Peter wrote:
The economic cost will be massive but interest rates are close to zero and all the time that continues, there won’t be a price to pay, anytime soon.
The opposite may be true… not for the economy in general, but as usual for those who deal with fact not fear and look for opportunities. In my little world, I’m in the middle of refinancing the fixed rate mortgage on our house (the one we live in), which because the interest is deductible we maintain as our largest debt. The monthly payment will come down about $400. With stable income and good credit, it would be very foolish to pass up an opportunity now that may benefit you far longer than coronavirus will be a factor.
The housing market is going a bit nuts here too: a neighbors house like ours sold the other day with 10 offers to choose from in a week. Final price was a little above the asking price. Low inventory is a factor due to people pausing on long distance moves, coupled with historically low interest rates encouraging renters to buy… and now more so in outlying suburbs, versus the city.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I suppose this shows brutally that the “Average Joe” is not able to discern what is essential for his own safety. Way too many still talk about this as a “normal flu” and start to wail about their civil liberties. Well, you don’t get any civil liberties in a coffin.
Somehow reminds me of my children (3 and 4 years old) who are unable to pass up sweets now even if they would then get more / better stuff later.
Unfortunately in this case the sweet factory is going to be gone if they don’t buy and eat a few of them now.
With the bankruptcy of travel and hotel firms already reported in the UK, the economic future looks bleak.
The “Post Industrial Economy” was probably a confidence trick.
Few people wearing masks in the Buckie Tesco today, despite the number of local cases.
Silvaire wrote:
Unfortunately in this case the sweet factory is going to be gone if they don’t buy and eat a few of them now.
The long term economic effects are hard to predict, while the short term picture looks bleak. At this point I feel like even an immediate lifting of all restrictions, as irresponsible as that would be from a public health point of view – would not reset the economy to “normal” because of the psychological effects that have already affected almost everyone. The age of unrestricted globalisation is certainly over, Covid-19 is only accelerating a trend there that began with the 2009 crash. But many sectors of the economy relied on cheap labour abroad, “just-in-time” and global supply chains, and those will all take a hit regardless of how the pandemic evolves from here.
Maoraigh wrote:
Few people wearing masks in the Buckie Tesco today, despite the number of local cases.
Interesting. Over here, the masks are mandated by law when going shopping or using public transport, and adherence to that rule is near 100% (isolated cases were people deliberately resisted this triggered police responses and headlines in local newspapers).
In the US the ‘shelter in place’ (lockdown) is over, people have moved on and are ignoring it where it still exists. What I see people doing is maintaining some distance from each other and wearing masks in those public businesses that are open. I suspect that maintaining a bit of distance is the only relevant factor – the contact contagion thing seems to be a minor factor notwithstanding its appeal to our emotions. RV (motor home) sales are up because people now like the idea of traveling this summer without leaving ‘home’.
Regardless, people here when left to their own devices generally do a pretty good job of managing their risk. I think the feedback loop has been created now due to time and experience, people will stay home if, when and where there’s a potential problem with being in public. The numbers will drop gradually and as they do business will pick up, obviously influenced by business licenses being reinstated as that becomes the case. There is no issue with hospital capacity.
With international travel in Europe screwed up my wife and I finally decided to replan for a trip along the full length of the US west coast this year. We could probably get into and around Germany but that’s just a starting point for us and not worth the trip. By waiting until tickets and reservations were cancelled by the airline or vendor, not by us, we’re seen a much better policy. We’re generally holding the reservations unscheduled versus cancelling or seeking refunds. In most cases the vendors are allowing rescheduling any time until the end of 2021, with one notable exception being a hotel in Corsica that isn’t returning emails. I’ll have a French friend of mine call them on the phone eventually.
My relatives in Germany are using a current building contractors license to get across the border to and from their house in Austria, otherwise they’d be out of luck, and it would not be very credible on a motorcycle.
I would hope the new “20 minute” tests will be a gamechanger. Implemented at airports, they should allow international travel. After all, who wants to bring the virus to some little Greek island, full of old locals and with nonexistent health care, and trash the place.
Presumably this point is not lost on the decisionmakers.
I would not get on an airliner unless everybody was tested.
Totally off topic, but what makes you say that?
The Manhattan Project.
We currently have 69% of ICU beds full in the Hannover area, only 4% of which are Covid-19 ppatients. If the 2nd wave hits badly, we will be at max. ICU capacity within days!
Who are the other ~65%? One of the differences with CV19 is that the patients are often really long term residents.
Peter wrote:
Who are the other ~65%? One of the differences with CV19 is that the patients are often really long term residents.
A good question. In my hospital specifically, we are now seeing many operations being performed which would otherwise have been done in April, especially “semi-elective” surgery. Lots of “elective” cardiac bypass surgery, for example, was postponed due to Covid-19 and needs to be done now, while the acute cases also need to be done. All these high-risk surgery patients need postoperative ICU care, sometimes for an extended period of time. Also, people who had serious conditions but did not go to the hospital earlier due to fear of contracting Covid-19 are now flooding our emergency departements. Some of those end up on ICU and, because they waited too long, often need more extensive (and thus longer) treatment than they would otherwise have needed if presenting sooner.
Generally, many doctors fear that the secondary damage to public health due to postponed or cancelled diagnostics and treatment is on par with the direct damage done by the novel virus. Of course, scientifically this will be difficult to evaluate because there are so many variables at play.
Peter wrote:
I would hope the new “20 minute” tests will be a gamechanger. Implemented at airports, they should allow international travel. After all, who wants to bring the virus to some little Greek island, full of old locals and with nonexistent health care, and trash the place.
That is interesting, and would help the airline industry. In any situation like this, solutions are found, life does go on.
I didn’t know Long Island was poor or Greek 
Peter wrote:
I would hope the new “20 minute” tests will be a gamechanger. Implemented at airports, they should allow international travel.
I hope they will prove more accurate than those which were rejected earlier. Yes, they would be a massive game changer, particularly if they are available in the required numbers. I have not heard of any such tests being available on a broad basis yet however.
Right now, the biggest factor for the travel industry is that buying a ticket to travel is not far removed from buying a lottery ticket, as you never know what will happen in the next days or weeks with regards to restrictions. The Slovenian case is one, we got the information that quarantine is stopped in BG from June 15 for citizens and families, only to have that rescinded yesterday (you can enter for 5 days without but if you are planning to stay longer you need, now what good does that do??) and the list goes on. As long as measures are written in pencil and can’t be relied on, travelling is totally unpredictable.
The UK measure of introducing quarantine in a few weeks rather than immediately shows this. If you need it, then NOW not on June bloody third? Now knowing that this will come anyone who needs to travel to the UK will do their damnest to storm the borders while the going is still good? I expected the PM to take this thing seriously now but apparently he still hasn’t gotten the message.
I guess one of the gross miscarriage of management of this crisis in Europe has been the haphazard and chaotic approach with which lockdowns and other measures were introduced: Late, non-specific, variing from place to place and so on, allowing the disease to spread all over the continent out of concern about public acceptance. This simply proves once more that insistance of observance of civil liberties in a crisis is very problematic particularly in the case of a pandemic. Viruses don’t give a rat’s behind about democracy…
Now in Germany there are two new outbreaks: one in the north where the grand opening of a restaurant infected close to 40 people at once and one near Frankfurt where a church service at a prayer hall did the same, despite both organizers claiming they had observed distancing. Police had to dissolve two soccer matches with over 1000 fans each attending near Lausanne in Switzerland as well. Some voices said, they should have locked them up in that Stadion for 2 weeks in quarantaine instead.
I suppose this is just the beginning of the 2nd wave which will now hit on a broad base as restrictions are relaxed way too early. As long as there are still a lot of new cases every day, lockdown should have been kept until there was ZERO infections over 2 weeks. But the political will to do that just isn’t there.
