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Journal by khallow
Sometime today, there will be more active, reported coronavirus cases outside of China than inside. The cat is out of the bag for sure. I think at this point, it's only a matter of time till a good portion of us catch the disease, barring a vaccine in the next few months. Good luck to you and your loved ones.
Moving on, this appears to me to be a real world test of various countries' public health systems, with such things as how accurate the above reports are, or how many people are infected or die due to this coronavirus.
Moving on, this appears to me to be a real world test of various countries' public health systems, with such things as how accurate the above reports are, or how many people are infected or die due to this coronavirus.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
All good ideas look like bad ideas to those who are losers.
-- Dilbert
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 08 2020, @06:26PM (18 children)
This virus is going to massively re-arrange the geopolitical landscape. I really think it's going to cause exponentially more suffering by its economic impacts than the direct effects of the virus itself. Speaking personally, as someone in her very early 30s with no specific risk factors and a normal BMI, I'm not worried about getting this aside from losing at least a week of wages.
No, the real problem here is this is likely another black swan event on the scale of 9/11 or the 2008 crash, and will likely linger around a lot longer. I predict this thing is going to become a permanent member of the world's constantly-circulating virus pool, and will likely become no worse than the average cold or flu in 1-5 years.
But until then, this is going to topple a lot of established power structures, because many of them are rotten and corrupt to the core. The US is a prime example. I hope and pray that the major lessons that we learn from this are 1) healthcare *is* national security and 2) we need to clean our corruption problem up if we don't want something even worse to wipe us out utterly.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @10:40PM (13 children)
With about 3000 listed victims and about $3,000,000,000,000 claimed losses, we're talking about $billion per every single corpse. Every government on this planet routinely lets subjects die off to save much smaller sums for the budget. Consider these two observations.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @11:04PM (12 children)
The global supply chain has collapsed and demand will not be picking up any time soon. The combined stupidity of offshoring production to a single country and refusal to isolate that country by putting global travel restrictions in place made global economic collapse inevitable. Lessons learned - supply chains will be diversified and China will end up in a massive recession. The geopolitical question is, will we relive the swinging '20s with a decade of hedonism before an economically struggling China goes on a war footing or not?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 09 2020, @04:53PM (11 children)
While there will be some long term impairment from a one or more year pandemic, much of the necessary infrastructure changes to the global supply chains can be figured out in a much shorter time. That leads me to the opinion that a recession from the coronavirus will be of similar v-shape unless it triggers a substantial secondary vulnerability, say such as a collapse in a major country's banking industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @08:34PM (10 children)
I've no doubt will we see a V-shaped slump and rebound but for the slope of the recovery. We are already discussing things beyond first order effects. [reuters.com] My initial claim was:
China and Singapore flattened the COVID-19 infection growth curve by going into lock-down and Italy is now following suite as it appears to be the only effective measure. The sequence of events would be as follows:
The auto industry has already been forced to seek alternative sources of supply from outside China. Once the investment in plant is made, these alternative sources will be able to compete on cost with the Chinese and these supply lines may never return to China. Insurers may demand this diversification of supply. Global shipping has been on a downturn for years, Trumps tariffs and incoming EU VAT rules will hit Chinese exports hard - all in addition to animus against the CCP for covering up the first signs of the outbreak. If an economic downturn creates civil unrest in China, the party will almost definitely deflect using an external conflict (as we've seen so many times in history). We know about Chinese ambitions wrt the South China Sea and Taiwan.
I don't think I'm being overly speculative and can't envision any other realistic scenario for how this shit-show plays out over the long term. You're welcome to disagree and throw another hat in the ring.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @12:29AM (9 children)
You think a lot of things. But yes, you are being overly speculative. So there is a short term supply disruption and a somewhat longer term demand-side disruption. That's still just a standard recession.
Except we're not really talking about much in the way of economic damage. It's not like companies and workers will evaporate from a year or two of weak economic activity. That's the only second order effects you've mentioned so far.
And what of that is supposed to be significant? Economies do stuff, governments occasionally trade paint, and societies evolve. None of that is unusual or alarming. If this hypothetical civil unrest in China should result in a more democratic government, it'll even be heavily bullish in the long term.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:19AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:23AM (7 children)
I'm not the same AC you've been discussing this with. The supply chain issues are happening because of quarantines and lockdowns. They were confined mostly to China for awhile but are now happening elsewhere. It's entirely possible we'll see some of that in the US. It's because of incompetence. We wouldn't have to quarantine so many people or have massive lockdowns if we tested lots of people early and often. Find out who has the coronavirus, treat them early, and isolate them early. Everyone else can go along with their lives with much less risk of being exposed. Pence said there are four million more tests that will be distributed by the end of the week. They've failed to deliver thus far, so I have no confidence in them this time. If we have large scale lockdowns and more supply chain issues, it will be because the government failed to contain or slow the spread of the virus early on.
As for longer term effects, I see two problems. We have little room to cut interest rates further because they were already quite low and we've started cutting them further. There's also a considerable amount of corporate debt on the books. The economy probably can withstand short term supply chain disruptions and decreased productivity from containment and mitigation efforts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:16PM (6 children)
Yeah. khallow thinks I am being overly speculative but we're well over the rubicon. [twitter.com] When I wrote my initial comment, only Northern Italian provinces were going into lock-down, now it's the entire country. This virus should have never escaped Wuhan (or anywhere else). The consequences of not implementing short term travel restrictions are going to play out long term (because Dr Tedros and WHO didn't want to create any "stigma"). And we are looking at a global pandemic [zerohedge.com] and we can't go back to economic data from the Spanish flu or standard recessions and predict a simple recovery on a V-shaped dip. Does the airline industry pull financial guidance or entire countries suspend mortgage repayments [bbc.co.uk] in a standard recession or in a global crash?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:48PM (5 children)
That leaves triggering large problems in the global economy as the other big risk. At present, I don't think that's a serious issue. You certainly haven't mentioned anything serious enough to worry about.
Having been on the internet for thirty years, I'm quite familiar with the doomsday pattern. This stuff comes out every recession and every novel disease outbreak. Make a guess how many times it's been right so far?
Finally, I will continue to pay attention to comparable history like the 1918 influenza pandemic and global recessions because this is similar, despite the protests to the contrary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:09PM (4 children)
LOL [un.org]
It's similar to the Spanish flu if you allow for double the R0 and higher fatality rate with a more interdependent global trade network that will not be able to function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:54AM (3 children)
So now, argument from ignorance fallacies.
And if you don't allow for double the R0 (because it's likely not double!) and a near equivalent fatality rate (because once again, it's about the same), then well, you get my side of the argument. I already have allowed for global trade disruption. This isn't going to be some magic unsolvable problem.
Same goes for global recessions. We get them all the time. We know how they evolve. It's not rocket science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:43PM (2 children)
How is khallow today; Stonks?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 14 2020, @12:41PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 15 2020, @02:18PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @05:27AM (1 child)
It's not corruption or healthcare that's the problem. China is generally seen as more corrupt than the US and also does not have nationalized healthcare, in spite of claiming to be communist. The problem, as always, is division. If China had US style social and political divisions, they'd have had an outbreak in the hundreds of millions. Instead it looks like they've mostly contained this with 100,000 cases in a country of 1,400,000,000. That's simply impressive.
Look at the US today and this virus is, ultra predictably, just becoming another tool for political division. We're becoming somewhat nihilistic in that we believe nothing matters, at all, except our own political viewpoints. It's not 'how can we solve this problem' but 'how can I further my political agenda with this problem.' There's even now this absurd ideology that if you're not actively engaging in politics then you're actually supporting some side or the other, as a sort of viral effort to consume everybody into this stupidity.
I think the long-term effects of this virus will probably be positive, even in the worst case scenario. Many nations are starting to head towards demographic collapse as fertility rates drop + people living far longer resulting an increasingly old and dependent population. The worst case scenario would see this issue completely resolved. The US is collapsing, but I think predictions of imminent collapse are hyperbolic. It's simply a gradual decline. It feels so similar to the collapse of the Roman Empire.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 09 2020, @12:44PM
Not to me. Seems much more similar to the collapse of the Roman Republic with the presence of populist politicians.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 09 2020, @01:07PM (1 child)
No, the real problem here is this is likely another black swan event on the scale of 9/11 or the 2008 crash, and will likely linger around a lot longer. I predict this thing is going to become a permanent member of the world's constantly-circulating virus pool, and will likely become no worse than the average cold or flu in 1-5 years.
Which doesn't really say much since these sorts of black swan events happen quite often.
We'll see. I think for the US, it'll take something bigger like a major defeat in a war or said "something even worse" pandemic. Big things take longer to die.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 09 2020, @01:07PM
Unless, of course, it doesn't.
Which doesn't really say much since these sorts of black swan events happen quite often.
We'll see. I think for the US, it'll take something bigger like a major defeat in a war or said "something even worse" pandemic. Big things take longer to die.