This is why people that work in U.S. health care are trying so hard to keep the number of cases down. When medical systems become overwhelmed, they have to make heartbreaking decisions about who lives and who dies.
The Covid-19 crisis is fueling a race to find solutions for the problem while also shutting down large parts of the economy and giving governments enormous economic powers. Except for wartime mobilization, this situation is unprecedented. In this article I discuss fifteen major potential negative consequences of the crisis.
1. Small, independent businesses will decrease as a share of the economy
Small, independent businesses will tend to be the first to collapse because:
· they typically have smaller reserves than big companies
· they typically have less access to stimulus funds
· they and/or their customers remain on (partial or complete) lockdown while giants such as Walmart & Amazon remain open (especially online) & take over their business
2. More people become dependent on government
Meanwhile, millions or tens of millions of people will lose their jobs or encounter great economic difficulties, and will turn to the government for help.
3. More businesses become dependent on government
Many smaller or medium sized businesses that do survive will have had to rely on government assistance. Dependence on aid and other privileges may persist for some time and to some extent, and government loans will have to be paid off.
4. Public-private partnerships benefit big business
The technological and institutional solutions to the Covid-19 problem will involve lots of ‘public-private partnerships’ that benefit well connected businesses and that will create new industries or transform existing ones. Through government contracts and regulations these businesses may come to form de facto cartels, keeping out or crowding out independent competitors.
5. A public-private surveillance industry and control system emerges
To keep track of virus spread governments need data. Businesses will develop new, more advanced and comprehensive tracking and collection systems that can be used by governments. Said governments will use those new tools to not just contain and control the virus but also the people.
6. Revolution through crisis
For decades governments, businesses, NGOs, voters have been talking about economic measures against climate change. These talks are slow, the negotiations tense and difficult, the changes small & incremental— lots of talk, little action. But now with Covid-19 we are fundamentally restructuring the economy in a matter of weeks, with little to no talk and all action.
7. A supply crunch followed by a demand crunch = not good
Due to the virus’s first confirmed cases happening in China and due to the drastic measures the Chinese government took to contain it, supply chains to Western economies were severely disrupted. These seem to be recovering but now Western economies are shutting down, causing a huge demand crunch. In a hyper-leveraged economy and a very uncertain economic environment, this is a recipe for disaster.
8. Borders become a thing again
The problem with viruses is that they spread. Border controls of people and goods can slow or halt that spread. So borders —both between countries and within countries— will become a thing again, and trade and travel will become less free.
9. The world economy becomes more protectionist, less free
Western countries —especially under pressure of a pre-existing anti-China lobby that is seizing its opportunity and is painting China as the Great Enemy that brought this plague upon us— will erect more barriers to trade with China, will try to decouple more, start making more goods (especially pharmaceutical & medical) at home or in other countries.
10. Protectionism creates a more dangerous international situation
A reduction in trade and the further politicization of existing trade cause political tensions between countries. With less economic interconnectedness the direct economic and social costs of conflict decrease which means there are lower barriers to war and war-like actions.
11. A big geopolitical shift away from the US and toward China could take place
If the US keeps its economy shut down for much longer and if China’s economy continues its recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, and if China continues to assist other countries in dealing with the pandemic, the US will lose economic and political power while China gains it. Expect the US to put up some serious economic, political and military resistance to this development. Few empires go gentle into that good night.
12. Anti-China rhetoric and policies will go up by a lot
For several years now politicians, media and think tanks have been increasing their anti-China rhetoric. Now faced with an economic collapse and looking for scapegoats the Trump administration will pull a Hillary: Blame a foreign power for his own failure.
China and China alone will be blamed for the Covid-19 crisis, despite the lack of evidence for the accusations, the considerable evidence to the contrary and ample evidence for the Trump administration’s own mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis and the disastruous effects it has had. Those people and special interests with a pre-existing hatred of China will seize the opportunity this climate provides them with.
Like Russophobia, Sinophobia will soon become a key part of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.
13. High unemployment & high economic uncertainty create a volatile domestic situation
Institutions will come under pressure; scapegoats will be sought and found; demagogues find willing audiences; people become more open to radical solutions; people’s and businesses’ increased dependence on government means those governments will have more power to wield; divisions within the country can be created or fueled and exploited; war against perceived domestic or foreign enemies may come to be used as a tool to unite a country, give its people a sense of purpose and a way to channel their anger & frustration.
14. Emergency work and life changes become permanent
To contain the virus, protect themselves and the people around them, a lot of individuals, families and businesses are making big changes: Working from home, home schooling and online education, various forms of social distancing. After the virus threat has receded and life has gone back to normal, some of these changes will endure because more people will now have experience with these practices and because a better infrastructure will have been built up to facilitate them.
15. A new narrative rationalizing the transformed political economy emerges
There was no public process of discussion, analysis, reflection and justification that formed the intellectual basis for the fundamental changes made to the political economy. The public was not given an opportunity to vote on whether they want this new system or not. Instead, these changes came in the form of direct emergency actions taken in the middle of the crisis or as a result of more indirect macroeconomic developments that the crisis and the measures taken to combat it gave rise to over time.
But although there was no prior process of deliberation and justification of the new system, the public will have to come to see the new system as legitimate. And so a new narrative or framework that rationalizes the new system will form and be communicated to the public by politicians, media, economists, social scientists, think tanks, schools and other major influencers of public opinion.
Koen Swinkels
This article first appeared on Foreign Policy Follies.
He’s started a propaganda campaign to blame a foreign power for his own grotesque failure.
This is a note just posted by my sister, a nurse at a hospital in Austin:
I know everyone has heard the healthcare workers cry for getting safe PPE. But I don’t think I’ve really read anything that explains exactly why.
My last shift at the hospital, I was asked to reuse my N95 mask and store it in a paper bag. As many of you have heard, this is absolutely unheard of before now. The CDC is saying health care workers can use bandannas, and many people are sewing masks. (Which is awesome all you volunteers looking to help. Thank you!)
I’m sure people who have their own N95 masks think that they need them if health care workers need them, especially if their immune system is depressed. But here is the MAJOR difference. If you have to go out in public, a simple mask will protect in ordinary day to day contact. If the person next to you coughs, for example.
But what I did on my last shift is this:
A child was in respiratory failure. This meant if we didn’t intervene immediately, that child would die. Absolutely, no question, be dead without immediate medical intervention or a miracle or both. So, just like any other typical day in the ER the team rushed to save this child’s life. Never for one second during any epidemic/pandemic/media scare have I EVER seen even one of my teammates hesitate to rush to a child’s rescue. This time was no different. We treated the child the same as we always did. EXCEPT…
We are daily around all kids of viruses. We all have rock-star immune systems because of it. However, we know there is a novel virus out there that our immune systems aren’t prepared for. So we don full PPE, we minimize the number of staff in the room. Which means all of us in there are doing multiple roles. I was initially the only nurse in the room. The doctor was helping hold the patient still for his IV. She was laying across half on the bed. The respiratory therapist was working with the equipment to help the little one’s breathing. This is a kid, so he would pull off the mask and cough all over her. My face was inches away as we worked to start the IV, give IV fluids, give medications. We stayed immediately at the bedside for an HOUR while we worked to stabilize this child, while the machine helping him breath aerosolized the particulates into the air.
I have no idea if this patient had COVID19. But what if? What if we did all of this without proper PPE? We did have PPE that day. But we might not even a week or two down the road.
Then what?
It isn’t just about my safety. I will gladly give my life for any of my patients. It isn’t even about the safety of my family when I come home. (Even though I have a medically fragile child on home oxygen. )
It’s about EVERYONE’S safety. If the nurses and doctors are sick who is caring for the patients? If our hospital systems are in danger of being overwhelmed, how on earth are we going to manage if large numbers of health care workers are among the patients?
What if it is you, your child, your loved one who needs me?
So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE if you have unused N95 masks, even if you are medically fragile, turn them in to your local hospital. You can use the cloth masks. They will help you. But I need more. My coworkers need more.
For the sake of everyone in the Austin area. For the sake of everyone everywhere.
For the money of course, dummy.
Oh yeah no I mean Iran something something yeah right.
I want to discuss the above graphic since it, or some version of it, has been promulgating the 24/7 media coverage and the internet. I realize the point of “flattening the curve” is to decrease the number of people who get COVID-19. That seems reasonable on face value, but it only highlights the Y axis of the graph. Maybe it’s just me, but the first thing that jumped out was the X axis. By flattening the curve, we are going to delay how long this crisis spreads. Now, it appears from the graphic that the goal is to keep the number of cases below our health care systems capacity. But this graphic does not take into account the cost we will have to pay to flatten the curve. Most Americans, indeed people all over the world, are already feeling the financial consequences of flattening the curve.
Does anyone else find it odd that the top of the bell curve of the “Cases with protective measures” just happens to fall underneath the line for health care system capacity? There are no numbers representing anything on the X or Y axis. Who has determined what our health care system capacity is? A quick Google images search of “flattening the curve” will show similar images representing the same thing. After looking through the first 50+ images, I didn’t see a single one with actual numbers on it. People are just promulgating and reproducing the same image with no idea what the numbers actually represent.
The health care system capacity certainly varies across the country from state to state and even within states. In my state of Tennessee, the city of Nashville and Williamson County, a major suburb of Nashville, have the highest number of cases. As of this writing they stand at 101 and 35 cases respectively.1 I am not an expert in the health care industry, and from what I have read it does seem like the numbers in these areas will continue to grow. But this certainly doesn’t seem like it would overwork the health care system.
Now I will grant you that some protective measures have been put in place. Bars and restaurants have been told to close down and most businesses are placing themselves on a self imposed quarantine by having people work from home or take time off. So yes, the number of cases would likely would be higher if no measures were put in place. Let’s use the graph, with a complete lack of numbers, to try to figure out where these cases would be had no protective measures been put in place. Eyeballing the graph, it looks like the number of cases would be triple what they are now. That would put Nashville and Williamson county at 303 and 105 cases respectively. Again, I’m no health care expert, but this doesn’t seem to be enough to overload the system, even in this worst case scenario.
Even if we take the higher number of infected patients, not everyone who has COVID-19 needs to be hospitalized. In fact, unless you are severely sick, have a weakened immune system, or are elderly, you should avoid going to a hospital. If you think you might have COVID-19, you should self-quarantine. If your symptoms get worse, then you should go to the hospital. For the majority of people, having COVID-19 is like having the flu. Its not fun, but it is not going to kill you.
Another reason that the health care system’s capacity won’t be overworked is that governments are loosening regulations to allow for more flexibility. In Tennessee, hospitals wanted to put physicians assistants to work on COVID-19 cases. This would free up a lot of physicians to keep focused on daily medical needs while tapping into a pool of highly qualified medical professionals to tackle COVID-19 in Tennessee. The problem is that physicians assistants, under licensing laws, have to have a physician overseeing them who is working in the same field. This would defeat the purpose of splitting up the physicians and physicians assistants to tackle two simultaneous problems; daily medical needs and COVID-19. The Governor signed an executive order on Thursday, March 19th to suspend the licensing requirement during this state of emergency.2
Even if the number of COVID-19 cases were to spike to projected highs, most other counties outside of Nashville and Williamson County have very few cases. Memphis has 4 cases. Most other counties with reported cases have 1 or 2 cases. If cases in Nashville and Williamson County spiked to projected highs and the loosening of regulations still did not alleviate the strain on the health care system, then patients could easily be flexed to other counties that are not effected. Physicians assistants from less effected areas could also be flexed to Nashville and Williamson County.
I think this shows, in a reasonable and prudent way, how we could handle the worst case scenario along the Y axis. I know a lot of you are thinking that these measures need to be taken to protect at risk populations. I will cover that later, but for now I want to focus simply on this graphic.
Let’s take a better look at the X axis and talk about some of the implications. If the Y axis’ main concern was whether or not the health care system could withstand a spike in COVID-19 cases, as indicated by the horizontal line at the top of the bell curve, then there should be a vertical line indicating the economies capacity to withstand shutting everything down. By flattening the curve, we have also stretched it out over time, causing this crisis to take even longer than if it ran its normal course.
The economic repercussions could prove to be far more deadly than the virus itself. People are already worried about paying rent and finding toilet paper. I don’t want to add to the spread of fear. Quite the opposite, I hope to alleviate some undo fear and show how taking extreme measures to mitigate the spread could lead to side effects that are worse than the disease, metaphorically speaking. Below are some real world examples of the economic side effects.
I manage some properties for an old Army buddy of mine. One house has several girls living there and two of them are out of a job because they work in the restaurant industry and the city of Nashville has closed down all bars and restaurants. This could mean that the tenants cannot meet their rent. The owner is currently going to school, so he depends on the profits from the rent to pay his own bills. The bank who he has his mortgage through depends on him paying his mortgage on time. Now multiply this across the city, state, and country. Shutting down even a couple of industries has far reaching consequences that are much greater than trying to protect one industry. I think we have shown thus far that the health care industry has reasonable flexibility too meet the added pressures from COVID-19 patients.
On a larger level, we have the federal government passing stimulus packages to pump trillions of dollars into the economy. Printing money brings down the value of the dollar, meaning that all the money people do have saved will be worth a lot less down the road. This is what happened with the banker bailouts during the Great Recession. Failing banks who should have gone under because they made too many risky decisions were instead rewarded with a bailout. The executives who should have been out of a job were still able to receive their million dollar bonuses.
Printing money and giving every qualified American $1,200 also is not the answer. We have the same issue of printing money causing inflation, which makes the value of the dollar go down. It also doesn’t solve the problem. This might help people pay rent and mortgages in April but what happens in May when people are still trying to catch up on all their other bills? These are the same drastic steps that Germany attempted between World War I and World War II. That excessive printing of money caused such hyperinflation that people paid for dinner at the beginning of their meal, because by the end of dinner, the check would be more expensive.
There needs to be a balance between keeping the economy going and keeping people safe. The solution is relatively easy and doesn’t require draconian, over the top government solutions. I know a lot of people say that everyone needs to self-quarantine, even if they are relatively safe from COVIN-19. The idea being that they may come into contact with someone who has a compromised immune system or is elderly. But it is unreasonable and unnecessary to shut down the entire economy in order to protect a small segment of the population. You have most likely seen videos of celebrities showing how they are social distancing from their elderly parents or grandparents and imploring young people to take this seriously and self-quarantine. Isn’t the solution to the problem right there in those videos? The people who are at risk need to be the ones who are self-quarantining. That will allow the economy to continue to move along.
I know there are issues with comparing COVID-19 to the flu. I understand that the death rate of COVID-19 is around 3% and the flu is around .1%. We have already discussed how this virus only effects a small portion of the population, so as long as they self-quarantine, they are effectively safe. Meanwhile, there have been less than 12,000 deaths worldwide from COVIN-19. I acknowledge that that number will go up before its over. However, that worldwide number seems pretty low when you realize that during the 2017-2018 flu season, there were 61,000 flu related deaths in the US alone.3 If we are taking such drastic measures over 12,000 worldwide deaths, why don’t we try to flatten the curve every flu season to prevent 61,000 deaths?
I hope you don’t get me wrong. I do have concern and compassion for anyone who is suffering during this crisis. My sympathies go out to both those effected with or who have lost loved ones from the virus and to people who have been put through undo financial stress due to no fault of their own. I think we all need to take a step back from the 24/7 news cycle and realize this is not the end of the world. Take precautions if you are in an at risk group, but otherwise, things should be business as usual.
This article was reprinted from OperationLibertas.com
NBC:
“State officials believe the family’s deaths are connected to John Brennan, 69, a horse trainer from Bergen County who was the first person to die from the coronavirus in New Jersey.”
(Unfortunately this is not the same John Brennan who as CIA director backed al Qaeda in Syria for 5 years, made up the Russiagate hoax and who definitely deserves to drown in his own fluids. But we can still hold out hope.)
