Category Archives: virus crisis

General update, April 10

Posted on by

1. Ronald Bailey reports,

Over the last two weeks, German virologists tested nearly 80 percent of the population of Gangelt for antibodies that indicate whether they’d been infected by the coronavirus. Around 15 percent had been infected, allowing them to calculate a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of about 0.37 percent. The researchers also concluded that people who recover from the infection are immune to reinfection, at least for a while.

I cannot read German, and I am a little worried about how they calculated this. Suppose we find that as of today 10000 people have had the virus and 37 have died. I don’t think it would be correct to infer that the infection fatality rate is 3.7 percent. It could be that there are 50 people currently in the hospital, and if 40 of them subsequently die, then that would mean we should double our estimate of the infection fatality rate.

If we trust the 0.37 percent number (round it to 4 in 1000), we can work backwards from deaths to the number of people who have had the virus. So here is some speculative arithmetic. If 4 Germans have died for every 1000 who have had the virus, and the reported number of deaths is 2600, then the number of Germans who have the virus is 2600 * 1000/4 = 650,000.

We can play the same game for the U.S. Take 17,000 * 1000/4 and that gives 4.25 million people in the U.S. have had the virus.

2. Tim Skellet has some tweets about the German study. I noted this:

Overall in Germany: “So far, no transmission of the virus in supermarkets, restaurants or hairdressers has been proven”. #SARSCov2 was detected by PCR on “remote controls, washbasins, mobile phones, toilets or door handles” BUT NOT in infectious form.

. . .The entire #COVID19 outbreak in #Heinsberg district is traced back to a couple who attended a local Karneval festival. It all kicked off from there.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

3. I also liked another link from Tyler, the Dan Wang piece on life in Beijing during the lockdown there.

The virus and political alignment

Posted on by

Joseph C. Sternberg writes,

The oddity is that the left in most of the world has been so intensely critical of Sweden’s experiment. If this model works, it would hold out some hope that the coronavirus could be managed without putting millions of members of the left’s own blue-collar base out of work. Yet the prevailing attitude is less “let them try” and more “excommunicate the heretics.”

I prefer to use the three-axes model. For those of you new to this blog, the model says:

Conservatives like to frame issues in terms of civilization-barbarism, accusing their opponents of being on the side of barbarism.

Progressives like to frame issues in terms of oppressors-oppressed, accusing their opponents of being on the side of the oppressors.

Libertarians like to frame issues in terms of liberty-coercion, accusing their opponents of being on the side of (state) coercion.

For conservatives, the easiest way to frame this in civilization-barbarism terms is to cast China in the role of barbarians. President Trump has taken that approach.

Progressives instinctively reacted against this. Early in the crisis, the progressive framing, as articulated by WHO and some American progressives, was to charge that racism was behind the fears of the virus. They saw themselves as heroically fighting against anti-Chinese prejudice.

Since then, the progressive framing has become less clear to me. I have seen, but forgotten to bookmark, a few articles claiming that the virus crisis is harder on minorities because their death rates are higher and harder on women because they bear the burden of caring for children home from school. Those articles would represent oppressor-oppressed framing, but to be honest, I don’t see them as representative of what most progressives are saying at the moment.

For now, I see progressives as focused on claiming President Trump has badly mis-handled the crisis. It seems to me that they place a higher priority on that than on establishing an oppressor-oppressed narrative. Such a narrative may emerge later, perhaps in the report of the investigative commission that many progressives are calling for.

Libertarians are being driven bonkers. Myself included. I don’t have to repeat what I already have said. I see as villains all of those who seem to me to automatically praise activist government regardless of whether it helps while ignoring the possibility that the private sector can adapt effectively.

Of course, libertarians are backfooted by the undeniable fact that there are externalities here. If I behave recklessly, I can endanger others by infecting them or using scarce hospital resources.

Should it be legal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet or for a restaurant to have a smoking section? Many people would say “no.” Libertarians would be inclined to say “yes.” There is some of the same division over whether or not you should be allowed to eat in a restaurant these days. And libertarians are not winning the argument.

Questions from a commenter

Posted on by

The commenter asks,

I sometimes wonder, if it was 2007 (pre-iPhone) vs. 2020, would we have reacted the same way? Would it have been worse and for whom?

2020 seems to be predicated on two guiding principles:

1) the enduring belief in models to guide public policy regardless of their underlying ability to accurately predict actual outcomes to within any degree of accuracy

2) the always connected smartphone with never ending updates.

A few thoughts.

1. I think it is too early to say whether computer models helped, hurt, or made little difference. My bet now would be on “made little difference.” I think that most policy makers, including those in European countries, had to see with their own eyes what happened in Italy and New York before they would react. Asia was a different story, in part for cultural reasons but mainly because the SARS precedent made a more profound impression there.

2. I don’t think that the pre-iPhone reaction would have been the same. I take the view that our current technology blurs what used to be a distinction between our intimate world and our remote world. It used to be that our intimate world was our family, friends, and co-workers. We saw them in person. The remote world was celebrities, politicians, and people in the news. We saw them on television or in print.

Now, our intimate world and the remote world both show up on the same screen. We feel a compulsion to try to be celebrities in our intimate world (worrying about whether our friends “like” our posts on Facebook or Instagram) as well as a compulsion to become involved in the remote world.

During this crisis, I myself have torn down the barrier that I used to put up to prevent me from becoming too involved in the remote world. That is, I used to write a blog post and schedule it to appear two weeks later. Instead, I am writing blog posts to appear within hours, or even minutes after they are composed.

I think that the current media environment puts tremendous pressure on policy makers to appear to be doing something, and doing it quickly. Pre-2006, I don’t think that you get daily briefings led by the President.

The pressure on policy makers to react quickly may do more harm than good. Reacting quickly is not the same thing as making the best choices based on available information. In fact, it may be the opposite. In a pre-iPhone environment, maybe you don’t have Dr. Fauci making light of the problem by saying that young healthy people should be willing to go on cruise ships. Maybe WHO would have made its presence felt more on the basis of the epidemiology of its scientists than on the ideology of its upper echelons Maybe Congress would have been patient enough to come up with bill that more effectively addressed the problems of economic dislocation caused by the virus, rather than passing the worst legislation in history.

On the other hand, I think that the private sector was able to react more constructively than would have been the case 15 years ago. Individuals and firms knew enough to overcome bad regulations, either by ignoring them or shaming the government into dropping them. Weeks before government stepped in, many businesses canceled conferences, sports teams canceled games, and many of us adopted social distancing.

So I don’t have an overall evaluation of whether we are better off or worse off having our current media environment.

3DDRR update

Posted on by

Another slight uptick today, from 1.53 to 1.54

But the 3DDRR outside of New York went up even more, from 1.54 to 1.58

I expect the 3DDRR and the 3DDRRxNY to be lower tomorrow, perhaps even 1.45, just because the death numbers on Tuesday look suspiciously high, as if they borrowed numbers from either Monday or Wednesday. If you have a data series with that sort of daily noise, you may want to look at a longer time interval. If you look at a 5DDRRxNY, it is very close to 2, meaning that the death rate is doubling every five days instead of every three. The good news is that the trend for the 5DDRRxNY is down, but the bad news is that it is not falling fast enough to warrant saying that the worst is behind us.

Speaking of noise in the daily data, a commenter from Indiana pointed out to me the contrast between deaths reported by the covidtracking site that I use for the 3DDRR calculation and the Indiana Department of Health site.

Here is how I understand what is happening. Suppose that 15 deaths occur on Monday, but the Department of Health finds out about 5 of them on Monday, 7 on Tuesday, and the other 3 on Wednesday. As of Monday, it will have incremented its total cases by 5, which is what the covidtracking site will pick up as the incremental deaths for Monday. Then on Tuesday, the Department of Health will revise its Monday total up by 7, but the covidtracking site will pick up these 7 deaths as incremental for Tuesday. And on Wednesday, the Department of Health will revise its Monday numbers up by 3, but the covidtracking site will pick those up as incremental for Wednesday.

In a steady state, daily deaths and the proportions reported staying constant, this would not affect the covidtracking site. But if deaths are increasing (decreasing), that site will show the increase (decrease) with a lag. If something similar holds true for other states, then this will add noise to the 3DDRR calculation.

General update, April 9

Posted on by

1. Expressions I wish people would stop using.

Re-open the economy. It is not a binary open/close situation. Some economic activity is taking place now. Much of the economic activity that was prevalent pre-crisis will never return. And most of all, no signal from a government official is going to enable “back to normal.” This isn’t like the games of tag we played when I was 6 years old. There is no “All-ee All-ee Infree.”

Stimulus. The government is reallocating capital and redistributing wealth. For better or worse, the Fed is telling banks where to lend and where not to lend. The point of giving people relief checks now is not to “stimulate” them to go back to eating in restaurants, attending conferences, flying overseas, or going to sporting events. If they don’t spend on anything other then rent, utilities, and groceries, that’s fine.

2. Worst-legislation-in-history watch:

Congress did not include relief for the mortgage industry in its $2 trillion rescue package — even as lawmakers required mortgage companies to allow homeowners up to a year’s delay in making payments on federally backed loans.

Sounds like Wesley Mouch wrote the CARES act.

3. James Stock and others write,

what is the share of infections that are undetected under current testing guidelines? To answer this question, we turn
to COVID-19 testing data from Iceland. . . Our primary estimates for the fraction of infections that are undetected range from 88.7% to 93.6%.

But is the trend in the U.S. for testing criteria to be tighter or looser? Some anecdotes suggest looser–that is, when someone calls in with symptoms, they are told that as long as symptoms are mild to stay home and not come in for a test. If that means that we are testing a smaller sample of the symptomatic, then the number of reported cases understates the number of people with the virus by even more than the above estimate would suggest.

4. Jeremy Stein and others write,

Under our plan, the government would provide payment assistance to enable impacted businesses to meet their recurring fixed obligations—including interest, rent, lease, and utility payments—during the health emergency. A key advantage of our plan is that it can be easily implemented and administered. Firms would apply for grants up to a maximum limit determined by their recurring fixed obligations, measured using items on the front page of the firm’s 2019 corporate tax return. Both to protect taxpayers and for reasons of fairness, firms—especially the largest firms—that receive temporary BCI assistance would be required to gradually repay most of these benefits over time. Large firms that receive assistance would also face temporary restrictions on their ability to pay dividends and repurchase shares, as well as limitations on executive compensation.

Note that the phrase “would be required to gradually repay most of these benefits” more like a compbination of a grant and a loan than like a pure grant. This is sort of like my credit-line idea, only more complicated. And even slightly more complicated means creating painful difficulties with implementation. People don’t seem to anticipate the way that as you try to improve an idea on paper you can make it seriously degrade in practice. As in the the worst legislation in history.

5. Some people are insinuating that virus deaths are over-reported. I will not consider this a serious issue until I see more evidence.

Of course “cause of death” is not a black-and-white issue. Someone could be diagnosed with congestive heart failure in February and be counted as a virus death in March. But in another case, the person who signs the death certificate could refuse to report a death as virus death only because the person was not tested the virus. If the CDC has issued guidance against making the latter reporting error, then I see that as sensible advice, not a conspiracy to inflate the numbers.

For a variety of reasons, the category “underlying conditions” is too broad. If nothing else, it would help to differentiate underlying conditions that typically lead to death within 6 months from other underlying conditions. i would only want to revise downward the estimate of virus deaths to the extent that more than, say, 5 percent are in people who had less than 6 months to live, anyway.

My case against lockdowns

Posted on by

I think I need to make this case more clearly.

Consider three scenarios.

1. Back to normal. Everyone behaves the way they did before the virus hit.

2. Baseline scenario. Everyone makes individual decisions, except that government dictates wearing of masks in crowded public places, such as subways. I expect under this scenario that many of us would telework as much as possible, avoid travel, stay home a great deal, and practice social distancing. Those would be our choices.

3. Lockdowns. The government orders certain businesses and schools to close. It restricts people’s freedom to move.

For me, (1) is irrelevant. If you insist that the only alternative to (3) is (1), then I won’t pay attention to what you have to say.

The relevant margin is between (2) and (3). Under either of those scenarios, I expect much less virus spreading than under (1). By the same token, I expect a big drop in economic activity under either scenario.

Suppose that the lockdown produces a significantly lower spread rate than the baseline scenario. Does that mean a much lower death rate? That would only be true if we can do a better job of treating people later than now.

The cry of “Flatten the curve!” was based on the presumption that having enough hospital beds and ventilators was crucial to saving lives. Now that we have had a chance to observe the way that cases progress, this argument seems less compelling. It seems that survival chances depend a lot more on patient characteristics than on medical treatment. My impression is that if anything, we are putting too many patients on ventilators. Too often, ventilators constitute futile care, keeping patients alive for only a few weeks.

Our personal policies are as follows.

a) My wife and I will continue to stay at home by ourselves, except for very infrequent trips for groceries.

b) When we do go out, we will wear masks except if we are on walks (or bike rides, in my case)

c) If I get the disease, I only want to be put on a ventilator if there is a decent chance of a good outcome.

[UPDATE] d) I hope we that the two of us have had the virus already and that we are immune. If we find that to be the case, then of course we will be willing to go back to normal. Or if better treatments become available.

In what I call the baseline scenario, other people would be free to have different policies. I prefer that to the lockdown scenario.

Where we stand as a society

Posted on by

[UPDATE: please also read My case against lockdowns, which spells out why I don’t think lockdowns are saving lives.]

Tyler Cowen writes,

R0 won’t stay [below] 1 for long, even if it gets there at all. We will then have to shut down again within two months, but will then reopen again a bit after that. At each step along the way, we will self-deceive rather than confront the level of pain involved with our choices.

There is some more at the link. Tyler is careful not to say how he feels about this scenario, but one is left with the impression that he believes that it is about the best one can hope for. I am going to protest more strongly.

My own thinking is focused on our economic and political system. I would prefer a much milder government response to the virus. In fact, the only response might be to require people to wear masks in crowded public areas, such as the sidewalks of Manhattan or riding mass transit.

I expect that on their own, without any legal coercion, many stores would require mask use as a condition of entry. “No shirt, no service” would become “No mask, no service.”

I expect that on their own, without any legal coercion, many businesses and individuals would increase teleworking and reduce travel. Large conferences and sporting events will hold little appeal.

Many schools and day care centers would take measures to keep sick children (or sick adults) from coming into their facilities. Parents who do not want to take time off to care for sick children would have to find commercial services that will do so.

Compared with the outcomes of these individual choices, the marginal effect of government-mandated closures and lockdowns on the rate of virus spread is small. It may not even be in the right direction.

Note that it is not certain that slowing the spread rate of the virus has benefits. Because medical treatment seems to make little difference in many cases, the solution to the problem of “overwhelming the hospital system” might be better triage.

Of course, triage is not the American way. Our cultural norms are that keeping someone alive an extra few weeks on a ventilator is better than giving up. There is something admirable about such norms, but perhaps in a crisis they ought to give way in order to conserve resources, especially the health of hospital workers.

The main benefit of delaying the spread of the virus is the likelihood that there will be more effective treatments down the road. But individuals who would like to try to avoid getting the virus until better treatments become available can make their own decisions to act especially cautiously. They do not need the state to impose their preferences on everyone else.

Whether the government response is mild or severe, there will be considerable economic dislocation. Much of the economic dislocation comes from the actions of private individuals and businesses. The idea that the government has the power to “reopen the economy” is as wrong-headed as believing that it is government’s responsibility to close businesses and shut people up indoors.

But I don’t think of the government as a rich uncle with an attic full of toys to give away. Instead, I think of government as an institution for forcibly collecting charity that can be used to help some of the people who suffer the most in this crisis.

I favor giving people and businesses access to credit lines, backed by taxpayer funds. Many individuals and businesses will not need credit to get through the next few months. At the other extreme, many will say that they can never recover financially, and they have to declare bankruptcy. In between will be individuals and businesses able to use credit lines to ride out the crisis and get back on their feet.

I also could support a relief program that gives money to those individuals who are particularly hard hit by the crisis, with the relief checks paid for by reducing government spending elsewhere and/or raising taxes for the next few years. I do not favor deficit spending, which strikes me as catering to the “rich uncle” illusion.

To me, it seems highly probable that in the last few weeks we have discarded American capitalism and individual rights for something that more closely resembles the Chinese model. Unlike China, we will have competitive elections, but both parties will now be more statist than Bernie Sanders.

The rights of the state now take precedence over the rights of individuals. The economy will now be a form of state-capitalism, in which government will direct funding and firms will expect protection from competition and innovation. Where it used to be the responsibility of government to enforce contracts, such as those between renters and landlords, it is now the responsibility of government to tear up these contracts.

Federal government spending as a share of GDP will permanently rise above the 18-20 percent norm of recent decades, to somewhere between 30 and 50 percent (getting to the latter would require crowding out some spending by state and local governments). I predict that inflation will soon be manifest, and price controls will be instituted, at least on some “necessities.”

When someone like me objects to all of this, I am afraid that the response from people under age 45 will be, “OK, Boomer!” Even before this crisis, there was little appreciation among well-educated young people for the liberal institutions of free markets, equality under the law, and civil liberties.

General update, April 8

Posted on by

1. Finland starting a random-sample test. I guess they have more money to do this than we do.

2. Tyler Cowen is soliciting proposals for anti-virus research that he will fund quickly.

3. The Competitive Enterprise Institute lists regulations that hamper the response to the crisis. I have to say that I am not one of those expecting libertarians to come out ahead after this. Everyone is going to say that the crisis serves to prove that their ideology is correct.

4. Ross Douthat on what the experts do not know.

most of the institutions that we associate with public health expertise and trusted medical authority have failed more catastrophically than Trump has.

I will be surprised if progressives ever concede that.

My perspective on the CARES act

Posted on by

The ostensible purpose of the CARES act is to help distressed individuals and small businesses. But much less than half of the spending in the act is directed at those groups. And in practice, the funds are dribbling out, because of poor design and bureaucratic read tape. My credit-line idea could have been implemented with a few lines of computer code at banks.

Meanwhile, the really significant feature of the CARES act is a government takeover of the capital market. The government is authorizing the Fed to lend $5 trillion to businesses, which is more than the entire private-sector lending market in 2019.

If Congress had put President Trump in charge of deciding which businesses get loans and which ones don’t, I assume that more people would agree with me that it is the worst piece of legislation in U.S. history. The only difference now is that instead of replacing the private capital market with a central planner in the Oval Office, the CARES act replaces the private capital market with a central planning bureau at 20th and C Streets, NW.