• COVID-19 Will Probably Cause Poverty to Decrease

    Jason DeParle reports on a study that says the COVID-19 pandemic will cause poverty in America to increase sharply:

    If quarterly unemployment hits 30 percent — as the president of one Federal Reserve Bank predicts — 15.4 percent of Americans will fall into poverty for the year, the Columbia researchers found, even in the unlikely event the economy instantly recovers. That level of poverty would exceed the peak of the Great Recession and add nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor.

    Wait. This doesn’t make sense. If you stay employed throughout the pandemic, then you won’t fall into poverty. If you’re laid off or furloughed, then you apply for unemployment benefits. Thanks to the coronavirus rescue bill, those benefits are higher than your normal pay for anyone with a low income. It’s quite possible, in fact, that poverty will decrease thanks to the CARES Act. So why does—

    There are significant caveats. Most important, the model does not yet include the potentially large anti-poverty effect of the Cares Act, the emergency legislation last month that provides about $560 billion in direct relief to individuals and even greater sums to sustain businesses and jobs.

    Oh for chrissake. What’s the point in writing something so wildly misleading? The CARES Act was passed more than two weeks ago. That’s plenty of time to incorporate it into models of poverty. Why waste time on alarmist nonsense based on a fantasy world that doesn’t exist?

    I understand that state unemployment agencies are overwhelmed right now, which means that unemployment benefits are slow to get approved. That’s a legitimate problem. But eventually things will settle down, and when they do people are going to discover that in addition to their $1,200 checks, they’re also getting a substantial upward bump in pay while they’re unemployed. For some reason, though, the nation’s press corps is oddly reluctant to write about this. I don’t get it.

  • Let a Science Fiction Author Predict Your Pandemic Future

    Charlie and his beloved companion, Murdercat.Charles Stross

    The latest hotness from the epidemiological community is that COVID-19 is now endemic in the human population and it’s not going to go away until either (a) we have an effective vaccine or (b) everyone in the world gets infected and the death toll is somewhere in the ballpark of the Spanish flu. What does this mean? Charlie Stross is always a good source for the gloomiest possible scenario, possibly because he’s a science fiction writer; possibly because he’s a Scot; or possibly because he’s a Scottish science fiction writer.  In any case, here’s his prediction:

    Lockdown can’t be sustained more than 1-2 weeks after peak ICU occupancy passes, so it will be lifted in mid-May in the UK and possibly as early as May 1st in the USA….So. The immediate peak hospital occupancy will pass, lockdown will be lifted sector by sector (or all at once) and region by region … and the 50% of COVID19 cases who are asymptomatic will go back to work, mingling with the uninfected.

    1-4 weeks later there will be a secondary surge in infections and it’ll follow the same exponential growth as the first spike in Feb/March. And lockdown will resume, probably in mid-June….If the howls of rage at the first lockdown are deafening, the second lockdown will be worse: think of toddlers being sent back to bed with no supper. And that’s the lucky work-from-home class: the working poor—with no savings and jobs they need to be physically present for — are going to be increasingly angry and fractious at their exposure. Expect civil disobedience and possibly summer riots unless central banks throw money at the grassroots — and not $1200 for 10 weeks: more like $1200 per week.

    ….So we’re going to see repeated 4-6 week lockdown periods alternating with 2-4 week “business as usual” patches. Somewhere during the second or third lockdown most of the pubs/bars/hotels/restaurants that hibernated during the first lockdown and came back from the dead will give up the ghost: by September-November the damage to about 10-30% of the economy, disproportionately the service sector, will be permanent (for some value of “permanent” that means not coming back until after the pandemic, growing afresh from zero rather than reviving from hibernation).

    ….By September there’s going to be social unrest just about everywhere that hasn’t nailed down a massive social spending/social security project on a scale that makes the New Deal look restrained and conservative. And that’s going to be the picture until June or July 2022.

    Of course, this is where mass testing is supposed to come in. The idea is that we crush the infection rate down to a very small value and then deal with local outbreaks quickly and mercilessly. This allows most of the country to avoid repeated lockdowns, but it works only if we’re testing so widely and so frequently that we catch flare-ups early, before they have a chance to spread beyond a small town or a few city blocks.

    Is that possible? I don’t know. What I do know is that at the very least it will require wartime mobilization with presidential leadership, not Jared Kushner playing doctor and Donald Trump petulantly telling governors, “Call your own shots.”

    A truly universal test-and-trace regime would be a lasting legacy for Trump and might well guarantee his reelection. It’s mind boggling that he seemingly refuses to do it just because the experts are in favor of it.

  • Lunchtime Photo — Throwback Thursday

    Back in 2008 my mother and I took a trip to Europe to check out the towns and villages where our ancestors lived. The Drum line of the family, it turns out, originated in Ulmet, Germany, a village about 60 miles southeast of Frankfurt. This is the village church, originally built in the 12th century.

    I remember being frustrated when I was there because the churchyard was surrounded by trees, which meant I couldn’t get far enough back to get a shot of the entire church. But when I was looking through my old photos, I noticed that I had taken two pictures: one of the lower half and one of the upper half. I’m not sure why I did that, but since I now have the Photoshop tools to stitch panoramas together I decided to give it a try. And it worked perfectly. Hooray for Photoshop!

    April 25, 2008 — Ulmet, Germany

  • Let’s Please Stop Blathering About the WHO

    I’m just blowing off a bit of steam here, but can we please put a stop to all the thumbsuckers about the World Health Organization? Everyone knows it’s imperfect, and everyone also knows that Donald Trump is targeting it solely to fire up his base and to distract attention from his own failures. Honestly, we don’t have to go chasing off after every shiny object that Trump throws in our faces.

  • Republicans Refuse to Assist State and Local Governments. Why?

    Parks are closed and sales tax revenue has plummeted at cities and states around the country.Kevin Drum

    It looks like the small business lending program has worked out pretty well after all:

    A new lending program for small businesses maxed out Thursday morning and stopped accepting claims, but a bitterly divided Congress looked unlikely to address that growing problem as the nation plunged into unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression. The Small Business Administration said on its website that the agency “is unable to accept new applications…based on available appropriations funding.”

    Naturally the result of this is an insanely stupid fight between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want to add more funding to the program and Democrats are fine with that. But they also want a big chunk of money for state and local governments, which, for some reason, Republicans oppose. But why? Why are Republicans against assistance for state and local governments that have suffered huge revenue shortfalls during the coronavirus lockdown?

    It’s a mystery. Republicans have long been opposed to bailouts for state governments, apparently believing that recessions are a good opportunity to punish them for profligate spending. Or something. I honestly don’t know. But whatever the reason, you’d think a massive pandemic would change their thinking a bit. But it hasn’t.

  • Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: April 15 Update

    Here’s the coronavirus growth rate through April 15. Tuesday was not a good day. Italy continues to stall. France took a big jump upward. Germany and Sweden ticked up as well. And the United States recorded 2,494 deaths, a new high. We might still peak this week, but things are looking a little dicier than they were a few days ago.

    One of the most frequent requests I get is to break out the US data by state or region. There are several reasons I haven’t done this. First, I’m lazy. Second, there’s no real epidemiological basis for thinking that state borders are meaningful. Third, it leads you down the rabbit hole of slicing and dicing the data in a zillion different ways desperately looking for a trend that will prove some theory or another. The data we have is so-so to begin with, and you end up with a dog’s breakfast if you try to squeeze too much out of it.

    What’s more, it probably doesn’t matter. If there’s any state that you might legitimately consider special, it’s New York. So I finally got curious and decided to see just how much New York was contributing to the overall US numbers. Here it is:

    Despite being the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, New York’s share of the total death toll has been practically flat over the past three weeks. This means that if you subtract New York from the US totals, you’ll get a lower number but almost precisely the same trendline. And if New York doesn’t affect the trendline, there’s little reason to think that any other state affects it much either.

    Bottom line: the United States is a perfectly good unit of measurement. Given the underlying accuracy and noisiness of the data, it’s best to simply track the US numbers and not try to torture the data into providing something that’s simply not there.


    How to read the charts: Let’s use France as an example. For them, Day 0 was March 5, when they surpassed one death per 10 million by recording their sixth death. They are currently at Day 41; total deaths are at 2,865x their initial level; and they have recorded a total of 256.5 deaths per million so far. As the chart shows, this is above where Italy was on their Day 41.

    The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

  • LA County Will Suffer a $1 Billion Shortfall This Year

    This is LA City Hall, but the county's Hall of Administration is right nearby.Kevin Drum

    Oof:

    Los Angeles County could see a $1-billion decline in sales tax revenue this fiscal year, which ends June 30, because of the massive economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. The decline is expected to surpass $2 billion between now and the end of fiscal 2021, according to county estimates released Wednesday.

    That’s just one county. A big one, granted, but still just one. This is why it’s so critical for Congress to budget relief funds for cities and states. Consumers will have plenty of cash to pull us out of recession after the lockdowns are over, but their job is going to be a lot harder if they’re working against the headwind of local governments cutting back spending by billions of dollars.

    To successfully reopen the economy, we need more spending from consumers, businesses, state governments, and the federal government, all working together. We’re doing OK so far on three out of four of those. Now it’s time to get serious about the fourth.

  • Lunchtime Photo

    I took this picture up on Mt. Baldy at the end of last year and decided to render it in black and white. Why? Because in black and white it makes me think this kid is posing for a Ralph Lauren ad in Vogue. I am easily amused.

    December 28, 2019 — Angeles National Forest, California
  • Here’s a Closer Look at South Korea’s COVID-19 Success Story

    South Korea is having an election today, and everyone is well prepared.Xinhua via ZUMA

    Since I mentioned the South Korean model earlier this morning, let’s take a closer look at it. First off, it’s been successful at reining in the coronavirus:

    And it has done so without locking down entire cities or taking some of the other authoritarian measures that helped China bring its epidemic under control. “South Korea is a democratic republic, we feel a lockdown is not a reasonable choice,” says Kim Woo-Joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University.

    Aggressive testing has been the key to their approach:

    South Korea’s foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, speaking to the BBC last week, said the key lessons from her country are that it developed testing for the virus even before it had a significant number of cases. “In mid-January, our health authorities quickly conferred with the research institutions here [to develop a test],” Kang said. “And then they shared that result with the pharmaceutical companies, who then produced the reagent [chemical] and the equipment needed for the testing.”

    So when members of a religious sect in Daegu started getting sick in February, South Korea was able to rapidly confirm that it was COVID-19. “Testing is central” to the outbreak response, said Kang, “because that leads to early detection. It minimizes further spread.” And it allows health authorities to quickly isolate and treat those found with the virus.

    But there’s more to it than that:

    Relentless public messaging urges South Koreans to seek testing if they or someone they know develop symptoms. Visitors from abroad are required to download a smartphone app that guides them through self-checks for symptoms. Offices, hotels and other large buildings often use thermal image cameras to identify people with fevers. Many restaurants check customers’ temperatures before accepting them.

    ….As the coronavirus outbreak grew too big to track patients so intensively, officials relied more on mass messaging. South Koreans’ cellphones vibrate with emergency alerts whenever new cases are discovered in their districts. Websites and smartphone apps detail hour-by-hour, sometimes minute-by-minute, timelines of infected people’s travel — which buses they took, when and where they got on and off, even whether they were wearing masks.

    ….Television broadcasts, subway station announcements and smartphone alerts provide endless reminders to wear face masks, pointers on social distancing and the day’s transmission data. The messaging instills a near-wartime sense of common purpose….Officials also credit the country’s nationalized health care system, which guarantees most care, and special rules covering coronavirus-related costs, as giving even people with no symptoms greater incentive to get tested.

    And it’s worth noting that South Korea has locked down to some degree:

    Schools and other public institutions have temporarily closed, as have, more recently, crowded businesses, such as gyms. Still, the cafés are busy, the streets and parks are peopled with members—albeit masked ones—of every generation, the stores have plenty of toilet paper, and never has it been easier to get a seat on the subway. Suddenly I feel, despite the virus—or, indeed, because of it—like I’m living a Korean Dream.

    It’s too late for us to adopt the South Korean model, but it’s something to look toward after we’ve managed to get our case numbers under control.

    And FWIW, the examples of South Korea and Sweden make me wonder: what if we adopted our general lockdown practices, along with universal mask wearing, except for restaurants? That would save a lot of restaurants, of course, and it would also ease the lockdown immensely if people could still meet their friends for lunch and dinner. And both South Korea and Sweden seem to be doing OK even with their restaurants still open.

    Just a thought.

  • Nobody Should Be Surprised by a Drop in Retail Sales

    South Coast Plaza, once the mightiest mall west of the Mississippi, has been laid low by the coronavirus lockdown.Kevin Drum

    I confess that I just don’t get this:

    U.S. stocks sank at the open Wednesday, dragged down by dismal earnings and retail data that offered new snapshots into the pandemic’s grip on the American economy. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 660 points, or 2.7 percent, shortly before noon and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and Nasdaq composite also fell sharply. The sell-off followed a blistering report on March retail sales, which plunged 8.7 percent for the worst monthly decline ever.

    Of course the March retail sales report was “blistering.” There can’t be a single human being in the country who didn’t expect that. And yet, merely putting an official number on it causes the stock market to plummet.

    I suppose we ought to brace for the stock market to be shocked once again next month, when investors pretend not to understand that lockdowns affected only half of March but all of April. This means that April retail sales will be down even more and the market can panic once again. Yeesh.