After the Virus,Life Will Be Different
The largely self-inflicted disasterof the war against Covid-19 is likely to have some permanent adverseconsequences, analysts predict. Here are some of them…
► Governments will continue to getbigger, more interventionist, more authoritarian and more powerful, involvingthemselves more extensively in economies. Populist pressures will mean they’relikely to favour less austerity, but more protectionism.
► Explosive growth in technology andlessons learned from fighting the virus will encourage governments to expandtheir control over where individuals are and what they’re doing. One analystsuggests we are “entering the era of tech control and the omnipotent bureaucrat.”
► Central banks will continue withtheir experiments of ultra-low interest rates, bond-buying and money printing,and go further.
► Policy changes arising out oflockdowns will make many businesses unprofitable and bankrupt them. Those thatsurvive may be more cautious about investing in expansion. However theavalanche of government giveaways and life support for zombie companies invirus-fighting programmes may encourage some managers to take higher risks,including higher leverage and minimal cash strategies -- if their enterprisesare large and important enough to feel sure of a public safety net.
► Consumers will also become morefrugal after losing their livelihoods due to actions outside their control.
► Working from home won’t be an easysubstitute for lost jobs as that can only be done in 29 per cent of cases,according to a US agency. Women will be most affected as they are 60 per centof those who have lost employment.
► All economies will emerge from thecrisis with much higher levels of debt, leading to a period of financialrepression (interest rates below inflation) and higher taxes on bothcorporations and personal wealth.
► As they cut their reliance onglobal supply chains, multinationals are likely to resort to greater automation(more robots) to shield themselves from cost increases.
Uncomfortable FactsAbout Lockdowns
It’s now becoming clear that most ofthe policy decisions taken by governments on the advice of their experts tocombat Covid-19 – stay-at-home orders and enforced shutdowns of businessesconsidered non-essential -- with the disastrous consequences for economiccollapse that are still gathering momentum, have been wrong… so wrong that someof them turn out to have been nonsense.
Detailed analysis of outcomes inAmerica by David Stockman shows that there is no case at all for the severelockdowns strongly advocated by scaremongers.
Death rates by April 28 in statesthat have been imposing harsh lockdowns ranged from 143 per 100,000 ofpopulation in New York city to just 4.6 in California, from 45.7 inMassachusetts to 3.8 in Maine. By comparison Iowa, with no lockdown at all, hashad a mortality rate of only 4.3 while Texas, while imposing only a lightlockdown, had a rate of just 2.4.
Sweden, which has one of the least restrictivelockdown regimes in the world – schools, businesses, restaurants and retailersallowed to remain open – has a mortality rate way less than several Americanstates with severe lockdowns.
“Self-evidently, what matters is nothow economically suicidal the lockdown regime is… but the age, health statusand general frailty/vulnerability of the population.”
Mortality rates attributable to thepandemic are so small relative to deaths from all other causes that, Stockmanargues, they are no more than “rounding errors on the scheme of things.”
He gives as an example Washingtonstate, where the first Covid-19 cases in the US were reported. Upwards of 40per cent of the 690 deaths to date have been in nursing homes. If you adjustfor those, mortality in the general population has been just 6.0 per 100,000.The rate of deaths in a year from all causes is 900 per 100,000. So the risk ofCovid-19 death so far has been less than 1 per cent of the normal average. Doesthat warrant a heavy lockdown that is driving the state’s economy “into thedrink?”
There are 15,600 nursing homes inAmerica, with 1½ million residents, a quarter of whom are older than 80. In thecase of Massachusetts, where the majority of Covid-19 deaths have occurred innursing homes, the average age of those dying has been 82.
Rather than destroy $4 trillion ofeconomic activity via lockdowns it would have made much more sense to spendmuch less – say $25 billion to start with – on Medicare/Medicaid and statepublic health agencies “to zero-in on protecting, isolating and treatingnursing home residents.”
Rather than trying to force allAmericans into a one-size-fits-all regime of state control, policy ought tohave been divided into three categories according to age:
► The Kids Nation of those youngerthan 15, where to April 28 there were only five deaths where Covid-19 wasinvolved. By comparison, children suffered 44,000 deaths from all causes lastyear. “In no sane world would it be a reason for shutting down the schools.”
► The Parents/Workers Nation of thoseaged 15 to 64. They account for the overwhelming share of commerce, jobs andeconomic activity. They experienced just 8,267 Covid-linked deaths. Theirnormal mortality rate – annual deaths from all causes – is 335 per 100,000. TheCovid rate to date has been just 3.6. “So we are talking about shutting downthe entire economy owing to a death rate to date which amounts to 1.1 per centof normal mortality.”
► The Grandparents/Great GrandparentsNation of 52 million. They accounted for 32,000 or nearly 80 per cent of allCovid-associated deaths, with 15,000 of them being among those 85 years andolder. Their Covid mortality rate has been 61 per 100,000 to date.
It has not taken “a catastrophicexperiment with Lockdown Nation” to figure out that their risk of death fromCovid-19 has been 7,600 times greater for them than for children; 29,000 timesgreater for the several million great-grandparents afflicted with severecomorbidity, and probably in the care of a nursing home. These realities werealready known from China and the history of other coronaviruses.
Although Stockman’s analysis islimited to America, it is clear that much of it applies to other countries.Policies could have been focused almost exclusively on the shielding andtreating the elderly.
Why Did They EverBelieve This Man?
It has become increasingly clearthat the largely misconceived war against Covid-19 was triggered and driven byabsurd forecasts about the numbers of people who would be killed by it.
At time of writing mortality hastopped a quarter-million… still far short of a conventional flu epidemic. Amassive campaign focused on the elderly would have been far more sensible, costa fraction as much, and avoided most of the massive economic damage.
I can understand why governmentspanicked, but not why they gave such credence to the predictions of ImperialCollege London, now totally discredited and revealed to have been based ondefective software giving false calculations.
Its team has been led by Britain’sbest-known yet least credible epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson. This was his trackrecord even before he terrified the British and American governments with hisprojections of death rates as high as 500,000 in the UK, 2.2 million in the US…
► In 2002 he predicted that up to 50,000 people in the UK would die ofBSE (mad cow disease). Actual number: 178.
► In 2005 he predicted 200 million people would probably die of avian fluH5N1. Actual number (according to the World Health Organization): 78.
► In 2009 he predicted that swine flu H1N1 in the UK could kill 65,000people. Actual number: 457.
Worldwide there is mountingrecognition of what a disaster has been the handling of the pandemic. In poorcountries the human consequences are greater than if governments had donenothing and let the virus run its course just like conventional flu.
In South Africa, for example, thegovernment has followed the lead of the rest of the world and imposed alockdown, but it admits that as a consequence 7 million people could lose theirjobs – and that this could lead to tens of thousands of deaths not caused bythe virus. So far there have been fewer than 200 Covid-19 deaths. Bycomparison, 410,000 South Africans die from natural causes each year; 21,000are murdered; and 15,000 die in road accidents.
Less than 3 per cent of SouthAfricans are older than 70 – are in the age category at significant risk fromthe virus. A policy focused on them would cost a fraction as much in human andeconomic terms.
Those of us who are privileged tolive in Chiangmai, Thailand – just one death from the virus – watch withfascination, and horror, how the pandemic is being dealt with around the world.A friend summed up our reactions in these words: “It is absolute madnessbordering on criminality to incarcerate the vast majority of the young, healthyworking citizens in order to protect the very small minority of morbidly sick,and then dumping infected people into nursing homes.”
It's interesting to see howopposition is mounting to anti-Covid policies on the grounds that they’rewrong, even crazy.
Ryanair chief executive MichaelO’Leary has publicly attacked the 14-day quarantine plan on passengers arrivingin the UK as “nonsense” and without any scientific basis.
Egon Musk was so angry at theCalifornian government’s enforced shutdown of Tesla’s huge Fremont car plantthat he threatened to shift operations to business-friendly Texas.
Glenda Gray, chairperson of theSouth African Medical Research Council, says the country’s continuing lockdownhas no basis in science and should be scrapped. It is having such devastatingeffects – jobs destroyed, so no food – that hospitals are seeing children withmalnutrition; something not seen for decades.
Experts: The reputation of traditional economists hasnever recovered from the profession’s guilt by association with the GlobalFinancial Crisis, says investment commentator Tim Price. It was a crisis theywere unable to foresee.
It was followed by the Brexitreferendum, when almost all economists warned that voting for it would cause anavalanche of disasters – which never happened.
Tim says the reputation ofepidemiologists may be about to join them “down there in the toilet bowl ofpublic opprobrium.”
Climate change: The well-known Leftist filmmakerMichael Moore has outraged environmental activists by producing a documentarythat exposes the lies used to promote subsidized industries such as biomassfuels, wind turbines, even electric cars. You can see Planet of the Humanson Youtube. One example of its content is a promotion for a new electric carwhose spokesperson didn’t know where the power to fuel it would come from. Itturned out to be 95 per cent from fossil fuels.
