Modern conservative politics is remarkable. Two days ago it felt like everyone was totally on board with school closings and quarantines and social distancing. It was the new reality. Then Donald Trump announced that he didn’t really believe the experts after all and wanted to re-open the economy. Within 24 hours I swear that practically every conservative in the country was suddenly in agreement—or seriously considering it at the very least. All Trump had to do was open his mouth to produce a right-wing U-turn so violent you could almost hear the necks snapping.
This picture was taken at Willaha, Arizona, which is just south of Grand Canyon National Park. I left the park right at sunset because it didn’t look to me like the sky was going to become very spectacular, but by the time I got to Willaha about 30 minutes later it was very dramatic indeed. I’ll never know if it looked anything like this back at the canyon. I really like the deep blue color contrasted with the ruddy sunset, all with a little bit of moon peeking out.
I’ve seen a lot of people quoting the Imperial College study of coronavirus spread, so I want to repost this chart:
It’s the top and bottom numbers that are important right now. President Trump would like us to “open the economy,” which for all practical purposes means doing nearly nothing. The IC study suggests that in this scenario around 2 million people will die.
If we get as serious as Italy—shut down everything, close every school, get everyone off the streets, and aggressively trace every known case—and if we do it for the next three months or so—we could get the number of deaths down to 200,000 or so. That’s about 0.06 percent of the population, similar to what Italy is likely to suffer.
This is the difference we’re looking at: 200,000 vs. 2 million. The first case is bad but manageable, and the Senate rescue bill would keep most people whole and ensure that the economy can pop back to life quickly when the control measures are over. The second is a catastrophe, and even with the rescue bill in place it would most likely produce a deep recession that would last through the end of the year at least.
The control measures are no fun. No president wants to be the guy who has to enforce them. But without them 2 million people will die and we’ll probably suffer a deep recession. Why would anyone in their right mind choose that option?
POSTSCRIPT: Why do I think the economy would do better with strict control measures? Think of it this way.
If we put control measures in place, we’re providing substantial certainty to everyone. The rescue bill keeps incomes flowing, and when the control measures are lifted everyone can go back to work. Since they’ve been taken care of during the crisis, their savings are intact and they’ll be willing to immediately raise their consumption to normal levels. We’d be in a deep recession for a few months, but it’s only a recession in a very technical sense since we’ve deliberately engineered it and everyone knows exactly what caused it. There’s no reason to think we wouldn’t bounce back as soon as we announce that the epidemic is over.
If we don’t put control measures in place, lots of people will die and the epidemic will last longer. That’s bad on its own, but it also introduces terrific uncertainty. The huge number of deaths will depress the economy for a while and those workers will only be slowly replaced. People will remain afraid to spend money until they’re sure the epidemic is over, and that’s going to be a very dicey thing. This would fundamentally be like a normal recession, in which we take a dive and then come back out of it slowly as businesses and consumers haltingly regain confidence.
The crazy thing about this is that the first scenario is almost certainly better not just from a humanitarian point of view, but also from a political point of view. Trump could be a hero and the economy would be in strong shape by November. In the second scenario, fear and recession remain in place for months, only slowly dissipating. Trump would be doomed on Election Day. How does he not get that?
You may be curious about just how generous the expanded unemployment insurance benefits are in the Senate rescue bill. I was. First of all, here’s the average unemployment benefit across the nation:
These are not huge payments! Here’s what the Senate bill provides:
Your normal UI benefit + $600
A minimum of half the average benefit + $600
A maximum of 100 percent of your normal income
For independent contractors and gig workers, the weekly minimum + $600
In Maine, for example, an above-average worker would likely see their benefit rise from about $450 to $1,000 per week. Low income workers would get an increase from around $250 to $850. Gig workers would go up from $0 to about $750. (All with a cap of 100 percent of your normal earnings.) This would be available through the end of June.
This is a pretty large increase, and for most people will probably replace 100 percent of their income or pretty close to it. Add in the average of $3,000 that most families will get from the “checks for everyone” program, and all but a handful of people will be made entirely whole. The biggest exception is those who didn’t work this year and therefore are ineligible for UI benefits.
If anyone knows of a more detailed analysis of the average amount of income replaced by the rescue bill, let me know. Overall, though, it seems pretty well designed.
Here’s the coronavirus growth rate through Monday. Most countries are still hewing pretty close to the Italian path, with only the catastrophic growth rate of Spain substantially off the trendline.
I mentioned yesterday that Italy’s growth rate seemed to be slowing down a bit, and you can see that a little better today, though you still have to squint to see the inflection point around Day 25. However, if you look instead at Italy’s daily death toll (as a rolling average of the previous four days to smooth out the noise), you get this:
The first dot is the average daily death toll from February 24-28. The last dot is the average daily death toll from March 19-23. I overlaid an eyeball fit of a normal curve, which suggests the death rate will peak in early April and the epidemic will end in early May. (There are other ways of charting the data, and they all point to the same thing: an early April peak and an early May finish.) The total number of deaths will be in the ballpark of 25,000, which amounts to 0.04 percent of their total population. If we take control measures seriously and follow the Italian path, the US epidemic will end a little later, in mid-May, and the total number of deaths will be around 100-150,000.
Super important note: This is strictly an amateur guess, and even if it’s accurate it relies on the US putting in place the same stringent control measures as Italy—which we haven’t done yet. And if President Trump succeeds in gutting even the control measures we do have in place, then all bets are off. Beyond that, we have no way of knowing what will happen when the epidemic fades out and we relax the control measures. Will the virus go dormant for the summer months and then return in the fall? Will it re-emerge as soon as the control measures end? Will it continue to be seeded by travel from other countries that are on a different schedule? At the moment there’s both positive and negative evidence about all this, and it’s simply too early to know anything for sure.
Here’s 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 18; total deaths are at 144x their initial level; and they have recorded a total of 12.9 deaths per million so far. As the chart shows, this is slightly below where Italy was on their Day 18.
The raw data from Johns Hopkins has moved. It is now here.
We are searching the world for surgical masks, ventilators, protective clothing, and anything else that might help us handle the coronavirus:
State Dept “asked all bureaus to report on what foreign countries would be able to sell “critical medical supplies and equipment” to the United States…“the United States could seek to purchase many of these items in the hundreds of millions…” https://t.co/hIcTOXkaX1
Taiwan has agreed to provide us with 100,000 masks per week—less than one percent of their output of 70 million—but not quite yet:
Under the joint statement signed on March 18 by Wu and Brent Christensen, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. promised to reserve raw materials for 300,000 medical protective suits for Taiwan, while Taiwan agreed to provide 100,000 medical face masks per week to the U.S. when its production capacity has stabilized….As for when Taiwan will begin to provide the U.S. with the promised 100,000 masks per week, Wu said the two sides are still discussing details of the matter.
Taiwan does not actually need 70 million surgical masks per week. It has a population of 23 million and about 200 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection. So why are they unwilling to provide more masks to their most critical military ally at a time when we’re facing a brutal shortfall that could cost tens of thousands of lives?
Apparently it’s because Taiwan wants every man, woman, and child on the island to have a steady supply of masks. It’s hard to fault them too much for this, given their prodigious preparation for the coronavirus pandemic, which started as soon as they first heard about it in early January. Part of that planning included an emergency ramp-up of mask production, and obviously they did that mainly to satisfy their own needs.
Still, one reason for our mask shortage is because China doesn’t want to export them to us, and our support of Taiwan has always been a sore spot for them. In other words, we’re paying a big price for supporting Taiwan, and it’s a little surprising that they aren’t willing to help us out a little more quickly and generously in return. I wonder if the dealmaker-in-chief has any idea what’s going on here?
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on his way to meet with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA
The Washington Post reports on negotiations over the $500 billion Republican lending pool for large corporations in the coronavirus rescue bill:
Democratic concerns have focused on a $500 billion funding program Republicans want to create for loans and loan guarantees, with some Democrats calling it a “slush fund” that lacks any oversight because the Treasury Department would have broad discretion over who receives the money….Republicans have said the funding would be handled appropriately and that a cash infusion of this scale is necessary to address a major economic crisis. As a final step in talks Monday, Senate negotiators were working on putting an oversight mechanism in place.
There are other bits and pieces that need to be worked out, but the slush fund was the big one. If Schumer and Mnuchin can work out a deal on that, it should be possible to get a bill passed and the money flowing pretty shortly.
On the subject of money, the Senate bill isn’t bad: it includes both the “checks for everyone” and a substantial expansion of unemployment insurance. The UI expansion isn’t perfect, but it does increase payouts significantly and also includes provisions to help independent contractors and gig workers. I haven’t been a big fan of the “checks for everyone” proposal, but now that it’s married to UI expansion I like it a lot better. It provides a nice one-shot infusion to help with the bills until the UI checks arrive, while UI provides substantial ongoing income that’s guaranteed until at least the end of June—at which time we should finally see a lot of businesses re-opening and people getting back to work. Another few days of negotiations won’t hurt much, but at this point I feel pretty good about putting some oversight on the slush fund and getting this bill out the door.
I get a lot of requests to please do my daily charts a wee bit differently or to add other countries or regions to them. I’m mostly not willing to do this since (a) I want the charts to be the same from day to day, and (b) adding more countries means it takes me a lot longer each night to create them. However, New York really does seem to be a pretty special case right now, so here’s a solo chart just for them:
The number of coronavirus deaths has grown 47 percent per day over the past week and currently stands at 157. If this keeps up, New York’s death tally will surpass 2,000 a week from now and 30,000 within two weeks.
Of course, this growth rate might not keep up, either because a slowdown turns out to be the coronavirus’s natural behavior or because the control measures put in place are working. Italy’s death tally over the past two weeks, for example has been growing at 21 percent per day. If New York can get down to that rate, it will have about 2,000 deaths in two weeks instead of 30,000.
The growth rate really matters—far more than whatever the current number of deaths happens to be. That’s why this is what everyone is focused on.
I’m taking my own advice and not watching Donald Trump’s coronavirus briefing right now, but apparently our president is bored with all the shutdowns and lockdowns he’s had to endure for the past [checks notes] seven whole days. So how much longer will this stuff last? “I’m not looking at months,” he says, even though nearly every expert says that months are indeed what we have to look forward to. “This is going away,” he says, despite abundant evidence that it’s not going away anytime soon.
Trump says that “other countries are going to do what they have to do,” but that “in our case,” “because of the magnitude of our economy,” we can’t do a quarantine and harm the economy any more than we already have.
If there’s any silver lining here at all, it’s the fact that it’s mostly governors who have the authority to shut down businesses and enforce quarantines. This is faint comfort for anyone living in a red state, who probably has a governor that slavishly follows Trump’s direction, but at least some of us will still be doing the right thing.
He has been agitated that he can’t run the campaign he wants against Democrat Joe Biden, and he has used daily, hour-long briefings as near proxies for his campaign rallies, guaranteed to attract attention and to maintain the backing of his fervent political base.
While some around him have suggested that he should only appear when there is big news to announce, Trump has been missing the spotlight and has told people that he knows the nation is watching the briefings and doesn’t want to give up the stage. On Sunday, he asked the briefing, originally slated for 4:30 p.m. to be pushed back later into the evening, when more people would be watching — including those tuning in for “60 Minutes,” the president’s favorite broadcast news magazine.
On Saturday, Trump used his platform to tout the use of hydroxychloroquine as a therapy against coronavirus, despite the lack of evidence that it works. The result is that people who need it for other illnesses can’t get it because Trump fans are hoarding it. A man died after ingesting chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. And people returning from Peace Corps duty, some of whom need it as an antimalarial drug, have to do without.
On Sunday Trump said once again that we didn’t even know about the coronavirus because China waited so long tell us about it. This is false. China hardly deserves any kudos for their handling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, but Trump was being briefed about it in January. Everyone knows this. Asked why he stood by while Trump lied about this, Anthony Fauci said in frustration, “I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down.”
Over the weekend Trump also announced that Ford and other carmakers are already manufacturing ventilators. This is, yet again, flatly untrue.
And of course Trump has consistently used his stage time for happy talk, suggesting that the pandemic will have a short lifespan and cause minimal damage. As a result, while Democrats have taken it seriously from the start, a large number of Republicans still don’t:
I could go on, but I hardly need to. The bottom line is that Trump’s daily briefings are (a) run like campaign events, and (b) full of falsehoods, including some that can be deadly.
Believe me, I understand why cable networks feel like they have to broadcast these press briefings live. Trump is the president of the United States in the middle of a horrific pandemic. Of course you broadcast them. But eventually, in the cause of informing the public fully and truthfully, this has to stop. Reporters need to sit through the briefings, decide what’s important, verify it with other administration sources, and then put it on the air. This will take only a little extra time and will endanger no one. Given Trump’s dangerous track record of distortion and fabrication during these briefings, it’s the only prudent option.
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