Covid-19

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Information is Beautiful Covid-19 data presentation

The Economist Excess Death Analysis

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UPDATES

5/25/2020

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Mark Twain [read the full context of this quip]

A cloudy drizzle for Memorial Day. This day highlights the trope that we are at war with Covid-19 and exposes it as false. War is a state of action. Few of us are actively fighting, supporting those fighting, or truly sacrificing. But we are being ravaged. So I understand those who want to “resist“ the Government’s theft of “liberty.“ I do not agree with the logic, but the resulting call for activity I accede to.

Why now? I do not believe an effective vaccine will be available for many months. I know the death toll will rise. But in the face of an inescapable contingency, best to wander boldly rather than wither and waste away. The psychic and economic costs are simply too high.

When the data on transmission rates and mortality rates were less clear, I conceded that sheltering in place to reduce a predicted doubling was the morally right thing to do. Now, the data support the conclusion that we are collective hostages to an at-risk minority. And so, I close this post with the conclusion that my personal risk of infection and the likely national resurgence in case load are acceptable.

Amusingly (probably to myself alone), I simultaneously associate my conclusion with emerging from Plato’s cave and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, “…roll the dice and take your chances.” A premonition of an arrogant false enlightenment? I hope not!

5/23/2020

We drove to Pendlelton to break the routine. A six-hour round trip for a sit-down dinner.

Plus, I am angry and needed to get out of sanctimonious Portland. The sheep voted another tax to “solve“ homelessness. Just one more example where sheep think that government solves problems, forgetting that Johnson started the War on Poverty in 1964. Time to concede defeat? Well no, clearly the issue was lack of resources! Dullards and dunces. So it is good to get among people who still understand the need for an honest day’s work.

It saddens me that the political landscape is as pervasively divisive and largely polarized on urban-rural divides. The two populations truly live in different worlds. Victor Hansen intelligently explains the divide and how Trump ascended. This one of many permutations of his presentation:

My children are unabashedly city-kids. Adin drove us back, affording me time to look out at the beauty of the Columbia Gorge. I asked him if he would go camping with me, his answer, “No, I’d rather walk the streets of LA.“ I am culpable: My children have no connection to the land. But I do try to inoculate them against an arrogant dismissal of its importance and the real character of the people close to it.

5/21/2020

The counterfactual “if we would have shut down earlier, then the avoided death total would have been…“ is the primary narrative in the news. Counterfactual logic does provide learning lessons, but that is not how it is presented to the public. Rather it is weaponized with a scolding tone, “the government should have done this so as to prevent death!“ Counterfactuals cannot be normative imperatives. Non-productive invectives annoy me because it betrays a weakness of mind – there were plenty of prognostications and ample time to prepare, but the warnings were not acted upon and the resources were not stockpiled. Fact. So what? This is where we are. The lack of preparation should tell you one thing only: what do you do now to be better prepared for the next event? What have you learned?

5/16/2020

Foreign Affairs “Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s”

5/15/2020

Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen are well worth following at Marginal Revolution. Here Alex has grave justification for his skepticism about the efficacy of the FDA.

5/14/2020

Sen. Wyden tried but the Patriot Act reauthorization bill passed. The government gets to siphon all the data it wants without a warrant.

5/13/2020

People want to go back to work and resume normalcy. That is my personal experience, corroborated by seeing increased vehicle traffic and more people in the downtown core. Some protest openly: Elon Musk is defying prohibitions to open his California plant. I suspect most people will in fact vote with their feet and start a phased return across all socio-economic levels, even without a vaccine. However, >this< well-considered post believes that the opposite will be true. Read the entire post, but the conclusion is succinct:

So here’s my bet. If the public choice analysis is right, and this is about some kind of broad and diffuse “public” pushing back against impossible regulations, then we will see a return to the economy sooner rather than later. But we can reasonably presume that this return will be roughly symmetric. People in general want to go back to work, they are voting with their feet to go back to work, and it’s just lefties and handwringing left-liberals who are oblivious to this.

In contrast, if I’m right, we will see a very different return to “normality.” The return to the economy will be sharply asymmetric. Those who are on the wrong end of private power relations – whether they are undocumented immigrants, or just the working poor – will return early and en masse. Those who have the choice and the bargaining power will tend instead to pick safety. They will be less likely to return to the workplace when they can work from home, they will go back later when they do go back, and when they do return to the workplace, they will make radical demands for changes that protect them.

With more than 20% of the work force unemployed, it’s not a power dynamic (Foucault back in vogue?), it’s basic survival economics. I believe people in fact do understand the risk-rewards and do pursue their best interests and will conclude that it is worth the risk to return to work. Cloistering fatigue, an over-zealous assertion of personal liberty, or Weberian work-ethic; whatever the individual motivation it will result in the same behavior.

Tyler Cowen “Our Regulatory State is Failing Us” – more proof-positive for us Libertarians…

5/12/2020

With the news outlets focused on Covid reporting, there is less attention paid to very dangerous moves by the government to expand its powers. Thank you Sen. Wyden for paying attention!

Snapshots from Information is Beautiful

5/8/2020

The unemployment figures predict joblessness soon equal to the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve already created more money to forestall the immediate consequences, but competing economic theories indicate that these actions may only extend the deprivation.

Amity Shlaes provides the historical context in her analysis of the Great Depression. Endorsed by the Mises Society, her work takes a classical liberal approach to scholarship. Looks like we found those magic money trees Bernie talked about.

5/6/2020

I had been feeling ill since last Wednesday (4/28) and my wife started the following day. Mild symptoms, but at night I would pay close attention to the pressure in my chest: am I having trouble breathing, or is it just collateral damage from my son slamming me at the post? Or am I just changing my breathing to better sense what is going on in my body? I have taken assiduous precautions and gone out very little. But what about my older boy? He has seen his friends, perhaps they weren’t socially distancing? Yesterday, my wife and I were tested. Both negative. That was a disappointment to me because I was hoping for rudimentary immunity (if it exists and assuming the results were not a false negative). I wonder when we will have any real certainty. Current data suggests prolonged contact is necessary to promote transmission. But now I cannot escape this thought: given all our precautions, how the heck did we get even a cold? A worse thought: are we developing allergies, and if so, to what allergen?

 心猿

Monkey-mind. Buddha taught the mind is filled with drunken monkeys, jumping around, chattering, all clamoring for attention. Fear is the loudest monkey, incessantly alarming, pointing out all the things we should be wary of and everything that could go wrong.

I admit the fear-monkey grabbed my attention when I was not otherwise busy. I could bury fear with action, even banal acts, like doing dishes or laundry. But at night fear would creep in insidiously. Without the test results I am sure doubt would have poisonously continued.

Because I pride myself in preparing and acting, I forget how pernicious fear can be and how the undisciplined mind can be overpowered, leading to inaction, or irrational actions. This was a good reminder for me. Guard vigilantly the mind’s ramparts!

5/3/2020

4/28/2020

And more excess death analysis, this time focused solely on the US.

I should have published my paper first (qv. 4/23/20) – a more developed review of the cost-benefit analysis of avoided deaths.

4/27/2020

Mark Manson summed up where we are today nicely: “no one has any idea what the fuck is happening or what we should do about it.” Yes indeed. Data blind, and people are left to extrapolate:

Here is a telling graph that expands upon The Economist‘s point on tracking total excess deaths (qv. 4/7/2020).

Look at the ranges in the variance! A quick glance and one might assume that Sweden at +18% and far less social restrictions is the clear “winner” in the response plan.

Aside from Brazil, is any other national leader so ponderously stupid as ours? I watched the original live, and can only applaud the Republicans for the Rule of Law in taking advantage of the gaffes.

Am I evil to hope beyond hope that his political base takes his advice and gulps bleach while shoving a UV light up their asses? Please, I want thousands of Darwin Award contestants!

John McWhorter (whose work I very much admire) was interviewed on MSNBC and provides a great review from a linguistic perspective (with some snide rebukes thrown in).

4/23/2020

And is anyone surprised that the first known infection in the US is being backdated? Ms. Dowd died February 6, 2020 – and back that date for initial infection and make the other reasonable assumption that she isn’t patient zero to conclude that Covid has been running amok at least since January in California. The statistical uncertainty remains.

The civically responsible response to avoid overwhelming the health care resources and limit unfettered doublings was to shelter in place. Without good information, that was a rational and reasonable plan.

I consider myself a “golden rule” libertarian – whereby you are free to do whatever so long as you don’t impinge on the rights of others, combined with the do unto others spirit of what it means to be a good human. Hence the belief that sheltering was absolutely the right plan given the information at the time that suggested very high transmission, infection and mortality rates.

But my pragmatic and misanthropic tendency now says it was probably (ultimately) the “wrong” decision. The total amount spent (first round) > the saved life value even at worse case death projections from early on with unfettered transmission

First Round	$                            4,300,000,000,000
Value of Life	$                                          10,000,000
Lives purchased	430,000

Quibble on the economics of the value of a life (I know the value of mine and my family’s is infinite!), but the best metrics for the NPV is about $10M. Given the pending next stimulus round, we are looking at, say, $5T in spending (about 20% of GDP) and as of today in the US there are 850K positive and 47K dead in a population of 330M. Simple math on shitty statistics (both infection and collateral dead are no doubt understated), but the order of magnitude will likely not change dramatically. In short we indebted ourselves 20% of annual GDP to save, at projected worse-case, 0.13% of the population. [Note that the actual debt will be far higher since the Fed now will backstop municipal bonds!] The total spend on estimated avoided costs (deaths) for a demographic segment whose commonalities appear to be underlying hypertension and over 60 is massively disproportional. This suggests Sweden’s response will ultimately prove the most economically and civically responsible, even while being controversial… The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

This is not just cold economic calculus. It is also based on human nature. Meaning, Sweden (as did England before Boris relented) considered that people as social creatures do not do well in confinement and that the disruption of a stop-start-stop-start sequencing based on reactionary governmental closings would have lasting and damaging social effects.

4/21/2020

The data challenges are well captured by Scripps Research.

Looking at those situations where social isolation was impossible (ships), it appears that the transmission rate is about 17% with a decent sample size. I would further infer that the average US Navy sailor is younger and in better health than the Diamond Princess customer – this may account for the lower positive and higher asymptomatic response. The converse is the homeless shelter where I expect the health is in general worse at baseline, but note the high infection rate with a very high asymptomatic percentage. I wonder if one could screen out baseline medical issues from the homeless population that would otherwise present as Covid-symptoms.

I sense people are done with this captivity. Even the civic minded are now going to look at risk-reward and decide that the risk of infection is worth them going back to normal life. No one will wait for the vaccine (too long in the making) and people have been lulled into complacency because the predicted horrors haven’t realized. The threat is still manifest, but the cure is being deemed worse than the disease.

The ramifications of the closures has created massive supply chain disruptions because of the bifurcated markets – commercial v consumer, now resulting in the huge waste of farm produce.

4/19/2020

The graph puts it in perspective

4/18/2020

If you haven’t changed your mind, you haven’t been paying attention. Information about the pandemic and associated statistics has changed so fast that everybody has had to recalibrate to take account of new information. And still the known unknowns are enormous. All governments are taking action not because of what they know but rather because of what is unknown.

Another example of governmental failure, at the CDC no less. Further complicating the unknown.

4/15/2020

Wealth is no assurance of risk mitigation in a contagion:

4/14/2020

A libertarian dream. Donald Trump is a political genius and a plant, purposefully undermining the federal government. His assertions of total authority and insistence in removing anyone who has a semblance of competency will completely and utterly destroy confidence in the office of president.

The defense production act only used to prevent exports to one of our closest trade allies and not to coordinate production served to galvanize independent action by private companies.

Centralized warehouses of necessary equipment left neglected and without requisite maintenance now useless forced the general public to make due. 

The frightened populous remembers self-reliance; people learn to bake bread, plant gardens, sew masks. 

The confused messages, the grandstanding, and blatant stupidity were purposeful. All designed to frustrate state level agencies into independent action. 

State’s rights, local action and civic pride once again assert themselves virtuously.

The true spirit of America awakens after the long slumber.

I Hear America Singing.

4/13/2020

I hate to admit this, but I have not read War and Peace. Mark Manson quotes Tolstoy as a lead-in to sum the illusion of leadership.

In quiet and untroubled times, it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding it with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, feeble man.

War and Peace is a brilliant book for many reasons, but chief among them is this idea—which Tolstoy argues via a 1,200-page novel—that leaders are mostly the effect of history, not the cause. When social forces accumulate to such magnitudes that they lurch the world in a certain direction, our leaders are simply the most visible people being carried by the same wave of fate that we are. Yet, we regularly mistake them for the wave itself.

Data shows that short-term approval ratings tend to go up for politicians in times of crisis, regardless of how good or bad that crisis is actually being managed. This is because in times of great uncertainty, arguably the real value of leadership is to simply embody an illusion of certainty, an illusion of control.

The truth is that our fates were determined long ago by the millions of value-based decisions we have made as a culture.

Cultures that have chosen to value science will test and get accurate data. Cultures that have not will have no idea what they’re dealing with. Cultures that value collective responsibility will stay home in large numbers and trust their governments. Cultures that value individualism and risk-taking will not. Cultures that prioritize the health and well-being of each citizen will sacrifice their economies for the sake of public safety. Cultures that prioritize personal opportunity will not.

4/12/2020

Easter Sunday. Boris Johnson was released from the hospital.

The Visual Capitalist summarizes the changes in shopping:

4/10/2020

After a month of sheltering in place, the things I have learned or confirmed:

The poor isolation responses confirmed that most people don’t understand exponential growth. Unchecked doublings (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 256, 512, 1024) outstrip the world population fast. I learned this from Star Trek. But stop just one doubling and the spread is checked. Some of the Asian countries did better in part because monolithic cultures, but critically, those countries also had prior experience with SARS and H1N1 that the US didn’t have to contend with. Learn from the pain of others! This is a skill of immense power.

It’s easy to go a week without a shower.

I enjoy the new structure of time spent jogging and playing basketball with my sons, even in hail.

Social distancing is very comfortable for me.  Proof of misanthropic tendencies?

While there are amazingly entertaining shows to stream, the number is sadly finite.

I’m not sure how long one should live without good Thai or Vietnamese food. [update – broke down: ordered to go Thai food on 4.17.20, so it appears a month is my limit.]

4/9/2020

Boris is out of ICU – a good thing for him personally and for the morale of Britain – but I wonder at lessons learned.

Another few trillion of credit into the market. Economists will be studying this global response for years. Great divides among responses both economically and medically. Richer countries can afford to purchase critical supplies, exacerbating the medical challenges for the poorer countries. The economics of pandemics will lead to a renewed focus on morality: it’s not just jobs but also individuals.

Time to revisit Joseph A. Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942).

Schumpeter’s argument is comprised of three linked theses: The essence of capitalism is innovation, resulting in economic “winners” and “losers,” creative destruction. These market changes will mislead scholars using standard tools of economics, such as static equilibrium and macroeconomic analysis that disguise the true progress and gains. Thus scholars will fail to see the virtues of capitalism – in particular its steady but gradual pattern of growth – because those benefits are long-run and hard to see; whereas its defects, such as inequality and apparent monopoly, are conspicuously visible. This will lead to calls for central control to fix the inequities. But Schumpeter correctly warned that it is dangerous to prescribe ‘fixes,’ because political and social circumstances are always changing. Nevertheless, Schumpeter’s prediction was that capitalism is unsustainable not because the system is flawed but rather because voters and bureaucrats in an otherwise free society will fail to protect capitalism from its enemies. He is particularly on point in observing how people take the triumphs of capitalism for granted, and yet how those who benefit most from its productivity tend to be the same people who want the system shut down in their own self-interest. 

Listen to the narratives in the news and watch the responses to this pandemic among the various governors. The cries by many for centralized command and control and belaboring the lack of a federal response; others using their faith as a shield or willing to sacrifice the aged on the alter of commerce.

Additional context for a re-read of Schumpeter. Fukuyama was premature in his prediction for the end of history (him a good Hegelian in 1992), which led him to conclude, in his 1997 review, that:

Schumpeter’s work stands as one of the most brilliantly wrong-headed books of the century in its central prediction that socialism would ultimately replace capitalism because of the latter’s insuperable cultural contradictions. Writing in 1943, Schumpeter argued that there was no inherent reason why central planning should work less well than free markets in the production of technological innovation, a point not as glaringly off the mark then as now. The central problem with capitalism, however, was not economic but cultural: it would produce a privileged class of people who would reject the sources of their own wealth and seek a socialist order. In this he seemed quite right for many years as intellectuals and artists in the West struggled against the very system that made their discourse possible. Things began to look rather different after the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions in the 1980s and the subsequent collapse of communism. Schumpeter’s book contains what is probably the most realistic, albeit minimalist, definition of democracy as a competition among elites for the allegiance of the people.

I fear that the pandemic may make Fukuyama’s predictions as premature as his forecast of the end of history. Covid-19 will probably make Schumpeter more correct again; the intellectuals will cry for the need for a “better central response plan.” Good-natured ignorance at best. More likely a huge opportunity for the erosion of personal freedoms.

In some ways I take great comfort in the abject stupidity of some governors and the fractured responses. I hope people are paying attention and see that the politicos are using a biological crisis to further their careers. They aren’t concerned about your personal safety! Yet, there are glimpses of humanity at the political level: The fact that California shipped ventilators to NYC is precisely the de-centralized, wonderfully humane, and ‘adapt and overcome’ spirit that is required as a response plan to an unpredictable threat of indeterminable magnitude.

4/7/2020

Getting real-time accurate data remains impossible. However, early indications are not comforting; we have false negatives on test results, misinformation from China, and reporting errors in the European nations leading to a significant under-count of the actual mortality rates. The Economist provides a better early metric: the excess death totals. A snapshot from Europe paints a grim picture.

In summary, governments always revise upward the official number of deaths after a disaster and therefore, we should only assume that the “official” numbers are too low.

This is not a conspiracy theory but an acknowledgement of the difficulty of real time reporting. Without easy and accurate testing for a new virus, calculating its impact is harder than for an existing disease. The initial estimates of global deaths in the 2009 swine flu were around 18,000, but these were later revised to a range of 150,000 to 575,000. There are differences between the two events, importantly, deaths from Swine Flu were unusually concentrated to the young, 80% of the deaths were people under the age of 65, whereas Covid-19 is more typical in adversely impacting the aged or those with underlying medical conditions. But importantly, all indications are that Covid-19 will have a much higher mortality rate than N1H1.

4/6/2020

This one should be back dated, but it was just reported Boris Johnson was admitted to the hospital with symptoms after testing positive for Covid on March 27. It’s just Herd immunity at work (see 3/14/2020 entry below).

4/5/2020

I still have to travel downtown for work. The streets are largely empty, mostly the shambling homeless making Portland look like a set on The Walking Dead. That led me to wonder what the drug-dependent panhandlers are doing? No one to cajole for money. How are street-level drug dealers and junkies faring with social distancing? Will we see a rise in deaths from withdrawal?

A Covid-19 vignette: a homeless person walked up to one of our security desks to ask, “Where did all the people go?” A reminder that not everyone has ready access to real time news. To a mentally unstable individual, the sudden sheltering must seem like the Rapture arrived.

Passover (Pesach) is April 8 to April 16 this year. I am not religious and prefer Athena to Yahweh, but with the Covid fears, the story of Passover has a heightened poignancy.

As told in the Book of Exodus, during the servitude of the Jews in Egypt, God told Moses and Aaron that each household shall sacrifice a lamb, sprinkle blood on the lintel, roast the lamb and eat it with bitter herbs. That meal is the Passover offering. The blood on the threshold was a sign to the Destroyer, the Angel of Death, to spare the household from the (tenth) plague.

For that night I will go through the land of Egypt and strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt, I the LORD.

God set a plague on the Egyptians that killed all the first-born sons of the Egyptians (including the first born of the cattle). We are all now all in our houses hoping to be passed over.

Frighteningly, this reminded my that the blundering administration may be playing this Covid event as a Biblical prophecy. We have already seen the US move its embassy to Jerusalem and Pompeo is a complete nut job. They may be trying to bring the End Times. I love conspiracy theories (here is a great map), but I forget the soft-brained take it as truth! And many of them are now in positions of power.

4/4/2020

My younger son’s birthday. His friends mothers’ all surprised him with a drive-by parade, cars decorated and honking through the neighborhood. A wonderful adaptation to the current conditions. I am amazingly grateful.

Because I fear the centralization of power, the solitary Trump decision I had been supportive of was his hesitancy to use the Defense Production Act, and yet now he employs it to prevent 3M from exporting masks to Canada. And to add insult to injury we get Kushner? Game over man. Fucking idiots all.

I have been in contact with close friends working in Emergency rooms in Connecticut, New York, Hawaii, and Oregon. The need is real. The structural incompetency is high. The worst of it is the lack of PPE and good protocols. I fear that we will have a decimated rank of health care providers as a result of this event. And this will not be the last pandemic. Bill Gates warned of this in 2015.

4/3/2020

The consumer spending shifts confirm the zombie apocalypse pantry preparation: store guns, ammunition and alcohol. Newsweek reported a 55% spike in alcohol sales. Gun sales also spiked – FBI data shows a 33% increase of reported new purchase in March. What frightens me is the increase in the number of scared untrained sheep who now own firearms. As if the mere fact of owning a gun is a talisman to ward off evil. It’s not the fucking firearm that protects you: it’s knowing how and when to use it.

Foreign Affairs has interesting discussions on the impacts Covid-19 will have on China (a forecast of political upheaval) and the US Economy (not encouraging – and with a link to Vox on firearm ownership implications).

Condoms are part of the global supply chain disruption. I am mildly curious to know given the social isolation how many condom-users are getting to hook up?

And the push for big data and monitoring continues. Do you think the Amnesty International statement will prevent the expansion? Google is already sharing public “anonymous data” on community mobility.

4/2/2020

The Wall Street Journal reports that experts worry that one-third of test results may be a false negative. More uncertainty on the basic facts and exacerbated uncertainty on the transmission and mortality rates.

4/1/2020

April Fool’s Day, but with a noted lack of pranks. Too soon. Too somber a time. Much of the world’s population is in lock down and it has changed how the very earth moves. Foreign Affairs advocating for more resilient supply chains. The conclusion: redundancy within national borders. Will there be a move to less global integration? An economic isolation that increases the trend to global nationalism?

3/31/2020

As we sit fragmented and isolated to keep one another safe, I wonder if this scare will result in higher vaccination rates. This may be a catalyst for change. Multnomah County had a good percentage of those parents who renounced vaccinating their children from fears of a (spurious) link to autism. The Covid experience should end a naive generation who lived in a brief era when deadly diseases were nearly contained and resulted in lax vigilance. Memory is short and fear is reactive. Because my father was briefly in a polio ward in his youth that left him with one leg shorter than the other, I always remembered that we are never beyond the reach of nature.

In a promising press release, Johnson & Johnson has announced a fast production for a vaccine.

Update on Covid-19 mortality rates. But, but, but, the lack of good data will continue to exacerbate the uncertainty of the statistical analysis. The CIA has been warning that data from China has vastly underestimated the total number of cases. And without readily available testing in the US we won’t have reliable data for some time, especially since the disparate responses and containment means human intervention has changed the spread vectors. I suspect India will provide a better statistical model for the true rate of unfettered infection and the resulting mortality rate. The Lancet reports are not particularly encouraging.

3/30/2020

In Hungary, Viktor Orban takes the chancellorship. Putin of course made his move early so expect to see him through 2036 (at least). Does this surprise anyone? I am surprised it took this long and that so few governments have invoked war power acts to further centralize control. I fully expect public fear will start to demand it. Even some smart people have advocated for more command and control. How people forget the lessons that were hard won at the founding! And they forget the general inefficiency (incompetency?) endemic to centralization.* Centralization of decision is fragile! In my neighborhood (a very small sample size), I have noticed fast responses to build resiliency: People planting neglected gardens (I am not the only one) and evidence is wider spread; finding plant starters is difficult. It’s not just toilet paper anymore. People are taking action and increasing self-sufficiency. Bravo!

*One needs remember that the shortage of hospital beds per capita in the United States is largely the result of the Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974 and the guidance of Milton Roemer whose well-intended goal of an expansion of a national health system led to a higher efficiency resulting in a general shortage. Roemer’s Law, “a hospital bed built would be a hospital bed filled,” was trying to solve for inequitable access and the driving up of costs at a time when health care was 8% of GDP. Unintended consequences indeed.

And the strategic stockpile of ventilators didn’t have a maintenance contract. And who was going to run them anyway?

3/28/2020

A weekend – but frankly it’s hard to remember which day it is without the routine change of scenery. Broken patterns are disconcerting. A good reminder for training broken rhythm.

3/25/2020

I take some comfort that there are advocates who recognize that governmental tracking of Covid-19 contacts is, as even Forbes reports, a grave threat to our privacy.

My low expectations of the majority is confirmed: voter approval remains at 46% (as of March 17), and I expect that this report on idiots who poisoned themselves after listening to Trump’s inane narrative on chloroquine as a potential cure is not isolated. And while I agree with the sentiment that individuals are responsible for their own actions, apologist reporting exonerating Trump of cuplability is overstating the point. Have we really lowered our expectations of leadership this low? You cannot have it both ways: either the leaders are responsible for the narrative or they are not leaders!

So the leaders no doubt are back slapping on having reached (at 1:30 am) an economic stimulus deal – $2T (9% of annual GDP) to keep the economy afloat. What’s another few trillion added to the national debt? Yes, this will help those families whose household earnings and whose jobs were directly impacted. But why isn’t the burden on the future generation being considered? The piper must be paid, lest the children be lured away. Oh, sorry, that is precisely the impact of more debt: our children will bear the cost.

Trump is garbling the message on the Defense Production Act (1950) – was it or is it invoked and being used? The continued confusion generated by the oval office aside, I am concerned that the precedent of a war time power act is being viewed as appropriate. Private industry was responding in advance of any directives, Anheuser-Bush making sanitizer and Hedley & Bennett making masks are just well-publicized examples of what numerous small businesses and the general public were doing without coercion.

The FDA gave emergency clearance to use convalescent plasma as a potential aid in treating patients as we await a vaccine. Gov. Cuomo continues to push and fortunately epidemiologists remember ideas from 1918.

3/24/2020

Alex Tabarrok always has good insights and questions – here is a look back to the Forgotten 1957 Pandemic. Which leads to Maurice Hilleman who was credited with saving more lives than anyone in the 20th Century.

3/23/2020

Oregon Gov. Brown finally issued an Executive Order to shelter in place. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was threatening to act independently should she fail to act. Following company policy, I had been working from home since March 12, 2020 which also coincided with the Portland Public School closures.

3/20/2020

The History of Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 to provide context.

3/18/2020

In Israel, the Shin Bet was authorized to send messages to let its citizens know when they were in proximity to Covid positive carriers. That is one accurate GPS system … Implications? Should be obvious. There will be a push to track by central governments in order to help limit the spread of future infections. You have seen this before! Hell, even Batman warned against this in The Dark Knight. So we will be compelled to cede more of our privacy – for our benefit. Do you believe that?

3/16/2020

And Boris Johnson relents and the UK’s approach starts to converge with the rest of Europe when Patrick Vallence (chief science adviser) recognized that the UK was closer to three days, not a month behind Italy’s trajectory.

A healthy US volunteer received the first dose of a vaccine. Phase 1 clinical trial has begun. Unfortunately even if successful, mass production would be 12-18 months out.

Reviewing a time-lapse of the data set on the map should prove instructive for the next outbreak.

ORIGINAL POST – 3/14/2020

The practice of Aikido reminds us that we are all interconnected. Kimusubi is exactly that: the finding of and cultivating a connection with another. Unfortunately for our daily practice that makes social distancing impossible. And the byproduct of a highly mobile and interconnected world means we are all citizens of the globe as well as our community. We therefore have a responsibility to act for the betterment of the community. Because we are facing a pandemic where anyone and everyone could be a carrier the responsible action is to prevent opportunities of transmission. That means closing dojos. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.

The decision is in the spirit of Aikido with full knowledge that we are all connected and that we all have a responsibility to one another for the preservation of life: dojos should be closed until the outbreak is contained. 

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I do find the response to the pandemic interesting to watch. First order observation: people do not understand log growth and those who do overestimate their ability to estimate it, and worse most don’t know how to evaluate information critically.

The post-hoc analysis will be interesting. [1] We have countries with some radically differing response strategies and timelines. China and Italy responding with a lockdown and the United Kingdom’s herd immunity theory show the extremes of social experimentation. Israel interestingly mandates a quarantine of all visitors (remind you of World War Z?). There is a stupidity of the ‘stiff upper lip’ tradition in England that Nassim Taleb chastises. [2] The totalitarian command-control of China is predictable, but Italy breaks its cultural predilection for rule-breaking but goes deeper to its collectivist tradition of doing the right thing for the community. [3] Israel smartly turns inward knowing that it has always been under siege. Here in the US we are slow to respond. The inept Federal leadership should be obvious and I can only hope the herd immunity theory starts at the top. Goodbye and good riddance!

My gallows-humor inclination is such that I tend to laugh more during crisis. As much as the enormity of the event is serious at the level of the individual and our impacted communities, I enjoy watching the lemmings scurry about hoarding toilet paper [4] and hand sanitizer. People worried about wiping their asses and they haven’t figured out how to live with adversity.

Covid 19 is just a manifested threat – one of many that we generally want to ignore. The simple fact of the matter is we in the Pacific Northwest live in an active earthquake zone and the impacts of that eventuality will be far worse than this virus outbreak. (And this outbreak will not be the last.) I can only hope that people learn from this exogenous shock and prepare for the next. [5]

But stockpiling material supplies is not a panacea. The far harder challenge is the existential threat. I am curious to see how long we are prepared to contend with the challenge. This surely will not be the only one. Thinking back to the existentialists the hand-wringing angst and vacuous conclusions of Sartre and Camus are good reminders of what not to do. The spirit of the warrior is to face challenges to overcome them.

The narrative in the public arena will focus on the impacts to the economy, the finger wagging at the politicos and by the politicos, but only a very few will use this as a learning and teaching opportunity. What will we learn from this adversity? The public arena is largely devoid of intelligent voices, but there are some: Anges Callard is one good example. [6]

Virtūs et Honos

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[1] A good source of real time data is >here< and a review of the data. There is good evidence that social isolation was an effective response to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. And there are some very puzzling questions to review once this crisis is over.

[2] Critical review of Imperial College paper that served as the basis for a herd immunity response.

[3] Of course Italy could also be remembering its mercantile history: The practice of quarantine begin in the 14th century to protect coastal cities from the plague. Venice port authorities required ships to sit at anchor for 40 days before debarking – hence quarantine from the Italian “quaranta giorni” (40 days).

[4] The initial surge that wiped out toilet paper supplies also reflects a supply chain shift: as people toilet at home the sanitary burden shifted away from the office. The type of toilet paper and the distribution channels are not the same – consumer vs commercial market.

[5] Here is a good link to your survival guide on hoarding. And some reminders of bigger threats: Yellowstone remains an active threat. What we can learn from Camus. And a reminder that armed insurrection is always a possibility. But there are academic groups specializing in planning for a greater resilience.

[6] As an aside it was just a few months earlier that a luminary of a better age in public discourse died: Gertrude Himmelfarb.