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How the Pandemic Will End The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out...... the virus has spread to almost every country, infecting at least 446,000 people whom we know about, and many more whom we do not. ..... has disrupted modern society on a scale that most living people have never witnessed. Soon, most everyone in the United States will know someone who has been infected. ..... Rich, strong, developed, America is supposed to be the readiest of nations. That illusion has been shattered. Despite months of advance warning as the virus spread in other countries, when America was finally tested by COVID-19, it failed. ......... More transmissible and fatal than seasonal influenza, the new coronavirus is also stealthier, spreading from one host to another for several days before triggering obvious symptoms. ......... To contain such a pathogen, nations must develop a test and use it to identify infected people, isolate them, and trace those they’ve had contact with. That is what South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong did to tremendous effect. It is what the United States did not. ............. Overstretched hospitals became overwhelmed. Basic protective equipment, such as masks, gowns, and gloves, began to run out. Beds will soon follow, as will the ventilators that provide oxygen to patients whose lungs are besieged by the virus. .......... With little room to surge during a crisis, America’s health-care system operates on the assumption that unaffected states can help beleaguered ones in an emergency. That ethic works for localized disasters such as hurricanes or wildfires, but not for a pandemic that is now in all 50 states. ........ some worried hospitals have bought out large quantities of supplies, in the way that panicked consumers have bought out toilet paper. ............. the White House is a ghost town of scientific expertise. A pandemic-preparedness office that was part of the National Security Council was dissolved in 2018.
.......... Rudderless, blindsided, lethargic, and uncoordinated, America has mishandled the COVID-19 crisis to a substantially worse degree than what every health expert I’ve spoken with had feared. .......... “The U.S. may end up with the worst outbreak in the industrialized world.” ......... As of last weekend, the nation had 17,000 confirmed cases, but the actual number was probably somewhere between 60,000 and 245,000. .......... The U.S. has fewer hospital beds per capita than Italy. ......... By the end of June, for every available critical-care bed, there will be roughly 15 COVID-19 patients in need of one. By the end of the summer, the pandemic will have directly killed 2.2 million Americans, notwithstanding those who will indirectly die as hospitals are unable to care for the usual slew of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents. This is the worst-case scenario. ..................... The first and most important is to rapidly produce masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment. If health-care workers can’t stay healthy, the rest of the response will collapse. ........ invoke the Defense Production Act, launching a wartime effort in which American manufacturers switch to making medical equipment .......... after invoking the act last Wednesday, Trump has failed to actually use it, reportedly due to lobbying from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and heads of major corporations......... tag in the Defense Logistics Agency—a 26,000-person group that prepares the U.S. military for overseas operations and that has assisted in past public-health crises, including the 2014 Ebola outbreak. ............ a massive rollout of COVID-19 tests. ........... On March 6, Trump said that “anyone who wants a test can get a test.” That was (and still is) untrue
.. Regardless, anxious people still flooded into hospitals, seeking tests that did not exist. ............... social distancing. .......... Fauci has advised every president since Ronald Reagan on new epidemics, and now sits on the COVID-19 task force that meets with Trump roughly every other day. “He’s got his own style, let’s leave it at that,” Fauci told me ............ even if social-distancing measures can reduce infection rates by 95 percent, 960,000 Americans will still need intensive care. There are only about 180,000 ventilators in the U.S.
......... “It could be anywhere from four to six weeks to up to three months,” Fauci said, “but I don’t have great confidence in that range.” ........... Even a perfect response won’t end the pandemic. As long as the virus persists somewhere, there’s a chance that one infected traveler will reignite fresh sparks in countries that have already extinguished their fires. This is already happening in China, Singapore, and other Asian countries that briefly seemed to have the virus under control. ......... three possible endgames: one that’s very unlikely, one that’s very dangerous, and one that’s very long. .......... the odds of worldwide synchronous control seem vanishingly small. ........ the virus does what past flu pandemics have done: It burns through the world and leaves behind enough immune survivors that it eventually struggles to find viable hosts. This “herd immunity” scenario ............. SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible and fatal than the flu, and it would likely leave behind many millions of corpses and a trail of devastated health systems. ................ The third scenario is that the world plays a protracted game of whack-a-mole with the virus, stamping out outbreaks here and there until a vaccine can be produced. This is the best option, but also the longest and most complicated. ........... it will take 12 to 18 months to develop a proven vaccine, and then longer still to make it, ship it, and inject it into people’s arms. ......... “we need to be prepared to do multiple periods of social distancing” ......... seasonal variations might not sufficiently slow the virus when it has so many immunologically naive hosts to infect. ......... immune citizens can return to work, care for the vulnerable, and anchor the economy during bouts of social distancing. ....... There’s no reason that the U.S. should let SARS-CoV-2 catch it unawares again, and thus no reason that social-distancing measures need to be deployed as broadly and heavy-handedly as they now must be. .......... the virus might simmer around the world, triggering epidemics every few years or so.
.............. COVID-19 may become like the flu is today—a recurring scourge of winter. ........... About one in five people in the United States have lost working hours or jobs. Hotels are empty. Airlines are grounding flights. Restaurants and other small businesses are closing. ........ “We’re far more urban and metropolitan. We have more people traveling great distances and living far from family and work.” ........... After infections begin ebbing, a secondary pandemic of mental-health problems will follow. At a moment of profound dread and uncertainty, people are being cut off from soothing human contact. Hugs, handshakes, and other social rituals are now tinged with danger. People with anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder are struggling. Elderly people, who are already excluded from much of public life, are being asked to distance themselves even further, deepening their loneliness. Asian people are suffering racist insults, fueled by a president who insists on labeling the new coronavirus the “Chinese virus.” Incidents of domestic violence and child abuse are likely to spike as people are forced to stay in unsafe homes. Children, whose bodies are mostly spared by the virus, may endure mental trauma that stays with them into adulthood. .................. “My colleagues in Wuhan note that some people there now refuse to leave their homes and have developed agoraphobia” ........... washing your hands for 20 seconds, a habit
that has historically been hard to enshrine even in hospitals, “may be one of those behaviors that we become so accustomed to in the course of this outbreak that we don’t think about them .............. Pandemics can also catalyze social change. People, businesses, and institutions have been remarkably quick to adopt or call for practices that they might once have dragged their heels on, including working from home, conference-calling to accommodate people with disabilities, proper sick leave, and flexible child-care arrangements. “This is the first time in my lifetime that I’ve heard someone say, ‘Oh, if you’re sick, stay home’”
............ Many of the country’s values have seemed to work against it during the pandemic. Its individualism, exceptionalism, and tendency to equate doing whatever you want with an act of resistance meant that when it came time to save lives and stay indoors, some people flocked to bars and clubs. Having internalized years of anti-terrorism messaging following 9/11, Americans resolved to not live in fear. But SARS-CoV-2 has no interest in their terror, only their cells.
............. When an administration prevaricates on climate change, the effects won’t be felt for years, and even then will be hard to parse. It’s different when a president says that everyone can get a test, and one day later, everyone cannot. Pandemics are democratizing experiences. People whose privilege and power would normally shield them from a crisis are facing quarantines, testing positive, and losing loved ones. Senators are falling sick. The consequences of defunding public-health agencies, losing expertise, and stretching hospitals are no longer manifesting as angry opinion pieces, but as faltering lungs. .................... After 9/11, the world focused on counterterrorism. After COVID-19, attention may shift to public health. ............ Despite his many lapses, Trump’s approval rating has surged. ......... The election of November 2020 becomes a repudiation of “America first” politics. The nation pivots, as it did after World War II, from isolationism to international cooperation. Buoyed by steady investments and an influx of the brightest minds, the health-care workforce surges. Gen C kids write school essays about growing up to be epidemiologists. Public health becomes the centerpiece of foreign policy. The U.S. leads a new global partnership focused on solving challenges like pandemics and climate change..... In 2030, SARS-CoV-3 emerges from nowhere, and is brought to heel within a month.
most things—e.g., prosperous periods, depressions, wars, revolutions, bull markets, bear markets, etc.—happen repeatedly through time.
......... when I paid attention to the details I couldn’t see the big picture and when I paid attention to the big picture I couldn’t see the details........ there are only a limited number of personality types going down a limited number of paths that lead them to encounter a limited number of situations to produce only a limited number of stories that repeat over time .......... gaps in wealth and values led to deep social and political conflicts in the 1930s that are similar to those that exist now. ........ I have been going to China a lot over the last 35 years and am lucky enough to have become well-acquainted with its top policy makers. This has helped me see up close how remarkable the advances in China have been and how excellent the capabilities and historical perspectives that were behind them are. These excellent capabilities and perspectives have led China to become an effective competitor with the US in production, trade, technology, geopolitics, and world capital markets. ......... At the start of 2020, more than $10 trillion of debt was at negative interest rates and an unusually large amount of additional new debt will soon need to be sold to finance deficits. .......... all reserve currencies in the past have ceased to be reserve currencies, often coming to traumatic ends for the countries that enjoyed this special privilege. ........... Wealth, values, and political gaps are now larger than at any other time during my lifetime. By studying the 1930s and other prior eras when polarity was also high, I’ve learned that which side wins out (i.e., left or right) will have very big impacts on economies and markets. ........... printing money and buying financial assets (now called “quantitative easing”) also widen the wealth gap because buying financial assets pushes up their prices, which benefits the wealthy who hold more financial assets than the poor. ............... the rises and declines of all the major empires and their currencies over the last 500 years, focusing most closely on the three biggest ones: the US empire and the US dollar which are most important now, the British Empire and the British pound which were most important before that, and the Dutch Empire and the Dutch guilder before that. .......... six other significant, though less dominant, empires of Germany, France, Russia, Japan, China, and India. .......... important empires typically lasted roughly 250 years, give or take 150 years, with big economic, debt, and political cycles within them lasting about 50-100 years. ......... a sequential picture of the world’s evolution via the events that led the Dutch empire to rise and decline into the British empire, the British empire to rise and decline into the US empire, and the US empire to rise and enter its early decline into the rise of the Chinese empire. ........ the Chinese leaders who all study these dynasties carefully for the lessons they provide.
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New York, New Jersey coronavirus ‘attack rate’ is 5 times higher than rest of US, top official says “The New York metro area of New Jersey, New York City, and parts of Long Island have an attack rate close to one in 1,000” ..... roughly 28% of the specimens submitted in that region have tested positive for COVID-19 ...... “Clearly, the virus had been there for a number of weeks.”...... New York is currently the hardest-hit state in the country, ahead of New Jersey, California and Washington state. New York City, alone, accounts for 12,305 of the 20,875 confirmed infections in the state as of Monday morning ...... Cuomo estimated up to 80% of the state’s more than 19.4 million residents will get the coronavirus. Last week, Cuomo estimated there are likely “tens of thousands” of COVID-19 cases in the state among residents who didn’t know they had it.
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Trump predicts 'this is going to be bad' but vows to reopen America In his zeal to fire up American prosperity after helping to trigger an unprecedented self-inflicted economic meltdown, Trump is already losing patience -- weeks before the virus may peak. ....... "Our country was not built to be shut down," the President warned on Monday. "We are going to be opening up our country for business because our country was meant to be open." ....... His comments came on day when the number of confirmed cases soared past 40,000 and 100 people died in a single day for the first time. Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, warned that the "attack rate" of the disease in New York, America's dominant economic and financial powerhouse, was five times that of elsewhere. ....... he argued that "if it were up to the doctors, they may say let's keep it shut down -- let's shut down the entire world." ....... attempts to reverse a shutdown to alleviate a horrific unemployment picture that has devastated the economy are premature at a moment when the pandemic is still exploding. ............ The President's upbeat prediction of a return to full speed ahead directly contradicted the actions of state governors nationwide -- who are imposing stay-at-home orders, closing businesses and ordering schools out for summer in March.
....... Trump's course change -- after warning last week the shutdown could last until July or August -- was consistent with the scattershot way in which he has managed the coronavirus pandemic. ....... He spent weeks denying it was a serious problem, predicting it could simply go away and was not much worse than the flu....... Then, with the crisis building last week, he turned himself into a wartime leader -- vowing to battle an "invisible enemy" and warning normal life may not resume until July or August......... It was noticeable Monday that Trump was talking about the virus in the past tense......... he went back to comparing Covid-19 to the seasonal flu even though it is far more virulent, has a far higher death rate and has no vaccine.
........ There is no mistaking the severity of the nightmare that has turned one of the strongest economies in American history into a disaster area that might rival the Great Depression. ........ Trump's apparent impatience, only days after declaring war on the virus, raises questions about the depth of his thinking and his own motivations given the importance of a strong economy to his reelection campaign. ......... There was a strong sense in Trump's press conference on Monday that he was engaging in wishful thinking that the pandemic would get better in order to allow his preferred reality -- unleashing what he hopes will be a post-crisis boom. ......... Apart from questions about Trump's motivation, there are deep practical questions about his desire for a swift reopening of the economy. First up, he doesn't have the power to do it....... Many of the shutdowns imposed on US cities and states have been ordered by governors fearful that their hospitals could be overrun.
This cure is killing economy, crushing dreams — we need to figure out a better way Countries have experienced economic depressions before, but not usually as a matter of choice....... The nation-wide coronavirus shutdowns over the last two weeks have ground parts of the American country to a halt. We have probably never before in our history seen so much economic activity vaporize so quickly — within days or even hours. The Great Depression and the panics of the 19th century are the only possible analogues. ...... These are the top-line numbers of a devastation that will throw millions out of work, stress families and blight personal lives, destroy the dreams of small-business owners and bankrupt industries. This is a tale of human misery, not just of declines in the stock market and in GDP. .......... even the biggest, best-designed stimulus bill is no fix for shuttered store-fronts and factories. And how many times can Washington pass $2 trillion bills?
......... Would New York City restaurants really be full if it weren’t for the Gov. Andrew Cuomo-ordered lockdown? Would people be eager to get on airplanes? To book a cruise? To see a Broadway show? To go to Disneyland? ........ No matter how bad today’s lockdowns are, imagine if we decided to undertake them at a time when America already had a million cases and the health-care system was in deep crisis. ........ Our aim should be to shift from the blunderbuss solution of mass shutdowns to rifle-shot remedies, on the model of what South Korea has done with its widespread testing ...... We should focus on the production of tests, ventilators, masks and other protective gear on an industrial scale. Whatever the federal government has to spend or do to get it done should happen — just as if we were on a wartime footing. ....... population-wide testing ...... Whatever path we take will be costly and have its downsides. All we can know with certainty is that the current path is untenable.
Cuomo: Coronavirus spreading like ‘bullet train’ in NY as cases top 25,000 Cuomo tore into President Trump and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s vow to send 400 ventilators to New York — a sliver of the 30,000 it’s anticipated the state will need. ........ a continuing flood of cases that now stands at 25,665 in the state and 14,904 in the city. The death toll reached 210. ..... “The president said it’s a war,” continued Cuomo. “Well then act like it’s a war!”
....... “We’re not slowing it, and it is accelerating on its own,” said Cuomo, noting that number of cases in New York is now doubling every three days. ...... The rate has led experts to project an eventual peak demand of 140,000 hospital beds — up from the 110,000 that Cuomo had previously predicted. ......... the worst could hit in as little as two weeks. .......“The apex is higher than we thought, and the apex is sooner than we thought.” ...... “But if you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest.
How Trump can win re-election in a pandemic Three weeks ago, President Trump seemed poised for victory in November. The economy was strong. The nation was at peace. That is usually a recipe for re-election ...... But then the coronavirus hit. ....... If we were going by the book, we’d have to conclude that Trump is a goner in November. History tells us that presidents do not win re-election in situations like this.
The last global crisis didn't change the world. But this one could To experience a crisis is to inhabit a world that is temporarily up for grabs. ........ our only guaranteed exit route from enforced “social distancing” is a vaccine, which may not be widely available until the summer of next year. ......... It is now inevitable that we will experience deep global recession, a breakdown of labour markets and the evaporation of consumer spending. The terror that drove government action in the autumn of 2008 was that money would stop coming out of the cash machines, unless the banking system was propped up. It turns out that if people stop coming out of their homes, then the circulation of money grinds to a halt as well.
Small businesses are shedding employees at a frightening speed ........ There is a grim truth at the centre of the present crisis that makes it feel closer to a war than a recession
....... The degree of devastation it will spread is due to very basic features of global capitalism that almost no economist questions – high levels of international connectivity and the reliance of most people on the labour market. ........ this pandemic does not discriminate on the basis of economic geography. It may end up devaluing urban centres, as it becomes clear how much “knowledge-based work” can be done online after all. ........ a striking feature of the last few weeks has been the universality of human behaviours, concerns and fears. ....... coronavirus is not a spectacle happening somewhere else: it’s going on outside your window, right now, and in that sense it meshes perfectly with the age of ubiquitous social media ....... In the end, government policymakers will ultimately be judged in terms of how many thousands of people die. ......... The immediacy of this visceral, mortal threat makes this moment feel less like 2008 or the 1970s and more like the other iconic crisis in our collective imagination – 1945. ........ Rishi Sunak’s astonishing announcement that the government would cover up to 80% of the salaries of workers if companies kept them on their payroll. ........ Rather than view this as a crisis of capitalism, it might better be understood as the sort of world-making event that allows for new economic and intellectual beginnings. ........ as an authentically global crisis, it is also a global turning point. There is a great deal of emotional, physical and financial pain in the immediate future. But a crisis of this scale will never be truly resolved until many of the fundamentals of our social and economic life have been remade.
Coronavirus: China braced for second economic shock wave as Covid-19 controls kill demand After riding out a supply shock that closed down most of its factories, China is bracing for a second wave demand shock to its economy
........ The situation in the US, for instance, is deteriorating so quickly that Morgan Stanley economists changed their forecast of a minus 4 per cent contraction in the economy in the second quarter to a record low minus 30.1 per cent, within the space of a week........ the coronavirus could cost China’s migrant workers a combined 800 billion yuan (US$115 billion) in lost wages ....... “Half of Beijing took a salary hit if they did not get fired.” ...... Most economists now expect the Chinese economy to shrink this quarter for the first time since 1976
After Coronavirus the World Will Never Be the Same. But Maybe, It Can Be Better we feel anxious and scared about what’s ahead. ...... we’re never going “back to normal”—and what we should be doing now to make the new normal a good one. ....... “It’s my contention that this isn’t a 2001 moment, this is something much bigger. I think of this as a 1941 moment.”
....... 1941 was the thick of World War II. Nobody knew what the outcome of the war was going to be, everybody was terrified, and the US and its allies were losing the war. “But even in the height of those darkest of times,” Metzl said, “people began imagining what the future world would look.” ....... It was 1941 when President Roosevelt gave his famous Four Freedoms speech, and when American and British leadership issued the Atlantic Charter, which set out their vision for the post-war international order. To this day, our lives exist within that order. .......Institutions intended to foster global cooperation (like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization) have been starved in the context of this re-nationalization, and as a result we don’t have effective structures in place to address global crises—and not just coronavirus. Think of climate change, protecting the oceans, preparing for a future of automation and AI; no country can independently take on or solve these massive challenges. ........... “The pandemic moves at the speed of globalization, but so does the response,” Metzl said. “The tools we’re bringing to this fight are greater than anything our ancestors could have possibly imagined.” ....... at the same time we’re experiencing this incredible bottom-up energy and connectivity, we’re also experiencing an abysmal failure of our top-down institutions. ......... If the poorer parts of the world get hit hard by the virus, we may see fragile states collapsing, and multi-lateral states like the European Union unable to support the strain. .......... “The world is not going to snap back to being exactly like it was before this crisis happened,” Metzl said. “We’re going to come out of this into a different world.” .............. take the trends that were already in motion and hit the fast-forward button. Virtualization of events, activities, and interactions. Automation of processes and services. Political and economic decentralization. ........ ....What if, three months ago, there’d been a global surveillance system in place, and at the first signs of the outbreak, an international emergency team led by the World Health Organization had immediately gone to Wuhan? ........ this new normal that feels so shocking to us right now will simply be normal for our children and grandchildren. ......... In 1941, the global planning process was top-down: a small group of powerful, smart people decided how things would be then took steps to make their vision a reality. But this time will be different; to succeed, the new global plan will need to have meaningful drive from the bottom up. ........ “We need to recognize a new locus of power,” Metzl said. “And it’s us. Nobody is going to solve this for us. This is our moment to really come together.”
