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World News See other World News Articles Title: Corona Will Kill Millions & Crater the World Economy Hyperbolic much? At this point, the burden of proof surely now has to be on the optimists, who’ve been alternately barraging us with “iTs JuSt LiKe ThE fLu”, and/or “it’s not going to kill non-East Asians anyway” (not that CNN’s Sanjay Gupta will admit it). But with epidemics, it’s usually a case of go big or go home. It’s not going home. As of the past couple of days, we can definitively state that containment has failed. The proof of this is Italy. Consider: Italy has only a moderate level of air traffic with China – approximately comparable to Russia and France, lower than Germany and the UK, fivefold lower than the US. Italy was the only country in Europe to ban all direct flights from China on January 31. (This appears to have actually no less hard a response than Russia’s ban on Chinese citizens on February 20, which however excluded transit and business visitors). Belying stereotypes, the Italian epidemiological response has been highly competent (if by unexacting global standards), with most or all people displaying flu-like symptoms apparently being tested. Even so, well over 200 cases in Italy have sprouted up in a matter of days, with deaths starting to tick up (seven as of the time of writing), a dozen cities under quarantine, and with no end in sight. Coupled with the cluster in Iran, this means that COVID-19 now also meets the definition of a pandemic, even if the WHO has chosen this moment to erase this word from its lexicon. It beggars belief that there aren’t similar or bigger clusters all over Europe, North America, and much of the world even outside East Asia. To which one might rejoinder, why haven’t they been detected yet? Well, recall how COVID-19 works. Most cases are asymptomatic; in cases where symptoms do appear, which can happen as much as 2 weeks after infection, they are easily confounded with the flu. From the earlier days, it has been estimated – and repeatedly confirmed – that COVID-19 has only a 10% detection rate (BTW, Davide Piffer estimates it at 18%). Meanwhile, carriers need not be symptomatic to transmit. At such early stages, you are only going to identify these clusters by intensive testing, which as I understand nobody apart from Italy and South Korea is really doing yet. One might make a comparison to a tsunami. Undetectable when it’s out in the deep ocean, unless you’re specifically looking for it… until it comes to shore and crashes down on local healthcare systems. At the global level, short of some late stage miracle, the cat is out of the bag and every country or bloc will now largely have to fend for itself. The one positive point is that China’s radical quarantine measures – now encompassing 10% of the world’s population – appear to have worked… at least going by official figures (e.g. only 11 new cases outside of Hubei this past day seems too good to be true – there have been some other oddities). Another obvious question is whether this stall will hold once the quarantines are eased and people are allowed to start going back to work – as they eventually must, if China is to avoid a full-fledged depression. Nonetheless, there are many places in the world – probably the great majority – that are less functional and competent than China. Certainly there are very few countries with the political wherewithal to put half of their population under varying types of travel restrictions and basically implode their own economies. There are going to have their own outbreaks, time lagged ~2 months relative to China (note that the first death in Wuhan didn’t take place until January 9), and will then start catapulting the disease back into areas where it had previously been checked – at least short of a total shutdown of globalization on the Best Korea model. At this point, probably the most efficient thing that most countries can do – bearing in mind that mortality with ventilators, drugs, doctors, etc. seems to be ~1% versus 2-3% for people left to their own devices – is to try to draw out the infections for as long as possible to prevent hospital facilities from becoming overwhelmed and so maximize the number of people who can be treated. Robin Hanson has some even more “powerful” ideas on how to minimize mortality rates, but I doubt there are any governments powerful enough to “consider controlled infection.” *** Official China says its growth rate will be 6% in Q1 2020. Who knew that sitting at home mining gold on World of Warcraft could be so economically productive as to counterbalance the effects of a 25% reduction in coal production and CO2 emissions, a ~70% reduction in air flights, and a 90%+ (sic!) reduction in automobile sales. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#1. To: Ada (#0)
China is now claiming that the daily number of new infections and deaths are on the decline. I don't know why anyone would believe China at this point. But even if true, as soon as people go back to work and school which they are aching to do, it can flare up again.
I hope that is correct. However, as you say, there is yet no evidence that people can develop antibodies; and if they get it again, its usually worse.
They would have to develop antibodies to recover, but the suggestion is that the body can "forget" them more easily than with other anti-bodies. But if that's the case, then would vaccines actually work?
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