Weekend reading: Whoops, there goes the economy

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• 1 Brod April 17, 2020, 11:49 pm

  I must say my experience of lockdown has been great.

  We’ve stopped setting the alarm, I can see my wife all day, every afternoon we take the kids to the virtually empty park for an hour or two… We all have breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day.

  But then I worked from home 2 days a week anyway. Now I’ve just got company 🙂 (and everyone else has their kids popping up on Skype calls too.)

  Do worry about the kids though.

  And I’m still only 20% in equities as I want to preserve capital and I think it’s gonna be an L.
• 2 C April 18, 2020, 6:22 am

  I was a homeworker beforehand – and essentially the playing field at work has now been flattened in all kinds of interesting ways.

  A V shaped recovery is the least plausible of all. Thousands of businesses won’t simply bounce back, and nor will demand in areas as diverse as travel and leisure. What will it take to convince you to sit in a restaurant, a cinema or a plane? Similarly, supply will also be a problem. Perhaps your widget depends on a material or component which is supplied by a country still in lockdown. Will any individual/business/government be going out and thinking, “Yep, I’m ready to blow a lot of cash on xxxx”. Paying down debts/building a war chest for the prospect of future lockdowns might be higher up the list.
• 3 Neverlaid April 18, 2020, 7:57 am

  I disagree.

  Now, what are we talking about today?
• 4 BBlimp April 18, 2020, 8:14 am

  I guess to see the irony you’d have to believe that workers can only come from the U.K. or the EU ?

  Why remainers take issue with the other 7bn people in the world I will never know.
• 5 David April 18, 2020, 8:18 am

  Let’s hope the recovery graph doesn’t resemble a Chinese character because they are drawn only with downstrokes, never upstrokes.
• 6 Marco April 18, 2020, 8:57 am

  I think we will see a super powered v shaped recovery fuelled by technological innovations to allow a more productive/efficient working society.

  Having now cashed in my premium bonds and emergency fund to invest (amazingly almost at the exact recent bottom), I’m just back to contributing my monthly earned income.
• 7 David April 18, 2020, 9:11 am

  Once the furlough scheme comes to an end we will see a spike in redundancies as businesses question whether they need those staff to come back after all.

  I can’t see normal life returning back to normal for two years so many marginal companies will fail even with near 0% interest rates.

  Difficult times.
• 8 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 9:18 am

  Pointless speculating on the shape of recovery until we see some signs, anywhere, that our government has understood what actions are needed to keep the infection under control, and has actually started doing them. We also need recognition that internationally co-ordinated action will be necessary to restart safe travel.
  Instead, we are three weeks and counting with no leader. It’s no way to run a railroad.

  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/17/political-imagination-end-lockdown-mass-testing-contact-tracing
• 9 xeny April 18, 2020, 9:19 am

  @BBlimp: The line reads the farming industry can’t find U.K workers. Typically it costs more to bring people further,and most business seeks to reduce cost. Where’s closer than the E.U. ?
• 10 PC April 18, 2020, 9:22 am

  Yes I’m a bit bemused by the WFH thing – I’ve been happily working from home almost all the time for the past year and for a least a day a week for the past 5. I first worked from home 20 years ago on dial up internet, with a large phone bill.

  As for sourdough .. been making it weekly for years.

  So far have avoided looking at my SIPP but will have to login soon to reinvest some dividends.
• 11 The Weasel April 18, 2020, 9:24 am

  As an introvert. WFH suits me perfectly. I can only hope the company boss sees the light. He’s a very old fashioned man. We’ll see.

  I’m other news, my mortgage fix ends at the end of this month. Very timely! Or so I thought… Halifax has actually decided to increase the fixed mortgage rates because hey, why not make a bigger profit with all that cheap money from the BoE. On top of it, they have reduced the estimated value of my property so I get a crappy LTV rate. Nice!

  Sadly, I can’t even change lenders because this is only one of a three-part mortgage and one of them is only one year through a 5 year fix…

  Sorry.. Had to get that off my chest.
• 12 Indecisive April 18, 2020, 9:25 am

  I have mixed feelings about future demand. Over half the people I know are working (and paid the same) as before, but with lower outgoings.

  People are looking to the end of lockdown (which was meant to be next month and now end of June) and booking holidays (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52328756). I think you underestimate the wave of spending that will meet freedom. Even I, a compulsive saver who skipped holidays for many years as a waste of money, have changed. Realising I will die and it might be sooner than 50 years’ time has woken a long-suppressed urge to live, to experience, and to travel. Sure I’m on track to pay off the mortgage in 3 years, but maybe that’s not the most important goal in life.

  On the flip side are people who have lost jobs and income, who will want to save or who don’t have any money to live on. Even if the economy bounces back this year, I think the shockwaves will be felt more next year, as people realise what’s missing and which businesses didn’t survive or are now unaffordable to them. And that’s assuming we don’t get another pandemic this winter.

  The one thing I’m certain of is that society will be more unequal than before. That saddens me, and I have no idea what to do about it.
• 13 JimJim April 18, 2020, 9:39 am

  Lock down is fine in the lakes still, financially the income still seems to be enough although diminished, next month the cash flow is a little tighter but expenditure is down altogether. So far so good. We are still having a great run of weather, so dry that watering the garden is a must, a rare thing in the lakes. Bike rides are long and solitary with everyone behaving well and distancing is rarely an issue. Working from the confines of the kitchen table is do-able, and my early bird nature means I have two hours head start on the day before the family gets up. I could do this forever if the nature of my work was different. As for the shape of the market, an utterly speculative guess would have my money upon a “W” recovery with a long flat up-sweeping tail. America might have it a little differently if the Trump decides to distance from China. Who knows.
  Here are some Easter Lambs at the bottom of my garden not giving a toss for social distancing for light relief… https://photos.app.goo.gl/YCegw14qz6Kpz3Cn8
• 14 Snowman April 18, 2020, 9:43 am

  A ‘present bias’ is a tendency for people to give stronger weight to payoffs that are closer to the present time when considering trade-offs between two future moments. I think there is a lot of ‘present bias’ going on at the moment.

  We look at the covid-19 death totals to date in the UK of 14,000. As an aside it’s actually nearer double this, if you look at ONS statistics, and work on how many extra weekly deaths there have been than you would normally expect.

  Then we look at New Zealand and there have been 11 deaths.

  Therefore New Zealand (around 2 deaths per million) are dealing with it much much better than the UK (around 200 deaths per million) and have had a much better outcome.

  New Zealand have arguably handled it well to date. But in terms of outcomes what we are looking at is the area under the daily death curve up to now, rather than the area under the daily death curve at the end of the pandemic.

  However well New Zealand have handled it, they may still end up in per capita terms with a similar area under the death curve at the end of the pandemic. Will New Zealand be able to continually stop the virus being imported into the country and then spreading through community spread, until a vaccine is found? What if no safe scalable vaccine is developed. Remember that no human vaccine has ever been developed for a coronavirus.

  At the end of the pandemic a similar percentage of the New Zealand population could have been infected by the virus, and a similar or even greater number per capita may have died. A greater proportion of the vulnerable could have been affected, as it is more difficult to shield the vulnerable, and they will disproportionately be affected by the significant economic consequences and fall-out.

  My sense is the UK government and it’s advisers are in a ‘present bias’ mode of decision making and critical thinking has been suspended on their part. That’s one of the reasons they won’t discuss exit strategies in my view, and we could be stuck in a paralysis of lockdown, which could ultimately prove much worse for the UK, than some alternate strategy aimed at containing but not suppressing the virus. The UK government demonstrated their ‘present bias’ at the daily briefing yesterday. I don’t think they have an exit strategy from the current position, so their biases have lead them to assume a vaccine will be available in September, so that they can avoid discussing what to do if no vaccine is available.

  Of course it is sensible that work to develop a vaccine is ongoing. But if no vaccine appears what is the exit strategy then, you can’t simply ignore that possibility.

  The UK does need to consider strategies such as moving to herd immunity, by releasing lockdown measures in a controlled way, that does not overrun the NHS, backed up by shielding of the vulnerable.

  I’m not saying I have a good feel for if the UK should proceed this way, and we need some reliable serology results, and understanding of immunity for those who have been affected first.

  But we do need to fight our biases and engage in clear thinking on approaches to get us out of this crisis, for the overall health and wellbeing of all of us.
• 15 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 9:45 am

  It frustrates me that we don’t yet have systems in place that would allow lower risk economic activities to start up again. For example, we have several bits of work on the outside of the house in suspension, these could be carried out with very low risk.

  However, we need good tracking data to be able to do this safely with the ability to react quickly if things lift off again. We need to be able to test teachers for example, before we get kids going back to school (which I think is a high priority for many reasons).

  A week or so ago I said we needed to get armies of contact tracers going. Still no sign.
• 16 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 9:55 am

  @snowman the most important thing we need to know is what our R number is under the current conditions. That’s what will allow us to attempt to release restrictions – can’t do it until we have an idea what the headroom might be. As Angela Merkel explained so well.

  I also don’t agree that there’s a fixed cohort of people who will inevitably die from Covid, and that all different countries are doing is spreading that out over a longer time frame. Rather, I believe the extent to which the infection rate is controlled does directly impact on the mortality rate. We won’t know for sure of course for quite some time, years. I do agree that without a vaccine we will be dealing with this until most people have been exposed (and possibly longer if immunity fades quickly).
• 17 Naeclue April 18, 2020, 11:00 am

  @xeny, don’t you realise we have a huge empire? Our colonial peasants can be brought in by the tanker load to pick our carrots.

  @snowman, coming up with a concrete exit strategy is hard when we are still learning what we are dealing with. What evidence do we have that herd immunity is possible to achieve? We don’t have it for a lot of other coronaviruses or rhinoviruses. We are in the contain and learn phase. We need to keep our options open with respect to exit strategies.
• 18 Tony Edgecombe April 18, 2020, 11:02 am

  Not only do you need a low R number but you need a mechanism to keep that low. If all we do is relax the lockdown then the replication rate will increase and we will be back where we started.

  That extra mechanism might be everybody wearing masks, track and trace, a vaccine, herd immunity or most likely a combination of all four. At the moment we don’t have the ability to implement the first three and I’m not sure how close we are.

  I don’t see us coming out of lockdown for a quite a while yet, probably as long again as it takes to reach the peak of infections.
• 19 Jonathan April 18, 2020, 11:05 am

  @Vanguardfan the Chief Medical Officer has talked a couple of times about the UK R value now being below 1. But not the actual number, and last night he just said “between 0.5 and 1”. I deduce there is too big a confidence range to specify an actual number.

  Although they don’t say so, I imagine their hope is that they can maintain current restrictions with R less than 1 for long enough that cases requiring hospitalisation reduce by something like half – whatever they think the NHS could cope with and resume some of the important treatments that have been on hold. It will need relaxation of the pressure on some staff who have no doubt been working longer hours under more stress than is sustainable, and return of some ICU equipment that has been “borrowed” from operating theatres.

  Once there they can relax restrictions a bit as long as R doesn’t go above 1. I just hope someone has been generating good estimates of the efficacy of the various measures! As a guide though Holland which has had looser restrictions than the UK seems to have controlled exponential spread, and even Sweden with very loose restrictions (and meritting @TI’s extra comment above) doesn’t have runaway infections.
• 20 Naeclue April 18, 2020, 11:10 am

  For all the gloomsters out there, I would highly recommend the Larry Swedroe article. From the end of 1939 to the end of 1945, the total return of the S&P 500 was about 100%.
• 21 Sara April 18, 2020, 11:11 am

  I can’t read the Morgan Stanley comment as it’s behind the FT paywall but if the headline reflects what it actually says then it’s wrong.
  Those people in the NHS who are currently being applauded are about to face ANOTHER 20 years of austerity to pay for all this. There will be nothing left but emergency care by then.
  And where are the questions about the non health professionals in the NHS and their exposure because they are poorly paid and have no or powerless unions?
  There are a lot of NHS porters seriously ill because they are exposed to everyone and everything all day long but don’t even get to be allowed to wear gloves to protect them.
  But hey they are only Band 2 paid staff and therefore don’t matter.
  They don’t have the powerful BMA or RCN shouting for them.

  And I know this applies to equally poorly paid people in social care, shops and factories and Amazon warehouses – so guess what, lots of money won’t guarantee protection from Covid-19 but it makes it a lot bloody easier to hide from it.

  So all these nice words of appreciation from politicians and public are great but do I expect it to translate into actual pay increases – NO.
• 22 Naeclue April 18, 2020, 11:16 am

  @Tony Edgecombe, I would add “improved treatments” to your list. As more is learned, existing treatments become better “tuned” and new treatments emerge (antivirals, etc.). Getting the death rate down and need for extreme measures (ventilators) will all help.
• 23 Neverland April 18, 2020, 11:17 am

  I expect as we come out of lockdown the old will spend and the young will not.

  The old on the average have more financial assets and much more secure income.

  Also I think saving rates among the young might increase quite dramatically since anyone over thirty will now have seen two large financial crashes in their working lives and anyone over 40 will have seen three.

  Ironically a big increase in the savings rate might make a big hole in the UK economy might as a lot of the SME sector is based on ‘experiences’ and ‘YOLO’ etc.

  But I have always been a saver so who knows.

  Whats almost indisputable is that each generational cohort is getting progressively poorer on the average in the UK compared to the post-war generation.
• 24 Jonathan April 18, 2020, 11:24 am

  @Tony Edgecombe, if current lockdown has to continue until there is a vaccine, then it will be a long hard wait. Of your other suggestions, track and trace is obviously ideal but will need all those 100,000 tests as well as manpower, and even then needs the number of new cases and hence contacts to trace to reduce to a manageable level.

  Masks seem to be controversial, probably because until there is a sustainable supply for care workers in particular the government may be fearful of a toilet roll style mass hoard. In terms of effectiveness, for people following guidelines by keeping 2 m from others except for transitory closer interactions on limited occasions (shopping) the theoretical reduction in infection risk is probably trivial. But my guess is that for people spending longer times closer than 2 m – travelling on public transport for example, or in jobs that require closeness like hairdressing – they would be well worth wearing.

  The herd immunity question is intriguing. The Guardian has a story this morning about some preliminary results from Stanford using antibody tests in California. It wasn’t surprising that the number they came up with as having been infected was much larger than those picked up by tests. Interestingly their numbers were close to the rule of thumb mentioned at one point by one of the government Medical Officers that total infections was approximately 1000x number of deaths. That would put the UK already at nearly 25% exposed and likely to get close to 50% even with the current lockdown. A “partial” herd immunity would greatly assist lowering restrictions.
• 25 BBlimp April 18, 2020, 11:34 am

  @xeny @naeclue … I think you’re just underscoring my point about remainernomics really.

  The cost of the travel is tiny compared to the cost of labour across a picking season. To help explain this… consider if it would be cheaper to get workers from France or Poland ? Yet France is closer ? It would be cheaper again if they came from Russia. But that is further away than France or Poland ! How can this be? Turns out there is a word outside the EU and the cost of flights is immaterial compared the cost of wages.

  Follows then, workers might be cheaper if they came from South America, Asia etc, etc, etc, etc ( like I say there are 7bn people outside the EU)

  This ( very basic) concept applies to all inputs, not just labour, which is why a lot of leavers don’t like to put ourself in a protectionist area with the tiny most expensive part of the world we happen to be closest to.
• 26 The Investor April 18, 2020, 11:39 am

  @BBlimp — Unfortunately this is one of the many errors in Brexit-backing thinking that sounds vaguely logical but is wholly incorrect in practice. Here’s an explainer from the LSE for you to ignore:

  In economics, there are probably very few empirical results as persistent as the distance effect on bilateral trade. In an influential article, Anne-Célia Disdier and Keith Head analysed close to 1500 estimated distance effects in more than 100 papers. Their findings indicate that the negative impact of distance on trade increased during the middle of the twentieth century, and has remained high ever since. Contrary to arguments proclaiming hyper-globalisation as the new normal, this negative relationship between distance and trade persists today. As Colin Hay has argued, the case for hyper-globalisation simply does not hold

  https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/02/23/why-distance-matters-in-trade/

  As ever, there are no economic arguments in favour of Brexit when you average everything out. Not even close.

  The arguments that make sense are curbing immigration (for whatever motivation, and note that we didn’t use the powers we already had) and maximum technical sovereignty (sacrificing some real power and influence to maximize sovereignty of Parliament).
• 27 The Investor April 18, 2020, 11:44 am

  @Sara — The article says basically what you’re saying in that this is the status quo today (as reflected in the table I’ve excerpted). The gist is that the Covid-19 has revealed this perceived unfair inequality / unfairness in society, and so there will be more political and social pressure improve the lot of the poor paid / more insecure in the future.
• 28 The Investor April 18, 2020, 11:50 am

  @Jonathan: You write:

  Interestingly their numbers were close to the rule of thumb mentioned at one point by one of the government Medical Officers that total infections was approximately 1000x number of deaths. That would put the UK already at nearly 25% exposed and likely to get close to 50% even with the current lockdown.

  As you’ll recall, this has been my argument here for a few weeks now and the numbers will have only been going up, despite the curbed growth from lockdown. A week ago I was thinking 7-10 million in the UK was very likely. We’re probably at least at 12-15 million now, *if* my mental model for how this virus works is correct. (And that is a big “if” because I’m just an interested citizen not an expert).

  I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority (i.e. more than 50% — I’m not saying 90%) of people who have actually died from Covid-19 (as opposed to happen to having it in their body on death) were ill/infirm and in hospital or a care home when they caught it, probably 3-6 weeks ago in most cases.

  Here’s The Guardian article referred to:

  At the time of the study, Santa Clara county had 1,094 confirmed cases of Covid-19, resulting in 50 deaths. But based on the rate of people who have antibodies, it is likely that between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected in Santa Clara county by early April – a number approximately 50 to 80 times higher.

  That also means coronavirus is potentially much less deadly to the overall population than initially thought. As of Tuesday, the US’s coronavirus death rate was 4.1% and Stanford researchers said their findings show a death rate of just 0.12% to 0.2%.

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/antibody-study-suggests-coronavirus-is-far-more-widespread-than-previously-thought
• 29 Algernond April 18, 2020, 11:54 am

  I initally thought that ‘You Clap For Me Now’ video was some kind of spoof.
  Mind you, I did see it first linked to by Titania McGrath, so I should have realised.
• 30 BBlimp April 18, 2020, 11:58 am

  Luckily there was a majority of people who recognise there is a world outside the EU.

  I had hoped a silver lining of an actual crises would make Remainers reflect on what a lot of fuss they’d made about losing the referendum. How bad will the world have to get before remainers realise no deal is no big deal ?
• 31 The Investor April 18, 2020, 12:08 pm

  @BBlimp — An excellent response to the overwhelming empirical evidence I shared with you, bringing the usual Leaver intellectual rigour to the debate.

  When this virus crisis passes, which I believe will be soon, we’ll be back to Brexit. Unlike Covid-19, it’s a nailed-on long-term structural impairment to our economy and (for some of us) our culture.

  @Algernond — If you can’t see it’s rather poignant that a population of majority Brexit-voting older citizens are being treated in a pandemic by a large number of foreign/EU-born NHS workers, even as Romanian workers have to be flown in to pick fruit because young British people haven’t got the memo that they’re supposed to be overjoyed at not being crowded out by dastardly EU citizens competing for minimum wage physical labour, then I guess you voted Brexit. 🙂
• 32 SpreadKindness April 18, 2020, 12:10 pm

  I love the You Clap For Me Video!!!
• 33 Snowman April 18, 2020, 12:16 pm

  The Santa Clare serology study is here

  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf

  I read it yesterday but didn’t post it up as it seems to be riddled with methodological flaws, for example the non-random facebook sampling, the inaccuracy of the serology tests (including false positives). And reading others comments they have come to the same conclusion.

  It’s not been peer reviewed yet.

  Some are saying it is evidence of a very low mortality rate of less than 0.2% but I’m not convinced it does provide evidence of that. The thing that surprised me was the low percentage of those who have or had the virus (less than 5% ish).
• 34 The Investor April 18, 2020, 12:22 pm

  The thing that surprised me was the low percentage of those who have or had the virus (less than 5% ish).

  Yes, that is the most disappointing thing to me about the Santa Clara study, too (although it could still get us to 3m+ in the UK, lowering our official fatality rate). While just one (flawed?) study it is a challenge to the idea (/my hope) that infection has already been very widespread in the UK. I’m hoping we are much further along the exponential curve in the UK, but I haven’t done any numbers on their deaths and obviously the demographics would be different etc.
• 35 Snowman April 18, 2020, 12:23 pm

  The USS Theodore Roosevelt study was pretty interesting (do a search for USS Theodore Roosevelt to find articles)

  Around 60% of a young/healthy demographic (i.e sailors) who had had covid-19 were asymptomatic.
• 36 Grumpy Old Paul April 18, 2020, 12:30 pm

  @Jonathan,
  California went for an early and extensive lockdown. Using worldometer statistics, with a population of around 40 million, it has 29,425 cases, 1057 deaths and a death rate per million of 27.
  New York State by comparison with a population of 19.5 million has 233,951 cases, 17,131 deaths and a death rate of 873 per million.
  US as a whole has a population of 328 million, 710,272 cases, 37,175 deaths and a death rate of 112 per million.

  I thought latitude might be a factor which explained the apparent relatively low incidence of COVID-19 across Africa and India and wondered whether this might be evident within a large land mass like the USA but that does not appear to be the case.

  The Guardian article does go on to say: “Even with the adjusted rate of infection as found by the study, only 3% of the population has coronavirus – that means 97% does not”.

  For the US, a crude calculation based on a death rate of 0.2% gives the number infected as 18.5 million or 5.6% of the population. Using the more widely quoted figure for the death rate I’ve seen of 0.4% of the infected population then these total infection estimates drop to 9.25 million and 2.8%. Obviously, this is a very crude calculation for many reasons, not least that the death statistics are a lagging indicator of the number of infections.

  For the UK, we get 7.3 million and 11% (0.2% death rate) or 3.65 million and 5.5% (0.4% death rate). So not wildly different from @The Investor’s estimates.

  Now for the standout statistic from Wikipedia: in 2000 the median age for Santa Clara county was 34, way younger than the UK or Italy.
• 37 Snowman April 18, 2020, 12:30 pm

  @TI

  I’m guessing that UK is at about 15% (10 million) who have or had the virus as at today. But I think there is still room for a wide range off that estimate.

  But we need serology testing results.
• 38 Dan H April 18, 2020, 12:31 pm

  @Jonathan @TI the guardian study puts the infection rate at the time of the study (doesn’t mention when it was) at <5% based on the maximum value of 81,000 infected out of a population of close on 2 million (https://www.google.com/search?q=santa+clara+county+population+2020).

  A study awhile back in the Gengelt region of Germany put it at ~15% (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-antibody-test-in-german-town-shows-15-per-cent-infection-rate-0-4pc-death-rate).

  These can't be applied directly to the UK, who perhaps didn't control things as well and has dense population centres with perfect avenues for rapid spread (hello London Underground). Hence I think our infection rate could be higher.

  I can see both positives and negatives to these studies. A couple outlined below:

  (a) On the plus side they support the view that the infection fatality rate is much lower than most estimates. It would mean the reason we are seeing large numbers of deaths in a short period is due to the extreme infection rate. This is in part likely down to it being a novel virus with no inbuilt immunity in the general population. Further larger scale studies (already underway) will hopefully provide further support to this view.

  (b) On the downside we are potentially still quite far from herd immunity. Taking the top end estimate of 80x infected we are still only at ~8 million. Perhaps it spread faster in the UK meaning we are closer to 10 million. This would still only put us at ~16% of population. Well short of what is required for herd immunity.

  Paradoxically a lockdown will mean it takes longer to get there. In my view this is needed at least for now to 1. build up capacity in NHS 2. determine a strategy to handle it over the medium term 3. improve the available facts to support evidence-based decision making.

  Another important aspect is whether the antibodies being produced mean immunity and for how long. The following article gives some information on this which sounds promising https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-you-become-immune-sars-cov-2-180974532/.
• 39 Algernond April 18, 2020, 12:35 pm

  Hi @TI.
  Am naturally suspicious of people or groups who demand respect; I always thought it should be earned rather than ordered.
  By the way, no.1 in the NHS overseas staff are from India, then followed by Filipino…
• 40 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 12:39 pm

  @snowman, that asymptomatic rate from the navy ship seems in line with other studies.
  What I find interesting is that even in ‘closed system’ outbreaks like this one, and like cruise ships and nursing homes, the proportion infected doesn’t seem to be much above a third (of course, when you have a rip roaring outbreak you do what you can to control infection spread, but even so it seems low to me).

  I agree that by now millions in UK are infected, but I am not sure that helps us right now.
  The issue at present is the rate of transmission and new infections coming through. Until we can get that at a steady state and actually reducing, we can’t move forward. I don’t know how our great and good are estimating R0, but I’d guess it’s from fairly crude stats like daily hospital admissions and deaths, since we don’t have any contact tracing or records of community cases to provide better data. I think that’s why they are terrified of moving too early, since we only seem to have plateaued (probably) at present. There isn’t much wiggle room in R0 around 1, as (again) Angela Merkel explained. We really really need better data on new infections. The serology is much less urgent.
• 41 Grumpy Old Paul April 18, 2020, 12:48 pm

  I’m the world’s worst and slowest typist so I see comments have moved on since I started my last post! E.g. @Snowman’s comment about USS Theodore Roosevelt.

  A final thought about my comment above is that I probably should have adjusted the UK death statistics based on estimates for the number of deaths in care homes and the community inferred from the ONS stats.
• 42 BBlimp April 18, 2020, 12:50 pm

  @Algernond… don’t worry – 52pc of us realise the NHS will be able to expand the numbers of staff it recruits from India or the Phillipines…

  I’m not going to continue trying to explain it to the 48pc… they’ll see for themselves in a couple of years
• 43 Matthew April 18, 2020, 12:56 pm

  If we can shrug off the economic cost of worldwide lockdown, we can demonstrably shrug off the much smaller economic cost of brexit, so if you expect to personally be more winner than loser in the brexit shakeup, go for it. With inequality GDP changes are arguably not going to affect everyone

  Btw with recent savings rates cuts I thought fluff it and will put my cash part into premium bonds, probably will lose a pittence of interest, for a crapshot at something more – even if you ignore the existence of a top prize. I don’t need instant access because Id run costs through a card first, and I think p2p is too risky for what it gives you
• 44 The Investor April 18, 2020, 12:59 pm

  @BBlimp @Algernond — Okay, we’ve all had our fun now. I propose a ceasefire and leaving the conversation to Covid/economic matters — cheers!
• 45 FI Warrior April 18, 2020, 12:59 pm

  This BBC reference ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52308783 ) appears to suggest that this current viral threat is largely canibalising deaths that would have fallen within the contemporary period anyway. The most important question should be ‘Is the annual death rate significantly different?’ Time will tell, but if not, then those countries that didn’t sacrifice their economies until absolutely certain of this, will be greatly relieved there is a future for all the survivors when clarity arrives.
• 46 Algernond April 18, 2020, 12:59 pm

  52% + at least 1 @BBlimp.
  I’m one of the converted
• 47 Algernond April 18, 2020, 1:00 pm

  Loved the diversification post from @TA this week.
  Got me thinking about the best portfolio for compromising between growth and volatility when getting closer to drawdown/retirement (which I need to think about doing once my current allocation strategy has reaped the rewards of the hopefully soonish to come recovery).

  Am thinking of some kind of permanent portfolio (All Seasons / Permanent / Larry / Golden Butterfly) that I’ve endlessly fiddled with on PortfolioCharts dot com.

  Would it be worth a post on the pros & cons of managing one of these oneself or using a similar all-in-one fund, with regards to withdrawal & re-balancing timing?
• 48 Neverland April 18, 2020, 1:05 pm

  @blimp

  You don’t really explain anything though do you?

  Mostly you just write some 180 character rubbish about how brexit is going to be great and just repeat it ad nauseum

  Anyway in less than a year we get to find out what brexit means if the government continues on its current kamikaze course

  Then the only arguments will be about whether the UKs continued lack of economic growth is due to conovirus or brexit

  … and I have a pretty clear idea about what you will be saying it is about whatever the evidence implies
• 49 Naeclue April 18, 2020, 1:14 pm

  @blimp, funnily enough the EU recognise there is a world outside the EU and these inward looking protectionists have more FTAs than any other region or country.
• 50 Snowman April 18, 2020, 1:24 pm

  @Vanguardfan

  Knowing what percentage of the population have or have had the virus tells us how long it might take to get to herd immunity, and to monitor the trajectory to herd immunity.

  If say 20% of the population have or have had the virus already then you could even envisage us getting to 60% during the Summer. We’d probably need to open schools (all/some/certain age groups) to return a bit of normality and to allow the infection to pass through a less susceptible part of the population (children, parents, teachers – typically younger healthier and very low death rates from the virus) and so less strain on hospitals.

  And you can envisage the policy of isolating the most vulnerable while allowing controlled spread in healthier groups to be vaguely possible from a physical and mental health perspective for those isolating if we could get to herd immunity relatively quickly.

  When we push up the % who have had the virus to say 50%, then an R0 of 2 really means each person only infects one other (because one of the two who the virus would have been transmitted to are hopefully then immune). And so social distancing measurements etc can much more easily be relaxed while allowing each person to infect just under 1 other person.

  Did watch that Angela Merkel video on the R0 a few days back. Great example of clear communication. I think she has a science background, great skill to have

  The % who have or have had the virus also tells us the mortality rate and mortality rate by age. The lower that is, the more you can justify taking away some lockdown restrictions and progressing to herd immunity.

  My brother-in -law had what almost certainly was covid-19 just over 2 weeks ago. My sister and nephew although they share a bathroom/towels with my brother-in-law have had no symptoms at day 20 of my brother-in-law getting his first symptoms. For a virus that spreads so easily, how likely is that?

  Does seem that there are some people who have had the virus who fight it off so easily that their antibody response is hardly detectable, and that seems to be part of the problem with antibody tests, as well as the problem with them mistakenly picking up antibodies from other viruses. It is speculated those with a negligible response could be reinfected, but is it logical from an evolutionary perspective that someone who had fought it off so easily would end up being reinfected again, wouldn’t the body leave a guard at the door from the first attack?
• 51 The Investor April 18, 2020, 1:38 pm

  @all — Okay, for the sake of everyone I am going to delete any more Brexit-related comments on this thread, from either side. We’ve all said our bit and we’re not really having a deep conversation about it here today. Please be aware so you don’t waste your keystrokes. Thanks! 🙂
• 52 Snowman April 18, 2020, 1:54 pm

  @FI Warrior

  The ONS data definitely shows that about 6,000 extra people died in the week to 3rd April who wouldn’t have otherwise died in that week, and that’s such a big number random fluctuations won’t make a big dent in that number. So these people are dying from covid-19 not dying with covid-19. Even though covid-19 is only shown on about 3,500 of the death certificates, the age/sex profile of those excess non covid-19 deaths show they are really covid-19 deaths. Many seem to be covid-19 care home deaths and possibly a few are people who were put off seeking medical help or couldn’t access help for other serious conditions.

  But to the extent that 9 in 10 covid-19 deaths have existing illness, are some at least of those 6,000, people who might have died later in the year due to their existing illnesses? Possibly and as you say if this is a significant proportion this might show up by looking at the end of year all cause death figures and say weeks in December may have lower than usual deaths. That assumes that there aren’t still people dying of covid-19 at the end of the year which would offset what would otherwise be a December decrease.
• 53 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 2:19 pm

  @snowman, I do of course understand the significance of antibody tests :-). However I don’t think they are important in guiding our lockdown decisions over the coming weeks, for several reasons. AIUI, antibody levels take some time to rise after infection so you can’t track ‘immunity’ in real time – it’s a retrospective marker. Also, we don’t have scalable tests yet. Finally, it really doesn’t look like we are anywhere near ‘herd immunity’ levels. Right now what we need is good data on new infections, and tracking data that can help us learn what environments and interventions are the most effective at controlling new infection rate, as well as guiding more targeted quarantine and isolation.

  What matters over the coming weeks is judging whether the stream of infected patients pitching up at hospital stays at a level that can be (just about) coped with. We are still very much on a knife edge as far as capacity goes. Because infection is widespread, very small changes in transmission could have large effects on whether services stay within ‘capacity’. Consider an infection where R0 is 2.5 but there are only 1000 infected. In the next 2 weeks, 2500 are infected. Now consider that R0 has been reduced to 1, but we have 100,000 infected. In the next two weeks, 100,000 are infected. That’s why, as infection spreads, the efforts needed to keep numbers containable need to be more stringent, and why we are still very much in the danger zone at present. And we need to get to a point where we are not using 100% (or close to) NHS resources on Covid, there are other things that need treating too which are currently neglected.

  (Btw, as immunity increases, R0 reduces, it’s not a fixed constant. That does mean of course that once you reach substantial proportions of infected, the rate of transmission naturally declines).
• 54 Sam April 18, 2020, 2:28 pm

  As a early 20s, furloughed Brit who has applied to work on a farm, I feel I should come to the defence of my generation a little as to why those picking jobs haven’t been snapped up.

  Firstly, it is quite difficult to find where to apply to. Given the target demographic, a nationwide, social media-focused recruitment drive would be more beneficial than the barely advertised, confusing range of job advertisements we’ve had so far.

  Secondly, and perhaps the most important reason, the furlough schemes has misaligned incentives. Many of the target demographic who could work in these picking jobs have been furloughed by the pubs/restaurants/etc where they were working. This means that they simply have no need to go and work anywhere. Also not helping in this regard has been the lack of clarity about how finding other temporary work would effect entitlement to furlough benefits. It makes no sense to go and find temporary work on farms (which would often come with additional costs) if you end up worse off than just doing nothing.

  Personally, I would have been in favour of either having a) the current furlough system which also stipulates that those in receipt of it be put to use in some other way (fruit picking, contact tracing, whatever); or b) no furlough system at all.

  In general, our whole response to the whole situation has appeared to me as quite un-British and a bit disappointing.

  Thanks for the links as always.
• 55 Matthew April 18, 2020, 2:43 pm

  Or furlowed people could be used to make ppe, run supplies, etc, but definitely, put them on some sort of database that employers can access, and once called up you only get paid if you agree to do the job or can demonstrate a reason not to, ie care duties or sickness

  Perhaps do the same for out of work benefits
• 56 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 2:47 pm

  @matthew, out of work benefits are already contingent on full time job searching.
  The furlough and other income support schemes are far more generous, and require no such obligation. I agree the incentives have been poorly thought through, as in many cases furloughed people can’t take work elsewhere.
• 57 Jonathan April 18, 2020, 2:51 pm

  @all I’ve never had so many comments on a posting here. Only just picked them up, went for a walk with my wife and then lunch.

  I imagine peer review will identify some of the possible shortcomings of that Santa Clara study. Especially the sampling, the test inaccuracies are less important for a population study as long as false positives and false negatives roughly balance or are estimated and adjusted for. (The test accuracy would no doubt not be suitable for diagnostic use) The fact that they come up with a pretty large confidence range for their estimate of the real number infected suggests that the researchers have estimated the inaccuracies they could be subject to.

  However the study does mean it is easily possible in the UK a fair proportion are likely already to have been exposed, and the fact numbers aren’t yet coming down from the peak suggests numbers will increase for quite a few more weeks. Not to mention the implied prevalance from the community deaths not accounted for.

  In that regard though, there will always be considerable uncertainties. In normal times the majority of care home deaths are likely to involve pneumonia, which proves too much for someone frail with declining cardiac and respiratory functions, and the pneumonia’s final trigger is likely to have been whatever respiratory illness (usually mild) was going round at the time. This year they will probably all be attributed to Covid-19. Without testing we will never know, though I suppose where there is a cluster of deaths that increases the suspicion.

  But while some of those deaths might be ones which in a previous year would have been triggered by a cold, there is also the conundrum mentioned by the Chief Medical Officer that there appears to be a larger excess over “normal” seasonal deaths than those that have been associated with Covid. Presumably someone will be analysing all the death certificates to identify if there is an explanatory trend, and whether Covid-19 might actually have been contributory in some way.
• 58 Snowman April 18, 2020, 3:06 pm

  Nearly a third of 200 blood samples taken in Chelsea {Masachusetts] show exposure to coronavirus!

  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/
• 59 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 3:19 pm

  @snowman, according to that article, Chelsea has a population of 40,000 and has had 39 deaths (so maybe between 50 and 100% have been infected if mortality rate is 0.1-0.2%). So they are a very hot spot, similar to the Diamond Princess or the Theodore Roosevelt.
• 60 Neverland April 18, 2020, 3:22 pm

  @Sam

  “Firstly it’s difficult to find where to apply to for those [farming] jobs”

  I dunno a farm maybe? Or just call the NFU?

  I’m sorry I am obviously too old and l am now starting to sound like Norman Tebbit
• 61 MrOptimistic April 18, 2020, 4:16 pm

  My wife spent her youth helping out on farms, including driving the minibus into the local villages to pick up the workers. That no longer happens as it isn’t necessary, cheaper labour was easier to find and agencies took advantage of the opportunities to profit from the novel incentives ( and the carbon footprint is no obstacle on the path to profit).

  Any step change causes temporary dislocations which aren’t necessarily pointers to some underlying ‘ truth’. But if the ‘ system’ makes it profitable to grow flowers in Kenya and fly them here what do I know, but people will still want lettuces in January, global warming or virus notwithstanding. So while logically I might think that a business producing low value items can’t be sustained by reliance on a labour force which needs to be bussed the odd thousand miles, what do I know. Other zombie companies have been sustained by market distortion.
  So my view is we will fall back to our old habits once this is over even if in the short term people reduce consumption for a while ( which will not help recovery).
  Incidentally, my wife tries to convince me that potato picking at the crack of dawn was enjoyable ( and good for you ‘soul’) but I agree with Sheldon; one advantage of an academic degree is you get to work indoors and my soul can find other consolations.

  Don’t know if this is of passing interest ( I had hoped he would be addressing the current investment environment but never mind)

  http://www.theretirementcafe.com/
• 62 ZXSpectrum48k April 18, 2020, 4:48 pm

  “How coronavirus almost brought down the global financial system”. The opening couple of paragraphs, with the “Rona Rigs” slang is classic Guardian. Evocative but almost completely wrong.

  On the buy-side, we’ve been working at home for a decade. Whether at home or in the office, I log into the same system via a VDI session. So there is precisely no difference. I find that I can happily run Bloomberg, Reuters, 4 FX platforms, 2 Futures platforms, multiple real-time spreadsheets and the usual other stuff quite happily in a fast market on 10Mbps, so the 150Mbps I get in semi-rural Surrey is complete overkill. Perhaps if you’re running a HFT strategy, then you need ultra-low latency but for most of us we’re just fine working from home. The sell-side is finding it harder but mainly due to regs rather than tech.

  Of course I do have a have a very high spec PCs at home, overclocked, special cooling, with multiple graphics cards ,running multiple 4K monitors, but that spec is needed for playing Total War games, not work!
• 63 SouthWalesFI April 18, 2020, 4:57 pm

  It’s going to be very interesting to see if what we as humans say we want (clean air, less traffic), in 6months/12months after this is over, actually happens. We had the ability to do this all along, and yet, we didn’t- that drive was just too important, that flight too important. Etc Etc.
• 64 two shillings and sixpence April 18, 2020, 5:45 pm

  Thanks for the weekend reading links……

  Found the “Larry Swedroe: Stop being bewildered that the market has bounced back – it’s not the economy – T.E.B.I.” interesting. Maybe because i am a little new to investing I had expected the market to fall further partly because of all the negative talk about recession and GDP. I can hear some of yous saying that it may fall further …….Which i understand but found this article helpful

  “Tim Harford: why we fail to prepare for disasters” was also very good.

  On the COVID-19 i think we have a lot to learn ….
  I am optimistic that a vaccine will be found soon. Mostly due to the global spread and the amount of affected countries which was not the case for the previous corona viruses which were also short lived.

  I think there is a lot more people who have had the virus without symptoms but this is more wishful thinking on my side. So far it is unclear if we will have immunity to the virus if we are exposed once. No doubt we will have a better understanding in the days ahead but this is concerning

  Thanks again for the links and the discussion
• 65 Matthew April 18, 2020, 6:19 pm

  How much of a difference to death rate is ethnicity and gender making? For the purposes of working out who to sheild should we be modifying their age by x years?
  Also its strange how one can be “moderate risk” and advised to be more careful social distancing but the gp says that because youre not sheilded you’re fine to work absolutely anywhere, like not even a “try to get someone lower risk to do certain tasks”
• 66 Sparschwein April 18, 2020, 6:38 pm

  The Stanford/Santa Clara study is preliminary, non-peer-reviewed, and got ripped to shreds on Science Twitter. Flawed methods, unfounded claims.
  Yet the study has been widely touted in the mass media.
  Good to see it critically discussed here.
• 67 happyjack April 18, 2020, 6:58 pm

  @C
  ‘What will it take to convince you to sit in a restaurant, a cinema or a plane? ‘

  If I could be 100% sure that the flight would actually depart, and that the destination would be at least half open for business, I’d book a holiday flight today for the very earliest date available.
• 68 The Investor April 18, 2020, 7:17 pm

  @Sparschwein — My observation is that every time one of these “lots of people probably have it, based on speculative early antibody testing / modelling / whatnot” studies, most people come out swinging to defend the status quo and say that it’s some combination of preliminary, non-peer-reviewed, and turns on things we can’t be certain about.

  Which is all true, but I don’t think means it’s to be dismissed.

  Especially as such findings keep on coming — and in the UK, for example, even the certain data is now clearly more consistent with these far higher rates of infection than were being officially / provably recognized 2-4 weeks ago, which is when today’s dying would have been infected.

  I well know this because when I voiced suggestions it was far more widespread at the time, here and elsewhere, based on my own wide amateurish reading, that view was effectively dismissed by the same people and I was told we could only trust the official tested positive Covid-19 case numbers.

  I wouldn’t mind so much if we were overturning Newton’s Laws here. 🙂

  But of course in reality, we *are* basing our existing lockdown policy on uncertainties, too — and IMHO a fairly catastrophic interpretation of the uncertain data.

  Perhaps that’s understandable from a precautionary point of view, especially a month ago, but it comes at grave economic and social consequence the longer it continues.

  For my part, I’ve found plenty of things that challenge that such catastrophic thinking.

  I appreciate things are moving quickly, but let’s remember six weeks ago or so that the official “let’s not trust anything unproven” view was that Covid-19 was only modestly asymptomatic, that only a vanishingly low number of people in the UK had been infected, and that the mortality rate we should work on based on the ‘proven’ (ish) data was 3-5% or so.

  We’re a long way from that looking remotely credible now.

  Indeed I feel the reality of the situation is coming ‘my’ way every day, however much Science Twitter wants to rip apart any particular suggestion it’s probably widespread and not very fatal. But time will tell.

  According to the prevailing interpretation of the data in the UK of a few weeks ago, Sweden should be a morgue by now.

  And of course even our verifiable data includes the morsel that every death with Covid-19 is going into the daily death roll call, and is broadcast as such across the country by a media relishing the fear and panic.

  Clinicians and epidemiologists must collect such data, of course.

  But the average person in the street believes 15,464 have been killed by Covid-19 in the UK, which is demonstrably not true.

  Bottom line: We’re all groping around with uncertainties.
• 69 NWIan April 18, 2020, 7:37 pm

  Gosh, that ONS graph is scary, if it comes to pass we’ll all be using the P J O’Rourke cookbook and boiling stones for soup. The decision to close down was political and the restart will also be down to a politician. I hope Boris finds his cavalier mojo and soon.
  This virus thing is not that novel, nor is it that deadly, compare its R0 of 2-2.5 and CFR (case fatality rate) 0f 0.99% (Lancet study) to that of the measles virus – R0 12-18, CFR 2-3%, measles kills 300,000 children per year. Take TB, R0 3-4, CFR 3.5%. The WHO estimates 10.4 million cases worldwide so that’s 360,000 deaths. Winter flu working with pneumonia takes around 6000 per month in winter in England and that’s with a vaccine. We can’t eliminate these viral and bacterial scourges but we can manage them with a variety of vaccines, drugs and basic hygiene controls so that we might conduct ourselves in a prosperous, civilised and productive way.
• 70 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 7:45 pm

  @ti, I think you are rewriting things a little. The published Chinese mortality rate was about 1%, I’ve never seen or quoted any higher figure than that. But it is not a fixed entity, it will vary by context (demographics, quality of care, completeness of denominator of diagnosed cases). Similarly, I don’t think anyone here, or anyone credible elsewhere, has ever claimed that the published diagnoses in the UK are an accurate reflection of actual infections.
  But there’s a quite a leap from ‘there’s a lot more infection than we are measuring’ (which I think we can all agree on) to concluding that the epidemic will be resolved by the autumn, and that therefore the social distancing restrictions are largely unnecessary.

  As I’ve said before, it will be good news if we find that we are further through the natural history of the epidemic than we think. There will be no delay in lifting restrictions if we find our infection rate and hospital admission rate plummeting to zero, and staying there. Right now, we’re not there, we are still counting nearly 1000 dead people per day and increasing numbers of beds occupied by Covid patients (though, I haven’t been able to find data from this week on that).

  I don’t think there are any other countries that are close to that point either, but it will be important to observe what happens as restrictions are gradually eased elsewhere.
• 71 MrOptimistic April 18, 2020, 7:53 pm

  Well this week’s national flu report is the fun read I’ve grown to expect. The number of care homes reporting acute respiratory outbreaks up to 8th April was steadily increasing and exceeded 800 then – fig 2. The excess deaths graph has gone ballistic fig 7. I don’t know how you get a measure of things, especially as it looks like it’s related to density of population so the NY and London experience isn’t seen in the outback. If it wasn’t for the press I wouldn’t know anything was going on. We have had no cases in this village of 700 and no-one I know has had it or has a near family member or friend who has had it.
  For the benefit of city dwellers I can also tell you that the maximum internet connection speed we get is 4Mbs, that’s standard definition Netflix to show the full horror if it. ‘Working’ from home should always have those apostrophes!

  When the phased return to work starts it will be interesting to see how much push back is generated. Don’t expect the same level of dedication in all public servants as shown by the NHS front line.
• 72 MrOptimistic April 18, 2020, 7:55 pm

  Oops, forgot the link. I know you’ll want it
  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/879710/National_influenze_report_16_April_2020_week_16.pdf
• 73 The Investor April 18, 2020, 7:59 pm

  @Vanguardfan — I may be slightly over-doing it, I haven’t got time to check back right now. But literally one second’s Googling:

  The death rate has been estimated at between 2 and 4% in Wuhan, where the epidemic began, but only 0.7% in the rest of China.

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/covid-19-what-we-know-and-do-not-know-about-the-coronavirus

  The mortality rate seems to be around 2%.

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/what-is-covid-19

  Of course people estimated towards the lower range, but that’s because people were already (of course, not rocket science) agreeing there were lots of missed cases.

  And in discussion people definitely said things like “the only thing we can be SURE of is the fatality rate is 5%” or similar, when discussing how much to adjust the figures, which was/is the certain number based on known cases:

  The global fatality rate has now risen above 5% of all reported cases, with the UK, the US and Spain among countries reporting a spike in fatalities in recent days.

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/top-european-teaching-hospitals-running-out-of-coronavirus-drugs

  Personally I think a fatality rate of even 0.3% in terms of cause/contributor to death is looking high-end now. But agreed, time will tell.
• 74 The Investor April 18, 2020, 8:02 pm

  p.s.

  Right now, we’re not there, we are still counting nearly 1000 dead people per day

  Yes, and as I wrote just above that 1,000 includes some number, almost certainly meaningful but as far as I’m aware not yet publicly available, who didn’t die of Covid-19 at all.

  Yet you’re happy to quote it here to build your case.

  It’s relevant, sure. But my point is it includes huge uncertainties itself.
• 75 Indecisive April 18, 2020, 8:23 pm

  @TI

  Especially as such findings keep on coming — and in the UK, for example, even the certain data is now clearly more consistent with these far higher rates of infection than were being officially / provably recognized 2-4 weeks ago, which is when today’s dying would have been infected.

  I’ve read every comment by you in the last 3 weeks so ought to know this already. But: what makes you think that the data now is more consistent with far higher rates of infection than the data 2-4 weeks ago (near the start of lockdown)?

  But of course in reality, we *are* basing our existing lockdown policy on uncertainties, too — and IMHO a fairly catastrophic interpretation of the uncertain data.
  […] For my part, I’ve found plenty of things that challenge that such catastrophic thinking.

  Every time I hear this, I come back to the question: “If it’s a poor interpretation of the data, why did the rest of the world do something similar – and do it before us?”. At a nation state level I would expect to see more variation in the responses unless there is a good reason to act this way.

  China isn’t known for valuing individuals over the (party’s interpretation of the) greater good” and yet they took a hardline approach.

  I was one of the voices calling for an early lockdown 2+ weeks before we did, as the situation in Italy unfolded. Perhaps an overreaction, given the exponential growth slowed earlier than I expected – but at the time it looked the right choice and I stand by that.

  Indeed I feel the reality of the situation is coming ‘my’ way every day, however much Science Twitter wants to rip apart any particular suggestion it’s probably widespread and not very fatal. But time will tell.

  Which Science Twitter are we talking about? Experts in the field, or anyone with science experience? Like with the current rush to publish and get your name attached to any journal article with ‘coronavirus’ as a keyword, there’s an awful lot of noise beyond the normal “fog of war” noise.

  According to the prevailing interpretation of the data in the UK of a few weeks ago, Sweden should be a morgue by now.

  And that’s the *joy* and *pain* of working in the unknown, reassessing as new information comes out.

  It’s why the diary studies being started (rather later than hoped) in the UK are important, because they provide learning opportunities and avoid false memories that rewrite history. Knowing what was known at the time and why a decision was made is different from looking back and saying why a decision was made.

  You are very certain you are right and many people – experts and non-experts – are wrong. It would be helpful if you wrote a blog post to set down why, the evidence you see for each point and the outcome you expect, as that would be easier to follow than in comments across multiple posts.
• 76 The Investor April 18, 2020, 8:55 pm

  @Indecisive — I haven’t written a post about this because unlike with investing I don’t consider myself massively more informed than anyone else (or at least any more than the average clever Monevator reader).

  And I am definitely not “very certain” I am right, whatever right means in this context. Literally in my post above I write “we’re all groping with uncertainties”. 🙂

  You may recall I’ve several times said I did reluctantly support the initial lockdown, if only on the precautionary principle, given the state of what we seemingly knew then and my presumption the Government has better data and resources than me. It’s more all the drama / terror / perceived confidence around it that I increasingly object to. (For instance the Government all saying they will not discuss exit strategies this week, or Sunak apparently rowing about the economic damage internally one day and then the next day trotting out the ‘no conflict between health and the economy’ patronizing platitude / shutdown of discussion.)

  Plenty of experts or at least researchers think the same as me (and it’s reading them and applying my own heuristics that got me to my views). See the Swedish epidemiologist quoted above on this comment thread (or perhaps it was on last week’s Weekend Reading) or the host of people coming out with data such as the Stanford study that’s (apparently) been shot down. I don’t think the study was done by the janitor at Stanford.

  I said “Science Twitter” because the phrase was used to me. Not sure who it consists of either.

  I’ve also been reminded offline that as recently as March the WHO was still bandying around an “official” 3.8% case fatality rate. This looks very high compared to for instance data from the cruise liners (where from memory one group found a CFR of 1-1.2% and estimated China might be down at 0.5% on the back of it. Can’t be sure, I’m using my faulty poundshop semi-eidetic memory here. 🙂 )

  I keep saying “officially” by the way because that is the data I’m/we’re being asked to consider somewhat sacrosanct, it seems. But I don’t.

  I do fully understand why you’d have called for the lockdown earlier; I think plenty of alternative views are credible, and especially at that stage I can well understand caution.

  And re: Sweden, I agree it’s a moving target and we’re all learning. That’s my point! It feels like when the new data moving in ‘my’ direction comes out, it’s shot down. Yet a little while later the data works into the prevailing view (e.g. numerous asymptomatic cases, or the steadily falling CFR estimate).

  (I note you haven’t actually addressed the Swedish experience / data. 😉 )

  I agree it would be helpful if I pulled everything together to present my case better, but we could say that about any commentator here.

  But I have barely had to moderate the Covid-19 discussion (maybe a couple of deletions where people said “let the wretched old Brexit voters die who cares” or similar) and I pretty much just consider myself ‘one of the gang’ here taking part in what’s been a very stimulating debate.
• 77 AncientI April 18, 2020, 9:26 pm

  Everyone Ive spoken to has said they have enjoyed how quiet it is everywhere during the lockdown, the greatly reduced traffic on the roads. And everything.

  Its a real glimpse into how over-crowding makes for miserable lives.
• 78 Indecisive April 18, 2020, 9:30 pm

  @TI

  And I am definitely not “very certain” I am right, whatever right means in this context. Literally in my post above I write “we’re all groping with uncertainties”.

  I saw, but as it was at odds with the tone I was reading in your comments (they have felt assertive), so I didn’t give enough weight to it. Noted and assumptions recalibrated!

  It’s more all the drama / terror / perceived confidence around it that I increasingly object to. (For instance the Government all saying they will not discuss exit strategies this week, or Sunak apparently rowing about the economic damage internally one day and then the next day trotting out the ‘no conflict between health and the economy’ patronizing platitude / shutdown of discussion.)

  I stumbled across this glorious quote in the Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/17/cabinet-ministers-admit-no-lockdown-exit-plan-wait-boris-johnsons/):

  A third Cabinet source […] added: “They are waiting for the public to change their minds.

  “We didn’t want to go down this route in the first place – public and media pressure pushed the lockdown, we went with the science.

  “The lockdown will only start coming loose when the public wants it to – not ministers.”

  Nothing like leadership when you need it.

  or the host of people coming out with data such as the Stanford study that’s (apparently) been shot down. I don’t think the study was done by the janitor at Stanford.

  The most amusing take-down of the Stanford study I’ve seen is https://twitter.com/PeterKolchinsky/status/1251585935994740736. Can’t comment on the accuracy, but it’s worth a read for the analogy.

  I’ve also been reminded offline that as recently as March the WHO was still bandying around an “official” 3.8% case fatality rate. This looks very high compared to for instance data from the cruise liners (where from memory one group found a CFR of 1-1.2%

  Thanks for the reminder re WHO and March. The cruise liners were very interesting, looking like an outlier when the first came (stuck off Japan IIRC) – how could the fatality rate be so low in a confined population? – and less like an outlier as other cruise ships got infected. I never saw an age profile for the guests onboard, which would have been interesting.

  (I note you haven’t actually addressed the Swedish experience / data. )

  I note you haven’t addressed my point about the developed world & China taking a similar approach either 😉

  On Sweden, I don’t know enough to make a comment. I know they are taking a somewhat different path, but I haven’t followed the progress of the disease there or seen the data. I don’t know anyone who is there either – or even who has written about it. I hope it works out for them.
• 79 Jonathan April 18, 2020, 9:43 pm

  @TI, in your defence I haven’t seen your personal opinions as unreasonable. One of the great things about Monevator it it has rational discussion by intelligent individuals who acknowledge when they are making personal judgements based on moderately reliable news information rather than actual expertise to develop their opinion (excepting a few Brexit trolls). If there are any readers who are actually infectious disease epidemiologists they haven’t shown themselves.

  In the end all of us – and at the moment that seems to include the experts – are trying to make sense of imperfect data which is changing constantly. No one disagrees that the number in the UK who have been infected is far larger than those who have been tested to be positive, but whether that is 10x or 100x (or more) from the quoted figure is up to interpretation. Obviously anyone’s view of the likely actual number is important in guessing how this will all work out.

  You mention Sweden, what I can see of the data there is volatile because of the lower numbers, but does suggest their approach has stopped exponential growth of infection. That is helpful in speculating about the UK’s next stage. There is better data from the Netherlands where a looser lockdown than the UK has stabilised but barely reduced infections. For the UK the first thing is to get the numbers safely manageable without introducing risk of untreated cancer etc, but beyond that there are good models for the policy makers to look at.

  It would be interesting to know where economic activity is in those countries compared to ours.
• 80 The Investor April 18, 2020, 9:54 pm

  @Indecisive — Sorry if this sounds like a cop-out, but I don’t want to back and forth on this too much tonight (I’ll have to keep dropping in for moderation, but would otherwise prefer to keep working through Better Call Saul 🙂 ).

  I was actually hoping the comments this week would be a more on-brand discussion of quality of life as per @Ancientl’s comment above, but if people want to keep discussing Covid-19 here I’m certainly enjoying the level of discussion.

  So just very briefly, I think you’ve answered your own question. I forgot to say in my reply to you when you said why did I think I was right and experts were wrong (we’ve both since clarified my view on this) that at least some of our own experts thought lockdown was a bad idea!

  The shift seems to have been at least partly political. And only last week the Home Office deputy chief science officer apparently told passport office workers they should get back to work, everyone was overreacting, and that “we” are working on the assumption that 80% of us will get it anyway! (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/coronavirus-uk-passport-office-accused-of-taking-cavalier-approach-to-staff-safety)

  I think politics / public / media at least partly explains why we followed China. If it was good enough for impersonal China, then it was good enough for us! In reality the Chinese situation was different anyway (they seem to have been able to lockdown when it was in one city, whereas we already had very dispersed cases, and their lockdown in the big cities is very different to ours, as I keep trying to explain in these disparate comments. Did you go to the shops today? Did you you have your temperature checked five different times? Did you scan any barcodes? All would have been done in China).

  I don’t think we should have done nothing. We should have used the fact it mostly hits the old/vulnerable (something I was still having to debate on here two weeks ago at least, incidentally) and then locked down the old / vulnerable pronto (instead of letting them wander around hugging, shopping, and going to the races) while we found out more. Care homes and hospitals should have been on high alert.

  We might have got away with everyone else doing hardcore physical distancing, including with their friends and family, at least outside of London and any other areas with mass transport. It really does seem to be working for Sweden, where you can still go to a restaurant, buy a coffee, and visit your friends, although of course the fat lady hasn’t sung for anyone yet as we’ve agreed. 🙂
• 81 MrOptimistic April 18, 2020, 10:25 pm

  The Better Call Saul episode this week ( just watched it) was nothing short of magnificent. One episode to go, plus one more series. The production standards are beyond reproach.
• 82 Henrik April 18, 2020, 10:32 pm

  Sorry I didn’t read through every comment yet but in case it wasn’t mentioned:

  Jason Zweig speaks with Charlie Munger “The phone is not ringing of the hook” [Search result]

  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/charlie-munger-the-phone-is-not-ringing-off-the-hook-11587132006
• 83 Vanguardfan April 18, 2020, 10:43 pm

  @ti, the daily deaths are those occurring in hospital only, and thus an underestimate.
  Also the evidence from the excess deaths ONS data also suggests that figure is a significant under count. So yes, as an estimate, I don’t think 1000 deaths a day overstating the order of magnitude.
• 84 The Investor April 18, 2020, 11:04 pm

  @Vanguardfan — I agree. You may recall on last week’s thread discussion that I was working then on the basis of 20,000 deaths *with* Covid-19, by adding in some numbers from those excess deaths. My point here is that you were (seemingly) quoting the daily hospital death figure unadjusted for the fact that a bunch won’t have had much to do with Covid-19. And now you’re adjusting (/speculating) for an unknown number of ex-hospital deaths.

  I have no problem with this at all! 🙂 But it’s exactly what those seeing other suggestive evidence (and I know to some extent you’re on-board with this, but more cautious/hesitant) are doing to reach a modified view of what is going on. We’re all using uncertainty. There’s not one ‘side’ with certainty and the other with numbers pulled out of a hat.

  Incidentally, 600K UK deaths a year works out as about 1,650 deaths a day. Let’s say Covid-19 has been in about 10-20% of the UK population over the past few weeks, especially in the populous areas where most people live. (I know it the infected percentage won’t have been so smooth but I’m just making a point here). That’s similar to for example the 15% figure pulled up in that testing of a German town the other week.

  We could be seeing 165-320 deaths a day testing positive for Covid-19 just on the grounds that 10-20% of the population has Covid-19!

  Of course that is a random number, the people tested are overwhelmingly skewed to a particular demographic, etc etc. I’m just pointing out how this ‘testing but not causative’ factor is a meaningful number if we’re reporting say 784 deaths in a day and *IF* 10-20% of the population has the virus in their body.

  (Again, I am not going to die on a hill for any of those specific example numbers. I’m just illustrating it could be a non-trivial point!)
• 85 The Investor April 18, 2020, 11:04 pm

  @Henrik — Thanks for the link, I’ve been meaning to get around to a post on the absence of these guys for a while now. Unfortunately that one is paywalled.

  @MrOptimistic — I’m back on Season 2. Finally got a chance to get stuck into it with lockdown (I was a big Breaking Bad fan, and Saul was my favourite character. Will look forward to that episode!)
• 86 Brendan April 18, 2020, 11:55 pm

  The Investor – it’s worth looking at the deaths/capita for New York City. It gives a lower bound to the IFR in a pretty young city (of course IFR will vary across demographics and healthcare ystems, but NYC is pretty comparable to many places in the west).
• 87 FI Warrior April 19, 2020, 8:10 am

  Thoughts on quality of life after the lockdown period? The economy and therefore country will be less resilient, so poorer in general. Many businesses will bite the dust, so unemployment will be epic and as such inequality will get even worse. The poor will suffer more as a result and the middle classes will steadily join their numbers. Mindless consumption will decrease due to a lack of choice even though most people will want things to revert to how they were before. (for the comfort of familiarity) Life will simplify massively, so things like no more 100 options when buying bread or washing powder, there’ll be more like 5 types that’re genuinely different.

  More working from home, use of public transport, living in multi-generational households to share costs and hopefully from a greater value of family bonds, the need for frugality will probably drive it though. People won’t wait for state intervention, they can build annexes and ‘granny flats’ themselves, working from home means the flexibility to live where other family are. Privacy will be lost, remaining a luxury reserved for those who can afford it, like so many rights already are now in the judicial system.

  There will be pros and cons, winners and losers. For those ready, willing and able, who’ve put a lot of thought into it, they could navigate the obstacle course to try and pick out what they want and avoid what they don’t. If you’re imaginative, self-aware enough and consciously seize the opportunity, you could seriously improve the quality of your life, while those who let others make the decisions for them, will end up worse off.
• 88 Old_eyes April 19, 2020, 8:53 am

  Too late I think for your roundup, but I found this article interesting https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-stimulus-checks-unemployment-benefits?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. Core argument is that large US corps have been using cheap debt to pump their stock price with buybacks, reducing reserves to handle a crisis. Hence must be bailed out with even more money. Ordinary US citizens face the crisis on their own. Not a good recipe for US society.
• 89 AVB April 19, 2020, 9:19 am

  I’ll be asking to work from home at least a couple days each week after this. I always hated my commute into zone 1, and i’m much healthier and less stressed now.
• 90 SpreadKindness April 19, 2020, 9:21 am

  It’s heartbreaking. Really terrible. Things are getting worse and worse. I really fear for the future. Seems like macho governments will just use this opportunity to throw democracy under the bus. 🙁
• 91 ZXSpectrum48k April 19, 2020, 10:24 am

  With regard to the economic impact and lives being lost due to those effects. I think people need to consider counterfactual scenarios where China and/or the West did nothing to impair the virus. In those scenarios, economic damage could be as bad, if not worse, than due to the lockdowns. Nobody would be commuting via train/tube/air, consumption would still have collapsed, there would be panic. I have no doubt that equity prices would be lower. You’d have had less monetary/fiscal stimulus but also, without a lockdown, the market would struggle to price a V, U, or any type of recovery. Health systems would be overwhelmed and many more people would be dying both of COVID and other conditions.

  I think this is opportunity to reshape our economy, social contracts and environment. The Neo-liberal capitalist model has been great but it’s 35 years old and somewhat long in the tooth. TI says that magic money trees don’t exist. I disagree: they are an inherent part of a fiat currency system. We have a global forest of magic money. The issue is not whether large amounts of money creation can occur, it can. The issue is if/when sterilization of that money creation occurs. I believe in sterilization but via the debt channel, not taxation. We need to be far far less afraid of long duration public sector debt. Issuing 50-year debt at 0.514% is not a problem. The real fear for a country like the UK, with a large current account deficit, should be large private sector debt. Increasing public sector debt will reduce that private sector debt, since it’s a sectoral balance identity.

  Right now, I see the usual vested interests already agitating for us to get “back to normal”. Iain Duncan Smith is doing the rounds because he’s been told to by his owners. The last thing most UK people should want, is to get back to normal. “Normal” is not to their benefit and hasn’t been for a quite a while.
• 92 Tony Edgecombe April 19, 2020, 10:43 am

  @TI “That’s similar to for example the 15% figure pulled up in that testing of a German town the other week.”

  You can’t extrapolate from a single town to the whole population, it isn’t going to be evenly distributed across the country.
• 93 The Investor April 19, 2020, 10:54 am

  @ZXSpectrum48k — Morning!

  There’s a lot of certainty in your first paragraph. 🙂

  I’m not so sure the scenario you describe would have *inevitably* come to pass. (At the risk of flogging the horse to its knees, look at Sweden.) It’s very likely far more companies would have voluntarily closed down; it’s also very likely many small cafes and restaurants would have stayed open, and hundreds of thousands more would still be in work. We’d probably have far more Covid-19 cases; whether we’d have an NHS-crippling number is for me still an unknown, although I well understand and respect the view that says we couldn’t risk it.

  I don’t see why we still couldn’t have supported / stimulated in that environment, too, except perhaps political will.

  I have taken on-board a point you’ve previously made that even if we’d soldiered on without a full lockdown we’d still have suffered a large GDP drawdown, both homegrown but also imported from abroad. (Infamous Sweden still faces a forecast steep retrenchment in output.) But we’re multiplying ifs by maybes by uncertainties here — and it’s well above my paygrade to say with confidence how different would have been the hit to the economy. I do struggle, given what we currently know, to think it would have been much worse.

  I agree money trees exist. The key word is ‘magic’. 🙂 I don’t disagree hugely with your diagnosis of the present, though I do suggest that both of us should be careful what we wish for when it comes to a transition to a new status quo. I think we’d both be losers, perhaps greatly, in our different ways.

  However the only real advantages I see to massive debt issuance versus traditional tax/redistribution are political (it’s easier to hide) and behavioural (you can push off the pain). I agree we can and should have the State borrow more today — indeed that’s what it’s doing. But how long would the cost stay at 0.514% if markets believed this was a policy aimed at underpinning a wholesale transition of society and its financial underpinnings?

  Perhaps quite a while — look at Japan — or perhaps not very long — look at any number of instances where such expansion unraveled.

  I suspect some countries will experiment more in this direction in the years ahead, and if so the textbooks should get some interesting new chapters.
• 94 Neverland April 19, 2020, 10:55 am

  @ZXspectrum

  I think you are a bit emotional for a hedge fund manager

  “In those scenarios, economic damage could be as bad, if not worse, than due to the lockdowns.”

  I’m not so sure of that. We have the examples of South Korea, Taiwan and Sweden to look at in a few months in terms of how the UK economy could have been higher if we had adopted different methods. I don’t think Germany is a good comparator because they seem to have a so much better funded health/social care system than us.

  We couldn’t not do lock-down because too many British citizens would have died if we didn’t, the core estimate was about 0.5 million which could easily have been higher.

  “Health systems would be overwhelmed and many more people would be dying both of COVID and other conditions.”

  Yes people would by dying in hospital corridors probably worse than Italy since we obviously don’t have a very good health and social care system, swhile people are very happy to ‘clap for the NHS’ they continually vote not to pay for it and they don’t want to pay for social care either.

  “I think this is opportunity to reshape our economy, social contracts and environment. The Neo-liberal capitalist model has been great but it’s 35 years old and somewhat long in the tooth. TI says that magic money trees don’t exist. I disagree: they are an inherent part of a fiat currency system.”

  As a lonely and fairly small island off the coast of NW Europe with a big current account deficit about to become economically isolated from its neighbors gambling on huge debts largely financed from abroad would just make sterling the rainy version of the Turkish lira, no thanks. Maybe there is a magic money tree for the global reserve currency owner, but thats not the UK.
• 95 The Investor April 19, 2020, 10:59 am

  @Tony — Agreed. My figure isn’t based entirely on that, I just wanted to give a data point so I wasn’t accused of making up a number entirely. It’s also based on the early signs from multiple antibody tests. It’s based on the number of Covid-19 infections discovered in routinely tested nurses in New York. It’s based on working back from known death rates. It’s based on the cruise ship data. Etc. 🙂

  One difficulty with this debate I’ve discovered (offline as well as here) is we all have our own mental models of what’s going on.

  If you’re (i.e. if ‘one’ is) working on the assumption of say 3-10x the number of proven infections in the UK, you’re seeing a very different world than someone like me who sees *far* higher likely rates of infection, based on my own wide reading, intuition, and hunches that are different from yours. But restating every influencing data point every time isn’t really feasible.
• 96 Vanguardfan April 19, 2020, 11:00 am

  If you’re worried about the overcounting of covid deaths (I think the whole with/from issue a red herring, given our problem is under rather than over diagnosis), then just stick with the excess death estimate. Next figures due out tomorrow.

  As far as economic impact goes, the IMF projections for next year show a fairly similar hit across Europe regardless of the approach taken to lockdown:
  https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Publications/WEO/2020/April/English/text.ashx?la=en
  I know much less about economic projections than I do about death stats, so these may be no better than fag packet guesstimates for all I know.
  My view remains that economic impact is best addressed by addressing the virus, as far as that is possible. But I’m just repeating myself now. And in any case I can influence almost nothing, so will just wait and see.
• 97 Naeclue April 19, 2020, 11:04 am

  @old_eyes, guardian makes some good points, but is riddled with inaccuracies. For example, the Fed buying up corporate debt does not cancel that debt, which appears to be the implied.

  Very damning article from the Sunday Times, usually pro Boris government. ST it bit too sensationalist for my liking and I take everything I read there with a pinch of salt. If we want to scatter blame around, I hate to admit it but the orange moron does have a point about some of the advice coming from the WHO. They were too slow to call for lock downs and travel restrictions.

  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh
• 98 The Investor April 19, 2020, 11:10 am

  If anyone wants to play around with the famous Imperial model, they’ve done a good job of making its output accessible here:

  https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/United_Kingdom

  This model has as I understand it changed several times over the past couple of months. That’s as it should be, of course, but as people are still talking about 500,000 Covid-19 deaths if we had done nothing that was drawn directly out of its first (public) iteration, worth keeping in mind.

  FWIW my friend who knows far more about stats/modeling than me (the one who pushed back at the doubting doctor’s blog a couple of weeks ago) is very impressed with Imperial’s modeling, and he has mostly disagreed with me throughout the course of the virus (although I would say he’s accepted the higher rate of infection with on average a two-week lag 😉 )
• 99 Hk Expat April 19, 2020, 12:02 pm

  I have been reading the comments (and online UK newspapers) with great interest. Hong Kong started earlier and is further along, but currently with 1025 infections, and 4 deaths, out of a 7.5 million population. For the last 8 days new infections are running at 1-4 per day with, I think, 2 of those not being travel related, with the last big upsurge being when students came back from Europe- mainly UK.
  I think the 2 big differences, even though the Govt here is widely considered as incompetent as it appears the UK govt is, is that:
  1. wearing masks is natural following SARS. It amazes me that the UK Govt coverage is that wearing masks won’t protect YOU, whereas here its to protect OTHERS, meaning that if everyone does it you are indirectly protected as well. I suspect this is the NHS mandarins not wanting to admit they screwed up by having inadequate supplies. And I do mean the sainted NHS, rather than Govt, since they have a large number of highly paid beaurocrats who’s job is to do exactly that but have clearly failed, choosing to allocate budgets elsewhere.
  2. Despite the politic’s of Hk being part of China and therefore can’t close the border with them, pure public pressure forced the Govt to shut down 95% of the access, followed by insisting on anyone from overseas going into 14 days quarantine (which my son’s have both gone through).
  Appart from that however all shops remain open, restuarants are open with social distancing. and only pub’s, sauna’s karaoke joints etc are closed- although the argument for closing pubs and leaving restuarants open is a bit thin.
  Anyway a different perspective from the UK which seems to be both paniced and a bit lost from where I am!
• 100 Old_eyes April 19, 2020, 12:03 pm

  @naeclue – I bow to your superior knowledge. I had just assumed that Robert Reich, a former US Secretary of Labor and Prof of Public Policy at Berkeley, would be a reasonably reliable source.

  The ST, Sky and other reporting today does have the feel of the ground shifting under the Government. Interesting.
• 101 Sparschwein April 19, 2020, 12:23 pm

  On the quality of science reporting in the media, consider these two profound analyses.
  Then put 1 + 2 together. Choose your sources wisely.

  1.
  http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

  2.
  “My expert would totally disprove that.
  Who is your expert?
  I don’t know, but I can get one by this afternoon. The thing is, you’ve been listening to the wrong expert. You need to listen to the right expert. And you need to know what an expert is going to advise you before he advises you.”
  – Malcolm Tucker
• 102 Sparschwein April 19, 2020, 12:54 pm

  Sweden has been mentioned as an example. This article suggests that Sweden is not doing so well:
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/16/sweden-has-shown-not-tackle-coronavirus-fights-now-save-face/?

  Indeed (today’s data from COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University):

  Confirmed cases
  Sweden 13288
  Denmark 7438
  Norway 7069
  Finland 3783
  UK 115317

  Confirmed deaths
  Sweden 1511
  Denmark 346
  Norway 164
  Finland 94
  UK 15464

  And how is this even a surprise? Spread of the virus is an *exponential* process. Death count is delayed by ~3 weeks from infection. Do nothing, and things look wonderful for a while… until suddenly they aren’t, and then it becomes exponentially more difficult and costly to get on top of the pandemic.
• 103 The Investor April 19, 2020, 1:12 pm

  @Sparschwein — As you’ve stressed we should be so rigorous and careful in our reporting etc, I’m sure you simply forgot to adjust for population. 🙂

  — Sweden currently is running at reported 150 deaths per million people.

  — The UK is currently running at 230 deaths per million people.

  So currently a lower death rate per million in Sweden, without a lockdown.

  And how is this even a surprise?

  Presumably this *is* a surprise to you, then? 🙂

  Sweden’s neighbours are doing better on deaths per million under a strong lockdown, however. And I do think it’s too early to call victory on any particular strategy.
• 104 Naeclue April 19, 2020, 1:29 pm

  @Old_eyes, ok criticism accepted 😉 I agree with most of what he says. I think listed companies should provide something in return for bailout money. Maybe stock options or redeemable preference shares that block ordinary dividends/buy backs until redeemed, or even direct equity stakes. If companies don’t like that, let them seek private funding. I can see it all getting difficult once you get into private and smaller companies though and delays getting money where it is needed. Maybe the simplest way is a period of higher corporate taxation, a ban on buy backs, which are basically a way of avoiding dividend taxes, and more rigorous closing down of tax loopholes.

  It is all very well for Reich to complain about corporate debt, but I don’t recall many complaints from shareholders about share buybacks or overgenerous dividend payments, in many cases also funded from debt. Look at some of the reaction when the PRA “requested” that banks hold back on dividend payments. Company boards have been doing what their shareholders wanted them to do.
• 105 Grumpy Old Paul April 19, 2020, 1:34 pm

  Before mentioning Sweden again, I’d suggest reading https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/833623311/in-sweden-a-different-approach-to-coronavirus-control?t=1587296974089

  which describes the measure which Sweden have taken. True, it is far from a lock down but it is also very far from doing nothing. It may also offer clues as to how we can ease our lock down without causing an massive surge in hospital admissions and deaths. Those with powerful contacts please note!

  It’s also interesting to read Monevator from March 21st – https://monevator.com/weekend-reading-lockdown-links-for-days/ just as a reminder how much attitudes have changed over the past few weeks.

  I also noted that the famous Imperial College paper dated 16th March ( https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf ) states:
  “The age-stratified proportion of infections that require hospitalisation and the infection fatality ratio (IFR) were obtained from an analysis of a subset of cases from China. These estimates were corrected for non-uniform attack rates by age and when applied to the GB population result in an IFR of 0.9% with 4.4% of infections hospitalised”. This was the paper that predicted that, with mitigation ( combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) actions alone, there would be 250,000 deaths in GB.

  IFRs (as opposed to CFRs) of 3-4% or 5% and above for the UK were not predicted in any serious source that I encountered. Happy to be shown the beef.

  I have no problem accepting that UK IFR may be much lower than .9%. I know nothing.
• 106 Jonathan April 19, 2020, 1:43 pm

  @HK expat, interesting to hear about life there. If those numbers are true that is very impressive.

  Mask wearing seems to be a cultural reaction to threat in some Asian countries. There have been pictures of people wearing them in big cities for years. One effect of that may be that there is a good supply chain when it needs to be called on.

  In the UK context, someone following social distancing will have a very low probability of catching Covid-19, say 1%. The easily available masks are apparently not that effective, lets say 50%. Wearing one would reduce your probability of infection by 0.5% But for someone working in hospital necessarily in frequent close contact with patients the unprotected risk could be as high as 50% meaning that even a simple mask reduces infection probability by 25%. If supplies are limited it is clear where they should be directed.

  I suspect masks might be an important help when it comes to reducing restrictions. For example more people will eventually be commuting on the London tube, they will no longer be able to maintain 2 m distance and a mask could be beneficial. (However that scenario will be massively be changed by things we have no hard data for: the fraction of London workers who may be resistant due to previous infection, and the how small the fraction who are potentially infective is after 6+ weeks lockdown).
• 107 The Investor April 19, 2020, 1:53 pm

  @GOP — In case that reminder was partly aimed at me, three things. 🙂

  Firstly, as I’ve said many times including in this thread, I supported the UK’s initial lockdown, given where we were at and what we knew at the time.

  Secondly, I’ve never suggested we do nothing. I’ve pretty consistently advocated reasonable/sensible physical distancing (a la Sweden) and quarantining the older/vulnerable — indeed offline and I am pretty sure early on here I’ve suggested stronger/earlier measures in that direction. (I’ve definitely said it many times in past few weeks here, just not sure about whether I was in late March here.)

  My mum must be approaching six weeks in self-isolation now, on my guidance. And that’s complete physical self-isolation, with food drops (but way more Skypes and Zooms and Facetimes and phone calls…)

  Thirdly, as the facts change, I change my mind. I’ve become less worried about the virus and less worried about its vaunted killer potential as time has gone on, for all the reasons discussed above and on every Weekend post for the past few weeks.

  That does not translate into “not worried” or “it isn’t serious” or “we should do nothing”, for the avoidance of doubt.
• 108 Tony Edgecombe April 19, 2020, 2:03 pm

  Digging around to find out more about Sweden I just discovered Sweden has the globally highest per capita rate of people living by themselves. I also found out that Sweden has a population density of 23 /sq km, the UK is more than ten times that.

  Perhaps they are just lucky that these figures are slowing the progression for them.
• 109 The Investor April 19, 2020, 2:13 pm

  @Tony — Very possible. As I said last week I think it’s surely no coincidence that the big spikes have been in New York, London, Madrid, Milan. May be density, pollution, public transport, larger BAME populations, more physical social contact, all sorts of things going on.

  Remember, though, the whole UK is on lockdown. And Trump (who I loathe, but…) is getting pilloried for suggesting states in the middle of nowhere might think about reopening.

  That’s what I’m getting at when I talk about the lack of critical thinking / panic / etc.
• 110 Vanguardfan April 19, 2020, 2:13 pm

  It’s certainly the case that comparing country responses is not straightforward, you have to dig a little to identify exactly what is mandated, and even what is not mandated but has become advised and common practice. Every country, even Hong Kong and Sweden for eg, seems to have closed schools and universities, which I find interesting, as the UK scientific guidance suggested that might not be one of the most effective measures. (Although, it’s worth pointing out that UK schools do remain open for children of key workers – I don’t know if any other country is doing that). I was pretty shocked to read that Spain’s lockdown does not allow children outdoors AT ALL. That seems horrific.

  I suspect (not done massive research) that our lockdown is actually at the softer end, possibly closer to Sweden and Netherlands than Italy and Spain. We haven’t restricted any form of public or private transport, we haven’t actually stopped workplaces from operating, as far as I am aware, (apart from entertainment and sporting venues?), you can still travel to any workplace if that’s necessary to undertake your work. You don’t need official pieces of paper to go outdoors. There’s no limit to how many times you can go outdoors, just the purposes. Of course, demand has fallen because people can’t go out for non essential retail or leisure activities. And there are some strange inconsistencies in what businesses have decided to do – the window cleaner is still working, but the builders who were going to do the repointing are not, although I can’t see that their work is prohibited (they say because the builders merchants are closed, but again, why? Construction on local building sites is still going on).
  It’s certainly not particularly logical, as far as I can see.
• 111 Hk Expat April 19, 2020, 2:14 pm

  Jonathan
  I think Hong Kong’s figures are pretty much true. It is highly politicised following the protests and no one seems to dispute them. I don’t think the basic analysis is different than the UK, ie anyone dying with Cov 19 in their system is counted, whether or not that is the actual cause of death. China’s figures not so much- I think they only count people who’s death was caused by Cov 19, not died with it regardless which may account for the huge difference, but straight forward under reporting is also likely given the regions desperation to hit central govt targets generally.
  To my mind masks seem to be the main difference. I didn’t wear one during SARs, being younger and more arrogant no doubt, but this time round I do, as much for social acceptance as safety. But it does bring home to you all the time you are out the need for social distancing which to my mind vastly exceeds the reasons the UK govt puts forward for not wearing one, such as touching your face more (which when you wear a mask you become conscious of just how many times you do per hour!)
• 112 The Borderer April 19, 2020, 2:24 pm

  Regarding Sweden, is it worth considering that average temperatures in February are between -3 deg and +3 deg, and in March between 1 deg and 9 deg. The Swedes would be bundled up against the cold with scarves around their faces, maybe?
• 113 The Investor April 19, 2020, 2:30 pm

  @Vanguardfan — One perspective on this is at the FT’s Coronavirus Tracker page:

  https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

  See the animated graphic How The World Locked Down Due Covid-19, towards the bottom of the page.

  Our lockdown is pretty strict but you’re right not the very strictest, at least if you take time of response into account. (I haven’t looked into the exact definitions behind this data).
• 114 Vanguardfan April 19, 2020, 2:31 pm

  For the many people here and elsewhere who suggests we should that only the ‘vulnerable’ should be subject to lockdown, how would this work?
  Households don’t neatly segregate by vulnerability, so are you suggesting this would work by isolating any household containing a vulnerable person? Who would decide the definition of vulnerable? Would those households still be eligible for income support schemes, but not households composed of non vulnerable? Would school kids be excluded if they lived with a vulnerable household member? Would the age threshold be lower for men, since they seem 50% more likely to die? Would BAME people have a different threshold, since they similarly seem at higher risk?

  I just don’t think it’s practically feasible, and I also doubt it’s effectiveness. If you have unconstrained transmission ‘outside’ the vulnerable households, it is bound to find its way in (witness what is happening in care homes).
• 115 The Investor April 19, 2020, 2:44 pm

  @Vanguardfan:

  I just don’t think it’s practically feasible, and I also doubt it’s effectiveness. If you have unconstrained transmission ‘outside’ the vulnerable households, it is bound to find its way in (witness what is happening in care homes).

  This is what I mean about us going around in circles, and uncertainties being voiced as a problem with alternatives but not so much for the status quo.

  We have debated before that your position appears to be to lockdown until vaccine — and yet you have also denied this the case.

  The alternative to lockdown until a vaccine is some version of opening up.

  In any version of opening up where we haven’t entirely expunged the virus from the UK there will be transmissions (and surely nobody reading still thinks this is possible any time soon, unless the natural history is such that we really don’t have any worries).

  Many credible scientists believe we will need to get some version of population ‘immunity’ (yes yes, we don’t know) and that 60-80% of the population will get it (/need to get it) anyway.

  Luckily, we know it kills rounding down nobody under-40 who isn’t vulnerable, and very few under-50. Not a great many, relative to the damage that ongoing full lockdown will be doing to the same demographic, under-60.

  So we open up to, say, everyone under 60 (or similar) and everyone without an obvious vulnerable health condition (government has already been mailing the people it thinks are such — so they decide). It spreads. Most people are fine. Some people get sick but are then fine. Fewer people get very sick and go to hospital. Fewer still, die.

  The virus does get into care homes and hospitals — where it appears to be running rampant anyway, which is zero surprise to me — but those who can, self-isolate — i.e. most people over 60 — do so and are not affected.

  This is an alternative way of controlling the peak, as much discussed previously.

  I agree though there are practical considerations. Some people may consider themselves vulnerable, the government (and its support) may not. Some businesses won’t be able to run without elders in office. Some (likely small number of people) people will feel they have to go to work and may get sick.

  But again, the fact is all of that’s true today. The NHS alone has 1.4m workers, many of whom are at work. People like me and @ZXSpectrum48K and many other readers are still earning the same we were earning in February working from home; lots of people are earning nothing. Lots of small businesses have had to close down; Tesco and Netflix are doing fine.

  We are already picking winner, losers, etc etc. The only difference is we’ve picked the option with (IMHO) the biggest and most damaging impact on the economy for the longer it goes on.

  I know reasonable minds can disagree on all this, but there are definitely many potential strategies from what we know right now.
• 116 Vanguardfan April 19, 2020, 2:58 pm

  Thanks for telling me what my position is…I have never, to my knowledge, said that we should continue lockdown until a vaccine. I don’t even have much faith that a vaccine will offer the way out, based on the current uncertainties.
  In as far as I have a position, and it’s way above my pay grade, I think we need to continue population distancing until we have clearly reduced the number of new infections to a controllable flow, and we then need to get serious about tracking, contact tracing and isolating contacts, as we should have done in the beginning. I think any release of restrictions should be gradual, and we should look carefully at the response. I think the most important current unknowns are what will happen when we do that, and what degree of population immunity we have acquired (nationally, locally and globally). I tend to agree (at least I think this is a point of agreement) that the extent of the damage will depend on how fast and to what extent the global population develops effective immunity.
  I think all I’ve ever said is that we’re between a rock and a hard place.
• 117 Vanguardfan April 19, 2020, 3:07 pm

  Oh and btw the government definition of vulnerable is much much more restrictive than the ‘underlying health conditions’ that have been present in many of those dying. It excludes diabetes for example.
  You could I suppose use the criteria for being a candidate for ICU: http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/765d3430-7a57-11ea-af44-daa3def9ae03
• 118 The Investor April 19, 2020, 3:17 pm

  Thanks for telling me what my position is…I have never, to my knowledge, said that we should continue lockdown until a vaccine. I don’t even have much faith that a vaccine will offer the way out, based on the current uncertainties.

  We’ve been through this ‘you’re telling me what I think’ already/last week. Pretty clearly — given I stated that’s your stated position — I know you have said this many times.

  What I’m saying is that for somebody for whom waiting for a vaccine is not viable, you continually reject any alternative, due mostly to the ongoing risk of transmission, and also to a new NHS-overwhelming peak. I’m almost pedantic enough to go through all your comments over the past few weeks to demonstrate this but (a) life is too short and (b) I don’t want to piss you off.

  My position, like yours, is we should not wait for a vaccine. Therefore I am open to hearing and prepared to propose alternatives, accepting trade-offs. Rather than shooting them all down due to uncertainties/problems/potential for death.

  I think it’s pretty clear my posting record reflects my stance.
• 119 The Investor April 19, 2020, 3:32 pm

  @Vanguardfan — Actually, I see you have proposed an alternative in your post this time. I was ‘triggered’ as they say by this ‘you’re telling me what I think’ opener and I only skimmed the rest. Apologies.
• 120 Jonathan April 19, 2020, 4:03 pm

  @HK expat, sorry my doubt about case numbers wasn’t really scepticism, more the uncertainty that exists everywhere about how cases are counted. Nevertheless it is still impressive. However such low numbers suggest to me very early use of restrictions which is of course one of the few things that really work, plus the fact that with cases stabilised at a very low value the probability of infection is bound to be small mask or no mask.

  And @Grumpy, agree that Sweden looks like a model for lockdown release. For the UK one would want hospital numbers to get down to something manageable (zero not realistic at all) and then Sweden type arrangements to hold them constant. Pretty much what @TI is saying I think.
• 121 Sean April 19, 2020, 7:26 pm

  @Vanguardfan (post 117)

  My wife is diabetic and I had noticed that the government list of reasons to be *very* vulnerable did not include diabetes. Not really a surprise to us given that the number of very vulnerable was said to be 1.5m, including all diabetics would result in a number several times that size.

  It therefore came as a bit of a surprise when, on Friday, she received an emailed letter from her GP telling her to fully isolate as she is very vulnerable. Possibly it’s due to other additional health issues as well although none of those are included in the government list either unless treatment is currently ongoing. Which it isn’t. Receiving that letter 3 weeks or so ago might have been useful! Perhaps (some) GPs and the government are working to different definitions of what constitutes very vulnerable.
• 122 David April 19, 2020, 8:54 pm

  I think we have to understand that the government are in some ways going to run things like an insect colony – unlucky individuals don’t matter as long as the whole hive doesn’t collapse. Once we pass the peak and lockdown starts getting lifted, all that matters is that the NHS isn’t overwhelmed so that relatively healthy people like chubby 55 year olds get the bare minimum of care required to keep them alive. Anyone who “would have died soon anyway” (to quote both The Day Today and more recently @ The Investor) is collateral damage in the mission to save the economy and therefore protect everyone else’s long-term physical and mental health by remaining a rich and free country with a decent healthcare system.

  This is why @Vanguardfan’s concerns about the feasibility of loosening restrictions are of no practical concern to the powers that be. Two different teachers have told me they are terrified of catching the virus because they live with somebody who has a lung condition. But we aren’t going to keep the schools closed indefinitely to protect their relatives because we’re talking about a handful of individuals versus the bigger picture. Everybody who thinks they might be vulnerable has to look after themselves and make their own choices as best they can.

  I’ve barely been out of my house and garden for the last month, and on the few occasions when I’ve been into a shop I’ve worn a mask and taken every precaution that I could. So I’m 99% sure I’ve not been exposed to the virus. Should I go and visit my 70-something parents now? If I wait a few weeks until my kids are back at school then I could be carrying the virus at any time and I definitely won’t be able to see them. But if they shut themselves away for 12-18 months or longer waiting for a vaccine, there’s a very good chance one of them will need medical assistance for another reason in the meantime. If they catch the virus in hospital and end up dying from it then they’ll have “wasted” the last months or years of their lives and our family will have been separated for all that time. These are the kinds of personal dilemmas which are going to be happening everywhere when we get “back to normal”, or realistically begin “the new normal”.
• 123 MrOptimistic April 19, 2020, 10:03 pm

  I hope the idea of certificates of immunity has gone away, much too close to certificates of racial purity for my sensibilities !
  From a personal point of view I have no well defined vulnerability but I am 66 and have spent a lifetime smoking. However the key unknown is how my immune system will deal with this virus. It might protect me or it might go all cytokine storm and induce fulminant pneumonia. We are all in that boat.
  I don’t know if I am currently harbouring a cancer, or have an incipient weakness in a cerebral blood vessel which will one day trigger a stroke. This uncertainty has not dominated my thinking or constrained my actions: I still lead my life.
  To my mind, this virus presents no unique personal problem. It has increased the risks I face, critically in an explicit fashion whereas the others were implicit. But you still have to live your life. So once the responsibility to do my bit to protect our society has been accomplished I intend to carry on as before.
  This is the day to day reality faced by the Victorians ( except they had to deal with many more threats that we do eg childbirth. Didn’t Kipling’s darling daughter die of flu ?). They just had to accept reality and deal with it and I think that’s what we’ll have to do, although the ethical path to that is going to give governments a lot of grief.
  Thinking that a vaccine may come along is all well and good ( and hopefully true) but to me such thoughts look like moral evasiveness to dismiss an awkward question we don’t want to answer.
• 124 The Investor April 19, 2020, 11:42 pm

  @David: You write:

  Anyone who “would have died soon anyway” (to quote both The Day Today and more recently @ The Investor) is collateral damage in the mission to save the economy and therefore protect everyone else’s long-term physical and mental health by remaining a rich and free country with a decent healthcare system.

  I get the sense that you weren’t using your ‘insect colony’ metaphor in a flattering light, and that I shouldn’t be too proud of being compared to The Day Today…

  But the reality is that you have summed up in the quote above and your whole post the dilemma very well indeed.

  Nobody wants to be in this position. I’d rather the virus didn’t exist. I want to see my 75-year old mother. I’d rather an 81-year old with chest problems got to die at 82, surrounded by their family and friends if they’re lucky, rather than alone now surrounded by doctors and nurses wearing protective masks and gowns.

  It’s totally horrible.

  Perhaps I should state it more; I tend to assume it goes without saying.

  However being a bit more emotive wouldn’t change the reality.

  Short lockdown, pragmatic and preventative. Damaging but we can bounceback.

  Long-term lockdown, hugely damaging emotionally, physically, and financially for individuals, the country, and the world. To the extent that it isn’t even credibly on the table IMHO, so I naturally move to thinking about what should or could be on the table. Which then brings up these horrid choices.

  Others can make the case that a 35% drawdown in GDP — something like SIX times worse the decline in the financial crisis or the Thatcher retrenchment — for 12-18 months to a vaccine, is a better cure than the disease. But I don’t see it.

  I hope your parents stay safe and you see them without fear sooner rather than later.
• 125 Learner April 20, 2020, 12:10 am

  > Sweden has a population density of 23 /sq km, the UK is more than ten times that.

  And the much referenced New Zealand at 18/sqkm. A nation of 1/4 acre home owning NIMBYs finally has something going for it.
• 126 britinkiwi April 20, 2020, 4:14 am

  @Learner – thanks for the tangential ad hominem! 🙂

  ….and we’ve a half-acre, I’ll have you know!

  NZ still at Alert Level 4 with no non-essential travel, work or activity permitted and social distancing in effect (but not mandatory masks). Shops mainly closed except major grocers such as supermarkets and fuel stations. Some online retailers still active and post and courier services deemed essential.

  I agree with @TI, huge levels of uncertainty with regard to this illness, and concomitant uncertainty about the methodology of dealing with it with massively different reporting systems around the world – apparently the case-fatality in Nicaragua is 20% vs UK of 0.84% (according to the aforementioned John Hopkins website today) which begs the question of what exactly is being measured. And as the statistician George Box said “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (I may be paraphrasing)

  @Jonathan – your mask and PPE has to be close to 100% effective if you are dealing with the risk of infection many times a day – rolling the dice multiple times a day a 25-50% risk in each is way too risky! Bayesian statistics can bite….

  Fortunately NZ seems to have been spared – at least for now – with low numbers of confirmed infection and few deaths. And we have the possible luxury of closing our borders to travel as its 2000km to anywhere….although there goes my spring break to Rarotonga and the SF WorldCon

  Kia kaha!
• 127 Vanguardfan April 20, 2020, 7:58 am

  @britinkiwi where do you get the 0.84% from? (I looked on Johns Hopkins).
• 128 SpreadKindness April 20, 2020, 8:24 am

  I was very disappointed to see comments here here citing President Trump as being some sort of role model for dealing with this crisis. Nothing could be further from the truth.
• 129 FI Warrior April 20, 2020, 8:40 am

  There is a film called ‘Idiocracy’ which is cringeable to watch, but illustrates a serious point, that generations of dumbing down through the tyranny of majoritarian rule results in a chaotic state where most people are incapable of critical thought, especially when manipulated through mass media coverage of endless crises on a loop to panic.

  We are now living in such a world, combined with Orwell’s 1984, where our thin veneer of civilisation seems to have been peeled back to reveal our inner confused naked ape. Yet there is no mistake, nor should there be any surprise when we look at our leaders and see jokers to the left, clowns to the right and us stuck in the middle, because we voted it in every step of the way. Consequences.
• 130 Snowman April 20, 2020, 9:01 am

  It is interesting to read people’s mind frames in approaching things, Mr Optimistic’s earlier post is a great example.

  I definitely think identifying the many good things that have come out of this pandemic has been helpful.

  People are talking to each more, and there is definitely a greater sense of community and ‘together we can’ thinking. We are lucky to have good neighbours but everyone myself included were so busy getting on with life, we didn’t take the time to talk to neighbours that much, and ask how they were doing.

  With the reduction in cars, children are playing on the streets again, like they did when I was growing up.

  When I go for a walk, everyone is much more friendly in their hellos, and there is that mutual appreciation when we both jump off the side of the paths to keep a wide separation.

  Bike rides are an absolute joy. So little traffic on the roads. And I quite like that surreal and eerie feeling you get when everything is so quiet at the top of the local hills.

  And you feel more in tune with nature. The singing of the birds is more noticeable, the lambs are bouncing about in the fields, I’ve even seen families of ducks walking down main roads

  Anyway, hope everyone is finding some joy out there, and take care all.
• 131 Seeking Fire April 20, 2020, 9:22 am

  Indecisive. I’m not clever enough to fully understand but I would largely agree with you. By and large the electorate get governments they deserve in western democracies. I had an increasingly animated conversation with a really good friend who is refusing to go outside (he is quite young) saying that his sense was there were lots more younger people dying from this disease. When I asked him what his source was he could only reference mass media articles. That’s not to say the disease isn’t dangerous to young people, it is, but reading mass media articles are worse than useless and a casual look through various fatality statistics will demonstrate the % of people dying who are young is very low.

  Been fascinating to read the comments. I must admit I think the UK Govt have done ok, not great (probably should have locked down a few weeks ago), not bad (good fiscal / monetary response, balanced lock down), doesn’t surprise me we don’t have a manufacturing facility for PPE / nor do we do diagnostics testing. That’s a consequence of globalisation I guess and fairly pointless blaming the government imo. We also don’t have mass manufacturing for a vaccine either – I picked that up yesterday so if you are waiting for a vaccine before going out, the UK will be in the global queue I suppose.

  The economic carnage is going to be quite something, and we’ll have to lift the restrictions at some point quite soon and to an extent accept the consequences – the really hard trade-off’s society will have to accept I suppose. I’m largely in The Investor’s camp here.

  The Tim Harford interview was interesting too and always chimed with what I feel. Switching away, if you believe that govts dont understandably fully prepare (which I do) and you believe in climate change (which I do) then perhaps you should be prepping for a significant climatic disaster at an undefined point in the future.

  I liked Neverlands comment that we’re willing to clap for the NHS but not pay for it – perhaps a couple of pennies on basic rate taxation / NI on pensions to increase NHS funding (I don’t necessary agree with that btw)? But the last time the liberals suggested that in the 2015 election they were laughed out of court…so again I don’t blame the govt for running the NHS with limited spare capacity – that is largely all the UK is willing to pay for up until now. Maybe things will change but I doubt it.

  Back to investing, I really doubt many people would have forecast the S&P 500 to be where it was after all of this (certainly I thought it would fall but I didn’t sell anything) and again shows that challenge of trying to market time. – far better to pick your asset allocation and the expected return / volatility and stick to it. Whilst equities ‘look’ overvalued with negative real interest rates everywhere and banks monetary response (with no doubt more to come) it’s far from clear they will fall – the ERP is reasonable here. The key is have sufficient liquidity to sleep at night I feel and mentally prepare your self for a 50% fall in equities (that’s easy divide your equities in 2 and take a good hard look at it).
• 132 David April 20, 2020, 9:35 am

  Thanks @TI #124 and as a long time reader I sincerely wish the same to you and your mum.

  I think the insect colony analogy is just me realising that we’re all expendable as individuals unless you happen to be the PM or somebody else important. Which totally goes against the usual narrative of human rights and individualism.

  And I don’t think it’s your fault that the news increasingly resembles The Day Today!
• 133 Matthew April 20, 2020, 9:59 am

  Its a popular thing to judge a society as a whole for who they elected, but without being racial (ie anti american because of trump) what is inherantly different about one society vs another? – demographics? Economy? Taxes? Culture? – do you really see something there that’s judgement worthy about a people? Is drawing any line at all between economy and deaths politically unacceptable? Or is the pointscoring starting?

  To get maximum quality of life i believe you need=
  Lives X quality of life

  So the best result is with middle numbers for both, not one extreme or another
• 134 ZXSpectrum48k April 20, 2020, 10:23 am

  @Neverland.
  I positing a counterfactual scenario where the Western world did nothing. Some in the media are now trying to argue the lockdown is doing the economic damage. That’s wrong. Whatever countries did, their economies were going down hard and lives were going to be lost. It’s about relative damage now.

  I think those countries that acted early/more effectively to suppress the exponential rise benefit the most in terms of both health/economic outcomes i.e. timing/quality of the lockdown is more important than severity. I’d agree with you that many countries (Aus, NZ) did far better than the UK on that front. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not a choice between economy vs. lives. You can have both.

  Of course, optimization is required going forward in terms of the length and severity of the lockdown. Unfortunately, my view is because the UK acted late and it’s execution is poor, we need a longer lockdown than other countries that did better. The NHS is still on a knife edge. The alternative may throw away what has been gained.

  I don’t agree the market will not tolerate fiscal expansion via bond issuance. I remember vividly in 2009/10, ideas that all the rate cuts and QE would cause hyperinflation and that “bond vigilantes” would result govt debt yields soaring, What utter crap. We’ve had nothing but deflation and the “bond vigilantes” turned out to be more like Oliver Twist, supplicants, despairingly asking Treasuries Depts “Please sir I want some more” (Bond duration). There is nothing in this crisis or it’s response to make me think it is inflationary (where exactly is global aggregate demand going to come from?). What I fear most is a return the terrible economic policy of “austerity”. It was unnecessary in 2010 and it’s unnecessary now.

  As a final point: hedge fund managers are people too. Off work, I have opinions, beliefs and even emotions. Most of the last 130+ comments are “just” opinions since we have such a paucity of good quality data. I promise you, however, I’m also capable compartmentalizing away all those weaknesses once I get back to work.

  As an aside, I won’t be back at work for 3-6 months. As was the case for many hedge fund managers who employ my strategy (long convexity, constrained downside), early March was truly wonderful. On par with late 2008/early 2009 for the staggering returns that were made. So with that all locked in, I’ve told my CIO I’m taking a sabbatical. Health over wealth is what matters now and I have plenty of the latter but clearly not enough of the former. If I’m going to die from this cursed disease, I’ll spend my last few weeks/months with my family, not staring at yield curves and vol surfaces. Then again, I suppose you’d consider such a response far too emotional for a hedge fund manager.
• 135 The Investor April 20, 2020, 10:30 am

  As an aside, I won’t be back at work for 3-6 months. As was the case for many hedge fund managers who employ my strategy (long convexity, constrained downside), early March was truly wonderful. On par with late 2008/early 2009 for the staggering returns that were made.

  So with that all locked in, I’ve told my CIO I’m taking a sabbatical.

  Wow, that’s a bold move @ZXSpectrum48k! Good for you. 🙂

  Hope it works out and you get a lot of Total War played during your break. My friends are mainly into boardgames more than video games nowadays, and we’ve had terrible trouble with overloaded servers or applications that work well for one person’s platform / taste / game experience but not another’s.

  It’s enough to make me buy that gaming PC I’ve been pondering for two years in order to dive into the latest Total War: Warhammer, which looks like total bonkers fun to me, if not massively strategic.
• 136 Neverland April 20, 2020, 12:39 pm

  @Spectrum

  “I don’t agree the market will not tolerate fiscal expansion via bond issuance. I remember vividly in 2009/10, ideas that all the rate cuts and QE would cause hyperinflation and that “bond vigilantes” would result govt debt yields soaring, What utter crap. […] There is nothing in this crisis or it’s response to make me think it is inflationary (where exactly is global aggregate demand going to come from?). What I fear most is a return the terrible economic policy of “austerity”. It was unnecessary in 2010 and it’s unnecessary now.”

  You are certainly inconsistent about this.

  I remember two or three weeks ago before the US federal reserve fired its big monetary bazooka you were comparing (rightly) the UK’s position to an emerging market when sterling was tanking.

  In terms of the “austerity” imposed after 2009 it was pretty selectively targeted on the young, the poor and local government

  For a lot of the economy there was no “austerity”, quite the opposite with the old and corporations benefitted from ever increasing state pensions and ever decreasing corporation tax rates for the last decade.

  There is plenty of scope for the cost of this financial crisis to be targeted on the bodies who benefitted most from the support: the old; and the corporation.

  Unlike you I remember the 70s and I can do no better than quote James Callaghan from 1976: “But I part company with those who believe we can rely indefinitely on foreign borrowing to provide for greater social expenditure, a better welfare service, better hospitals, better education, the renewal of our inner cities and so on. In the end these things, comrades, are only provided by our own efforts.”

  It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
• 137 The Weasel April 20, 2020, 1:33 pm

  Good point in a comment above about wearing masks and Western governements not insisting on that. Nassim Taleb, has pointed out that even if their effectiveness is not a 100% their effect on reducing the infection rate would still be massive.

  The way things are, wearing masks, even better-than-nothing, home-made ones should probably be part of any eventual exit strategy.
• 138 Learner April 20, 2020, 2:14 pm

  @britinkiwi > thanks for the tangential ad hominem!

  Oops, absolutely not directed at any readers here. I’m jealous.
• 139 ZXSpectrum48k April 20, 2020, 2:15 pm

  @Neverland. Yes, I was talking about the currency which is always going to be vulnerable since we have a sizeable current account deficit.

  This is fiscal expansion when 50-year bond yields are 0.5%. It’s a much better alternative to high taxation in a weak aggregate demand scenario. There is no reason to assume that govt fiscal expansion will cause a deterioration of the balance of payments position. In the last decade, as the govt deficit dropped from 10%, it was simply replaced by a larger private sector dissaving/deficit (which has to happen since that is the sectoral balance identity). The RoW capital account surplus has varied over that time but with no sign of any strong trend lower. So govt fiscal tightening did not translate to a smaller current account deficit. Nor to be honest, did a weaker Sterling. Our current account deficit is primarily structural and cannot be solved via fiscal means or currency devaluation. It requires a major change of economic focus.

  I’m not even bother to reply to you anymore since you are clearly living in the past. The 1970s economic turbulence was due to the end of the Bretton Wood fixed exchange rate regime. Unsurprisingly, it caused a global pulse of inflation and in many cases major currency devaluations. I don’t see any similarity now. In fact we’re almost diammetrically different. Demographically, the world is in a very different place. Disinflation and deflation forces abound given massive aggregate oversupply of labour and poor aggregate demand. We need a modest bout of inflation but try as hard as they can, central banks are struggling to keep inflation even at 2%. Fiscal policy should to be explicitly pro-inflationary since monetary policy is really low on ammo here.

  People still basing their views on what happened in the 1970s has done damage to the world economy post GFC. Not only has it resulted in weaker economic growth but it’s been socially disruptive and allowed populist demagogues to take power.
• 140 David April 20, 2020, 2:29 pm

  The spread of Covid-19 can be attributed down to the following:

  1) How dense the population is, and;

  2) How dense the population is.
• 141 Hare April 20, 2020, 2:50 pm

  Quoting @indecisive,
  ‘On Sweden, I don’t know enough to make a comment. I know they are taking a somewhat different path, but I haven’t followed the progress of the disease there or seen the data. I don’t know anyone who is there either – or even who has written about it.’

  A close friend is in Sweden. Her sister must have been one of the first to get it in Sweden, having caught it from her boss who came back from a trip to Italy. This was in mid February and her sister’s boss also infected her children and likely other employees and others as well. No one died – or was tested – but took 6 weeks to recover and the symptoms are classic covid.

  My friend is a care worker and has been working flat out for 2 months since so many of her colleagues are off sick. They are dying like flies in the care homes now.

  Sweden doesn’t have the same lockdown but it’s a country that is much less populated and with a different kind of culture. People usually stay further apart and don’t travel as much. Even where she lives, in a block of flats surrounded by other blocks of flats, it is much more spaced out than it would be in the UK so people are further away from each other so infection rates are lower.

  Take from that what you want to but Sweden is one of the countries I’m able to keep track of.

  @ZX Congrats. If you don’t take time off now, what’s the point of having the money?
• 142 Neverland April 20, 2020, 3:13 pm

  @Spectrum

  “I’m not even bother to reply to you anymore since you are clearly living in the past.”

  This time is different are the four words in finance which make for the largest financial crashes.

  So much so that Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff wrote a book with that title.

  But obviously you know better.

  Finance types are really good at explaining what caused the last couple of crashes but always completely blind as to what will cause the next one because it isn’t a factor in their models.
• 143 Neverlaid April 20, 2020, 3:22 pm

  I disagree.

  With everyone.

  Always.

  It’s my thing.
• 144 The Investor April 20, 2020, 3:25 pm

  @Neverlaid — Your last two posts in this vain have made me snort twice now, but I’m going to have to ask you to stop please. It’s clearly personal, and we don’t want that breaking out here on Monevator. Cheers!
• 145 Pre ka April 20, 2020, 4:53 pm

  I personally think our Nhs is just not up to the job and hence the number of deaths
  The first thing they say when you get to hospital is that chances are 50 50, this is basically a disclaimer
  A lot of them probably don’t want to be there, it’s normal human behaviour to try and protect yourself.
  Then they stick people with other ill people and scare them even further with space men suits…then they stick you on a ventilator…2/3 people die on a ventilator…
  If you had any positive thoughts about surviving they are totally sucked out of you by the Media and the NHS, hence chances of survival become virtually none.
  I feel you have a 100 percent better chance by simply fighting this yourself at home and block out the noise from the Media.
  I have had the virus and did get very ill at one point but there was no chance in hell I would have gone to hospital….if I went to the NHS, I would think I would probably have got worse or even end up with a panic attack and hence require a ventilator visiting a hospital full of the virus, and my chances of survival would have dropped…
  You may say the NHS has saved Boris but do you really think he would have had the same treatment as your average Joe public, nope, don’t think so…
• 146 Boltt April 20, 2020, 5:12 pm

  @ Pre Ka

  I understand you are worried but I don’t find this helpful.

  Two of my three daughters work in the local hospital and they are with adequate PPE, so much so that my wife make scrubs with her sewing machine – also having a crack at a face visor. (Because they aren’t classed as front line staff – we deal with multiple wards).

  Neither has mention 50/50 – but that’s just my sample size one information.

  Only the most serious cases will be put on a ventilator – being put on a ventilator should Not increase your chance of death (otherwise why bother!).

  “Chances of survival virtually none” – I’m lost for none swear words.

  I’ve lost the will to continue….

  B

  Ps feel free to delete if too harsh
• 147 Grislybear April 20, 2020, 5:38 pm

  @Neverlaid, I remember the 1970s and the inflation 24% one year at its peak. The UK economy was very different back then a lot of manufacturing, we even made our own tv sets. The price of fuel skyrocketed pushing the price of everything up. The unions were very strong and could match wages to high prices. Now most manufactured consumer goods are imported. The price of fuel is going nowhere and unions are not very common. What is the point in having control of our own currency if we are not going to use it to help the economy out of what might be a very difficult situation. The problems going forward I would think are going to be deflation and high unemployment.
• 148 Neverlaid April 20, 2020, 6:03 pm

  @Grislybear

  I agree with you.

  Wow…this feels strange…but also good.

  Let’s re-shore the supply chain starting with generic pharma and medical supplies (I’m guess that’s started already).
• 149 Neverland April 20, 2020, 6:15 pm

  @Grislybear

  ‘What is the point in having control of our own currency if we are not going to use it to help the economy out of what might be a very difficult situation’

  So you think devaluing sterling is the way forward? We tried devaluing sterling about 25-30% just recently and it doesn’t seem to have made much difference

  UK government debt as a share of GDP in 2007: 35%

  UK government debt as a share of GDP 2019: 80%

  We never paid down the debt from 2009 yet. If we put the same on again from this one debt/GDP would be 125% which would be up there with Italy, that well known economic powerhouse or we could just go for France which looks super healthy at 100% and has no problems whatsoever ….

  But yes, lets forget all our problems and borrow more e.g. for £100bn for a train line that takes an hour off a train to Manchester, bargain

  What could possibly go wrong?
• 150 Pre ka April 20, 2020, 6:40 pm

  Sorry boltt
  looking at my post again I think I was rather harsh, I normally exercise off any emotion but don’t feel up to it yet as not fully recovered, even after 4 weeks,
  so your unmentioned swear words I accept.
• 151 Grislybear April 20, 2020, 6:50 pm

  @Neverland. Well while we are on about it Japans debt to GDP is over 200% and no inflation on the horizon. Spending £100bn on a train line, again its all depends on how you look at it debt or credit.
• 152 Neverland April 20, 2020, 7:06 pm

  @Grislybear

  Big difference between Japan and the UK (and Italy) is that the Japanese have enough savings to own their national debt domestically, whereas the UK (and Italy) depend on the kindness of strangers abroad buying their government debt issues

  In a crisis that becomes an important difference

  Greece by contrast has ‘only’ 180% but most of it is owed by foreigners; result misery

  https://www.ft.com/content/e26d36e6-918b-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb7f0
• 153 Boltt April 20, 2020, 7:18 pm

  Thanks for the response Pre Ka – it’s appreciated.
• 154 Grislybear April 20, 2020, 7:40 pm

  @Neverland. Ok you are not on board, Most of Japans debt has been bought by the Bank of Japan and not domestic savers.
• 155 The Weasel April 20, 2020, 8:47 pm

  Crude oil May contracts went negative :o. I have plenty of room in my garden for a few barrels…
• 156 ZXSpectrum48k April 20, 2020, 8:51 pm

  Why is someone I don’t want to reply to quoting the Reinhart & Rogoff book “This Time is Different”. It’s based on the 2010 paper “Growth in a Time of Debt” by the same authors. It’s been understood for years that that paper contains errors which undermine it’s central thesis that too much debt causes lower growth (i.e. that fiscal multipliers are less than one).

  As early as 2013, Herndon, Ash and Pollin found that math errors, selective exclusion of data, and incorrect weighting of statistics in that paper led to large errors that resulted in the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period beng inaccurately represented. They showed that some high debt countries grew > 2%, rather than the −0.1% cited by Reinhart and Rogoff. Moreover, even Reinhart & Rogoff in 2013 disavowed their initial claim that a 90% government debt-to-GDP ratio is a specific tipping point for growth outcomes.

  It’s unfortunate that a paper riddled with errors and questionable assumptions was used by politicians around the world to justify austerity policies. Even Reinhart & Rogoff, in 2013, said their work has “falsely equated our finding of a negative association between debt and growth with an unambiguous call for austerity”.

  Even the IMF has recanted. In Oct 2012 the IMF released their Global Prospects and Policies document in which an admission was made that their assumptions about fiscal multipliers had also been inaccurate. To quote “IMF staff reports, suggested that fiscal multipliers used in the forecasting process are about 0.5. Our results now indicate that multipliers have actually been in the 0.9 to 1.7 range since the Great Recession. This finding is consistent with research suggesting that in today’s environment of substantial economic slack, monetary policy constrained by the zero lower bound, and synchronized fiscal adjustment across numerous economies, multipliers may be well above 1.”

  I don’t think I know better than the experts. I’m no economist. It’s just that the experts have been shown to be wrong (or at a minimum that their initial conclusions are highly debatable). The expert’s views have changed on the basis of changing information. Sounds perfectly reasonable.
• 157 Seeking Fire April 20, 2020, 8:56 pm

  Weasel – yup oil <-$40 (albeit likely to be partly technical I read). If anything this is a great reason why deflation here is the issue not inflation. Big fall in demand, low interest rates, money printing the continued likely outcome etc. I've always been ok with UK borrowing large amounts at circa 0.5% if the money was been used for money multiplier effect e.g. infrastructure for ex. Much better than funding from China in my opinion. Funding day to day expenditure by money printing is more along the James Callahan view i think but desperate times cause for desperate measures I suppose.
• 158 Neverland April 21, 2020, 7:55 am

  @Spectrum

  UK government debt (%GDP) 1991: £188bn (32%) – Source: Guardian

  UK government debt (%GDP) 2007: £619bn (43%) – Source: Guardian

  UK government debt (%GDP) 2014: £1,582bn (91%) – Source: Guardian

  “General government gross debt was £1,821.3 billion at the end of the financial year ending March 2019, equivalent to 85.2%” Source: ONS

  How much more can the UK Government safely borrow: I have not got a clue, but it won’t be another £1.2trn and I would rather not find out
• 159 Snowman April 21, 2020, 8:41 am

  ONS weekly all cause England and Wales deaths to 10th April due out at 9:30am. Average of the last 5 years of (week 15) deaths has been about 10k (10,518). I’m expecting the total to be something around 20K so about double the normal weekly deaths. But we will find out soon.

  And will be interesting to compare the excess deaths against the official number of covid-19 deaths to estimate the understatement of covid-19 deaths in official statistics.
• 160 Neverland April 21, 2020, 8:49 am

  @seekingfire

  ‘Funding day to day expenditure by money printing is more along the James Callahan view i think but desperate times cause for desperate measures I suppose’

  We printed money to fund day to day expenditure for seven years from Nov09 to Aug16, I don’t really remember 2013-16 being desperate times?

  Latest increase in the QE program is to £0.7tr from £0.4tr in 2016. Its just normal now, none of those gilts were sold and I believe new gilts were bought with the proceeds as the originals matured

  2019 gilt issuance in 2019 was £0.1trn, but obviously will be much higher this year

  Really all £0.3trn buys you is a few years breathing space for tax rises or spending cuts, nothing else
• 161 Snowman April 21, 2020, 9:41 am

  The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in Week 15 (week ending 10 April 2020) increased from 16,387 in Week 14 (week ending 3 April 2020) to 18,516. This is 7,996 more deaths than the five-year average of 10,520

  Previous years week 15 figures for comparison
  2020: 18,516
  2019: 10,291
  2018: 12,301
  2017: 8,493
  2016: 11,417
  2015: 10,089
  2014: 9,504
  2013: 12,147
  2012: 9,992
  2011: 9,327
  2010: 9,892
• 162 The Investor April 21, 2020, 9:52 am

  @Snowman — These are obviously depressingly high numbers. While it seems extremely likely that Covid-19 is the cause of most of the additional deaths, I wonder if there’s a slight bit of knock-on already from social isolation, diminished health care provision, loneliness etc. (All pandemic-driven at the root of course).

  It might seem ridiculous to talk about, say, loneliness causing death, but when you’re looking at a population of 67million you only need to notch up a hundredths of a percentage point to see an impact. Loneliness is well-known as a contributor to premature death, though I wouldn’t have thought anything other than direct impacts (e.g. an old person falling unnoticed in the lockdown) would have had an impact so far, even though I know people who anecdotally are already pulling their hair out. :-\

  Of course the flattening the curve strategy is partly aimed at reducing non-Covid deaths by trying to make sure the health service keeps ticking over below capacity. I have my doubts about the efficacy of this long-term but short-term I can’t see how it won’t have helped. There’s lots of anecdotal reporting of people having cancer operations et cetera rescheduled (one of my best friends has had her second follow-up endometritis postponed, which is frustrating as she wants kids and it’s getting very tight) but surely this wouldn’t show in the stats yet.

  Some anecdotal reporting / anger / debate here:

  https://twitter.com/aislinnmacklin/status/1251556984790421509
• 163 britinkiwi April 21, 2020, 10:25 am

  @Vanguardfan – check the tabs at the bottom of the main map. Changes the view and the case fatality ratio is the 4th along. Click on one of the white blobs to get national stats.

  @Learner – no worries! And the traditional quarter acre is a thing, although its changing, as sections get smaller.

  Kia atawhai.
• 164 The Investor April 21, 2020, 1:16 pm

  Wow, Coca-Cola has just reported global volume sales down 25%. Coke! This is pretty staggering to me.

  Sure, I get it. People aren’t at the cinema. People aren’t at baseball games. Consumers in countries with less refrigeration/distribution whatever aren’t buying it so much to consume at home. (A few guesses on my part).

  But we’re talking Coke here. Dreadfully unhealthy stuff but for many people it’s like water. Even as someone who has banged the drum for considering the economic impact of lockdown from day one (yes, I get we all get it now. that wasn’t the case at the start!) I’m pretty stunned by this.

  It makes me more near-term bearish about equities to be honest.
• 165 Snowman April 21, 2020, 1:26 pm

  @TI

  All we can really say at the moment is that the number of extra people dying each week is in excess of the UK coronavirus death toll.

  We already have about 14K excess deaths in England and Wales from the 2 weeks to 10th April (+- 2K say). The UK hospital death toll at 20th April is currently 16,509. The excess all locations UK deaths to 20th April could be in the region of 30,000. The ONS weekly figures in coming weeks will show how close it is to that (at least for England and Wales).

  Care home covid-19 deaths are clearly understated in the covid-19 death numbers still. For example. 2,471 died in care homes in the week to 13th March (and slightly less the next week) and 4,927 died in care homes in the week to 10th April, so about 2,500 are covid-19 related you would think for week to 1oth April. And yet only 768 are showing as covid-19 care home deaths.

  As an aside Covid-19 seems to being put on death certificates more readily for the week to 10th than the week to 3rd (6K from 8K excess deaths vs 3.5K from 6K).

  There are definitely going to be deaths from those who can’t access cancer treatments. A friend is having her radiotherapy cut to a single session from a full course of radiotherapy. And that twitter thread you linked to gives a good guide as to what is going on with cancer treatment. And then there is the affect on cancer screening programmes.

  While they seem to be saying people aren’t seeking help for urgent treatment, which is of course true, there are also people who are seeking treatment for conditions but can’t access it. And then as you say there are the loneliness and mental health issues all of which affect life expectancy and quality of life. I have a friend whose mental health is deteriorating.

  We shouldn’t underestimate the affect on people’s wellbeing of the cancellation of elective surgeries (hip ops, knee ops, hernia ops etc).

  And then there are the cancellations and postponements of many outpatient appointments and treatments in so many areas. Many people are not even being offered telephone appointments in their place.

  And then there is the lack of access to dental treatment.

  I could go on listing all the different areas.

  The point is that all sorts of screening and treatments aren’t going ahead at the moment and people are going to get ill in their homes through deteriorating mental and physical health. Many months of this will be catastrophic and many will die or lose quality of life because of it.

  You can argue that suppressing the virus means slightly more normal activity can go on in the NHS. But I do think the damage from a containment strategy affecting things short term is significantly less than the long term affects of a prolonged suppression approach waiting for a virus that never arrives.

  In terms of the statistics the indirect preventable deaths such as higher cancer deaths will show up more gradually over many weeks/years in the figures as opposed to the acute and immediate affect of covid-19 deaths in the statistics.

  I think it is a tactical mistake to talk of the economic affects of lockdowns, as people think we are trading money for a life, when we are really trading a life for a life.

  My fear is not the virus. Fortunately the death rate is quite low and the young and healthy seem to be at little risk. Of course a small death rate applied to a large population does mean there will be lots of individual tragedies that we will all be connected to. And it is traumatic and terrible for everyone working in the health service.

  But my fear is the inability of government to take the right actions to avoid the collateral long term damage which will silently kill many more. Now we are past the peak we need to be lifting the lockdown sooner rather than later, while keeping in place social distancing measures and some restrictions, continue to shield the vulnerable, and introduce mask wearing. Only that way can we reach a position of herd immunity through allowing a controlled spread of the virus mainly through the young and healthy. The only other way to get herd immunity is through a vaccine and I don’t see one being available for at least 18 months if ever. The real armageddon scenario is locking down for many months and then finding out no vaccine is available.
• 166 flotron April 21, 2020, 2:04 pm

  @TI although there is a plenty more to Coca-cola than Coke, they’ve tried to diversify away from the traditional sugary drinks, not sure how successfully though, they even own a brand of Kombucha… but all the same shocking figures

  I’m assuming the margins on the bottled and canned stuff isn’t anywhere near as high as the mixes that come out of the machines at the cinema or pub either
• 167 The Investor April 21, 2020, 2:10 pm

  @Snowman — Thanks for that extensive reply, virtually all of which I agree with of course. As you know, we’re pretty much on the same page regarding the woeful disregard or even aggressive dismissal of future impacts from lockdown. I do see the initial lockdown as justifiable, if only on precautionary grounds (and there are others) but we should all be striving to find/hope there are ways out of this morass. I get the sense that among many people the attitude however is “not a Covid-19 death related more!” which in isolation is understandable but as you say appears to entirely discount all the other consequences of prolonged lockdown.

  Incidentally I’m partway through a dental treatment that has now been postponed indefinitely, leaving me in limbo. Absolutely and utterly trivial in the grand scheme of things, but a personal indication of the wide-ranging knock-on affects.
• 168 The Investor April 21, 2020, 2:16 pm

  @flotron: “I’m assuming the margins on the bottled and canned stuff isn’t anywhere near as high as the mixes that come out of the machines at the cinema or pub either”

  I’m sure you’re right but note this is a 25% *volume* decline. So there’s 25% less of the stuff being sold, AIUI, rather than 25% fall in sales or profits. That’s even more shocking in my view.
• 169 Vanguardfan April 21, 2020, 2:29 pm

  @britinkiwi, thanks for that. When I do that, I get a case fatality rate for the UK of 13% not 0.84%. That’s what I’d expect from our known cases vs known deaths (obviously not an accurate estimate of infection fatality rate due to limited testing blah blah)
• 170 Naeclue April 21, 2020, 3:18 pm

  On a positive note, estimates of symptomatic cases by an epidemiologist at Kings College, based on the Covid-19 app, is now below half a million, from a peak of over 2m on 1 April.

  https://covid.joinzoe.com/data

  I have no idea as to the reliability of any of this, but I provide an update every day on the app. It takes seconds – have you been tested? No, do you feel fine? Yes.

  Also, average death toll on the roads is about 35 per week. Have not seen any figures, but I would be very surprised if this was not down and we have far fewer injuries. Maybe car insurance will be cheaper next year?
• 171 The Investor April 21, 2020, 3:35 pm

  Also, average death toll on the roads is about 35 per week. Have not seen any figures, but I would be very surprised if this was not down and we have far fewer injuries. Maybe car insurance will be cheaper next year?

  On this note the FTSE 100 insurer Admiral has just announced today it will refund its customers £25 each due to more cars and vans sitting idle due to the lockdown.

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52367030
• 172 flotron April 21, 2020, 4:06 pm

  The Admiral refunds is a good start, although i expecting it as I saw some reports that some American Insurers were already looking at this last week.

  I’m not sure how i feel about the flat £25 refund however, it may well be a month’s worth of premium to many people, but its certainly not going to be for those 17 year olds that passed their tests in January. Presumably for them its worthwhile cancelling their insurance entirely and sitting it out with a SORN vehicle, but other other young drivers that are trying to build up their No Claims Discount will have a decision to make.

  Should be interesting to see how other Insurers react. Would be good to see some data on claims during this period.
• 173 Whettam April 21, 2020, 7:50 pm

  @TI I know it’s your site, but isn’t “It makes me more near-term bearish about equities to be honest.” short term market speculation
• 174 The Investor April 21, 2020, 8:39 pm

  @Whettam — I’ve been known to sell 20% of my equities in a week and have the same equity exposure back again a fortnight later. There’s a reason I don’t write the passive articles on this site. 🙂
• 175 The Investor April 21, 2020, 8:41 pm

  p.s. I think you might be too new around these parts to know about my dancing with the devil. See:

  https://monevator.com/days-of-being-wild-part-one/

  https://monevator.com/passive-vs-active-investing-episode-1/
• 176 The Investor April 21, 2020, 10:59 pm

  This is the sort of story I’d expect (and I’m hoping) to see more of if the theory that Covid-19 is really REALLY widespread (especially in hospitals/care homes etc) is correct:

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now “actively looking into” results from universal COVID-19 testing at Pine Street Inn homeless shelter.

  The broad-scale testing took place at the shelter in Boston’s South End a week and a half ago because of a small cluster of cases there. Of the 397 people tested, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms.

  https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-universal-testing-results-boston-homeless-shelter/Z253TFBO6RG4HCUAARBO4YWO64/

  Unfortunately however we’ve not seen many stories along these lines (and even this one is six days old) so sadly it’s still a hypothesis to be proven.
• 177 Indecisive April 21, 2020, 11:24 pm

  @Snowman What I haven’t found a clear answer to is how many NHS treatments are cancelled to free up capacity, and how many because Coronavirus makes them too risky.

  For cancer treatments resulting in immunosuppression it seems the latter, though a 3 month treatment delay will be bad for those with aggressive cancer and there must be a tipping point somewhere.
• 178 britinkiwi April 22, 2020, 2:12 am

  @Vanguardfan – fair enough, may have changed or I clicked the wrong dot! For comparison NZ’s is 0.9% now.
• 179 Snowman April 22, 2020, 7:46 am

  @Indecisive

  I work on a project providing benefits advice for those affected by cancer. But I don’t work on the medical side, so I’m not close enough to what is going on to provide any insight on your question.

  My friend’s breast cancer operation went ahead 3 weeks ago. She was extremely stressed out that it wouldn’t go ahead but fortunately it did go ahead. I’m not sure what the position would be if the operation was scheduled for now. The radiotherapy has been cut to one week rather than 5 weeks, and that seems to be the standard here for adjuvant breast cancer radiotherapy.

  The link that TI provided gave a real feel for what is happening and how people are being affected. This blog provides some insight into the reasons why cancer treatments are being affected

  https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2020/04/21/how-coronavirus-is-impacting-cancer-services-in-the-uk/
• 180 Snowman April 22, 2020, 8:33 am

  Interesting answers from the lead epidemiologist advising the Swedish government.

  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01098-x?fbclid=IwAR2ELm8oXSN9c8f51ueBpKchykmu1h2NLqu0JXntNCO-XulDB8jaf_zs1KI

  The answer on reaching herd immunity is particularly worth quoting. How you reach herd immunity has to be the crux of any approach. The strategy for the UK government to reach herd immunity is completely missing, other than wishful thinking a safe scalable vaccine will be available in September, and they have no obvious strategy at all for if there is no vaccine. Anyway here is Ander’s Tegnell’s answer on the Swedish approach

  Q: Do you think the approach has been successful?

  A: It is very difficult to know; it is too early, really. Each country has to reach ‘herd immunity’ [when a high proportion of the population is immune to an infection, largely limiting spread people who are not immune] in one way or another, and we are going to reach it in a different way
• 181 The Investor April 22, 2020, 10:45 am

  The FT has a piece up using this death data to estimate true death count in UK from Covid-19 at 41,000:

  The number of deaths in the UK has moved from running at below long-term averages to well above them as a result of the pandemic. Excess deaths from all causes stand 16,952 above the seasonal average across the UK since fatalities from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, began to mount in mid-March.

  The “all cause excess mortality” figure is widely recognised as the best measure of the death toll linked to the pandemic.

  David Spiegelhalter, the Winton professor of public understanding of risk at Cambridge university, said it was “the only unbiased comparison” given the problems measuring deaths and their causes.

  https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab

  If we plug that into infection fatality rates of 0.3% to 0.5%, we could have UK infection numbers at 8million to nearly 14million.

  Incredible how these potential total infected numbers have gone from outlandish speculation by me and some others much more educated about it to looking quite likely to me now.

  On the other hand, this does assume IFRs that are quite low. Obviously if the IFR is actually 1%, we’d only be looking at 4 million or so, although given when the unfortunate 41,000 would have been infected that’s still way above most people’s infection numbers of 2-4 weeks ago.

  The other big caveat/unknown is skew in that 41,000. I continue to presume a very large number were actually in care homes / hospitals at the start of the pandemic, so there’s clearly a lot of skew in the data and I’m not fluent enough with stats to know how that should work out in wider assumptions.

  On the other hand if most of the most vulnerable have had it due to the ‘universal lockdown rather than extreme vulnerable lockdown’ strategy, then a (very bitter) silver lining is many of them may have already been through the process of exposure and, hopefully, getting through it.

  (From memory even at the over-80 cohort the case fatality rate is still ‘only’ 15% or so.)
• 182 Tony Edgecombe April 22, 2020, 11:19 am

  “If we plug that into infection fatality rates of 0.3% to 0.5%, we could have UK infection numbers at 8million to nearly 14million.”

  That’s still only a small proportion of the population (between 12% and 21%). If you assume herd immunity is your saviour then ultimately 96% of the population will be infected.

  So extrapolating those 40,000 deaths we would end up with between 180,000 and 320,000 deaths.

  I should add I don’t believe these figures just as I don’t believe the figures @TI and @Snowman are bandying about.
• 183 The Investor April 22, 2020, 11:53 am

  I should add I don’t believe these figures just as I don’t believe the figures @TI and @Snowman are bandying about.

  @Tony — Fair enough, it’s a very uncertain game and I don’t “believe” my figures, as I’ve said they’re my best estimate based on hunches I think are moving in my direction.

  What I also don’t believe is your figure of 96% infection being required for herd immunity.

  The estimates I’ve seen consistently sit at 50-70%, more usually towards the bottom of that range. Here’s a selection of quotes from experts:

  https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-comments-about-herd-immunity/

  A bigger argument against this approach appears to be a surprising lack of antibodies seen in previously infected patients, although nobody seems quite sure why this is the case yet. (It could even be because for most the infection is so trivial it’s killed by other elements of the immune system!)

  Still if it’s a virus that the immune system doesn’t generate anti-bodies in response to, then AIUI there goes the vaccine solution… we’d need to focus on therapeutics for the vulnerable then, I guess.
• 184 Snowman April 22, 2020, 12:36 pm

  @ Tony Edgecombe

  Assuming infection gives permanent immunity (it might not of course), then herd immunity might occur at around 70-80% of the population (depending on the R0 over time) but not 96%. Your aim is for a disproportionate chunk of the vulnerable to be in the 30% who never get the virus to reduce the overall deaths (hence shielding).

  Say the RO is 3.0. Then each infected person infects another 3 people at the start. But when two third of the population has had the virus each infected person only infects one as the other 2 who would have been infected have already had the virus and are immune. So the number of infected starts to go down then over time and effectively reaches near zero, and the cumulative number who have had the virus overshoots two thirds of the population until the virus has died out. So the pandemic might end because of the overshoot at say 70-80% of the population.

  At that point any small levels of imported infection from countries who haven’t had the virus could cause it to re-emerge but community spread shouldn’t be possible as each person is infecting less than one other.

  Remember that even when 20% of the population has had the virus and herd immunity hasn’t been reached, it does allow you to ease up on restrictions because at that point each infected person infects 2.4 others not 3 others, and so keeping the R0 down to a level that doesn’t overrun the health service is easier.

  Obviously R0 is changing over time and it is more complicated than this but that is the basic principle.
• 185 Snowman April 22, 2020, 1:09 pm

  @TI

  Perhaps the antibody tests that are being used in population sampling to determine what percentage have had the virus, are missing some people who have had had the virus, but fight it off so easily that they don’t have enough antibodies to measure, but those same people are immune anyway.

  And so the % who have had the virus is higher than we previously thought……..

  (to those who think we are talking up the numbers, sorry fair comment in relation to this comment, but couldn’t resist it)
• 186 Grumpy Old Paul April 22, 2020, 2:33 pm

  I was initally very sceptical of the FT figures because the ONS gave a total cumulative figure of excess deaths vs 5 year average of 10,232 up to April 10th and I thought that the FT were just trying to achieve a sensational headline. The FT also quoted a figure of 16000+ cumulative excessive deaths without giving the source. However, I did my own calculations and derived a figure of 36000 for cumulative excess deaths to date vs 5 year average for the UK including Scotland and Wales. So not wildly out.
  I strongly agree with you that we need to focus on optimising treatment regimes for those who are seriously ill, including the development of new drugs and repurposing existing drugs. People are talking as if a vaccine is going to be a magic bullet but it may not:

  – few vaccines are anything like 100% effective (see figures quoted for flu)
  – will take months to develop and test
  – will take longer to produce in volumes required
  – proving safety for use by billions of people must be a major issue
  – may only provide protection for a limited period
  – possibly require a new vaccine each year

  However, I worry about relying on herd immunity even more!
• 187 Naeclue April 22, 2020, 3:08 pm

  I have been looking at the ONS stats, especially the data behind figure 2. The data shows under 45 deaths for the cohort as 2.2 per million, 45+ as 236 per million. In other words, someone under 45 is over 100 times less likely to die from a C-19 infection than someone 45+. The percentage of deaths in the under 45s was 19% of overall deaths in the cohort, 34% in the over 44s. Under 45s make up 56% of the population, so if you take a reasonable upper limit on an IFR of 1%, and a full infection rate of 80% before herd immunity, that implies around 0.008% of under 45s may die, about 2700 of them. Given that some of the under 45s can be identified as being at risk and so better protected by isolation, death rate could potentially be even lower than this.

  So the question is, why are kids not at school and the under 45s at work? Or have I screwed up somewhere?
• 188 The Investor April 22, 2020, 3:17 pm

  @Naeclue:

  So the question is, why are kids not at school and the under 45s at work? Or have I screwed up somewhere?

  The theory is they are still transmitters and that we needed to curb the infection rate overall to keep down the total number of vulnerable / elderly that found the exponential growth of the spread of the virus washing up against their communities / care homes / hospitals. Which did make some sense, especially early on when we knew even less what we were dealing with.

  However, basically I agree and it’s what I’ve been saying here for well over a month now.

  Someone will pop up in a minute though to tell us about an under 30-year old who unfortunately died, so we shouldn’t be so callous. (Obviously, for the avoidance of doubt, I do think it’s very unfortunate. Every death is unfortunate, but sadly every death is not preventable).

  Presumably people will be applying this same precautionary principle to deaths for under-30 year olds from all causes, and so will be banning them getting behind the wheels of cars or being allowed to drink alcohol until over 30 and so on, too.
• 189 DS April 22, 2020, 6:43 pm

  Nice to see the more calm discussions here on both COVID and investing.

  “Someone will pop up in a minute though to tell us about an under 30-year old who unfortunately died, so we shouldn’t be so callous. (Obviously, for the avoidance of doubt, I do think it’s very unfortunate. Every death is unfortunate, but sadly every death is not preventable).”

  Agreed. I had to stop replying on the Mr Money Mustache forum since the thread seems to be mainly NYC people understandably mad at the 0.1% IFR comments being shared. The variances are wide – population density is key. And of course the North American average health of a 30-50 year old puts many more in higher risk cohort.

  Myself I am actually concerned not enough are getting infected where I live. Our province (British Columbia) is 4 times the size of the UK, and we have had 87 deaths population 5 million (17/million).

  Properly comparing deaths/million shows the variance is wide. Canada 51 (Quebec province 122), USA 139 (NY at 1028 ten times almost), Sweden 192, UK 267. Most likely due to combinations of infection rates (NYC must be >60% based on testing so far), density, health of the cohorts etc.

  I keep commenting to colleagues that the smaller our first wave, the bigger the second, but most don’t want to hear this – they just want no deaths or cases of course. We are looking to follow some EU countries’ relaxing of restrictions (I estimate 1-2 weeks behind Germany, for example). And I expect people to freak out. I am hopeful we at least have learned how to handle future breakouts (hospitals adjusted for bed capacity, etc.) since no one did this post SARS or MERS or any of the outbreaks (2003, 2009, 2012) whereas Asia did. I also assume model makers already account for places like my province – we are 2 times the size of Sweden with half the population – kind of an ‘outlier’ for density. Must be that the more dense, more herd immunity needed initially – more spread and more deaths.

  Hopefully people are as calm and trustful on the restriction easing phase here as they were during the initial ‘locking down’. Quotations because we were quite obedient and lucky – all along we could still go grocery shopping, hardware stores, and of course walks exercises, and parks and beaches all open.

  DS
• 190 Snowman April 22, 2020, 10:24 pm

  @Naeclue

  I agree your logic except isn’t it 0.018% (not 0.08%) of under 45s so 6k region (not 2.7K)?

  since 0.56* 0.022442 + 0.44 *2.2442 = 1
  and 0.8 x 0.022442 = 0.018%

  Your calculation assumes that infections so far have been spread evenly though the population (i.e. 56% of the infections are under 45s) as that gets you to the 100 times less likely to die assumption. But that isn’t an unreasonable first guess

  But I agree the schools should be reopened
• 191 The Investor April 23, 2020, 12:11 am

  Seems the cancer concerns we’ve been discussing for a few weeks here are growing:

  Delays in diagnosing and treating people with cancer could lead to more years of lost life than with Covid-19, according to a leading cancer expert.

  A drop-off in screening and referrals means roughly 2,700 fewer people are being diagnosed every week, Cancer Research UK says.

  Cancer screening has paused in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with few invitations sent out in England.

  People are still advised to contact their GP with worrying symptoms.

  But Richard Sullivan, professor of cancer and global health at King’s College London, said there was more fear of Covid-19 than of having cancer at the moment. With GPs more difficult to contact than normal, this was resulting in a “dramatic drop-off” in referrals to specialists, he said.

  “Most modellers in the UK estimate excess of deaths is going to be way greater than we are going to see with Covid-19,” he said.

  With cancer patients generally much younger, Prof Sullivan predicted “years of lost life will be quite dramatic” on top of “a huge amount of avoidable mortality”.

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52382303
• 192 Snowman April 23, 2020, 7:39 am

  Some relevant bits coming out of the daily briefing yesterday:

  1. Indirect e.g. cancer deaths
  Chris Whitty making the point about not forgetting the indirect affects e.g. cancer.

  https://youtu.be/UWchvWGVZqc?t=2406

  Just waiting for his advice and government policy to reflect that principle

  2. Serology Testing
  Update on the Porton Down serology tests here, i.e. don’t yet have a good serology test yet

  https://youtu.be/UWchvWGVZqc?t=1976

  3. Helpful admission that virus won’t be available soon.

  https://youtu.be/UWchvWGVZqc?t=2675

  Unfortunately he mentions only two ways of exit a) a vaccine or b) highly effective treatment drugs. Prevention is better than treatment but treating symptoms with drugs rather than addressing route causes of chronic treatment is the modern way so perhaps that’s why he gets stuck on drugs. There is a preventative intervention which would address the route cause of susceptibly to the virus, and that is eating nutrient dense real foods (and ignoring the food pyramid that forms the guidelines).

  But accepting that this preventative intervention won’t happen, the exit strategy he completely misses is allowing the virus to spread through the population in a controlled way so the NHS isn’t overrun, and with some shielding of the vulnerable, thus minimising deaths by his own accounting methodology.
• 193 Snowman April 23, 2020, 8:40 am

  Absolutely brilliant and considered piece of clear thinking by Dr John Ioannidis, that covers many of the issues we have discussed (indirect deaths, serology, vaccines, school closure affects).

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=cwPqmLoZA4s&feature=emb_logo
• 194 Vanguardfan April 23, 2020, 9:11 am

  @snowman, I’m sorry I can’t allow that statement to go unchallenged! There is zero evidence that the dietary intervention you suggest would have any impact in reducing the transmission or severity of illness due to this coronavirus (notwithstanding the general positive effects of sensible diet and exercise habits on long term health and well-being).

  It’s one thing to speculate where there is genuine uncertainty and sparse data, but quite another to put forward quack remedies as though they are proven interventions, even if this is just some blog in a corner of the internet. Let’s not have Monevator descend into fake news.
• 195 The Investor April 23, 2020, 9:17 am

  @Snowman @Vanguardfan — I was about to say the same thing as @Vanguardfan to be honest. I think pointers to evidence-backed indications or new developments are fine but we should be wary of dramatic left-field statements please. 🙂

  (I happen to agree more generally that diet is very important to health outcomes, but haven’t seen anything specific with respect to Covid-19, beyond speculation about Vitamin D and related indications that diabetes and possibly obesity may be additional risk factors.)

  Also I think you and me have to be careful @Snowman that we don’t generally crowd out other views here.

  I’m increasingly confident ‘our’ view is more right than wrong, but for me anyway it is not 100% settled yet and I welcome contributions pointing in the other direction, although would prefer it’s not of the “1 in 10 will end up on a ventilator” catrastrophic thinking of six weeks ago (at least, again, not without some at least empirical evidence!)
• 196 The Investor April 23, 2020, 9:30 am

  Talking of counter-evidence, it’s troubling to the view that mangitudes more than officially proven have had Covid-19 that the WHO is still seeing only 2-3% antibodies in the population at large. Unless we can show that many people shrug off the virus without producing antibodies, or the test isn’t finding them…

  Then again that is global population figures, not virus hotspot numbers. Maybe it’s higher in the UK? More details on the new testing programme which will start with 25K tests and do 300K over a year:

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/uk-plans-to-test-300000-for-immunity-to-coronavirus
• 197 Snowman April 23, 2020, 10:48 am

  @Vanguardfan

  Perhaps I should have made it clearer it was my view, albeit a properly considered and evidence based one. Your statement there is zero evidence that dietary interventions such as the one I suggested couldn’t help with improving outcomes to coronavirus by improving metabolic health needs to be challenged though.

  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-020-0353-9

  Virta health trials (again published papers), based very much on the dietary intervention I have suggested, show metabolic health can be improved in a relatively short timescale to put type 2 diabetes in remission and sustained over at least 2 years

  The jury is out on how quickly a dietary intervention could help, that is the unknown for me, based on my view.

  By way my view is most publicly being put forward by the cardiologist Aseem Malhotra so hardly a quack viewpoint. I’ve not remotely got the skills to work these things out, I will leave that to the brilliant experts out there. But I would modestly suggest that I have a small ability to critically examine evidence that others have put forward on both sides of a position and judge which is most likely to be correct.

  I’ve also suggested masks and vitamin D might health, and I understand Public Health England are now suggesting vitamin D, and the press were suggesting yesterday that the position on masks may change soon.

  It is ironic that Semmelweis was pilloried for suggesting hand-washing in the 1840s, an intervention that most would suggest is working to stop the spread of coronavirus now.

  TI understandably won’t want this to be a long discussion about metabolic health and coronavirus outcomes. But perhaps you can put in one post your evidence that improving metabolic health doesn’t improve coronavirus outcomes? And then we can end the discussion there.

  @TI
  I am very much interested in hearing alternative endgame strategies to get us out of the current position, and you make a fair point about crowding out other views. Vanguardfan began to detail a possible strategy earlier which was useful, although I don’t think I quite saw the endpoint of that strategy especially in the scenario a safe scalable vaccine doesn’t emerge. So if anyone wanted to do this I hope they would be encouraged to do so and treated with the same respect that myself and others have been given in putting our views.
• 198 Naeclue April 23, 2020, 10:55 am

  @Snowman, agreed, in full and more accurately,

  deaths in cohort = 80% * 1% * deathrc / deathr * popc
  where
  assumed total no. of infections = 80%
  assumed death rate per infection = 1%
  deathrc = sampled death rate in cohort = 74 / 33,122,445
  deathr = total sampled death rate = 6213 / 59,115,809
  popc = population of cohort = 33,122,445

  which gives 5,633 deaths for under 45s. It rapidly gets riskier over 45. eg. the 45-64 cohort shows about 20 times more risk that the under 45s and doing the above calc for this cohort gives about 10 times more deaths (approx half the population of under 45s).

  Just in case this is considered fake news – yes there are a lot of assumptions here in scaling the relatively small sample to 80% of the population, including the assumed 1% IFR! Just a ball park figure on how little this is likely to affect the under 45s, even more so if the known higher risk under 45s can be isolated.

  We need to move to smarter measures than we have now asap and it surely needs to be recognised and fed into decision making how well the under 45s are coping compared to the over 45s.
• 199 ZXSpectrum48k April 23, 2020, 11:06 am

  At a personal level, I’d like to give the opposit view to those who argue “send the children back to school”. Taking my children’s prep school as an example, on the edges of London / the Surrey commuter belt, it’s clear that the vast majority of parents do not want the children to go back this term at all. Yes, children are only rarely impacted by the virus. Yes, there is some research that implies that children do not transmit the virus as easily as adults. That research, however, is clearly not consensus with institutions such as the RKI, for example, disagreeing.

  The real issue is that 600 children have around 1200 parents. The average age of those parents is 45-50, but varies from 40-60+. Most are healthy but I would say average BMI is probably still high 20s (then again that is also pretty average for UK). I don’t get the impression that anyone is suffering financially. Most of the parents are working easily from home. Those that aren’t, however, are spending time on a train, tube etc getting to London plus time in offices and cafes and could easily be exposed. It’s pretty clear that viral load matters to health outcomes and the more potential exposure the more potential viral load. Anecdotals (and yes they are not worth much) from NHS consultants with children at the school think it would be unwise for children at the school to mix with their children given the risk they are running of catching the virus. The impression they give is that the NHS in London is still massively struggling to cope.

  Moreover, what is the downside of keeping the children the at home? The Remote Learning Scheme the prep has devised works very smoothly. The’ve cut the curriculum back by about one third by getting rid of all the pointless crap: art, drama, music, sport etc. Instead they are just focussing on what matters: math, English, science, and languages and practicing for VR/NVR/GL exams. Most parent’s agree it’s actually a much better curriculum and gives the children more downtime just to stare at the ceiling. Parent’s save time ferrying children back and forth.

  Sending the children back to school adds risk (and we can debate how big/small) but doesn’t add any real upside. Why take risk for no return?
• 200 Vanguardfan April 23, 2020, 11:48 am

  @snowman, by evidence, I would want to see a controlled trial of the intervention vs coronavirus outcomes. As are currently being conducted for the most promising therapeutics, which at present are also unproven.
  I’m certainly aware of the dietary interventions that can improve or even reverse type 2 diabetes. Also that diabetes appears, along with a whole host of other conditions, to be associated with more severe Covid 19 disease. There’s a massive leap from that to saying your proposed diet could prevent coronavirus transmission now, in an acute pandemic situation. But of course, you are free to adopt whatever diet you wish, just don’t present it as a proven effective preventive.

  @zx, I’m sure the kids at private prep schools in Surrey are doing just fine. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, things are not so rosy. State schools are doing their best, in between providing emergency childcare for key workers, keeping in touch with children in unsafe home environments, and personally buying and delivering free school meals in some cases. Inequalities will widen in proportion to how long the schools are out for. (But I agree the difficulty is not so much the risk to the kids as their wider family connections, and as yet it’s unclear how important this route is in relation to wider community spread.)

  @ ti, I agree the last WHO press conference on antibodies was not encouraging. I assume they are looking at all the available data in some detail, but I was struck that their technical lead said that they had not seen as much antibody prevalence as they has expected. I’m quite sure they are as keen as the rest of us to get more concrete estimates of how far the infection has spread! Of course one possibility is that the very mild or asymptomatic infections are not actually provoking much of an antibody response, and are therefore not much use in helping to slow transmission, because they are not producing effective immunity. We mustn’t forget, as antibody studies start to be published, that just having antibodies isn’t the whole story – we need to understand what that might mean for reinfection rates, and the effectiveness and duration of any immunity.