Excellent article as usual. I'm surprised to not see any discussion of UBI, though. With so many jobs depending on public contact I don't see how society will continue to function over the next six months without some sort of direct cash transfer to replace lost income among those who don't currently work digitally.
I suppose I see it as central to the rest of your argument.
Without something like a short term UBI, it seems to me, the consequences of extended large-scale quarantine will become so dire that the cure will seem worse than the disease and large numbers of people will rebel against the official guidance.
Thank you. I have begun to avoid reading most Covid articles, but this one is useful. "Buying time" is a new argument to me and... it landed.
To John Ennis, I have written about "why UBI" in my November 2019 book - no, I didn't predict Covid - and think it's the most efficient fiscal response right now.
@KevinFlanagan - surely we haven't "let" people die from seasonal flu / road accidents / alcoholism? Is it not, rather, that these deaths occur despite governments attempts to protect us all from such fates. Likewise there will be many deaths from covid19, and without any government action it seems that that number could make this worst single-cause-of-death humans have experienced. Of course, how much government does, and what impact that action has on society (and the the economy etc), is the business of politics to sort out. Hopefully it is precisely because of government action that this will not be as big a deal as it could have been. No doubt that many sections of the press will always work to amplify our worst fears, but it does seem that governments have so far not encountered something worse than covid19 to be distracted by.
Your argument is reasonable and based on proportionality which I agree with. It comes out to looking at these problems from a DALY or triage perspective as is being practised in Italy. My Principal question and consequent disagreement is what is a proportional response and is the UK basing its volte face in policy on a extreme extrapolation?
The epidemiologist whose lecture I posted estimates that the true mortality rate is capped at 0.6% which I believe would lead to quite different conclusions than the 3-5% Ferguson is bandying about. S Korea has the best data so far about this disease because it has done the most testing and tracing. Shutting down the economy will have consequences in terms of shorter lives, otherwise untreated conditions leading to advanced mortality and in general poorer quality of life all round. I do not get the impression that this has been weighed in the balance.
I would like to point out that a fundamental assumption of the Ferguson paper is the mortality rate. There are 2 key problems with Covid-19, the asymptomatic, typically 20 year olds(from S Korean data), and the lack of a quick cheap test, though Senegal may solve this. As a result S Korea is the only place where somewhat comprehensive testing has been done and while 4 X the next highest it is still only 4,000/1m population. An epidemiologist from John Hopkins extrapolates from the S Korean data that the mortalitity rate is capped, ie it may even be lower due to untested asymptomatics, at 0.6% which is between 5X and 8X lower the estimated mortality of the 1918 pandemic. Also this seems to target people with comorbidities and/older while 1918 targeted younger people already decimated by WW1. I wonder how much of the reaction has been driven by the 24 news cycle?
True but this is not a unfamiliar family of viruses so given that doesn't seem to be being flagged it's clearly a non-zero but probably small probability.
Well BBC has around 55% of stories on its home page, your last 8 posts had 6 about it, 2 in the previous 27 back to Jan 1
The question I'm asking is whether the endless hyper optimisation of Shareholder Value has a cost in the creation of hyper fragile systems that can't easily cope with these sorts of shocks and essentially will cost much more in totality. The WHO uses DALY, Disability Affected Life Years, to measure impact. Given this virus's mortality demographics I'm suggesting that we need to pause and consider the consequences of previous decisions and make forward looking informed decisions because this may not be a big a deal as we seem to be making it. As I write we've already let over 101,000 people die from seasonal flu, 525,000 from alcohol and 283,000 from road accidents!
Excellent article as usual. I'm surprised to not see any discussion of UBI, though. With so many jobs depending on public contact I don't see how society will continue to function over the next six months without some sort of direct cash transfer to replace lost income among those who don't currently work digitally.
That might be one innovation yes. There will be many. Too many to list in every essay,
I suppose I see it as central to the rest of your argument.
Without something like a short term UBI, it seems to me, the consequences of extended large-scale quarantine will become so dire that the cure will seem worse than the disease and large numbers of people will rebel against the official guidance.
Thank you. I have begun to avoid reading most Covid articles, but this one is useful. "Buying time" is a new argument to me and... it landed.
To John Ennis, I have written about "why UBI" in my November 2019 book - no, I didn't predict Covid - and think it's the most efficient fiscal response right now.
Excellent, Michael, I'll look for your book.
Here's a link John... https://www.amazon.com/Get-Work-Future-Michael-Falk/dp/1704375827 (I didn't wish to appear pushy before) Thanks.
Thank you, Michael.
@KevinFlanagan - surely we haven't "let" people die from seasonal flu / road accidents / alcoholism? Is it not, rather, that these deaths occur despite governments attempts to protect us all from such fates. Likewise there will be many deaths from covid19, and without any government action it seems that that number could make this worst single-cause-of-death humans have experienced. Of course, how much government does, and what impact that action has on society (and the the economy etc), is the business of politics to sort out. Hopefully it is precisely because of government action that this will not be as big a deal as it could have been. No doubt that many sections of the press will always work to amplify our worst fears, but it does seem that governments have so far not encountered something worse than covid19 to be distracted by.
Your argument is reasonable and based on proportionality which I agree with. It comes out to looking at these problems from a DALY or triage perspective as is being practised in Italy. My Principal question and consequent disagreement is what is a proportional response and is the UK basing its volte face in policy on a extreme extrapolation?
The epidemiologist whose lecture I posted estimates that the true mortality rate is capped at 0.6% which I believe would lead to quite different conclusions than the 3-5% Ferguson is bandying about. S Korea has the best data so far about this disease because it has done the most testing and tracing. Shutting down the economy will have consequences in terms of shorter lives, otherwise untreated conditions leading to advanced mortality and in general poorer quality of life all round. I do not get the impression that this has been weighed in the balance.
Thankful for the debate and positive efforts from all. Excellent to have access to all this. Thanks all, thanks Azeem as ever will read in full.
Here is a critique from a different perspective TLDR S Korea’s approach of comprehensive testing, tracing and isolation can reduce lockdown to a local level with cross border quarantine and testing https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions
I would like to point out that a fundamental assumption of the Ferguson paper is the mortality rate. There are 2 key problems with Covid-19, the asymptomatic, typically 20 year olds(from S Korean data), and the lack of a quick cheap test, though Senegal may solve this. As a result S Korea is the only place where somewhat comprehensive testing has been done and while 4 X the next highest it is still only 4,000/1m population. An epidemiologist from John Hopkins extrapolates from the S Korean data that the mortalitity rate is capped, ie it may even be lower due to untested asymptomatics, at 0.6% which is between 5X and 8X lower the estimated mortality of the 1918 pandemic. Also this seems to target people with comorbidities and/older while 1918 targeted younger people already decimated by WW1. I wonder how much of the reaction has been driven by the 24 news cycle?
Well, we don't know so we need to take a risk-managed approach at this point.
The second issue is that we don't know about the risks of long-term damage to the many people who survive covid19.
And as for the news cycle, many of us have been following this since early January, if not before.
I'm suggesting we do have preliminary data and from someone who is an expert. see https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/news/stories/2020/february/coronavirus-lecture.html
True but this is not a unfamiliar family of viruses so given that doesn't seem to be being flagged it's clearly a non-zero but probably small probability.
Well BBC has around 55% of stories on its home page, your last 8 posts had 6 about it, 2 in the previous 27 back to Jan 1
The question I'm asking is whether the endless hyper optimisation of Shareholder Value has a cost in the creation of hyper fragile systems that can't easily cope with these sorts of shocks and essentially will cost much more in totality. The WHO uses DALY, Disability Affected Life Years, to measure impact. Given this virus's mortality demographics I'm suggesting that we need to pause and consider the consequences of previous decisions and make forward looking informed decisions because this may not be a big a deal as we seem to be making it. As I write we've already let over 101,000 people die from seasonal flu, 525,000 from alcohol and 283,000 from road accidents!