“This really isn't the right Forum to discuss the Virus Crisis”Judging by what the Pfizer vaccine announcement has done to the price of gold and the NST SP, it appears that the “virus crisis” is a highly relevant topic.
I was down $127k at the close on Tuesday, so I am definitely not happy.
And before you ask, I am not one of the other dwarfs either, although, I could give grumpy some competition.
In any case, you introduced the topic of the virus.
“Politicians severely over reacted and now they want to keep controlling us and trashing the World Economy”I don’t have any problem with the notion that politicians tend to have ambitions to control us.
However, it stretches credibility that any politician in office wants to trash their own economy.
Although, I wouldn’t put that desire past Trump in his remaining days in office.
However, he still thinks he has won, so we are probably safe on that score for the time being.
The simple fact is that no political leader holding office in a developed country can stand by and do nothing while refrigerated trucks are lining up as temporary morgues – not even Boris Johnson.
As for
“over reaction”, thus far, the data indicates that the developed countries that have managed to get the virus under control and thereby restrict deaths, have suffered less absolute economic decline.
The chart below shows the June quarter GDP decline per capita, expressed in US dollars versus the June quarter deaths per million for various countries.
( A small approximation in the chart is that I applied the published June quarter GDP percentage declines to the 2019 annual GDPs rather than to the GDP at the start of the June quarter.)
The upper trend line is for the countries on the chart with less than 150 deaths per million.
The lower trend line is for all the countries on the chart, except Sweden, which made itself an outlier by policy choice.
The trend is clear, better control and consequently, fewer deaths, correlates with less economic decline.
A similar chart was produced by Deloitte Economics and shown by Alan Kohler some time back.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the figures for the third quarter are included.
(On present trends, the US will chalk up 300,000 covid deaths in total by mid-December (906 per million). )
“[Covid] is not the Black Death or the Spanish Flu”I agree.
Thankfully covid is not as lethal but that’s not much comfort.
The Black Death eventually killed about 30% of the people in Europe and the Spanish Flu killed more people than WW1.
On the bright side, the Black Death was a boon for the serfs who managed to survive because their labour was subsequently in such short supply.
It’s an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody some good.
“There are now many, many Doctors and Nurses coming out and saying that this Virus is not a Big Deal”You have lost me with this comment.
I don’t doubt that there are some medical folk somewhere who have said covid is “not a big deal”, but they will comprise a vanishingly small percentage of their profession.
Indeed, I think I know of one such, but to my knowledge, the same person, to put it kindly, was also careless about their use of professional titles, which rather dents their credibility.
Covid has amply demonstrated that, unchecked, it can overwhelm available intensive care facilities in developed nations in a matter of weeks, including in the US.
It stretches credibility that responsible medical professionals are going to say that such a disease is “not a big deal”.
This is not to say that they do not also worry about the health effects of the measures that have been taken to to control covid.
Cheers
(20min delay)