Monday, April 06, 2020

Coronavirus News (32)

Chinese tourist sites packed as country comes out of lockdown, but experts say risk still high



There Is No Plan for the End of the Coronavirus Crisis

For a month, American journalists and public-health experts have praised the coronavirus response of South Korea and Singapore above all others. On Tuesday, Singapore will close its schools and most businesses to guard against an out-of-control outbreak; South Korea just extended its social-distancing policy.

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Cases are spiking in Japan, and a second wave of infections is feared in China, as well.

...... many of the nations desperate Americans have spent the last few months praising as exemplary models of public health management do not actually have the virus under control — or at least not to the degree it appeared a few weeks ago, or to the degree you might be hoping for if you expected a (relatively) quick end to quarantine measures and economic shutdown followed by a (relatively) rapid snapback to “normal” life and economic recovery. ......... this crisis is just a few months old and the scientific and public health wisdom just as preliminary. ..... the fact that there is also no planning to speak of for how we might leave behind the present crisis means all we can see looking forward from the darkness — is more darkness. ....... public-health experts in the U.S. are increasingly worried that the public is underestimating how long the coronavirus “disruptions” are going to last — with many Americans assuming a sort of national reopening will begin in early May and most public-health experts expecting at least a month beyond that. Possibly more, even considerably more. ....... the tests we are using may have a failure rate of about 30%. That means about one in every three people being tested could be getting the wrong result. .......seasonality (which could dampen the spread come summer but which most epidemiologists suspect won’t radically alter the trajectory of disease). ......... we have no idea how long “this” will last and how it will end. In the meantime, all we have is a daily White House press conference starring a shortsighted, uninformed, and self-contradicting showman of a president, with multiple competing response teams occasionally emerging from the shadows to reveal a basic ignorance about the meaning of federalism. ............ both the Republican governor of Georgia and the Democratic mayor of New York seem only to have learned, in the last few days, that asymptomatic people can still spread the disease — a fact familiar to anyone following the story since January — is less an indictment of those two men than the vacuum of guidance from Washington, which requires every state and local leader to piece together their own understanding of the disease.

To fight Covid-19, India will need 15 mn PPEs, 50,000 ventilators by June The country would require an estimated 27 million N95 masks, 15 million PPEs, 1.6 million diagnostic kits, and 50,000 ventilators by June 2020 ..... As the global death toll in coronavirus surpassed 69,000, the central government is ramping up its preparedness to deal with the pandemic. In the last few weeks, the govt has restricted supply of critical medical equipment, and has prohibited or tightened export restrictions on testing kits and drugs, especially anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. It has also prohibited exports of “all ventilators including any artificial respiratory apparatus or oxygen therapy apparatus or any other breathing appliance/device" along with sanitisers, surgical masks, and PPEs.

Oil prices are low, print some money, don’t think of inflation, says Abhijit Banerjee the “uncertainties caused by uncertainties”, the unsustainability of lockdowns, difficulty in getting numbers, the case for domestic manufacture of ventilators and why India needs to “go Keynesian”. .......... The biggest problem is for now is the savings of human lives, and in the near term it will be about getting back to work. And in the medium term to get back into the normal economy. What we are doing now to save lives must not snowball into a such a big economic crisis that we lose livelihoods. ........ People are working for a cure but it will take time. All we can do is to isolate ourselves. Another thing we can do is to practice good hygiene in particular washing of hands. ......... If there are a lot of asymptomatic infected people, we are closer to herd immunity than we think we are. If the numbers infected are closed to 100 million than a smaller number. ........ we could not count them very systematically. In France where I come from, anybody who dies at home is not counted (as dying from virus). Only if you die in a hospital (are you counted as someone who died from the virus). ........

When the weather becomes hot and humid, we do not know how it will respond. It is a new virus and we know so little about it.

....... The good news is that India is an extremely young country. The average age is around 28. ....... the world economy will be in a free fall. Rich countries will be in a lockdown. They are not going to buy anything. The whole world economy is going to shrink. That is a complete given. We are going to see a massive recession. ......... People will have lost so much income and so much wealth that they will sit on what they have and not spend. That is the core worry. ........ Is it the end of Second World War and people will start buying things or is it the middle of 2009 crisis and people are afraid to spend? I do not know the answer to this. But I am pessimistic.

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