Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Coronavirus News (60)

The Economist’s coverage of the coronavirus



Mark Carney on how the economy must yield to human values In recent years, the market economy has become the market society. The virus could reverse that trend ....... Value will change in the post-covid world. On one level, that’s obvious: valuations in global financial markets have imploded, with many suffering their sharpest declines in decades. More fundamentally, the traditional drivers of value have been shaken, new ones will gain prominence, and

there’s a possibility that the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close

. ................ Current financial-market valuations reflect profound uncertainty over the path of the virus and the length of time that the global economy will remain shuttered. How many quarters of earnings will be lost? How quick will the recovery be once it comes? ............. the very real opportunities the crisis has revealed: in teleworking, e-health, distance learning, and the acceleration across our economies from moving atoms to shifting bits. ........ As our digital and local lives expand and our physical and global ones contract, this sea change will create and destroy value. Creativity and dynamism will still be highly prized ........ the crisis is likely to accelerate the fragmentation of the global economy. Until a vaccine has been found and widely applied, travel restrictions will remain. Even afterwards, local resilience will be prized over global efficiency .......... much of the enterprise value of companies will be taken up by extraordinary financial support and destroyed by lost cashflow. Their higher debt will increase the riskiness of the underlying equity and weigh on the capacity for growth. ..........

The financial relationship between the state and the private sector has already deepened dramatically.

......... the searing experience of the simultaneous health and economic crises will change how companies balance risk and resilience. ....... Which companies will operate with minimal liquidity, stretched supply chains and token contingency plans? Which governments will rely on global markets to address local crises? .........

Entire populations are experiencing the fears of the unemployed and sensing the anxiety that comes with inadequate or inaccessible health care. These lessons will not soon be forgotten.

.......... in recent decades, subtly but relentlessly, we have been moving from a market economy to a market society. Increasingly, to be valued, an asset or activity has to be in a market. For example, Amazon is one of the world’s most valuable companies, yet the Amazon region appears on no ledger until it is stripped of its foliage, and converted to farmland. The price of everything is becoming the value of everything. ...............

This crisis could help reverse that relationship, so that public values help shape private value.

.......... When pushed, societies have prioritised health first and foremost, and then looked to deal with the economic consequences. In this crisis, we know we need to act as an interdependent community not independent individuals, so the values of economic dynamism and efficiency have been joined by those of solidarity, fairness, responsibility and compassion. ............. a test of stakeholder capitalism. When it’s over, companies will be judged by “what they did during the war”, how they treated their employees, suppliers and customers, by who shared and who hoarded. .......

The great test of whether this new hierarchy of values will prevail is climate change. After all, climate change is an issue that (i) involves the entire world, from which no one will be able to self-isolate; (ii) is predicted by science to be the central risk tomorrow; and (iii) we can only address if we act in advance and in solidarity.

........... Mark Carney was governor of the Bank of England.






We Still Don’t Know How the Coronavirus Is Killing Us Over the last few weeks, the country has managed to stabilize the spread of the coronavirus sufficiently enough to begin debating when and in what ways to “reopen,” and to normalize, against all moral logic, the horrifying and ongoing death toll — thousands of Americans dying each day, in multiples of 9/11 every week now with the virus seemingly “under control.” ......... how deadly it is to how many people caught it and shrugged it off to how long immunity to the disease lasts after infection (if any time at all). .......... The World Health Organization got so worried about the much-touted antiviral remdesivir, which received a jolt of publicity (and stock appreciation) a few weeks ago on rumors of positive results, the organization leaked an unpublished, preliminary survey showing no benefit to COVID-19 patients. ............. one survey in New York City found that 21 percent of residents may have COVID-19 antibodies already, making the city not just the deadliest community in the deadliest country in a world during the deadliest pandemic since AIDS, but also the most infected (and, by corollary, the farthest along to herd immunity). ........... How is COVID-19 actually killing us? .............. Early in the epidemic, the coronavirus was seen as a variant of a familiar family of disease, not a mysterious ailment, however infectious and concerning. But while uncertainties at the population level confuse and frustrate public-health officials, unsure when and in what form to shift gears out of lockdown,

the disease has proved just as mercurial at the clinical level, with doctors revising their understanding of COVID-19’s basic pattern and weaponry — indeed often revising that understanding in different directions at once

. ................. “is there any other virus out there that is this weird in terms of its range of symptoms?” .......... as many as 70 percent of patients sick enough to be admitted to New York State’s largest hospital system did not have a fever. ............ Cough is more common, according to Brigham and Women’s, with between 68 percent and 83 percent of patients presenting with some cough — though that means as many as three in ten sick enough to be hospitalized won’t be coughing. .......... As for shortness of breath, the Brigham and Women’s estimate runs as low as 11 percent. The high end is only 40 percent, which would still mean that more patients hospitalized for COVID-19 do not have shortness of breath than do. At the low end of that range, shortness of breath would be roughly as common among COVID-19 patients as confusion (9 percent), headache (8 to 14 percent), and nausea and diarrhea (3 to 17 percent). ............... That the ranges are so wide themselves tells you that the disease is presenting in very different ways in different hospitals and different populations of different patients — leading, for instance, some doctors and scientists to theorize the virus might be attacking the immune system like HIV does, with many others finding the disease is triggering something like the opposite response, an overwhelming overreaction of the immune system called a “cytokine storm.” ................... front-line doctors have been expressing confusion that so many coronavirus patients were registering lethally low blood-oxygenation levels while still appearing, by almost any vernacular measure, pretty okay .............

88 percent of New York patients put on ventilators, for whom an outcome as known, had died. In China, the figure was 86 percent.

............... the ability of the disease to mutate has been “vastly underestimated” — investigating the disease as it appeared in just 11 patients, they said they found 30 mutations. “The most aggressive strains could generate 270 times as much viral load as the weakest type” ............ Based on early reports, covid-19 appeared to be a standard variety respiratory virus, albeit a very contagious and lethal one with no vaccine and no treatment. But they’ve since become increasingly convinced that covid-19 attacks not only the lungs, but also the kidneys, heart, intestines, liver and brain. ....................

“a clear picture is elusive, as the virus acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen.”

.......... the following organs as being vulnerable to COVID-19: brain, eyes, nose, lungs, heart, blood vessels, livers, kidneys, intestines. ........... Heart damage was discovered in 20 percent of patients hospitalized in Wuhan, where 44 percent of those in ICU exhibited arrhythmias; 38 percent of Dutch ICU patients had irregular blood clotting; 27 percent of Wuhan patients had kidney failure, with many more showing signs of kidney damage; half of Chinese patients showed signs of liver damage; and, depending on the study, between 20 percent and 50 percent of patients had diarrhea. ............... in New York and Wuhan, between 14 and 30 percent of ICU patients had lost kidney function, requiring dialysis. .............. “[y]oung and middle-aged people, barely sick with COVID-19, are dying from strokes.” Many of the patients described didn’t even know they were sick .......... The patient’s chart appeared unremarkable at first glance. He took no medications and had no history of chronic conditions. He had been feeling fine, hanging out at home during the lockdown like the rest of the country, when suddenly, he had trouble talking and moving the right side of his body. Imaging showed a large blockage on the left side of his head. ............

only 53 percent of COVID-19 patients have died from respiratory failure alone.

.......... the degree to which doctors and scientists are, still, feeling their way, as though blindfolded, toward a true picture of the disease cautions against any sense that things have stabilized, given that our knowledge of the disease hasn’t even stabilized.

the coronavirus pandemic is not just a public-health crisis but a scientific one as well.

....... tens of thousands dead and literally billions in precautionary lockdown, we are still in the very early stages, when each new finding seems as likely to cloud or complicate our understanding of the coronavirus as it is to clarify it. Instead, confidence gives way to uncertainty. ......... In the space of a few months, we’ve gone from thinking there was no “asymptomatic transmission” to believing it accounts for perhaps half or more of all cases, from thinking the young were invulnerable to thinking they were just somewhat less vulnerable, from believing masks were unnecessary to requiring their use at all times outside the house, from panicking about ventilator shortages to deploying pregnancy massage pillows instead. Six months since patient zero, we still have no drugs proven to even help treat the disease. Almost certainly, we are past the “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals” stage of this pandemic. But how far past?




If we get COVID-19 and you have one the following preexisting condition, risk of dying varies (as per the data). So let us be careful if we have any preexisting condition.
Condition ------------------ death chance (%)
Cadiovascular dis (13.2%)
Diabetes (9.2%)
Chronic Resp dis (8.0%)
Hypertension (8.4%)
Cancer (7.6%)
No preexisting condition (0.9%)
Source: worldometers.info
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2600391186915298&id=100008333262342

In less than three months, the coronavirus pandemic has killed more people in the U.S. than the 58,220 Americans who died over nearly two decades in Vietnam.

Posted by NPR on Tuesday, April 28, 2020




Coronavirus News (59)

Be a Friend to the Elderly, Get Paid Combating loneliness is vital work. Services that offer “grandkids on demand” are doing just that.














COVID-19 is not a Chinese virus. It is a Global Warming virus.
Posted by Dan Duncan on Monday, April 27, 2020
The U.S. is 44th (per capita) in testing for #COVID-19. We are not #1.
Posted by Loren M. Jones on Monday, April 27, 2020


जनता समाजवादी : वैकल्पिक कि निर्णायक शक्ति?
कम्युनिस्ट भाइरसको दबदबा
माधव नेपाललाई फकाउने बालुवाटारको प्रयास असफल आइतबार नेपाल निवास कोटेश्‍वरमा अर्का अध्यक्ष पुष्पकमल दाहाल प्रचण्डसहित भएको नेपाल समूहको छलफलले पार्टी र सरकार दुवैतिर ओलीको नेतृत्व असफल भएकोले विकल्प खोज्‍नुपर्ने निश्कर्ष निकालेको थियो। ...... कोटेश्‍वरमा नेपाल र ओलीसमूहबीच छलफल चलिरहँदा खुमलटारमा प्रचण्ड, झलनाथ खनाल र वामदेव गौतमबीच छलफल भएको थियो।
जनकपुरमा पीसीआर परीक्षणमा 'नेगेटिभ' देखाएका रौतहटका दुई जनाको काठमाडौँमा परीक्षण गर्दा 'पोजेटिभ'
कोरोना संक्रमितको संख्या ५१ पुग्यो, दुई नयाँ संक्रमित थपिए
Donald Trump's immigration plans create panic and anger among the Indian diaspora in the US “I cannot tell you the panic this has caused in the legal immigration community,” Nandini Nair, an immigration lawyer based in New Jersey, said of Trump’s “upending of life by a tweet.” ....... Visa programmes like H-1B help fill specialty positions at companies like Google, Apple and Facebook. Indian-Americans are some of the country’s most successful and wealthiest immigrants, with a particular stronghold in Silicon Valley’s startup scene........ These days, Harkamal Singh Khural, 34, a software developer living in an Atlanta suburb, said he was barely sleeping. Even if the government did not push him out, he said a volatile job market meant his immigration status was already tenuous. ....... Most of the 800,000 immigrants currently waiting for a green card are Indian citizens. Because of quotas that limit the number of workers from each country, Indians can expect to wait up to 50 years for a green card since their representation among immigrants is so high in the United States........ Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said, “Any action that appears to infringe on the mobility of Indians or Indian-Americans will be strongly resisted.” ...... Over a video call, Nagar’s daughter, a kindergarten student, told her: “Mommy, when the virus dies, you’ll come. I’ll wait for the virus to die.” When video conversations with her daughter end, Nagar said she sometimes lies in bed and cries.



India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates They talk about the "mystery behind India's lower death rates" from the Covid-19 infection, and say that India is "bucking the coronavirus trend". One talks about the "Indian exception as death rates in major Indian cities are lower compared to global coronavirus hotspots". ........ Many public health professionals and doctors say India's grinding lockdown, which has lasted more than a month, could have kept infection and deaths in check. .........

the "lockdown is already having the desired effect of flattening the epidemic curve".

.......... doctors treating critical Covid-19 patients have told me that the contagion is as virulent here as has been reported elsewhere in the world. ........

part of the mystery is we are not doing enough testing.

......... diagnostic tests which determine those who are currently infected and antibody tests to find out whether someone was previously infected and recovered. .......... Most affected countries have inadvertently under-reported deaths. ....... the death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60% higher than reported in official counts. ......... Around 80% of deaths in India still happen at home, including deaths from infections like malaria and pneumonia. Maternal deaths, and deaths from sudden coronary attacks and accidents are more often reported from hospitals. "A lot of people get some medical attention over time, return and die at home in India" ........... At the same time, there are no reports yet of a massive surge in hospital deaths, which would surely have not gone unnoticed .... a sharp spike in home deaths over a long period is also not likely to go unnoticed. ............ More than 850 million Indians use mobile phones and they could be persuaded to report any unusual death in their villages on a toll-free number. Authorities could then follow up the deaths by visiting the families and conducting "verbal autopsies"......Counting deaths has always been an inexact science in India........... only 22% of deaths in India are medically certified. ........ ....Some Indian doctors have reported that many people were dying of Covid-19 symptoms without getting tested or "treated". Then there's the question of wrong diagnosis in a country where doctors often misdiagnose the cause of death. ......... "But nobody is trying to hide deaths intentionally. You can't hide mass deaths"


How Accurate Is the Coronavirus Death Toll? — A forensic pathologist's perspective ........... At an April 7 news conference, Deborah Birx, MD, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said, "There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem -- some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Right now ... if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death." ............

the tally of COVID-19 deaths in the United States and elsewhere in the world is almost certainly an undercount.

........ the overall numbers of deaths during the months of this pandemic have far outpaced the death rate during the same period in recent past years ............. Number one, COVID-19 can affect the heart (via myocarditis, pericarditis, or the formation of microthrombi). Number two, it's possible that the death may not have happened without the stress on medical resources caused by the pandemic. That's one of the reasons why the death toll in Italy is so bad -- their otherwise excellent healthcare system was grievously overloaded by a huge wave of COVID-19 patients. People who would've survived heart attacks during normal times died without medical intervention because they couldn't make it to the hospital or because the hospital couldn't treat them in time to save them. ........... after this pandemic terminates, an excellent approximation of the true fatality rate of COVID-19 deaths can be made by the calculation of the excess mortality for the period. .......... A soldier in the heat of battle can't think strategically about the outcome of the wider war. The death toll of COVID-19 is not going to be accurate until epidemiologists and statisticians have time to crunch the numbers. ..........

We are slogging through a slow, brutal, worldwide mass-fatality event. Whatever the final tally, it will be a terrible one.



Yeap! Finland Will Become The First Country In The World To Get Rid Of All School Subjects By 2020, instead of classes in physics, math, literature, history or geography, Finland is going to introduce a different approach to life through education. Welcome to the phenomenon based learning! ....... “In Phenomenon Based Learning (PhenoBL) and teaching, holistic real-world phenomena provide the starting point for learning. The phenomena are studied as complete entities, in their real context, and the information and skills related to them are studied by crossing the boundaries between subjects.” ....... instead of learning physics (or any other subject) for the sake of learning it, the students will be given the opportunity to choose from phenomena from their real surroundings and the world, such as Media and Technology, or the European Union. ........ a student who wants to study a vocational course can take “cafeteria services” and the phenomenon will be studied through elements of maths, languages, writing and communication skills. Another example is the European Union, which would include economics, languages, geography and the history of the countries involved. ........... inquiry-based learning, problem-solution and project and portfolio learning. The last step is going to be practical implementation, being seen as the outcome of the whole process. .......

This reform is going to require a lot of cooperation between teachers of different subjects and this is why the teachers are already undergoing an intense training.

........ teachers who embrace this new teaching style will receive a small increase in their salary as a sign of recognition. ...... the interaction in this teaching style is something every teacher has always dreamed of. ......... A similar approach called the Playful Learning Centre is being used in the pre-school sector and it is going to serve as a starting point for the phenomenal-based learning.




LA's Coronavirus Death Toll Climbs As SoCal Eases Restrictions As crowds packed beaches in Orange and Ventura counties, LA saw its COVID-19 death toll double in a week, including 11 health care workers.
Seniors With COVID-19 Show Unusual Symptoms, Doctors Say COVID-19 is typically signaled by three symptoms: a fever, an insistent cough and shortness of breath. But older adults — the age group most at risk of severe complications or death from this condition ― may have none of these characteristics. ......... Instead, seniors may seem “off” — not acting like themselves ― early on after being infected by the coronavirus. They may sleep more than usual or stop eating. They may seem unusually apathetic or confused, losing orientation to their surroundings. They may become dizzy and fall. Sometimes, seniors stop speaking or simply collapse. ...... At advanced ages, “someone’s immune response may be blunted and their ability to regulate temperature may be altered” ....... Recognizing danger signs is important: If early signs of COVID-19 are missed, seniors may deteriorate before getting needed care. ...... older adults who are profoundly disoriented and unable to speak and who appear at first to have suffered strokes....... “When we test them, we discover that what’s producing these changes is a central nervous system effect of coronavirus” .......... Included on the atypical list are changes in a patient’s usual status, delirium, falls, fatigue, lethargy, low blood pressure, painful swallowing, fainting, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and the loss of smell and taste. .......



How Will Coronavirus End? It Depends on Our Immunity. Three Possible Outcomes With the curve finally flattening in the US, the ramping up of anti-viral and vaccine trials against SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes Covid-19—and the launch of antibody tests to screen for previous infection, it seems like science is rapidly moving towards the end game. How exactly the Covid-19 pandemic will finally bugger off into history is still anyone’s guess, but virologists and public health experts generally agree that immunity is key—either through widespread safe and effective vaccination, or when enough of our population has recovered from infections and gained herd immunity. ............ Like most processes in biology, immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is complex and mysterious, with results that could rapidly diverge into many possible futures. It’s partly why estimates of how long Covid-19 sticks around to wreak havoc can vary enormously, from months to years to…well, seasonal and forever, similar to the flu. ......... The immune system is basically an entire battalion of rapidly-adaptive units consisting of cellular scouts, killer cell assassins, antibody troops, and intelligence agents that log each encounter with a new enemy. When our body is assaulted by a new foe—viruses, bacteria, or even cancer—surveillance first kicks into high gear. ........ The complexity of our immune response is partly why a positive antibody test may not exactly mean you’re immune to Covid-19, and a negative antibody test doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not immune. ........... One study on the OG SARS virus that terrorized most of East Asia in 2003, for example, found that antibody levels dropped dramatically after three years from the initial infection. ......... the worst-case scenario: the cat-and-mouse seasonal battle. If the virus mutates fast and dramatically enough to outfox our immune system, then our bodies will no longer be able to quickly pick it out from an invader lineup. Our immune intelligence systems and battalions will once again have to fight off a new, if somewhat similar, enemy. It sounds like a frustrating scenario, but it’s exactly what happens with the flu every year. The flu virus mutates at a shockingly rapid rate, which means we’re always one step behind and the virus becomes a seasonal nuisance. The good news is not all viruses have the flu’s superpower. Preliminary studies find that SARS-CoV-2 seems to mutate at a much slower rate than the flu, which is great news for the sticking power of vaccines. .......

So how does the Covid-19 pandemic end? The uncomfortable truth is no one knows.





REPUBLICAN GROUP RELEASES AD DESCRIBING TRUMP AS 'UNFIT, UNWELL, UNACCEPTABLE'
The pandemic will leave the rich world deep in debt, and force some hard choices the fight against covid-19 has seen governments, particularly those in the rich world, rack up debts so large that the way in which they are paid off could have a long-lasting effect on their economies, and significantly affect the distribution of wealth. ............. Advanced economies will run an average deficit this year of 11% of gdp, according to the imf, even if the second half of the year sees no more lockdowns and a gradual recovery. Rich-world public debt could run to $66trn, which might be 122% of gdp by year’s end. ........... after the global financial crisis of 2007-09, which increased debt levels by about a third in advanced economies, many countries chose to reduce public spending as a share of the economy. Between 2010 and 2019 America and the euro zone cut their public-spending-to-gdp ratios by about 3.5 percentage points. Britain’s fell by 6 percentage points. Taxation, meanwhile, rose by between 1 and 2 percentage points of gdp. .......... The second option—defaulting or restructuring debts—may be forced on to emerging economies which lack any other way out. If it is, that will cause significant suffering. .......... choose to grow their way out of hock. The secret to this is ensuring that the economy’s combined level of real economic growth and inflation stays handily above the interest rate the government pays on its debt. That allows the debt-to-gdp ratio to shrink over time. ........ At its wartime height, America’s public debt was 112% of gdp, Britain’s 259%. By 1980 America’s debt-to-gdp ratio had fallen to 26% and Britain’s to 43%. ............ the coming years could prove to be politically demanding times. .......... inflation will surge of its own accord when the enormous economic stimulus they expect butts up against the supply disruptions imposed by lockdown. ........... Thanks in part to the Fed’s actions, the American government can borrow for ten years at an interest rate of just 0.6%. ......... bond-buying by central banks takes much of the worry out of some of the debt. ......... treating higher public debt as sustainable in a low-inflation, low-interest-rate world. .........

qe does not really neutralise public debt.

Central banks buy government bonds by creating new money which sits in the banking system in the form of reserves. And central banks pay interest on those reserves. Because the central bank is ultimately owned by the government, qe replaces one government debt-interest bill, interest payments on bonds, with another, interest payment on bank reserves. And although the latter are very low today—negative, in fact, in several places—they will stay so only so long as central banks do not need to raise rates to fight inflation. ............ The first sign of any debt trouble in the rich world would probably be rising inflation. ......... Steve Mnuchin, America’s treasury secretary, has said that on some days he has spoken to Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, more than 30 times. ............ Conveniently for politicians, some of the pain of high inflation would be borne by foreign investors, whose share of public debt exceeds 30% in many rich countries ........... A perception that a nominally independent central bank was in fact a creature of politicians would create a risk premium on investment that would slow growth throughout the economy. .......... Inflation would bring arbitrary redistributions of wealth to the disadvantage of the poor ........

Wealth taxes, as favoured by Keynes back then and increasingly discussed by academics and left-wing politicians today, could find that their time had come.

Post-pandemic populations may welcome the sort of cost-free-to-most all-in-it-togetherness they might provide. Less radically, a value-added tax in America (which lacks one), higher taxes on land or inheritance, or new taxes on carbon emissions could be on the cards. .......... Even economists with reputations as fiscal hawks tend to support today’s emergency spending, and some want it enlarged. Yet one way or another, the bills will eventually come due. When they do, there may not be a painless way of settling them.