The Covid-19 Info thread (keep politics out please)

[Prediction? Pain.]

A few days back in another thread, I linked to an article from the MIT Technology Review about the "reopening" of the US economy from the perspective of prominent economists. The premise of the article was that choosing between economic viability and human life is a false choice. The two are inextricably intertwined and putting one above the other would lead to ruinous results. Here's the link again if anyone's interested:

https://www.technologyreview.com/202...e-can-do-both/

The gist of the author's argument is that the most prudent path forward is to implement a robust, national test-and-trace system that, coupled with other remedial measures, will allow the health to work and the sick to be immediately isolated.

That aggressive test-and-trace approach is part of what has made Taiwan such a success story so far. If you haven't read up on Taiwan, here's an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association that gives a summary of its efforts and here's a 7-minute news clip about the same thing, both of which are from March.

With a population of over 23,000,000 -- millions of which take the 80-mile trip to and from China regularly and repeatedly -- and a population density that is top ten in the world and would rank 1st among US states, Taiwan to date has only 395 cases of COVID 19 and 6 deaths. They've had between zero and five new cases each day for the past week. For a democracy with a relatively solid, modern economy, that's pretty damn impressive.

But just for a comparison, let's look at some states in the US. New Jersey, which has the largest population density of any state in the US (though it's still lower than Taiwan's) and less than half of Taiwan's total population, has had nearly 69,000 COVID-19 cases and 2,805 deaths. My state of Tennessee has one-tenth the population density of Taiwan and less than a third of Taiwan's population and we've got more than 10 times the cases (5,823) and 20 times the deaths (124). Hell, my county alone has nearly twice as many deaths as the entire country of Taiwan with only 370,000 people and a population density less than half of Taiwan's.

The trace-and-test thing is something that healthcare people are pushing for too, at least in Tennessee. Vandy's Medical Center put out a short piece a week or so ago about the flattening of the curve and the potential dangerous of going back to normal without a much more robust system of testing and tracing in the state.

Another interesting tidbit from the MIT article was about some economists' study of the 1918 flu pandemic's economic consequences. I haven't read the entire study (it's 50 pages long), but here are the two main conclusions from the study and a little more insight from the MIT article:

First, the pandemic leads to a sharp and persistent fall in real economic activity. We find negative effects on manufacturing activity, the stock of durable goods, and bank assets, which suggests that the pandemic depresses economic activity through both supply and demand-side effects. Second, cities that implemented more rapid and forceful non-pharmaceutical health interventions [like business and school closures] do not experience worse downturns. In contrast, evidence on manufacturing activity and bank assets suggests that the economy performed better in areas with more aggressive non-pharmaceutical interventions after the pandemic.

Verner [one of the authors of the study] points to the fates of two cities in particular: Cleveland and Philadelphia. Cleveland acted aggressively, closing schools and banning gatherings early in the outbreak and keeping the restrictions in place for far longer. Philadelphia was slower to react and maintained restrictions for about half as long. Not only did far fewer people die in Cleveland (600 per 100,000, compared with 900 per 100,000 in Philadelphia), but its economy fared better and was much stronger in the year after the outbreak. By 1919 job growth was 5% there, while in Philadelphia it was around 2%.

Today's economy is much different -- it's geared more toward services, and far less toward manufacturing than it was 100 years ago. Nevertheless, the cities' stories are suggestive. Verner says that even a conservative interpretation of the data suggests there is "no evidence that interventions are worse for the economy." And most likely they had a significant benefit. "A pandemic is so destructive," he says. "Ultimately any policy to mitigate it is going to be good for the economy."

Sorry for the length of the post. I was encouraged to hear people that have forgotten a crap-ton more than economics than I'll ever know talk about economic and physical health as two sides of the same coin instead of mutually exclusive. Figured some of y'all might, too.