianism in the human population, probably passed through the genes, is sometimes necessary for the survival of the species.  There have been - and likely will be again - times when outside threats are real and immediate and the need to obey a leader fast and without question is necessary for survival.

But there are times - like the times we've been blessed with since I can remember - when unquestioning obedience is not required.  Not only is it not required, but it can be downright harmful as we are seeing today.  Naturally, that doesn't mean that authoritarian followers disappear overnight from the gene pool.  They're still there - and still here - and when they are gathered together and manipulated for ill intent by an unscrupulous leader they can destabilize a society.

I think about this every day and, since I last posted, I've revised the definition of the problem away from the fact that we have a large number of authoritarian followers among us and toward the fact that we're not very aware of it and we don't know how to minimize the harm they can do when they are misused by a leader for his own antisocial purposes.

Angela Merkel is aware of this and so, I thought, were most Germans and most of us who can remember the last time authoritarian followers were used to bring down a society.

Currently, the US seems to have lost this institutional awareness and we're watching the German playbook being repeated page for page.  And we seem to be nearly as compliant as the German citizens were when their rights were finally stripped away by the Enabling Act.  Nearly, but not quite.  I think we still have time to learn from the past but it's rapidly slipping away.

With that redefinition of the problem to "lack of awareness", I'll suggest one solution might be a House subcommittee to evaluate the risk of authoritarianism to our democracy.  The Committee would answer the questions: (1.) How big a risk is authoritarianism to our democracy?, (2.) What authoritarian forces are there in the country today?, and (3.) How should we reduce the threat of authoritarianism to our democracy?  And I'd publish interim findings as they come out of committee.

I'd like to see the issue of authoritarianism become public discourse at the speed of light.

 

[tassojunior]

6 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

What I read says not. Supporting reporting?

You don't read very often then. Europe has been ahead of the US in the R-factor a couple weeks at least. I can't find it but the last couple days I saw the R-factor in the US had fallen under 1.0 (it's headed back up probably) , while in Europe it was over 1.4 in several of the biggest countries (and headed further up in Europe alarmingly in a big 2nd wave). Merkel always said the R-factor was most important and we had to get it under 1.0. You can try to find the current R factors if you have time. I don't.

Reuters and the Guardian seem to have the best graphs and stats. I'm surprised they don't have the R-factor prominently:

https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/

https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/USA-TRENDS/dgkvlgkrkpb/index.html

Anyway France with 12% of our population has 25% as many new cases in that first story today. Twice our new infection rate. Europe probably just went into the 2nd wave faster than we did as our new case rate is up 15% in the past 2 weeks now. 

https://www.geopoliticalmatters.com/2020/05/coronavirus-what-exactly-is-r-and-how.html?m=1

 

https://amp.ft.com/content/121c2f30-9f69-11ea-ba68-3d5500196c30?__twitter_impression=true

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by tassojunior

[AdamSmith]

https://www.gzeromedia.com/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNzA0MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0OTc1NzAzOH0.RvayFWD0RHYLS1j92-YlcLx71t94O5oZz8VfLhsjtWc/image.png?width=980

[AdamSmith]

[stevenkesslar]

5 hours ago, lookin said:

With that redefinition of the problem to "lack of awareness", I'll suggest one solution might be a House subcommittee to evaluate the risk of authoritarianism to our democracy.  The Committee would answer the questions: (1.) How big a risk is authoritarianism to our democracy?, (2.) What authoritarian forces are there in the country today?, and (3.) How should we reduce the threat of authoritarianism to our democracy?  And I'd publish interim findings as they come out of committee.

First, I like that definition.  Foster awareness of the downside of lots of people following authoritarian leaders.  And find ways to diminish the flames, not fan them.

On a less serious note, I was thinking if we're going to put a committee together, Don, Jr.  would be a great Chairman.  That way, he can get some experience as a leader.  What do you think?

[Greg_blond]

14 hours ago, tassojunior said:

Europe now has worse corvid stats than the US. 

It is correct that some areas in Europe are currently experiencing a second wave of the Covid crisis

Spain and France are really hit hard . . . Italy apparently learned a lot from the first crisis

Germany is again doing well so far . . . maybe because the majority of its population trusts its leader :-) 

Hopefully Ursula von der Leyen (EC president), former minister of Angela Merkel (but she did not do a good job as minister of defense), will solve the ongoing European refugee crisis . . . She recently launched proposals, fingers crossed   !!!

Happy Sunday to all !

[tassojunior]

10 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

That was June. You can't just read every 4 months. 

Here's the current edition of that same graph from Hopkins. Since June the R-rate for the US has been much lower than Europe's up until the last week when the 2nd wave seems to have started in the US. This past week the rate in Europe has soared to above US levels and the 2nd wave seems to be hitting equally so far.

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, Greg_blond said:

It is correct that some areas in Europe are currently experiencing a second wave of the Covid crisis

It is interesting.  The thing that is obvious is that while some countries - like Spain and France - are having as many or more infections as the first wave, they have a small fraction of the deaths they had in the Spring. 

Meanwhile, other countries - like India and Argentina - are in a very different place.  Their pattern is like what happened in the first wave almost everywhere - more infection simply means more death.

The US is more like India than like Europe.  More infection means more death.  But what might be called our "second wave" involved more infections but fewer deaths than the first wave.  Some of that has to be that the people who are most affected are now better informed and playing it safe.  Some of it is because of states like New York.  Whatever they are doing to mitigate infection - and death - seems to be working.  New York, unlike France or Spain, has kept the number of infections low.  So New York's deaths are a very small fraction of what they were this Spring.  Like 10 deaths a day now on a bad day, as opposed to 1,000 deaths a day this Spring.

It all fits into what seems to be the global mantra for managing this:  The Hammer And The Dance.  If you haven't read that, it's worth reading it or glancing through it.   Tomas Pueyo, the author, published several papers this Spring as we were just starting to become aware.  As far as I can tell, the most influential one was Why You Must Act Now, which hit on March 10 and motivated the idea of immediate shut down - like today.  Which is exactly what California did, starting in the Bay Area.  (Pueyo used to be a data analyst at Facebook, I think.)  In retrospect, everything important Pueyo argued turned out to be correct.  That was back when President Toxic was still saying "only a few cases" ..... "miraculously go away" ... blah blah blah.  Pueyo said this is way deeper and broader than we suspect, as New York and New Jersey sadly learned within a matter of weeks.

This phrase "hammer and the dance" is being used all over the world to describe government efforts.  The most recent I can remember is watching some interview of John Kasich where he was asked about the conflict between keeping people safe and alive,  and the economic impact of keeping things closed.  He immediately referenced the idea of "the hammer and the dance" and said we have to all get as good as we can at "dancing" around the virus.  Masks and social distancing are the basics, of course.  But after the initial "hammer" - which pretty much all of Europe did well - now they are doing a bunch of things.  None of it is awful news.

Spain and France fall in one category, and the case and death charts I hyperlinked tell the story visually.  In Spain the number of infections climbed back to its Spring peak.  But the number of deaths is maybe 10 % of what happened in Spain this Spring.  Everyone seems to agree its because young adults are getting infected a lot more.  But they are not dying. That said, some of them may be dying, or they may be spreading it to more vulnerable adults who are dying. There is a spike in the number of deaths, but nothing like what happened this Spring.  France is even more extreme.  They've blown way past the number of infections they had this Spring - like 15,000 a day now versus 5,000 a day this Spring.  But, again, the number of deaths is maybe 10 % of what they had this Spring.  

It seems like this is a natural experiment that could go well, or be really bad.  As far as I can tell the message in Spain and France to young people is be responsible, and don't spread this virus.  So far, it seems like it is being contained among parts of the population that mostly don't get very sick, or die.  Whether that can last through Winter is a whole different question.  It could get very ugly again.  That said, a more optimistic view is that once these young adults get sick and recover, they are immune and can no longer spread the virus.  Like I said, it seems like it's an unplanned experiment in herd immunity, mostly driven by the fact that young adults are not as concerned about following the rules.  It's too early to know what the outcome will be.

Germany could be the poster child for "the hammer and the dance".  They did crush the virus as effectively as any country.  They were probably too optimistic after doing that in thinking they could effectively make Germany COVID-free.  The number of case loads has gradually risen.  But so far it is staying at a plateau much lower than what was going on in the Spring.  And the number of deaths is maybe 2 or 3 % of the number they had this Spring.  So business is picking up again, and they seem to have it contained more like a very bad flu year than like the Spanish flu.

By comparison, India and Argentina just look sad.  It is what you'd expect with an uncontained and deadly virus.  The number of daily infections just keeps going up, and as that happens the number of deaths just keeps going up.  The shape of the infection curves and death curves look exactly the same.  

So for some reason, in some parts of the world a lot more infection means a lot more death.  In Europe, so far, a lot more infection does not mean a lot more death.

Our neighbor Canada looks a lot more like Europe than the US.  Their daily caseloads are climbing substantially, and they are definitely into a second wave.  But, unlike the US, the death curve looks very low.  People are getting "sick", but mostly not dying.

I think the main explanation is that some countries are way better than others, both at the initial "hammer" of crushing the virus - which President Toxic never really even tried to do -  and now in the continuous "dance" around keeping it contained and not letting it kill lots of people.

 

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

This is an extension of what I posted directly above.  Kind of morbid, but I think over six months in the death rates tell us a lot about what has worked and what hasn't worked.   These are the deaths per million citizens for various countries, and then several US states, ranked from deadliest to least deadly.

New York -  1707 dead per million

Spain - 668 dead per million

Brazil - 665 dead per million

Florida - 653 dead per million

USA - 631 dead per million

Texas - 546 dead per million

California - 394 dead per million

Canada - 245 dead per million

Germany -  114 dead per million

Australia - 34 dead per million

South Korea - 8 dead per million

Here's also some relevant statistics for GDP decline in the second quarter of 2020

Germany   -  10.1 %  GDP

USA     - 9.5 %  GDP

Australia      - 7 % GDP

South Korea      -  2 % GDP

 

When the dust settles, I think we'll learn that the countries that had the least deadly health impacts also had the least painful economic impacts.  China is # 1 on that list.  Since there is doubt about the credibility of their numbers, I didn't post any.  But there's all kinds of evidence from external numbers that their economy took less of a hit, and it is growing again.  South Korea is basically a different version of the same thing.  They were on masks and contact tracing and containment from Day One.  As a result, their economic contraction was not as deep as many other countries that had to shut everything down.

There was no avoiding taking a huge economic hit for countries that have had way better health outcomes so far, like Germany and Australia.  In fact, that was partly the point.  To hammer it into control with an abrupt and effective shut down, and meanwhile put all kinds of mitigation steps into place.    It has not stopped the virus from rebounding, which is not a shocker.  But if you just go by number of deaths Germany and Australia spared their countries of lots of sick and dead people as a result of the measures they took and the economic hit they absorbed.

It will always be a mystery to me why New York got hit so much harder than California.  Maybe the China travel ban helped, but it was leaky.  California shut down earlier, but only by about a week I think.  So mostly it was probably just bad luck for New York, which was flooded with Europeans when the virus was silently spreading like crazy.

I was more optimistic about how things would go in California.  When the virus spread through the Sunbelt states, it essentially worked the same way.  Florida took less precautions, California took more.  But in both states, infections spike.  I blame part of that on President Toxic.  We didn't have the "Liberate The Virus" crowds with guns at the state Capitol like Michigan did.  But California was not immune from the right wing pushback.  And part of it is that even the most obedient children - like Germany and Australia and South Korea - have learned that this virus is not easy to contain.  The difference is those three countries have a national consensus to relentlessly try to contain it.  More than anything, in California it's disproportionately Hispanics that have to go to work and risk their lives.  61 % of the cases and 48 % of the deaths in California are Latinos, which are 39 % of the state's population.

If California had the same death rate as New York, there would be 50,000 or so more dead Americans in California alone.  

It was just sad, and cruel, when President Toxic went after the "blue states".  It is true that Cuomo and DeBlasio could have acted earlier.  Like I said, the slightly earlier shut downs in California is one reason our death rate was lower than New York.  But Cuomo was not get briefings like President Toxic was every day, which we now know from Woodward President Toxic understood very well.  We'll never know what would have happened in February if Trump did his job and actually warned Americans of the wave of death that was coming.

This sad, sorry, incompetent, and miserable excuse for a leader will lose in November, and lose very badly.  His name will be remembered by history for being exactly as bad as he was.  The only question left, really, is whether the poor pathetic man goes to jail before he goes to hell.  I wouldn't bet either way on that one.

Edited September 27, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[Suckrates]

56 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

This sad, sorry, incompetent, and miserable excuse for a leader will lose in November, and lose very badly.  His name will be remembered by history for being exactly as bad as he was.  The only question left, really, is whether the poor pathetic man goes to jail before he goes to hell.  I wouldn't bet either way on that one.

My dear Kessie,  I can truly appreciate your ra-ra enthusiasm for the demise of Trump, one way or the other.   I share your sentiments...  But PLEASE remember 2016 when everyone had ra-ra enthusiasm for Hillary, AND WE GOT TRUMP......   It COULD happen again....   And that would make all your pages and pages of postings about his loss even sadder....  Maybe we need to turn the optimism DOWN just a smidge ?     For almost 4 years Trump has been pulling fucking rabbits out of a hat, lied, mishandled, schemed and destroyed our democracy without ANY consequences... 

I hope you are right, BUT you could end up wrong ?        

[tassojunior]

12 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

It is interesting.  The thing that is obvious is that while some countries - like Spain and France - are having as many or more infections as the first wave, they have a small fraction of the deaths they had in the Spring. 

Meanwhile, other countries - like India and Argentina - are in a very different place.  Their pattern is like what happened in the first wave almost everywhere - more infection simply means more death.

The US is more like India than like Europe.  More infection means more death.  But what might be called our "second wave" involved more infections but fewer deaths than the first wave.  Some of that has to be that the people who are most affected are now better informed and playing it safe.  Some of it is because of states like New York.  Whatever they are doing to mitigate infection - and death - seems to be working.  New York, unlike France or Spain, has kept the number of infections low.  So New York's deaths are a very small fraction of what they were this Spring.

It all fits into what seems to be the global mantra for managing this:  The Hammer And The Dance.  If you haven't read that, it's worth reading it or glancing through it.   Tomas Pueyo, the author, published several papers this Spring as we were just starting to become aware.  As far as I can tell, the most influential one was Why You Must Act Now, which hit on March 10 and motivated the idea of immediate shut down - like today.  Which is exactly what California did, starting in the Bay Area.  (Pueyo used to be a data analyst at Facebook, I think.)  In retrospect, everything important Pueyo argued turned out to be correct.  That was back when President Toxic was still saying "only a few cases" ..... "miraculously go away" ... blah blah blah.  Pueyo said this is way deeper and broader than we suspect, as New York and New Jersey sadly learned within a matter of weeks.

This phrase "hammer and the dance" is being used all over the world to describe government efforts.  The most recent I can remember is watching some interview of John Kasich where he was asked about the conflict between keeping people safe and alive,  and the economic impact of keeping things closed.  He immediately referenced the idea of "the hammer and the dance" and said we have to be all get as good as we can at "dancing" around the virus.  Masks and social distancing are the basics, of course.  But after the initial "hammer" - which pretty much all of Europe did well - now they are doing a bunch of things.  None of it is awful news.

Spain and France fall in one category, and the case and death charts I hyperlinked tell the story visually.  In Spain the number of infections climbed back to its Spring peak.  But the number of deaths is maybe 10 % of what happened in Spain this Spring.  Everyone seems to agree its because young adults are getting infected a lot more.  But they are not dying. That said, some of them may be dying, or they may be spreading it to more vulnerable adults who are dying. There is a spike in the number of deaths, but nothing like what happened this Spring.  France is even more extreme.  They've blown way past the number of infections they had this Sring - like 15,000 a day now versus 5,000 a day this Spring.  But, again, the number of deaths is maybe 10 % of what they had this Spring.  

It seems like this is a natural experiment that could go well, or be really bad.  As far as I can tell the message in Spain and France to young people is be responsible, and don't spread this virus.  So far, it seems like it is being contained among parts of the population that mostly don't get very sick, or die.  Whether that can last through Winter is a whole different question.  It could get very ugly again.  That said, a more optimistic view is that once these young adults get sick and recover, they are immune and can no longer spread the virus.  Like I said, it seems like it's an unplanned experiment in herd immunity, mostly driven by the fact that young adults are not as concerned about following the rules.  It's too early to know what the outcome will be.

Germany could be the poster child for "the hammer and the dance".  They did crush the virus as effectively as any country.  They were probably too optimistic after doiung that in thinking they could effectively make Germany COVID-free.  The number of case loads has gradually risen, but so far is staying at a plateau much lower than what was going on in the Spring.  And the number of deaths is maybe 2 or 3 % of the number they had this Spring.  So business is picking up again, and they seem to have it contained more like a very bad flu year than like the Spanish flu.

By comparison, India and Argentina just look sad.  It is what you'd expect with an uncontained and deadly virus.  The number of daily infections just keeps going up, and as that happens the number of deaths just keeps going up.  The shape of the infection curves and death curves look exactly the same.  

So for some reason, in some parts of the world a lot more infection means a lot more death.  In Europe, so far, a lot more infection does not mean a lot more death.

Our neighbor Canada looks a lot more like Europe than the US.  Their daily caseloads are climbing substantially, and they are definitely into a second wave.  But, unlike the US, they death curve looks very low.  People are getting "sick", but mostly not dying.

I think the main explanation is that some countries are way better than others, both at the initial "hammer" of crushing the virus - which President Toxic never really even tried to do -  and now in the continuous "dance" around keeping it contained and not letting it kill lots of people.

 

 

It's not just France and Spain tat have a huge new surge. Belgium has the worst situation and just today:

The reproduction R rate of Covid-19 infections in the UK has risen to 1.2-1.5 as cases jumped by 60 per cent in a week. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-news-latest-roundup-r-rate-london-leeds-lockdown-b601113.html  As I copied above the UK has a table of when "hammers" fall that should mean a new lockdown. But there are riots in London over re-closing bars and restaurants, as there have been this week in other European capitals. 

Meanwhile New York, as I cited, now somehow incredibly has a immunity rate of over 33% because it had that terrible burst of hellish proportions. It's bars and restaurants etc are open with no big uptick. Similarly the Lombardy region of Italy which had the world's worst surge to begin this pandemic, is now extremely quiet while regions of Europe that had never had many cases, like Czech Republic, are soaring just as the new wave in the US is hitting hardest in previously almost virus-free states of North and South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc. Of course the 2nd wave starting this week is new and anything could happen but it seems like, as in Europe, in already-surged areas from the 1st wave, the new cases are mostly young people in schools and bars and there is not as much contagion to older people yet at least. 

As Merkel famously said when this all started in March, covid is so contagious that 70% of us at least are eventually going to be infected and lockdowns are needed to slow the numbers, the R Rate, to what will allow our hospitals and medical staff to cope with the epidemic. I'm not sure anyone ever thought of having a real lockdown until a vaccine was easily accessible. Sweden's experiment in no lockdown at all leading to herd immunity was a failure but nevertheless, it seems areas that have already been ravaged hardest are fairly immune from the worst of the 2nd wave. But we have control over some things, like slowing the epidemic, but not over ending it until there's a widely-used vaccine.  China with it's harsh total lockdown and culling into dorms of the infected was effective and Europe with it's harsh lockdown was more effective than the US at slowing the virus expansion into previously mostly unaffected areas. But overall the US and Europe experience has been somewhat similar (with Germany and California doing better than others) . It's more that the European wave started and subsided first when the American 1st wave was peaking. Now they're more similar in this 2nd wave so far. There is an ability to slow infection rates somewhat by government action but that doesn't seem to stop contagion from eventually happening unless you're a totalitarian government like China and can take inhumane drastic measures very quickly.  

9 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

This is an extension of what I posted directly above.  Kind of morbid, but I think over six months in the death rates tell us a lot about what has worked and what hasn't worked.   These are the deaths per million citizens for various countries, and then several US states, ranked from deadliest to least deadly.

New York -  1707 dead per million

Spain - 668 dead per million

Brazil - 665 dead per million

Florida - 653 dead per million

USA - 631 dead per million

Texas - 546 dead per million

California - 394 dead per million

Canada - 245 dead per million

Germany -  114 dead per million

Australia - 34 dead per million

South Korea - 8 dead per million

Here's also some relevant statistics for GDP decline in the second quarter of 2020

Germany   -  10.1 %  GDP

USA     - 9.5 %  GDP

Australia      - 7 % GDP

South Korea      -  2 % GDP

 

When the dust settles, I think we'll learn that the countries that had the least deadly health impacts also had the least painful economic impacts.  China is # 1 on that list.  Since there is doubt about the credibility of their numbers, I didn't post any.  But there's all kinds of evidence from external numbers that their economy took less of a hit, and it is growing again.  South Korea is basically a different version of the same thing.  They were on masks and contact tracing and containment from Day One.

There was no avoiding taking a huge economic hit for countries that had way better health outcomes so far, like Germany and Australia.  In fact, that was partly the point.  To hammer it into control with an abrupt and effective shut down, and meanwhile put all kinds of mitigation steps into place.    It has not stopped the virus from rebounding, which is not a shocker.  But if you just go by number of deaths Germany and Australia spared their countries of lots of sick and dead people as a result of the measures they took and the economic hit they absorbed.

It will always be a mystery to me why New York got hit harder than California.  Maybe the China travel ban helped, but it was leaky.  California shut down earlier, but only by about a week I think.  So mostly it was probably just bad luck for New York which was flooded with Europeans when the virus was silently spreading like crazy.

I was more optimistic about how things would go in California.  When the virus spread through the Sunbelt states, it essentially worked the same way.  Florida took less precautions, California took more.  But in both states, infections spike.  I blame part of that on President Toxic.  We didn't have the "Liberate The Virus" crowds with guns at the state Capitol like Michigan did.  But California was not immune from the right wing pushback.  And part of it is that even the most obedient children - like Germany and Australia and South Korea - have learned that this virus is not easy to contain.  The difference is those three countries has a national consensus to relentlessly try to contain it.  More than anything, in California it's disproportionately Hispanics that have to go to work and risk their lives.  61 % of the cases and 48 % of the deaths in California are Latinos, which are 39 % of the state's population.

If California had the same death rate as New York, there would be 50,000 or so more dead Americans in California alone.  

It was just sad, and cruel, when President Toxic went after the "blue states".  It is true that Cuomo and DeBlasio could have acted earlier.  Like I said, the slightly earlier shut downs in California is one reason our death rate was lower than New York.  But Cuomo was not get briefings like President Toxic was every day, which we now know from Woodward President Toxic understood very well.  We'll never know what would have happened in February if Trump did his job and actually warned the Americans of the wave of death that was coming.

This sad, sorry, incompetent, and miserable excuse for a leader will lose in November, and lose very badly.  His name will be remembered by history for being exactly as bad as he was.  The only question left, really, is whether the poor pathetic man goes to jail before he goes to hell.  I wouldn't bet either way on that one.

Yes but New York has a density much greater than any place in California outside downtown San Francisco, the population is much older, the virus hit there first (except for a couple odd cases direct from China in CA and OR), and New York now has an immunity rate way up at 33% while CA's is 1%. We'll see how the 2nd wave affects NY v CA, especially rural inland areas and northern CA, whether the harsh Bay Area lockdown holds, and if the no-lockdown in NY( and FL) results in more cases and deaths. So far 2nd wave seems confined to younger people but that can change (or not). And much of CA has not had a 1st wave yet. If the Bay Area were suddenly to drop all lockdowns a huge 1st wave would probably come through. 

Politically Trump is an obnoxious moron pandering to the basest instincts of people and any president during such a national disaster should be defeated by a huge margin. Jimmy Carter was hardly responsible for either the world recession/Iran crisis but was swept out in a landslide (even though he was personally very-well-liked) after 4 years just as Hoover was for the Great (World) Depression. The fact this election seems more tight is a condemnation of the Dems who many, if not most, people see as little better than Trump. That's a low bar.

But I'm certain making a political football out of an epidemic is very bad policy today for either Trump or the Democrats. It was stupid politically when the right-wing Dems in unison on Jan 31 denounced Trump's China travel ban as racist and xenophobic. That dog comes back to bite with younger voters who wade the muck of America's corporate yellow press and see both political parties as immoral opportunists for solely their own gain. A president in such a time is normally going to lose big anyway. The opportunism just backfires and helps him by lessening motivation of the young to be rid of him for the "alternative". Trump is stupid. The right-wing "centrist" Dems are even stupider. Dumb vs Dumber may not get a lot of motivation kindled for anyone. Reagan had a favorable landslide mandate when he tossed out Carter (which he used), as did Obama when he defeated Bush I (which Obama did not use, he became a Republican clone). Biden-Harris is aiming for a "we don't stink as much as the other guy" and generating zero enthusiasm for them among the young and (majority) independent. IMO I think clearly their goal is to be the "new" Republican party and let the Trumpists keep the "old" Republican party. Since we're a government-sanctioned 2-party system that leaves reformer democrats out in the cold.

But i'd be careful with making a political football out of the pandemic by either party. The Democrats should let Trump play that game alone to his own detriment to thinking people. Backlash to opportunism that kills motivation to be rid of him is the only card he has. 

  

[tassojunior]

3 hours ago, tassojunior said:

That was June. You can't just read every 4 months. 

Here's the current edition of that same graph from Hopkins. Since June the R-rate for the US has been much lower than Europe's up until the last week when the 2nd wave seems to have started in the US. This past week the rate in Europe has soared to above US levels and the 2nd wave seems to be hitting equally so far.

 

 

 

Also from WaPo today:

Cases per 100,000 population in Spain (293.76) and France (213.8) have both surpassed the United States (176.62). Israel is also struggling to cope with a second wave (797.19 per 100,000); 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/europe-is-facing-its-second-covid-19-wave-countries-must-act-together-to-contain-it/2020/09/27/15785896-fdbc-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, Suckrates said:

I hope you are right, BUT you could end up wrong ?        

Of course I could.  I mean, you've always had better taste than me in men.  You've always been more skilled in deep throating.  So, to be blunt, it would not be a shocker if you were right about this as well.

In fact, let's just say it, okay?  You have always been a stronger and smarter woman than me.  I'm not ashamed to tell the truth.  

So here's a couple other truths.

First, I just decided to stop posting for a few months.  Daddy and I had a sort of falling out that was a long time coming, I'd say.  It's multi-dimensional, and better left unsaid.  But the fact that he started a racist thread (in my opinion) that essentially said Black Lives Don't Matter was my last straw.  And I don't miss the useless ranting back and forth with Toxic Trump supporters.  As should be very clear, these posts are mostly my own intellectual masturbation.  If other people enjoy them, great.  But I mostly just use them to learn things I didn't know and think them through out loud.

There was a specific reason for the timing of when I started posting here.  And it was the topic of my first post:  Allan Lichtman.  I actually was thrilled when I read he called 2020 for Biden.

There's two things about that.  Number one, he has been right on every call so far, since 1984.  Number two, whether he is right or not in 2020, his theory explains why he SHOULD be right.  His basic argument is that Americans are smart enough to judge how well Presidents govern, not how well they campaign or text.  So I agree with him.  President Toxic WILL lose, and President Toxic SHOULD lose.  He fucked up the economy, he divided America to the point of mass social unrest, and he is going to lose for those reasons and more.  That said, Lichtman has been quoted this year as saying he gets butterflies in his stomach every time he makes such a call.  This time he might be wrong.  Stay tuned.

Right or wrong, I did make a mental adjustment when I read his stuff.  It's been a shitty year.  And if you asked me six months ago, I would have said Biden has at best a 50/50 chance at winning.  If you asked Lichtman before the pandemic, I'm pretty sure he'd have said that as of today Trump will probably win.  So my optimism is sincere, and intentional.  

I am more confident than I was in both 2012 and 2016.  In both years the polls were close enough - like within a point or two - not very long before Election Day.  So far, in 2020, that has not happened.  The polls change, of course.  But what is interesting this year is actually that they don't.  Biden has had a poll lead of like 5 % + every single day going back to last year.

I think of it the way I did back in our youth, when we were just two girls in finishing school.    Granted, what were the odds that an ugly little duckling like me would get to suck the 9" cock of the captain of the football team?   But if you recall, my dear, I did end up sucking it.  And I think I did an excellent job, all 27 times.   So it never hurts to hope for the best.  That's true whether it is chewing on a horse hung cock, or making sure that one of the biggest assholes to ever lead our country ends up being as fucked as he can possibly be.

And please forgive my blunt talk and rude manners.  You know me.  I'm just an overstimulated whore.  

[Pete1111]

It takes a noble gentleman to admit he's not the #1 cock gobbler in the room.  

That said, network news reports this evening that ongoing anti-mask/lockdown protests continue in London.

A segment of US doctors, health gurus and others continue to spew their position that the pandemic should not require Americans to wear masks or social distance.

And Rand Paul spewed false pandemic claims about herd immunity this week while he criticized Dr. Fauci during more Senate hearings.

Sounds like the pandemic death toll is sort of acceptable to these people.

Now, some better news this evening:  COVID hospitalizations in LA and Orange County are dropping.  The data varies depending on which news source, but in any case, good to hear.

I should say something about A.M., to stay with the OP.  The article attributed her being basically standing at the head of European affairs.  Reminds me of a pre-covid protest I attended where one of the LA board of supervisors spoke about kidnapping and murder of gays in Chechnya, and how we need the leader of the free world, Angela Merkel to stand up to Russia.  That got a rousing cheer from the crowd.  I look forward to better times when we can gather safely, and better times after bad-POTUS is out of the WH. 

Edited September 28, 2020 by Pete1111
edits

[stevenkesslar]

I agree with your point @tassojunior that Democrats should not make this a political football.  

That said, I'll repeat what a new poll said that surprised me.  Americans agree 3 to 1 with Nancy Pelosi's $2 trillion relief package.  They did not call it Nancy's plan.  If they had described Mitch's plan, maybe people would have said they support that 3 to 1 as well.  Either way, it's good news there is that much public support, I think.

So in a sense there is some political footballing, about how to help the American people.  And also on whether to have a mask mandate, which Americans overwhelmingly support.  That is the way I think Democrats should play pandemic politics.  Support things that help people who need help, and that most Americans support.   (As an aside, this is true in Kentucky, too.  That state poll that showed Rich Mitch way ahead of Amy also showed very strong majority support for federal pandemic relief.)

7 hours ago, tassojunior said:

Yes but New York has a density much greater than any place in California outside downtown San Francisco, the population is much older, the virus hit there first (except for a couple odd cases direct from China in CA and OR), and New York now has an immunity rate way up at 33% while CA's is 1%. We'll see how the 2nd wave affects NY v CA, especially rural inland areas and northern CA, whether the harsh Bay Area lockdown holds, and if the no-lockdown in NY( and FL) results in more cases and deaths. So far 2nd wave seems confined to younger people but that can change (or not). And much of CA has not had a 1st wave yet. If the Bay Area were suddenly to drop all lockdowns a huge 1st wave would probably come through. 

I'd be careful about density.  Some of the densest cities in the world - Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong - have had some of the lowest infections rates.  It's not a coincidence that they are Asian.  Being Asian (stereotype: communitarian) helps compared to being an American or Brit (stereotype: individualistic) in this pandemic.  It's not unlike @lookin's theory about a genetic basis for authoritarianism.  Any of those Asian cities I just named is a good example of how a communitarian ethic helps when it comes to a pandemic.  And any White asshole with a gun outside a State Capitol ranting "Liberate The Virus!" is an example of how individualism is hurting the US very badly.  On the face of it, individualism or libertarianism has a lot more to due with why 200,000 Americans are dead than density.

And speaking of assholes and libertarians, Rand Paul doesn't know shit.  Maybe there is herd immunity somewhere.  Maybe COVID-19 cross-reacts with with antibodies from prior and less deadly Coronaviruses.  But he doesn't know that.  Nor does Dr. Fauci, as he said when he bitch-slapped Rand.  

This completely wrong article is worth a peak:  "New York and California May Have Already Achieved Herd Immunity, Data Scientist Says."  That's from an Israeli scientist who also said that Israel had reached its COVID-19 peak. On Aug. 30, the day before that article came out, Israel had 555 cases.  By Sept. 23, it had 11,316 cases.  Oops!  So much for herd immunity.  I do not believe for one second California has herd immunity.  Like you said, if California went back to normal the virus would be free to roam and kill mercilessly here. 

Anyone who talks about herd immunity, or "herd mentality" to quote President Toxic, is suspect to me.  Sweden has 581 deaths per million.  As I said above, South Korea has 8 deaths per million.  And they took a much less severe economic hit than the US, Germany, or Australia to prevent mass death.  Sweden would have done better if they acted like South Korea.  Or Finland or Norway, which have 50 to 60 deaths per million, or 90 % less than Sweden.

i had not seen that figure on New York having 33 % herd immunity.  And it's not quite right.  That number is for the lowest-income and hardest-hit boroughs of NYC where people had to go to work, and often get sick or die.

Quote

The department has just released 1.5 million coronavirus antibody test results, a far larger sample than had been made public before. The clear trend: Lower-income neighborhoods, especially those with large immigrant populations, have far more antibodies than richer ones. That makes sense because so many of those people worked right through the plague. Unlike a lot of wealthy New Yorkers, they weren’t hiding in the Hamptons or the Hudson Valley for the last six months.

Citywide, the positive rate was 27%. Of the five boroughs, the Bronx was highest, 33%. Manhattan was lowest at 19%. But that doesn’t fully reveal the disparities. In Corona, Queens — a neighborhood packed with Spanish-speaking immigrants, many of whom have been working all year — 51% of those tested had antibodies for coronavirus. South of 96th Street in Manhattan, not a single ZIP Code topped 20%. Depending how contagious an infection is, usually 70% to 90% of a population needs immunity to achieve herd immunity, according to Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

1.5 Million Antibody Tests Show What Parts of N.Y.C. Were Hit Hardest

It would be great to think that New York has herd immunity.  But there's no scientific basis for thinking that.  On the face of it, if everybody uniformly threw caution to the winds the next wave of death in New York would disproportionately kill rich people who've been hiding out in The Hamptons.  But even if 1 in 3 lower-income or Black or Brown residents of The Bronx who had no choice but to face the virus every day are now immune, that leaves 2 in 3 Bronx residents.  And we still don't know how long "herd immunity" lasts.  The good news is that the incidences of presumed re-infection are few and far between.  We now know it is easy to get COVID-19.  If it were easy to get it twice, we'd probably know that by now, too.

Here's some other sobering numbers.  The overall death rate is 1707 per million in New York state.  Compared to 8 per million in South Korea.  If we assume that the cost of ending the pandemic is letting every state work its way to the level of herd immunity in New York, that's about 560,000 dead Americans.

Queens had 7,248 deaths, which works out to be about 3188 dead per million.  That's a little over 1 million dead Americans.

The Bronx had 4,947 dead, which works out to about 3488.  That's about 1.15 million dead Americans, if we assume the whole nation needs to get to 33 % herd immunity.

And that's assuming what happened in The Bronx is as bad as it can get.  It's assuming that, for whatever reason, the other 2/3rds are naturally immune, or at least won't get sick enough to die.  I can't think of any particular reason to believe that.

If you roll out these numbers, we're getting to the point where you can compare this to the Spanish Flu, in terms of potential fatalities.  No one knows for sure.  But a common estimate is that 675,000 Americans died.  That was out of a population of about 100 million, so roughly one third the size of today.  It's believe that in 1918 about 28 % of Americans were infected.  Which is in the ballpark of what has happened already in The Bronx and Queens.

There is some good news to that.  If you project the Spanish Flu death toll on the US with the population of today, it's about 2.1 million dead.  So if we assume that COVID-19 has infected about the same percentage of people in a few NYC boroughs, that would make it about half as deadly as the Spanish Flu.  

Very importantly, it also means that all those 20 and 30 somethings that were particularly susceptible in 1918, and died in droves and left orphaned children behind, have been spared.  They are the ones that can get COVID-19 and probably just walk away with a sneeze.  Once it's all sorted out, the death rate for older Americans between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu may be pretty similar, if it continues to spread and take out older Americans.  If COVID-19 is less deadly, it's probably in large part because of its inability to kill lots of young adults.

Another reason COVID-19 likely won't hit 1 or 2 million is dead that we are being smarter about keeping more people alive.  I don't think you can do a clear apples to apples.  But there was a V-shaped recession in 1918, followed by a Depression in 1920.  So it's not like by having more people die more quickly the US avoided paying a steep economic price from 1918 to 1920.  I think we now know that the countries with the highest death toll are also the ones that pay the steepest economic price, as well.  I'm a deficit hawk, so I'm not happy about adding on trillions of debt.  But I think even many conservative economists agree that if there was ever a time to go into debt and a reason to do it, now is the time.  And sparing hundreds of thousands of lives and long-term illnesses is a very good reason.

The interesting question no one knows the answer to is this:  why did the Spanish Flu only infect 28 % of Americans?  28 5 is at best an educated guess.  So basically we don't know.  Like I said, it would be nice to think that New York is not seeing a spike because they have achieved something in the ballpark of herd immunity.  But on the face of it, we know that most other parts of New York are vulnerable to be hit at least as bad as those two boroughs.  The state death rate (1707 per million) is only half that of the Bronx death rate (3488 per million).  So there is every reason to think that even in New York, let alone California, things could get a whole lot worse.

Reviewing these numbers reinforces what I've been noticing for a few months.  Which is that among the people I know, who all take COVID-19 seriously, I'm more optimistic than most.  I know a bunch of people that think we're into this for two or three or even five years.  I'm guessing this will play out similar to the Spanish Flu.  Meaning there will be multiple waves, and in a year it will start to move into the rear view mirror, like it did in 1919.  Since this started this Spring, I think by next Spring we will have been through the worst of it.

Some of that is I think that even though the US is the problem child in the world today, we're probably handling it much better than in 1918.  We understand viruses and how to protect ourselves from them better.  We might understand how to treat them better, as well.  But mostly I think that with the masks and social distancing and shut downs we're just being better at avoidance.  And living in suburban homes rather than being crowded into unsanitary tenements helps.  The other big difference is once a vaccine hits that will also knock the ability of the virus to spread way back - assuming people agree to be vaccinated.

No one knows why the Spanish Flu went away, mostly, after a year.  I'm hoping that part of history repeats itself.   I'm not assuming we have to get to 70 % or 80 % through either natural immunity or a vaccine for the virus to start to disappear.

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

34 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

I agree with your point @tassojunior that Democrats should not make this a political football.  

That said, I'll repeat what a new poll said that surprised me.  Americans agree 3 to 1 with Nancy Pelosi's $2 trillion relief package.  They did not call it Nancy's plan.  If they had described Mitch's plan, maybe people would have said they support that 3 to 1 as well.  Either way, it's good news there is that much public support, I think.

So in a sense there is some political footballing, about how to help the American people.  And also on whether to have a mask mandate, which Americans overwhelmingly support.  That is the way I think Democrats should play pandemic politics.  Support things that help people who need help, and that most Americans support.   (As an aside, this is true in Kentucky, too.  That state poll that showed Rich Mitch way ahead of Amy also showed very strong majority support for federal pandemic relief.)

I'd be careful about density.  Some of the densest cities in the world - Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong - have had some of the lowest infections rates.  It's not a coincidence that they are Asian.  Being Asian (stereotype: communitarian) helps compared to being an American or Brit (stereotype: individualistic) in this pandemic.  It's not unlike @lookin's theory about a genetic basis for authoritarianism.  Any of those Asian cities I just named is a good example of how a communitarian ethic helps when it comes to a pandemic.  And any White asshole with a gun outside a State Capitol ranting "Liberate The Virus!" is an example of how individualism is hurting the US very badly.  On the face of it, individualism or libertarianism has a lot more to due with why 200,000 Americans are dead than density.

And speaking of assholes and libertarians, Rand Paul doesn't know shit.  Maybe there is herd immunity somewhere.  Maybe COVID-19 cross-reacts with with antibodies from prior and less deadly Coronaviruses.  But he doesn't know that.  Nor does Dr. Fauci, as he said when he bitch-slapped Rand.  

This completely wrong article is worth a peak:  "New York and California May Have Already Achieved Herd Immunity, Data Scientist Says."  That's from an Israeli scientist who also said that Israel had reached its COVID-19 peak. On Aug. 30, the day before that article came out, Israel had 555 cases.  By Sept. 23, it had 11,316 cases.  Oops!  So much for herd immunity.  I do not believe for one second California has herd immunity.  Like you said, if California went back to normal the virus would be free to roam and kill mercilessly here. 

Anyone who talks about herd immunity, or "herd mentality" to quote President Toxic, is suspect to me.  Sweden has 581 deaths per million.  As I said above, South Korea has 8 deaths per million.  And they took a much less severe economic hit than the US, Germany, or Australia to prevent mass death.  Sweden would have done better if they acted like South Korea.  Or Finland or Norway, which have 50 to 60 deaths per million, or 90 % less than Sweden.

i had not seen that figure on New York having 33 % herd immunity.  And it's not quite right.  That number is for the lowest-income and hardest-hit boroughs of NYC where people had to go to work, and often get sick or die.

1.5 Million Antibody Tests Show What Parts of N.Y.C. Were Hit Hardest

It would be great to think that New York has herd immunity.  But there's no scientific basis for thinking that.  On the face of it, if everybody uniformly threw caution to the winds the next wave of death in New York would disproportionately kill rich people who've been hiding out in The Hamptons.  But even if 1 in 3 lower-income or Black or Brown residents of The Bronx who had no choice but to face the virus every day are now immune, that leaves 2 in 3 Bronx residents.  And we still don't know how long "herd immunity" lasts.  The good news is that the incidences of presumed re-infection are few and far between.  We now know it is easy to get COVID-19.  If it were easy to get it twice, we'd probably know that by now, too.

Here's some other sobering numbers.  The overall death rate is 1707 per million in New York state.  Compared to 8 per million in South Korea.  If we assume that the cost of ending the pandemic is letting every state work its way to the level of herd immunity in New York, that's about 560,000 dead Americans.

Queens had 7,248 deaths, which works out to be about 3188 dead per million.  That's a little over 1 million dead Americans.

The Bronx had 4,947 dead, which works out to about 3488.  That's about 1.15 million dead Americans, if we assume the whole nation needs to get to 33 % herd immunity.

And that's assuming what happened in The Bronx is as bad as it can get.  It's assuming that, for whatever reason, the other 2/3rds are naturally immune, or at least won't get sick enough to die.  I can't think of any particular reason to believe that.

If you roll out these numbers, we're getting to the point where you can compare this to the Spanish Flu, in terms of potential fatalities.  No one knows for sure.  But a common estimate is that 675,000 Americans died.  That was out of a population of about 100 million, so roughly one third the size of today.  It's believe that in 1918 about 28 % of Americans were infected.  Which is in the ballpark of what has happened already in The Bronx and Queens.

There is some good news to that.  If you project the Spanish Flu death toll on the US with the population of today, it's about 2.1 million dead.  So if we assume that COVID-19 has infected about the same percentage of people in a few NYC boroughs, that would make it about half as deadly as the Spanish Flu.  

Very importantly, it also means that all those 20 and 30 somethings that were particularly susceptible in 1918, and died in droves and left orphaned children behind, have been spared.  They are the ones that can get COVID-19 and probably just walk away with a sneeze.  Once it's all sorted out, the death rate for older Americans between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu may be pretty similar, if it continues to spread and take out older Americans.  If COVID-19 is less deadly, it's probably in large part because of its inability to kill lots of young adults.

Another reason COVID-19 likely won't hit 1 or 2 million is dead that we are being smarter about keeping more people alive.  I don't think you can do a clear apples to apples.  But there was a V-shaped recession in 1918, followed by a Depression in 1920.  So it's not like by having more people die more quickly the US avoided paying a steep economic price from 1918 to 1920.  I think we now know that the countries with the highest death toll are also the ones that pay the steepest economic price, as well.  I'm a deficit hawk, so I'm not happy about adding on trillions of debt.  But I think even many conservative economists agree that if there was ever a time to go into debt and a reason to do it, now is the time.  And sparing hundreds of thousands of lives and long-term illnesses is a very good reason.

The interesting question no one knows the answer to is this:  why did the Spanish Flu only infect 28 % of Americans?  28 5 is at best an educated guess.  So basically we don't know.  Like I said, it would be nice to think that New York is not seeing a spike because they have achieved something in the ballpark of herd immunity.  But on the face of it, we know that most other parts of New York are vulnerable to be hit at least as bad as those two boroughs.  The state death rate (1707 per million) is only half that of the Bronx death rate (3488 per million).  So there is every reason to think that even in New York, let alone California, things could get a whole lot worse.

Reviewing these numbers reinforces what I've been noticing for a few months.  Which is that among the people I know, who all take COVID-19 seriously, I'm more optimistic than most.  I know a bunch of people that think we're into this for two or three or even five years.  I'm guessing this will play out similar to the Spanish Flu.  Meaning there will be multiple waves, and in a year it will start to move into the rear view mirror, like it did in 1919.  Since this started this Spring, I think by next Spring we will have been through the worst of it.

Some of that is I think that even though the US is the problem child in the world today, we're probably handling it much better than in 1918.  We understand viruses and how to protect ourselves from them better.  We might understand how to treat them better, as well.  But mostly I think that with the masks and social distancing and shut downs we're just being better at avoidance.  And living in suburban homes rather than being crowded into unsanitary tenements helps.  The other big difference is once a vaccine hits that will also knock the ability of the virus to spread way back - assuming people agree to be vaccinated.

No one knows why the Spanish Flu went away, mostly, after a year.  I'm hoping that part of history repeats itself.   I'm not assuming we have to get to 70 % or 80 % through either natural immunity or a vaccine for the virus to start to disappear.

 

 

NY seems to have a 33% immunity factor according to reputable Lancet.(DC is 21%). That's not herd immunity but getting there. 

At any rate it seems areas like NY and Lombardy that saw the worst in the 1st wave are spared in the 2nd wave more and areas that were pretty untouched by a 1st deadly wave, will get one sooner or later. As Merkel said, eventually 70% of us will be infected. 

and the political issue that everyone dodges is that many deaths were the result of certain areas forcing corvid patients to be housed in nursing homes that were full of elderly patients. In both Europe and the US that was a horrible mistake.  

 

 

[tassojunior]

53 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

 

No one knows why the Spanish Flu went away, mostly, after a year.  I'm hoping that part of history repeats itself.   I'm not assuming we have to get to 70 % or 80 % through either natural immunity or a vaccine for the virus to start to disappear.

 

Do you know that even with almost 700,000 dead in the US from the 1918 flu, President Wilson never said one word about it? 

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, tassojunior said:

Do you know that even with almost 700,000 dead in the US from the 1918 flu, President Wilson never said one word about it? 

Wilson had the Spanish Flu, and survived it.   My guess is back then there was a lot more "stiff upper lip" thinking.  Today a lot of people just don't have a choice, which is why the infection and death rates were highest in The Bronx and Queens.  Back then a lot higher percentage of the population didn't have a choice, most likely.

Merkel would NOT say 70 % of Germans will get COVID-19 today.  She said that at the beginning.  But it is clear that both she and the German people decided that they were not going the herd immunity route.

China and all the Asian countries have clearly said "fuck you" to herd immunity.  I presume that when we know there is a safe vaccine, all those Asian nations that have almost zero natural herd immunity will acquire it through vaccines.

Germany and some other countries (Australia, New Zealand) now have ended up sounding a little overconfident.  I don't know that anyone ever actually said, "We are now 100 % COVID-19 free." But some countries that did well in crushing the virus in the first wave sounded in that ballpark.  To some degree it was understandable pride that the country rallied together, put on masks, and got through it together.

Assuming that a safe vaccine is rolled out by Spring 2021, I think we're going to have to have a big national education on what immunity and vaccines mean.  I'm pretty sure we will not have a "sterilizing" vaccine.  Meaning you get a shot and you are close to 100 % sure not to get COVID-19.  I don't understand it.  But the vague picture I do get is that there is a race between a virus and an immune system.  And you want the immune system to win.  And the vaccine at least gives the immune system a head start, with a lot of people who get it.  That's about what I understand.

That story you posted on masking reducing disease severity is an idea I've read several times as well.  One idea I've read is that you could have multiple exposures, never get very sick, get a vaccine shot or two, get a booster shot the next year or two, and gradually acquire immunity piece by piece.  When I read something like that, if I got it right, I'd actually rather not think about it.  I will get a vaccine shot.  But in terms of whether I can get smaller doses of COVID-19 in the air filtered through a mask that end up helping me develop immunity all sounds beyond my control.  Wearing a mask is in my control.  But the part that happens invisibly and microscopically is a mystery to me.  At least until I get sick, and then maybe things go south - or maybe not. 

I think the key things we'll need to be told very clearly is when it is safe to get a vaccine, and when and why is it safe to start to relax with the masks and social distancing.  That's all something to worry about in 2021, when Joe Biden is our President.

Edited September 28, 2020 by stevenkesslar