[Oldmanmatt]

Genuinely asking.
Why is it different?

[User deactivated.]

Still cant believe that fags haven't been banned by the way.

This would likely lead to an increase in usage and associated crime. Source: every prohibition of substances ever?

 Sorry for

[Murph]

I'm not an expert matt, but that paper I link above... i dont thi k there are papers like that about game pie.

[Davo]

Interesting thoughts. I tend to agree with PeteJH here in that we are doing what we are doing currently because realistically no UK (or any worldwide) politician is going to stand up and say that we are going to let a lot of people die because of the cost involved. Instead I do believe that we will have a good go at lockdown and eventually public opinion and political sentiment will change: am thinking here of when the job losses and bankruptcies really start to kick in. At that point I think we will relax things and make all kinds of statements about having done the tough work in containing the virus etc and also that we need to keep the economy going etc

I also think like Murph that economists and health economists will be poring over this stuff for many years to come and will likely find that we have spent an incredibly large sum per person saved that could very well have been spent elsewhere more effectively.

Lastly I really do think we are doing significant harm to a large number of people’s health outcomes here with little thought for them. Many children will be harmed and worse off for what we are doing, many people who were struggling financially anyway will be tipped over the edge and their mental health will crumble.

[gme]

Dont mention game pie to my wife, i am making one tomorrow and she believes anything she reads.

I might not put the bats in it though just to be safe.

[JamieG]

Isn't one of the problems with wet markets that lots of alive (and weird and wonderful) animals are kept in close proximity to each other potentially all passing viruses to each other and humans. And only killed and prepared once home.

With typical game the animals is killed then and there, like pigeon shooting, and then sold or take home already dead. Presumably the risk for transmission of airborne viruses is then massively reduced.

[seankenny]

If anyone is interested in the macroeconomic effects of the pandemic, here are some macroeconomists doing a pandemic-related seminar. One at 5pm today.

https://sites.google.com/view/virtualmacro/

Note I have no idea how technical these will be.

Edit: also on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo_KoJ89CTJPLA6LguTbhwA

Edit: I glanced at the first one, it is quite technical. Probably not as interesting as eating bats.

[SA Chris]

There was a post a while ago about how the wet markets came about, and were accepted in China to avoid mass starvation. Wildlife was being farmed so people could live.

Secondly, the thing about live animal markets is a twofold; firstly a lot of them are in warmer climates and secondly in countries with limited access to refrigeration. You kill an animal somewhere warm and without refrigeration the flesh rots quickly. The most sensible option is to keep an animal alive for as long as possible; live meat is fresh meat. Seeing people walking home from markets with a trussed up live chicken is pretty common, ready to wring its neck when you get home, and stick it in the pot. It may seem horrible to us, but it's a way of life for others.

[SA Chris]

There was a post a while ago about how the wet markets came about, and were accepted in China to avoid mass starvation. Wildlife was being farmed so people could live.

[Stu Littlefair]

To everyone discussing whether a complete lockdown is worth it:

1) A 0.2% infection-fatality-rate is at the bottom end of the range of viable estimates. Decision making now on that number is farcical.

2) Role play out the costs of being wrong under the two strategies....

LOCKDOWN:
Based on an estimate that the viral could kill up to 2% of the population you lock down for three months. This costs a lot of money and leads to economic hardship. After three months we have the data that shows the danger was vastly over-rated.

The lockdown is released, and everyone complains about the wasted financial cost. Maybe the economy recovers quickly. Maybe it doesn't...

DON'T LOCKDOWN:
The economy continues relatively unaffected (but it's not great cos the economic output of your neighbours has dropped 40%). After two months it becomes clear that the disease actually kills 2% of people, but you now have an out-of-control outbreak and an overwhelmed health service, so you end up with 2% of your population dead. And economic chaos.


Now pick an option?

There seems little point discussing the economic cost of the lockdown now, because it is needed under the precautionary principle. Once you have firm numbers about the disease, the kind of cost-benefit analysis you want makes more sense.

[Duma]

Thanks stu, I'd been trying to get this straight in my head, this has clarified things a bit

[JamieG]

Sorry that absolutely wasn't meant to be a judgement of wet markets as places to buy produce. And you are absolutely right about the practicalities of home refrigeration etc. Apparently they are also substantially cheaper.

I grew up in the countryside. Our school was next door to the abattoir. We kept and ate our own chickens and I've been rabbit shooting. I've also travelled in various countries (including China) and been to these type of markets they are cool places to visit. So I'm not particularly squeamish about this kind of thing. In fact I think we have gone to far the other way in the west and don't really understand where our meat comes from anymore.

It was more just a comment on why they are potentially bad for novel viruses.

[Stu Littlefair]

Would we not have started to see a difference by now? How long do you think we will need to wait until the accelerate past us, 2 week, 3, 6?

No.

It's way too soon to be comparing Holland to the UK. If you get infected today, you probably won't die for around three weeks. Changes made today show up in fatality rates after? Three weeks.

We locked down 1.5 weeks ago. Our curve might start to differ from Holland's in another 1.5 weeks. And even then they'll diverge slowly. Until then comparisons between the two are meaningless. Log back onto this thread on Easter Monday and we'll talk.

(edited to be less arsy)

[Oldmanmatt]

Many months ago, I read a piece that asserted strongly that our greatest pandemic threat was intensive meat farming. That was centred around the Bird Flu, birds shitting in animal pens, type scenario (I hope it’s obvious that I’m simplifying).

[tomtom]

(What Stu said - far too early to make sensible comparisons)

What is a bit infuriating is the lack of normalising deaths by population in the graphs (e.g. we should be plotting deaths per million).

I’ve seen several comparisons of curves after the first ten deaths or first 100 deaths... that’s just bad data manipulation. Comparing Belgium (or our) curve to the USA after 100 deaths is the same as adding or subtracting a week (or more) from the horizontal axis.

Grr.

[Murph]

Jamie - I'm no expert but I've seen the youtube video of what a wet market is. And yep.

SA Chris- the video I saw wasnt about live chickens so much as it was about totally exotic animals from different parts of the world all being kept together so their diseases could mutate and spread.

Liam - Is that true though - I dont know. Anyway the smoking thing was a bit of a flippant point. A lot of things have just become a lot less ok and a lot less - not more - popular.

Sean - thanks for the link. Listening now. It's just the sort of thing been muttering about on here.

Stu - im not wedded to 0.2%  if its 2% or 20% then the lives saved part of the equation looks different. But we dont have the first idea what the cost is really. But it sounds like it's a lot. 20% of GDP is going to need a lot of hospitals to close down to pay for it. I admit I haven't really put much thought into what a collapsing health system looks like. The army barricading the carpark? Hospitals just being abandoned? I dont think anyone really knows. Things were different for the Spanish flu but that sounds like it was a lot worse than even the worst case base fatality rate of covid. But back then the dependency ratio in the western world was a lot more manageable - there is now a vast proportion of the population dependent on treatments that hadnt been invented 100 years ago.

Morbid stuff.

[Oldmanmatt]

(What Stu said - far too early to make sensible comparisons)

What is a bit infuriating is the lack of normalising deaths by population in the graphs (e.g. we should be plotting deaths per million).

I’ve seen several comparisons of curves after the first ten deaths or first 100 deaths... that’s just bad data manipulation. Comparing Belgium (or our) curve to the USA after 100 deaths is the same as adding or subtracting a week (or more) from the horizontal axis.

Grr.

It’s worse, given that 100 deaths as a percentage of the population, is a very different matter, from state to state.
Caveat: I haven’t checked all the different populations, globally, or even Europe wide. But one Greater London is probably worth a Luxembourg in the bush. There or there abouts.

[Murph]

Actually probably rambling too much here. And I will watch Liam's video. But the economic cost of this could spiral in all sorts of ways and 20% of GDP might look modest. I dont know. But I do know that there are all sorts of decks of cards out there that we cannot even imagine. The collapse in 2008 could end up looking incredibly modest. We are experimenting in live running with an extremely complicated system here. It's the uncertainty surrounding the whole thing. All the small things like whether your local cafe or nursery closed down to the geopolitical stuff.

[galpinos]

(What Stu said - far too early to make sensible comparisons)

What is a bit infuriating is the lack of normalising deaths by population in the graphs (e.g. we should be plotting deaths per million).

I’ve seen several comparisons of curves after the first ten deaths or first 100 deaths... that’s just bad data manipulation. Comparing Belgium (or our) curve to the USA after 100 deaths is the same as adding or subtracting a week (or more) from the horizontal axis.

Grr.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&country=GBR+SWE+ITA+USA+NLD+DEU+CHN+FRA+ESP"

You can add countries etc. Up to date as of today. Netherlands not looking so hot right now.....

[seankenny]

Stu - im not wedded to 0.2%  if its 2% or 20% then the lives saved part of the equation looks different. But we dont have the first idea what the cost is really. But it sounds like it's a lot. 20% of GDP is going to need a lot of hospitals to close down to pay for it.

I think the issue is partly the size of the contraction - we know it's going to be eye-watering - but also its length. If it's relatively short I can't see why we can't pay for it over a very long time. Yes we will have higher debt but that seems a price worth paying given the costs of not doing so. If we lost 2% of our population I can imagine that having a massive effect just in terms of overall demand in the economy. In addition you'd get a sort of ad-hoc self isolating process which would be ineffective at halting the disease but economically damaging.

I think in the longer term there'd be a knock-on effect in terms of a massive loss of trust if the governent simply let a lot of people die. Imagine if you were one of those who'd lost their job in the pandemic recession and also lost a close relative: those people are going to be really pissed off. A government - or even worse, a state aparatus - that is seen as unable to look after the basic needs of its citizens would create some kind of political crisis and that would inevitably come with a financial cost.

[tomtom]

@galpinos. Thanks - Sweden doesn’t look too flash their either. Nor our recent uptick 😱

[Murph]

Sorry Sean I meant your video not Liam's. Skipped through it a bit but it was basically looking at the do nothing scenario. And yes it does come with a cost, obviously people wont be going out as much while they are worried about getting sick / sick / dead. It was just a starter though and hopefully will catch it again when they've put some of the costs of the options through the model.

It's all a bit economicsy though - obviously - and only as good as what goes into it which is a lot of assumptions about how quickly people start spending again and substituting different types of consumption etc.

Still. will be interesting to revisit when theres an advance on the do nothing scenario. Thanks for the link.

[Oldmanmatt]

Someone mentioned not being  able to imagine a collapsed healthcare system/nation, earlier?

Might look like this, in the beginning:
http://huffp.st/j18iLrC

[petejh]

This caught my eye in today's CDC update email:

PANAMA IMPLEMENTS GENDER-SPECIFIC SOCIAL DISTANCING In an effort to further enforce nationwide social distancing measures, Panama recently announced that it is implementing gender-specific rules for when people can leave their homes. Women will be allowed to be outside on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and men will be allowed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On Sundays, everyone must remain indoors. The restrictions will reportedly last for at least 15 days. Officials implemented the additional gender-specific restrictions after observing high rates of noncompliance with the previous policies. These rules will be enforced based on the sex specified on individuals’ national identification cards. Additionally, the announcement stated that Panama has also been invited to participate in the SOLIDARITY Trial, led by the WHO, which aims to assess COVID-19 treatment options.

I know men are at greater risk of severe symptoms than women but how is this measure useful, are they suggesting people are still going out on the pull 

[Oldmanmatt]

This caught my eye in today's CDC update email:

PANAMA IMPLEMENTS GENDER-SPECIFIC SOCIAL DISTANCING In an effort to further enforce nationwide social distancing measures, Panama recently announced that it is implementing gender-specific rules for when people can leave their homes. Women will be allowed to be outside on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and men will be allowed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On Sundays, everyone must remain indoors. The restrictions will reportedly last for at least 15 days. Officials implemented the additional gender-specific restrictions after observing high rates of noncompliance with the previous policies. These rules will be enforced based on the sex specified on individuals’ national identification cards. Additionally, the announcement stated that Panama has also been invited to participate in the SOLIDARITY Trial, led by the WHO, which aims to assess COVID-19 treatment options.

I know men are at greater risk of severe symptoms than women but how is this measure useful, are they suggesting people are still going out on the pull 

Does the CDC do April Fools?