It is time to finally realize that we are in for a profound change in our lifes and lifestyle. This is not a 2 month story, it will be years and thie means, quite a few things will stay permanent.
The main culprit of this is international travel. Without it, without millions of people travelling, this thing would have ravaged china, where the lifestyle has provoked such outbreaks over and over again. But nowhere else. Consequently, particularly in the buiness world, most people will reckognize the futility of travelling vs virtual meetings and therefore business travel will reduce to maybe 10% of what it used to be. After 2-3 years of stand still, also airline capacity will be a fraction of what it is today, maybe a few state owned carriers. Production will go back to the countries where the goods are also consumated. Which makes a lot of sense in more than one way.
We have to face it, our small world will be our flats and the 1-2 km circle around it. For the forseeable future, at least this whole year, maybe longer. Most of us will have lost a considerable amount of family, friends, money, that nobody will really be in the position to even consider travelling, let alone GA. This is a complete change in what life will be. Nothing which we took for granted will be there for a long time.
Our governments and their slow reaction has condemmed all of us to terms in the home which will soon become a complete isolated prison, instead for 2-3 months like in China, probably for at least 1 year, more likely more.
“It may be that this pandemic will be less severe than expected. But it could still also be more severe than expected. It troubles me that I have not seen anyone addressing this fairly obvious question: ‘what happens if we let the hospitals become overwhelmed?’ I worry that this is because the answer is alarming.”
If you do nothing and hostpital get overwelmed, then the economy will go to the bin in that scenario as well, actually more worse than how it go on “controlled lockdown”, if we will have a recession on this better have an optimal one…
For UK spike in hospitalization cases, things are still 7 days away from hitting capacity
Well here in France it was miserable weather (the airfield was waterlogged) and then the weekend of the lockdown, the sun came out and its been lovely weather ever since, so I and everyone else with a garden has been outside working in the garden as I hear nothing but lawnmowers, hedge trimmers etc…
Edit: I suspect that first weekend of partial lockdown, with the stupid simultateous government declaration that everyone should go out and vote combined with great weather, is why so many people here went out and about, and why 2 days later the current quasi-stasi-state was ordered…
If you do nothing and hostpital get overwelmed, then the economy will go to the bin in that scenario as well
Exactly.
The projections were ~500k deaths if nothing was done. It is obvious from the trend that it would not stabilise for ages.
The result? Hospitals totally useless (much of their staff ill or dead, too, because the protective gear is way below 100% effective; you need an air fed mask for that). Bodies lying everywhere. A breakdown of law and order. Military patrolling the streets. People would be too scared of catching it to go to work, so the economy would be finished anyway, but all of it and not just the retail facing sector. No food manufacture and distribution.
Society is just 1 meal away from anarchy.
It’s not an option.
Sure questions will be asked. Some are blindingly obvious e.g. why not shut all inbounds from China, and quarantine all the skiers returning from the Alps during Feb and March.
The airlines will have to change their hygiene practices too.
Ibra wrote:
If you do nothing and hostpital get overwelmed, then the economy will go to the bin in that scenario as well, actually more worse than how it go on “controlled lockdown”, if we will have a recession on this better have an optimal one…
I think this is the status at the moment. We got this thrown upon us, completely unprepared. We got some warnings, but those warnings were mostly regarded as ridiculous (still the case for some). To add to the confusion, the virus itself, the disease and how to fight it is still the great unknown, and people are simply doing as best they can. Some in more panic mode than others, but the differences are mostly academic details IMO compared with the overall outcome in 1-2 years from now.
Life is worth more than money. To preserve our democracies and our freedom in the long run is worth more than our “urge” to express our individual freedom right now.
This is a really bad situation, and the only thing we can do is to dampen the fall.
I am far from being as sure what to make of it, as most of you guys here in this thread are ;)
Anyway – while I doubt they have planned that in advance – the populist government here in Poland is making sure the disease proves a political advantage for them. They keep emphasizing how bad things will be in the future, which is definitely their best bet (if things come out better, the government is your savior; if they don’t – well, it’s not the government’s fault, they told you!).
As of now, the presidential election on May 10 is to be held as originally planned. We are told that election-wise, the whole situation is almost normal. Since the current president (seeking to be elected for a second term) is aligned with the parliamentary majority, this is also convenient, isn’t it? Oh well, perhaps it is a bit difficult to run an election campaign at the moment, but “obviously” all the candidates are at an equal disadvantage… And the current president is appearing frequently in the media “only” to fulfill his duty of keeping up the nations’s spirit etc etc. ;)
Similar things probably happen everywhere right now, it’s just more or less subtle (and sometimes surely leads people into believing in global conspiracy etc.). I am jealous of the trust that the Swedes have in their government (independently of their solution to the situation). In the society as a whole, such a trust definitely makes things more effective. I don’t think I could convince myself to believe in sincere intentions of any politicians here, be it the government or the opposition…
BeechBaby wrote:
Regardless of your viewpoint could I ask everyone who has an interest to read this article. I am not a fan of Peter Hitchens normally, but my God is he on the money. this is exactly what I and a few others have been trying to convey and say.
He lost me on this: " … I did so out of an instinct that we were entering on the craziest period of our lives since the death of Princess Diana. …"
What kind of bubble does he live in?
I guess his anger matches your anger and thats why you write “my God is he on the money”
But most of his arguments are based on wishful thinking/anger, not on facts and logical thinking.
For example, he uses the fact that Ferguson has revised down his death estimate (to argue that this is a non-event), but then dismisses Ferguson’s argument that it is because of lockdown. If there was no lockdown, what would have made it in Britain different from what is happening in Lombardy? Where there are ALREADY more deaths than the revised Ferguson’s estimate (5700 – which I consider highly optimistic, given that UK is already at 1000+, the daily deaths are still rising sharply, and the peak is quite long – 2 weeks in China).
hmng wrote:
I’m probably too tired, I have to admit I am not following your example. You seem to assume that those 5000 are all in excess, and that another 10 000 died as well (the normal number).
Fair point, it could be read like that, but I meant it slightly differently.
5,000 people (sadly, as of today, nearly 6,000) died with / of Covid-19 related pneumonia in Lombardy; and while some of the 10,000 people who normally die will also die of pneumonia, in a normal year it would be less than 10%.
So while I don’t think all 50% are excess deaths (nor are the 40% “excess pneumonia”, either – many of those may have died shortly thereafter for other reasons, or caught another kind if pneumonia), the number of excess deaths is still likely to be measured in the thousands.
There are other reasons to believe that there is a significant number of excess mortality: In Lombardy, currently around 500 people die every day with/of Covid-19; this has been going on for over a week now and is not just an outlier; the expected number of deaths per day is around 300.
There is an argument to be had if, given the age profile of the dying, the number of life years lost would be a better metric than the number of deaths, and if the number of life years lost justifies the measures taken, but there should be no argument whether this is worse than seasonal influenza, because it obviously is.
Hitchens makes a few (only a few) good points.
One of them is that one cannot trust the police to interpret a law which is anything other than absolutely 100% crystal clear and very simple.
For example the current UK law makes it illegal for you to go out and feed your horse. So the horse must die. So this one is down to whether the policeman who stops you has a brain and common sense. Most have not but all. The need to run our aircraft engines periodically is in a similar category but obviously less emotive than horses (the whole world stops when a horse gets ill 
).
The police love power. And the public loves power too. So we get stuff like this reporting portal where the public can inform on their neighbours having more than the one permitted outing per day.
Report_a_breach_of_Covid19_guidance_pdf
Fortunately whoever drafted that was obviously aware of the problems and so the penalty is a fixed penalty ticket… £30 1st time, then doubling.
What are the penalties in other countries, as a compatison?
esteban wrote:
I guess his anger matches your anger and thats why you write “my God is he on the money”
Interesting comment.
Where is the anger? I certainly remain my usual cool, calm, balanced self.
Just because someone has a differing viewpoint on the ’’facts’’ does not mean that they are wrong, or angry, or right for that matter. Where would we be if we all thought the same.
