Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Vater said:

You seem like a smart guy (TM), but you're stuck in this mindset that the ONLY solution is to stay home and that anyone who thinks differently is an imbecile. Never mind that folks all around me are losing their jobs and way of life.

I'm not stuck on anything... there are mathematically two outcomes, and we can see both futures in the places where the virus had an earlier start.

Italy did not enforce isolation until the genie was out of the bottle, and in a few days, they'll have more cases than China despite having just 4% of the population. That is staggering. Even more telling is that Italy already has more fatalities than China, despite having half the cases. Why? Because the healthcare system has failed. Do you really think Italy can just send everyone back to work?

Please, if there's another solution other than staying home, when there's no vaccine, no obvious treatment, and 15% of those infected need hospitalization, I'm all ears. You could probably land a job in the White House.

Not trying to totally discredit Italy's situation, but those statements are assuming the Chinese numbers are accurate. China is a country which practices extensive censorship along with a cultural norm of "saving face" being more important than other outcomes. I read an article that said the estimation of cases in China is somewhere closer to 400,000.

Anyway, on another tangent, did anyone read the article about the government of Denmark covering workers salaries so that they can sit at home until this blows over and then resume working as normal, or at least that is the plan.

From what I have seen of the Denmark plan, they will pay 75% of the salary of any private business employee if the business says it plans to layoff 30% of its workforce or at least 50 employees. For 3 month period and for wages up to $52,400 on an annualized basis.

Will help. But while no one is working, nothing is being produced/services provided. Much of that demand won't come back (even if things move forward in 3 months). And employee costs are just part of the costs of running a business. If not operating you aren't bringing in revenue. You still have to cover your fixed costs and 25% of employee pay (and either cut pay for those making more than $52,400/year or cover those salaries too).

Many different ways to address the issue/help address issues relating to shutdowns/closures.

The driving force behind their plan isn't just the coverage of salaries, which 75% should be ample since discretionary spending is basically gone, in addition to transportation expenses. The plan also has a provision for coverage of company's fixed expenses during this time. They didn't just focus on the worker, but also on the businesses themselves.

They mentioned that they will pay the salaries only if the workers are not fired, which will in the long run hopefully prevent costs due to turnover, unemployment, etc. as well as allow for the country to try and resume as normal once everything blows over. If the workers don't lose their jobs and incomes, then when everyone goes back to life, instead of scrimping and saving because of no job, loss in wages etc, they should be able to jump right back into their lives as they were beforehand.

Of course there is the massive bill this presents, and also what is to prevent those companies from just firing the workers down the road. But at least it is a different approach which is better than just letting everything circle the drain.

Ultimately, this whole situation will cost huge money to each country's government. Just like the US govt had to pump money into the economy to help get out of the depression, the same will be required of this. Since the economy is simply money getting passed from one to the next, rinse and repeat, it needs to start somewhere. Currently everywhere seems to be turning off this cycle, someone is going to be responsible for turning it back on again or it will just stagnate.

The Disruption vs. Death Act of 2020 is just 15 days away.

The federal reserve is actually already inserting new money into the system, creating and printing it off a rapid pace to insure that the banks have the finances to back up a lot of the massive withdrawals that are happening, and the to support the system in general. There was an interesting report on that last night on 60 minutes.

One thing I have learned, that makes the whole ordeal even more unsettling, is that the idea that this is an elderly disease is myth. This is not to say that I have felt invincible, but I must admit that this entire time I have been more or less self-reassuring with the idea being that if I (or my family) did contract it, we might not even know it, and certainly would not end up in a hospital. You know, it would just be the happy Tom Hanks version.

This does not appear to be the case at all.

Here is the view from a doctor's perspective that was an interesting read.

So, out of curiosity, what would the "worst case scenario" look like, hypothetically? The sick just being left to die?

My take on this portion of the conversation (Man, for someone working virtually from home, you'd think I'd have more time for internet discussions): Yes, of course there is and always has been a slider that moves from social disruption on one side to additional death on the other. Of course, we have weighed that with seasonal flu and landed at a particular point on that scale. Of course, we have to continue weighing that trade off in the current pandemic. Of course, there is a point at which the economic impact will be more harmful than the saving of lives.

However, the point that Jeff is making which I believe is right is that we are nowhere near the trade off point on that scale. Like, not even in the same ball park. A quick back of the envelope calculation shows this and the countries who have been through this before and the countries ahead of us in time, obviously including Italy, are all saying that we should be enforcing stricter protocols, not relaxing them. Every reputable epidemiologist or public health official is saying that we need to do a better job at social distancing, not worse.

And for leadership to even entertain the conversation publicly at this point is irresponsible in the same way that calling it a "Democratic hoax" was irresponsible and saying that "anyone who wants can get a test" was irresponsible. The language changes behavior and that behavior will make things worse. Suggesting that in 15 days we might be through the worst of this is not supported by any model or by simple math and is a dangerous implication to make because it give people the idea that things are getting better and they can "probably have some friends over because we have this thing under control."

I would hope that we are all in agreement that we are not even close to that point....certainly not 15 fricking days away.

There's just simply no leadership. At this point in the game, states should not be on different pages. The whole country should be doing what Ohio is doing weeks ago.

I'm happy I live in a state that is doing its best to instigate change, but we are but one piece of a larger system. If the other parts decide not to play along, the whole system breaks down, because we are all connected.

Jeff, you referenced Italy’s healthcare system failing. I find it interesting that many in this country rant and rave about the healthcare of these European countries, or really just about any country other than ours, and yet one of them is experiencing an unprecedented failure to cope with this. Granted, it seems like their failure is more not shutting everything down faster and the healthcare failure is just the inevitable result of that not happening, but even so, it’s just interesting.

Also, I understand the notion of exponents, but what I think is questionable is the way we’re strictly looking at total cases and examining our similarity to Italy. A far better chart, and one I wish would be used, would be to switch your vertical axis unit of measure to percentage of the country’s population testing positive. It’s a much more appropriate comparison, but it would result in a far less dramatic curve for the US, and that makes for less interesting television.

I can totally support the extreme measures in place, but if we want to cry science as justification for what we’re doing, maybe we should stop acting like having the same number of cases nationwide at identical points in the relative timeline as a country with the population of California and Florida means we’re failing as badly as they are. If closing everything down is the way to go, great, but let’s make sure we’re using the right metric to gauge our success/failure. We’re being led to believe that we’re tanking as badly as Italy, but using the last chart you used that compared the two, we’re actually five times better off than they were.

sirloindude said:

Also, I understand the notion of exponents, but what I think is questionable is the way we’re strictly looking at total cases and examining our similarity to Italy. A far better chart, and one I wish would be used, would be to switch your vertical axis unit of measure to percentage of the country’s population testing positive.

Umm...I'm not sure you understand exponential growth. If we looked at the percentage of the country's population, you would still see exponential growth. The fact that the numbers are smaller in no way changes the fact that that, at the end, an unimaginable quantity of people will get sick all at the same time.

Like, it doesn't matter if the numbers are 10,20,40,80,160,320, etc. or 0.00000001%, 0.00000002%, 0.0000004% etc. Those tiny looking numbers are still growing exponentially. One sequence will end in 4M, 8M, 16M, 32M and the other will end in 2%, 4%, 8%, 16%. Sure, the first sequence has "bigger numbers" in the middle and "looks scarier" and the second has "smaller numbers" which reassure us, but that 16% at the end looks pretty damn scary to me.

sirloindude said:

...it would result in a far less dramatic curve for the US, and that makes for less interesting television.

Why would it make for a less dramatic curve? Changing the axis doesn't change the shape of the curve at all. Unless you're suggesting making the axis top out at 100% in which case you could do the same thing by making the "# of cases" axis top out at 300M. In which case, you will miss the fact that you are totally screwed until you have 10 million people testing positive. Like, if the scale goes up to 300M, you won't even be able to tell if 1 million people test positive. It won't even register on the graph. But that's still a lot of people and it still indicates that your country is totally f'd.

The best graphs are actually the ones that use log scales, like the animation I linked above, because you can see both the rates and the absolute numbers...but most people don't know how to read a log scale graph.

Math is math is math. Combined with observable facts, I don't understand why there is even a debate.

sirloindude said:

Jeff, you referenced Italy’s healthcare system failing. I find it interesting that many in this country rant and rave about the healthcare of these European countries... Granted, it seems like their failure is more not shutting everything down faster and the healthcare failure is just the inevitable result of that not happening, but even so, it’s just interesting.

I keep seeing that talking point online, which presumably has the intention of drawing some connection between socialized healthcare and outcomes, which is wholly absurd because, again, with objective numbers and facts, generally has better outcomes than US healthcare, and with a fraction of the cost. But again, you're right, their failure is not taking it seriously, and having more sick people than there are beds. And according to this, Italy has 3.17 beds per thousand people with their socialized medicine. The US has 2.77

...maybe we should stop acting like having the same number of cases nationwide at identical points in the relative timeline as a country with the population of California and Florida means we’re failing as badly as they are.

Do other countries not also have rural and urban populations? Do you think the outbreaks aren't going to spread to those places? It takes 1 infection in Butte, Montana, to star the chain reaction across the city, just like it does anywhere else (for the record, there are 2 there). Rural populations are potentially worse off, because there are fewer beds per capita, or the beds are dozens of miles away. Florida has five times the population of Louisiana, but about the same number of cases.

And as Andy points out, exponential growth is exponential regardless of size. It's helpful to look at it backward... if 100% people are infected after it doubled every single day, you were only at 50% the day before.

With all the crap being espoused today about "let's just get back to work", I'm happy I live in Ohio. Easter it is!

OhioStater said:

With all the crap being espoused today about "let's just get back to work", I'm happy I live in Ohio. Easter it is!

YMMV, of course.

I live in Ohio too and the work schedules around here increased since DeWine started putting stuff in place.

I understand exponential functions. I’m not questioning the validity of them. What I’m questioning is the use of case counts and acting like if they had 1500 on day 8 (I’m just using an arbitrary number here) and we had 1500 on day 8, we’re somehow in just as bad of shape as they are. I think that focusing more on the exponential behavior of the curve would be a much more accurate depiction of what’s happening, because I can tell you that just from my news feed and what I see on social media, it’s the case count that’s getting the focus, and even reputable sources are doing the Italy comparison I’ve referenced, and then people make it sound like our healthcare system has already collapsed.

I will say that I’ve been more swayed toward the strict measures in place right now, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in asking for the data to represented better or for the media to focus less on the number of cases and more on the behavior of the spread. Doing the latter will likely convince more people who are getting screwed financially that it’s a worthy sacrifice in light of what could happen if we just pretended like this virus was no big deal.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, the incessant politicization of this is obnoxious. The constant complaining is going to look pretty silly if we end up faring much better than Italy. This applies to all parties, by the way.

I do agree that case count and even new cases per day are not the stats we need to be looking at. R0 is the only stat that really matters (the transmission rate which is the base of the exponential function). The problem is nobody understands how different an R0 of 1.3 and an R0 of 2.2 are. (See OhioStater's cartoon) It's like advanced stats in sports. They're way more accurate in predicting what will happen, but nobody likes them because they can't count them as they watch. Case count is RBI's. R0 is OBPS.

Why do we keep saying that we're right behind Italy? Because when we actually look at the data in terms of R0 (the slope of the line in the link below) we are doing worse than they are. Our transmission rate is and continues to be worse than just about every other country at the same relative time (days after case count hit 100) including China and Italy. While they are tailing off and bringing the transmission rate down, we're still on our exponential curve with a doubling time somewhere between 2 and 3 days. We have a crystal ball that tells us the future and it tells us we're going to be worse than Italy. And we're not taking their advice.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/covid19-coronavirus-countrie...trajectory
(Now admittedly, there may be errors here due to lack of testing and other sample errors, but I suspect the same biases would be at play in the Italian data. Maybe it's all just NY and everywhere else will magically be fine, but I wouldn't bet millions of lives on that.)

The politicization is obnoxious. But only because it's obvious that some (many? most?) politicians are more interested in their own optics than in the science or the greater good. And at that point it's not obnoxious, it's dangerous.

Gonch, thought of you and your family when they mentioned today that there are discussions about converting hotels in urban areas into hospitals.

Teaching certainly hasn't stopped. Suppose we are lucky that our paychecks and workload...while shifted dramatically...is more or less the same.

The entire coporate office at my wife's company all took "voluntary" pay cuts of between 50% and 100% in order to help keep the doors open and continue keep as many people employed as they can.

So she's bringing in a fraction of the money, working longer hours than before and shouldering the risk of being out there.

That sucks. Prayers for safety and relief.

I had to furlough myself from virtual teaching which could have been done, but the kids need adult supervision for at least 8 hours a day.

Edit: Thankfully, even with the total collapse of the stock market, we still have enough socked away that the loss of income won't devastate us.

I just started working for a company that handles online ordering for a great many restaurants. That sounds like an opportunity, but I don't know that take-out and delivery has actually increased (I haven't started yet, but I'm sure they know).

It totally sucks. And I feel ya, Andy; our girls are 8 and 12 so they can (at times) fend for themselves, but we keep saying it's a good thing we actually all love each other and actually like being around each other. For now. Ask me again in 2 weeks.

Our biggest hit is our private practice. It's just gone to a slow trickle. My wife has just 1 client next week, and that's assuming they don't decide to cancel.

Jeff; every pizza place in our town is actually hiring to keep up with demand, and if there has been one constant keeping the places here on life support it's been takeout. It's probably different from place to place, but you're right, it certainly sounds like an opportunity.

ApolloAndy said:

A quick back of the envelope calculation shows this and the countries who have been through this before and the countries ahead of us in time, obviously including Italy, are all saying that we should be enforcing stricter protocols, not relaxing them. Every reputable epidemiologist or public health official is saying that we need to do a better job at social distancing, not worse.

So I'm not a huge fan of sitting here and running calculations all day. But I grabbed a couple data points just to play around with some numbers. This is all very difficult due to the fact that everything changes everyday. However, a Bloomberg article published on 3/6 estimated total economic loss at 2.7 Trillion worldwide due to this event. Now lets just take that number for now, and compare it to the current death count I found at 18,604.

I must say that I thought I would have a harder time finding out this piece of information, but apparently the value of life is a routine topics among economists. The number they settled on was 7 million per life. Taking all of that into consideration we get the following:

Projected Economic Loss - 2.7 Trillion, Value of Current Death Toll - 130.2 Billion Breakeven point at 7 million - 385,714 deaths.

Those numbers are always in flux, and what makes the decisions so hard is that no one knows the final economic loss and death counts.

That's my back of napkin math, at least I included some numbers. Of course every person in the medical field says we need to do more, that is their job. They aren't graded on how well the stock market does, they are graded on their ability to provide care and save lives. Their view is highly skewed. Just like the economists, their view is skewed towards saving the economy. Italy says do more because Italy is a mess, they would say that.

Here is the million dollar question, why did we not handle it like S. Korea? It's obviously too late now, but they flattened the curve and kept the death and case rates very low. They did not do it by social distancing, but by aggressive testing and identification, and then removal of the infected individuals from society. No need to keep everyone home, only the diseased. Preserve lives and the economy, win win.

Value Of A Life

Economic Projections

Death Count