Pandemicia coronavirus report #50

Pandemicia coronavirus report #50

The Greatest Planning Disaster

And thus we finish an extraordinary year dominated by the greatest planning disaster ever, in which the great Western economies sat paralysed and unable to respond to a bug that China and other East Asian countries had already dealt with effectively. A medical establishment that seemed to be fighting another war entirely. Inability to establish and agree upon basic quarantine principles. 

Australia, which had managed to keep out introduced animal and plant diseases since settlement found itself unable to maintain human quarantine, its quarantine stations closed decades ago and now were tourist curiosities, workers from particularly vulnerable populations were chosen to police this quarantine without training or isolation. As an island, Australia was able to suppress the disease fairly easily, yet from a single externally introduced case a second wave four times as large as the first emerged.

In the United States, all the weaknesses and lack of community integration that had been simmering for decades broke into plain sight. It took seven weeks to institute a testing regime that other countries managed in only a few days, and only about one case in eight was initially tested. A disruptive and destructive buffoon from reality TV was in charge, peddling quack cures or no response at all, but still managing to retain the unwavering support of half the population. The deep distrust of government and rampant individualism that is part of the American malaise caused a significant part of the population to resist even basic hygiene precautions and refuse to admit the disease existed when they were dying. States and Federal authorities were unable to work together. Democrats and republicans were unable to work together. Race relations headed into crisis, homeless lined the pavements, and bodies were packed into refrigerated trucks outside morgues. By year's end, 350,000 were dead, mostly old people suffering multiple complicating factors, with up to 100,000 more to go. In Europe it was just the same. 

And at the end these apparently totally incompetent countries were able to pump out millions of doses of complex vaccines requiring advanced technology within days, when eight months earlier they could not deliver simple tests. So we see the paradoxical power of advanced democracies, how they lose wars so badly and incompetently at the start, yet when they finally gear up are able to out-manufacture anyone at all and win comfortably.

We saw the cities of the world sitting empty with wild animals running about, downtown commercial and residential properties vacated to an alarming level while assets mysteriously continued to hold their values, many millions of workers paid to stay at home, with unemployment benefits raised massively when for decades it had supposedly been impossible to raise them by a few dollars. Governments committed to surplus happily ran up deficits in the hundreds of billions. 

And at the end the year, these apparently totally incapable countries were able to pump out millions of doses of complex vaccines requiring advanced technology within days, when eight months earlier they could not deliver simple tests. Again we see the paradoxical power of advanced democracies, how they lose wars so badly and incompetently at the start, yet when they finally gear up are able to out-manufacture anyone at all and win comfortably.

Epidemic

There have been 82 million recognised cases globally, though probably more like 350 million have been infected. Over 1.8 million are dead. Conformed cases have been over 600,000 per day globally since the start of November, and deaths continue to rise from about 13,000 per day. This is well ahead of most modelling projections.

The USA  has passed 20 million confirmed cases and India 10 million. California alone has had 2.2 million cases, with new cases and deaths at record levels since the start of December. Texas and Pennsylvania are similar. 

At the end of the year, the United Kingdom has the highest levels of  infections and deaths per million of any major country, only exceeded by a few countries in East-Central Europe that missed the first wave. Despite a severe lockdown,  the UK has hit over 50,000 cases per day for the first time - but daily deaths are still only half of the first wave. Germany is also at record levels for cases and deaths. 

The dire predictions of the aid community that the poor countries would have the most damaging epidemics have not come to pass. COVID -19 case intensity and deaths increase with prosperity of the country, even across Africa. The low death rates in poor countries are probably due the presence of modern medicine in better-off countries which keeps more older people with multiple complications alive. The initially slow rate of transmission in poor countries is due to limited business and tourist networking  It may be partly because of better planning capacity as a result of continued assistance in planning over the last 30 years, when Western countries have dispensed with it, or to improved awareness of how to handle disease transmission in poorer countries (such as never putting hands in mouths). 

I will not discuss this again, but China the most populous country and apparent origin of the outbreak is now number 93 country in terms of cases, and not too much higher in deaths. 

Response

Flattening the truth

In science fiction disaster movies, impending disaster is usually spotted by bright young things with good equipment and models, who penetrate the bureaucracy immediately, are led to the top levels of government, are supported by a scientific consensus and take action to rapidly solve the issue. This is very far from what happened with COVID-19.

 

In the absence of treatment of any kind, the world was thrown into a form of community response not seen since the Middle Ages. Entire communities and countries were completely locked down under stay-at-home regulations. These left the public spaces of the world eerily empty. The apparent reluctance of countries to impose border closure even though it is far less expensive than damaging than lockdown has been a most peculiar feature of the pandemic. When they were finally applied, weeks or even months too late, panic buying of specific rather peculiar items such as toilet paper and rushes for the border were almost universal.

One reason for this was the mishandling of the pandemic by the medical bureaucracy including the WHO and their advisers, who arguably were most to blame for the pandemic. In many Western countries they were put in charge of handling the situation or at least were the only real advisers to government. The populace were told to 'listen to the science' - which variously consisted of advice to avoid border closures, lockdowns, masks and other measures soon shown to be necessary to control the pandemic. Instructional models were trotted out based on other diseases entirely with no predictive power whatsoever, from which terms like"herd immunity" and "flattening the curve" promised millions of deaths slowly rather than quickly. Incompetence in organising testing, PPE, ventilators,field hospitals and even body disposal became the norm, though no-one actually starved. It was extremely hard for voices armed with fact to penetrate the conspiracy of noise, or for central funding or organisation to deliver desirable outcomes quickly.      

Vaccine

The true heroes of the pandemic, apart from the courageous medical staff who performed the care and thus died in droves, were in fact the bright young medical researchers. Within days of receiving the Chinese information on the structure of COVID-19 were designing testing kits and vaccines. In Russia and China, which still have a significant public science sector, these were soon launched as experimental vaccines. In the West, the various designers were able to gain financial support from massive pharmaceutical companies for full development and approval, and several were finally launched in the most affected rich countries as provisional vaccines as the year ended. 

If the Western countries have become shambolic in terms of public governance, at least capitalism still works in terms of rapidly deploying a commercial product with government forward purchases.

Geopolitical

Initially, the Chinese outbreak was greeted with satisfaction  by the Western powers, who thought COVID-19 would slow down the economic march of China. This turned into horror when China suppressed the outbreak rapidly in typical authoritarian fashion. The major Western countries were left to flounder amid social disorganization, economic paralysis and death tolls that far exceeded the most pessimistic predictions, eventually having to resort to authoritarian means themselves. 

The very few larger island countries that managed to curb their outbreaks completely, Australia and New Zealand, did so with quarantines that exceeded in length and scope anything China had done. However they still continued to allow the return of nationals from infected areas, causing new outbreaks that after six months could be suppressed with increasingly effective test-trace-isolate systems that South Korea had managed to deploy in a few weeks. Australia in particular was left to defend the ethos of the West against quiet Chinese triumphalism, and did so by insulting their major trading partner and provoking trade restrictions.  

Economy

Strangely, every country could immediately agree on one thing that would have been unthinkable in the  past. Governments could make vast outlays to keep people at home, actually increasing spending beyond what occurred when people had to work for a living. They did this by "printing money" driving interest rates down almost to nothing.

This resulted in a surge in asset inflation (stocks and houses), which had briefly faltered, while contributing nothing to wage inflation, the great bugbear of capitalism - as there were now no wages. It is surprising this economic sleight of hand had never been discovered before and that governments had ever bothered trying to keep interest rates at a level where passive investment and saving was worthwhile. It was now involuntary as discretionary parts of the economy that had soaked up much spare cash (transport, entertainment and dining out) were now defunct. In the meantime, business still insisted on a 12%  return on investment while getting almost limitless amounts of cash to do so and upping their profits. 

Almost enough to wonder why the whole wage labour system has ever existed. Though the change is underpinned by the considerable advance of remote household IT and communication technologies, keeping most of the high-paying critical jobs in place. 

Who were the losers? No-one that counted really, small business owners, self-funded retirees and, to a limited extent, landlords and absentee owners that had to slow their drive toward acquiring the whole non-luxury housing stock.

Labour force

The steady growth of the "gig economy" that replaced centralised wage fixing and workers rights in late capitalism has proven to be a particular vulnerability. Low paid workers, often recent immigrants living in large families and holding multiple jobs, were used both to support quarantine and in  aged care. Any breach of poorly designed quarantine rapidly spread into the elderly population, causing deadly uncontrollable outbreaks.

The lack of action at either central or local level or any form of anticipation to support the places where deaths would be at their highest made the underlying idea of "herd immunity" infeasible (a rapid spread through young populations, leaving vulnerable populations intact) yet it continued to be the "COVID endgame" of many countries.   

Spatial

The emptying of the central cities, the disappearance of "bright lights", the drop in travel costs as roads emprtied   and the loss of foreign residential investment and temporary visitors who favour the centre  meant that the steepening of rent gradients that had been occurring for 40 years under pressure from the two income family and "anti-sprawl" efforts actually reversed. Vacancy rates for apartments in the central city shot to unprecedented levels and rents there fell, while house prices in suburban and close rural locations shot up, as families sought extra space for home living and home offices. The rapid acceleration in home working that had been promised for forty years but never arrived actually became a reality at last, and one that seemed destined to stay as employers found they could pass office costs onto their decentralized employees without affecting the amount or quality of work in many professions.  

Social

Any social weaknesses that existed were thrown into relief by the pressures of lockdown. Race,  political division and homelessness in America, The dependence on low paid foreign workers and high paying students in many Western countries. Migrant workers in places like India and Singapore.

The social welfare sector immediately began strident pressure for extra funding for a supposed increase in mental health and family violence issues.

The former actually turned out to be the case for young people, possibly due to the existential threat, possibly due to the loss in social mixing to which they were unaccustomed. Calls to Lifeline organizations increased, while suicide did not, 

The older people who were truly at risk from COVID-19 showed surprising equanimity  - possibly because they were already philosophical about an extended lifespan, and possibly because many were already socially isolated so that lockdown made little difference except fortuitously to limit the other infections to which they were normally exposed.

The latter was based on the unpleasant assumption that home, rather than being a calming and supportive environment, was actually a dangerous place for women. In fact however, it appears however that removal of the pressure to work and make a living actually removed the most common form of domestic frustration, and death rates from heart conditions and  other stress-related illnesses fell by more than 20%. 

Summary

 In a year "like no other" many changes that had been on the cards due to technical change in response to congestion actually became a reality. The larger economies presumably discovered that the market would not in fact solve anything, and effective government and planning was genuinely necessary in an orderly society.

As the new year dawned, WHO delivered the stark warning that this might not after all be the 'big one', just a dry run for the real thing as increasing volumes of humanity encroached upon wild reservoirs of pathogens. And in the year to come, governments would be given yet another chance to show how badly they could create confusion in the distribution of vaccines, while infections and deaths rose to new heights. 

Truly, this is the Great Planning Disaster of our age. Except in those few countries still capable of planning. 

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