How deep will the damage be?
Over 800 more fatalities in Italy in the past 24 hours. Is the virus mutating? Why the younger people? Why more men than women? Yes, the Italians smoke more than we do, but typically (except for the UK) most Europeans are heavy smokers.
JP Morgan said on Wednesday, March 18th: “...we are slashing our forecast for real annualized GDP growth in Q1 to -4.0%, followed by an even weaker -14.0% in Q2… growth partly recovering to 8.0% in Q3 followed by 4.0% growth in Q4."
When the dust settles, citizens should also ask themselves: how will consumers behavior change—it will change—and who will benefit? Will consumers be strong enough to resume life from where they were before the crisis? And, how long will it take to repair the damage, or find a new normal?
The most important thing we can do in this situation is to preserve capital. You need to live—so you can fight another day.
(“Political Rant”-The US is led by a man who has not got a clue and has denied the existence of a dangerous epidemic since informed about it in early January. If he does not step aside, soon, and quite wasting our time with his “poverty of linguistics”, and let Dr. Fauci/Dr. Groirer/Dr. BIrx et al answer the press conference questions, the situation in the US will get out of control totally. Fine if that is what Americans want but just watch China become the leading economy in the World as quick as Covid-19 infects people.)
America for several years has become a fundamentally unserious country. This is the luxury afforded us by peace, affluence and high levels of consumer technology. We didn’t have to think about the things that once focused our minds—nuclear war, oil shortages, high unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates. Terrorism has receded back to being a kind of notional threat for which we dispatch volunteers in our military to the far corners of the desert as the advance guard of the homeland. We even elevated a reality TV star to the presidency as a populist attack on the bureaucracy and expertise that makes most of the government function on a day to day basis.
The COVID-19 crisis could change this in two ways. First, it has already forced people back to accepting that expertise matters. It was easy to sneer at experts until a pandemic arrived, and then people wanted to hear from medical professionals like Anthony Fauci. Second, it may—one might hope—return Americans to a new seriousness, or at least move them back toward the idea that government is a matter for serious people. The colossal failure of the Trump administration both to keep Americans healthy and to slow the pandemic-driven implosion of the economy might shock the public enough back to insisting on something from government other than emotional satisfaction.
The coronavirus pandemic, one hopes, will jolt Americans into a realization that the institutions and values Donald Trump has spent his presidency assailing are essential to the functioning of a democracy—and to its ability to grapple effectively with a national crisis. A recognition that government institutions—including those entrusted with protecting our health, preserving our liberties and overseeing our national security—need to be staffed with experts (not political loyalists), that decisions need to be made through a reasoned policy process and predicated on evidence-based science and historical and geopolitical knowledge (not on Trump-ian “alternative facts,” political expediency or what Thomas Pynchon called, in Gravity’s Rainbow, “a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all-round assholery”). Instead of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, we need to return to multilateral diplomacy, and to the understanding that co-operation with allies—and adversaries, too—is especially necessary when it comes to dealing with global problems like climate change and viral pandemics.
End of so-called Political Rant (for some) and Useful Information (for some). Let’s see how this looks a year from now. I am an optimist and realist. This is not a “rant” but a call to look seriously at a “Game Changer” as to how we function as a society going forward. Time to get back to work.
Best,
DWD
PS-Read the CDC guidelines before you start commenting about the use of masks, the type of masks, how to clean the masks, when to wear the masks...I grant that we all have differences of opinion, but when it comes to the actual FACTS about masks, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and sanitizers/hand washing/social distancing...read the CDC and/or your own State Board of Health/Board of Medical Licensure guidelines. This is a very fluid situation and the mitigation maneuvers/guidelines are updated on at least a daily basis. I didn't start this thread, and I have my own opinions. I also use and know many of the guidelines as to how to screen/evaluate/triage/treat COVID-19.
