C.D.C. Releases Early Demographic Snapshot of Worst Coronavirus Cases [feedly]

C.D.C. Releases Early Demographic Snapshot of Worst Coronavirus Cases
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/health/coronavirus-cdc-demographic-study-hospitalizations.html

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On March 1, there were 88 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States. By month's end, there were more than 170,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has compiled data on people who were hospitalized from the virus during that month to get a clearer demographic picture of infected patients who have required the most serious medical care.

The study, released Wednesday, found that older people infected with the virus were more likely to be hospitalized; men were more likely to endure severe cases than women; and black people were hospitalized at a higher rate than whites. The study also found that hospitalization rates for Covid-19 have been significantly higher than for recent outbreaks of influenza.

The data, based on hospitalizations from March 1 to 30, was taken from a network of hospitals in parts of 14 states, including New York, Connecticut, California and Ohio. The area studied includes only about 10 percent of the overall population of the United States, but is seen as a representative snapshot of the virus's spread and the demographic breakdown of patients.

"There have been a lot of questions swirling about testing and what is the actual burden of the disease in the population," said Charles Branas, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, who did not participate in the study. "By the time it gets to hospitals, that is a really nice way to gauge the burden of the disease."

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The C.D.C. uses information on hospitalizations to help public health officials better understand the evolving epidemiology of a disease, and to help in the planning and prioritization of health care resources.

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On Wednesday, the C.D.C. also announced new guidelines outlining how employees who are considered essential by their employers but who have been exposed to people infected by the virus can go back to work. The guidelines apply to workers who do not feel sick and are able to follow certain precautions.

Refer your friends to The Times.

Such workers can return to work if they take their temperature before heading to their workplace, wear a face mask at all times and practice social distancing while on the job, Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C. director, said at the White House coronavirus briefing. While at work, they should not share headsets or other objects that touch their face, and they should not congregate in break rooms or crowded places, he added.

Dr. Redfield said that employers should send workers home immediately if they developed any symptoms. He also said they should increase air exchange in their buildings, and should clean common surfaces more often. The goal, he said, is to "get these workers back into the critical work force so that we don't have worker shortages." In its report on hospitalization data, the agency cautioned that the findings about Covid-19 were preliminary, with the number of cases expected to increase considerably as the virus continues to spread and as testing becomes more available. Also, the data does not reflect the surge of cases during the first week of April, straining hospitals in places like New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Michigan.

But the numbers reflected trends that were reported from other countries at earlier stages of the outbreak. The C.D.C. received information about possible underlying medical conditions in a subset of 180 patients. Approximately 90 percent of those patients had one or more underlying conditions. The most common of those was hypertension, in 49.7 percent of patients, followed by obesity, chronic metabolic disease (like diabetes), chronic lung disease (like asthma) and cardiovascular disease.

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In terms of age and gender, 74.5 percent of patients were 50 or older, and 54.4 percent were male.

18

Covid-19 hospitalization rates

per 100,000 population

16

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

Age 0–4

5–17

18–49

50–64

65–74

75–84

85+

By The New York Times | Source: C.D.C. data from 14 states

The report also shows that, while the highest overall percentage of hospitalized patients were white (45 percent), the percentage of black patients (33 percent) was much higher than the percentage of African-Americans in the population as a whole. In the geographical areas covered by the study, 59 percent of the population is white, the report said, and 18 percent is black, "suggesting that black populations might be disproportionately affected by Covid-19."

In the included region, men generally represent 49 percent of the population and women 51 percent, which effectively further widens the disproportionate percentage of men requiring hospitalization.

The report emphasized that its findings would need to be confirmed by more data.

Over all, 4.6 people per 100,000 have been hospitalized in the area studied. But the rate jumped to 13.8 per 100,000 for people 65 and older, which the C.D.C. found was higher than the rates for recent influenza patients. The study compared data from the first four weeks of the past five seasons of influenza, and found those hospitalization rates ranged from 0.1 per 100,000 people between the ages of 5 to 17, up to between 2.2 and 5.4 for people 85 and older. For Covid-19, the hospitalization rate for patients 85 or older is 17.2 per 100,000.

These Charts Show Global Economy's Dive Into Deep Recession [feedly]

These Charts Show Global Economy's Dive Into Deep Recession
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/these-charts-show-global-economy-s-dive-into-deep-recession

The bad economic news has been coming thick and fast, from record drops in activity to record surges in jobless claims, and unsurprisingly it's set to continue next week.

The International Monetary Fund updates its global forecasts to coincide with its spring meeting, which will now take place via video conference for the first time because of the coronavirus.

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Huge downgrades are expected, echoing the multiple dire predictions from economists, institutions and central banks already. In a gloomy preview, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Thursday the world is looking at the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.

Here are some of the charts that appeared on Bloomberg this week, offering a snapshot of the immense damage being done to activity, jobs and government finances because of the measures needed to contain the virus.

Serious Losses

JPMorgan says virus could cost world at least $5.5 trillion in lost output

Source: JPMorgan Chase

Note: Forecasts show deviation from Jan. 24 baseline

The coronavirus outbreak is set to rob the global economy of more than $5 trillion of growth over the next two years, according to JPMorgan Chase economists. That's almost 8% of gross domestic product, or greater than the annual output of Japan.

The global economy is already shrinking, and losing steam faster than in the early days of the financial crisis: That's the main takeaway from Bloomberg Economics' new global GDP tracker. The reading for March shows a 0.5% contraction on an annualized basis, compared 0.1% in February. With lockdowns deepening over the past month and set to stay in place in April, the March reading is unlikely to be the worst of the downturn.

Risky Business

The ILO fears 38% of the world's workers are at risk of layoffs, pay cuts

Source: International Labor Organization

The pandemic is having a "deep, far-reaching and unprecedented" impact on employment, with more than 1 billion workers at high risk of a pay cut or losing their job, according to the International Labor Organization. With factories, schools and shops shuttered around the world, the ILO says lockdowns are affecting almost 2.7 billion workers. Within that, almost half -- representing about 38% of the global workforce -- are extremely vulnerable, mainly in the hotel, food service, manufacturing and retail industries.

Ugly Numbers

The World Trade Organization says 2020 trade could fall as much as 32%

Source: World Trade Organization 

The World Trade Organization says there may be a deeper collapse of international trade flows than at any point in the postwar era. The WTO presented two possible scenarios for global trade in the years to come in a report published Wednesday, noting that the unprecedented nature of the health crisis could result in a wide range of outcomes. In an optimistic scenario, the WTO forecasts merchandise trade may fall 13% in 2020 and rebound 21% in 2021, while in a pessimistic case volumes could drop by as much as 32% before increasing 24% next year.

Quantitative Easing

Net asset purchases for G-7 central banks approached $1.4 trillion in March

Source: Bloomberg Economics

Major central banks have been forced to take extreme steps to support growth and underpin financial stability. Across the Group of Seven, that's included the return, or launch, of large-scale asset purchases. Net asset purchases for G-7 central banks were close to $1.4 trillion in March. That's an extraordinary total, close to five times higher than the previous peak of $270 billion in April 2009, according to Bloomberg Economics.

Fiscal Stimulus

Spending packages vary vastly globally

Source: ING Bank report from April 2, calculations exclude liquidity and guarantees

Leaders around the global are unveiling ever-bigger spending packages to help companies and workers. In the European Union, finance ministers managed to paper over differences this week to agree a 540 billion-euro package. Russia was proving an outlier, with the Kremlin hoarding hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves. ING Bank estimates President Vladimir Putin's support measures so far amount to only about 2% of GDP. That is set to change: The government will roll out about 1 trillion rubles ($13.5 billion) of new spending, according to people familiar with the plans.

Movement Denied

Europe imposed tough clampdowns on movement in response to virus

Source: UBS Global Mobility Restrictions Tracker

Note: *Restriction rating on 10-point scale

Countries have implemented social distancing measures and shutdowns at varying speeds and intensity. While some governments have spoken about gradually easing tough restrictions, any return to what might be recognized as "business as usual" is unlikely to happen very soon.

With huge swathes of economies shut down, workers have been laid off, lost hours or been furloughed. In the U.S., the impact on the labor market can be clearly, and depressingly, seen in initial jobless claims, with the weekly total hitting more than 6.6 million. The average over the past five years -- before the virus-related surge -- is less than 250,000.

— With assistance by Anna Andrianova, Bryce Baschuk, Catherine Bosley, David Goodman, Dan Hanson, William Horobin, Jeannette Neumann, Tom Orlik, and Reade Pickert

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States continue to see record-high levels of initial unemployment insurance claims, including in the South [feedly]

States continue to see record-high levels of initial unemployment insurance claims, including in the South
https://www.epi.org/blog/states-continue-to-see-record-high-levels-of-initial-unemployment-insurance-claims-including-in-the-south/

Key takeaways:

• 28 states had record numbers of unemployment insurance (UI) filings last week. The rest of them had their record high one of the previous two weeks.
• California, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Texas filed the most claims last week.
• Southern states didn't initially lose jobs as quickly as other states, because they were slow to implement social distancing measures. Now, however, they are experiencing this unprecedented job loss particularly acutely.
• The federal government should take on the costs of keeping workers on the payroll and provide substantially more funding to state and local governments.

Another 6.6 million people filed initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims last week, continuing the upending of the labor market we have seen in response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to seasonally adjusted data released yesterday morning by the Department of Labor, over the last three weeks, 16.8 million—over one in 10—workers have filed for UI. As the labor market is disrupted, so are the lives of millions of workers across the country.

Last week, 28 states saw a record number of initial UI filings, with the rest of the states experiencing their high point during one of the prior two weeks. While many states saw a slight decline in UI claims compared to the prior week, the number of claims filed this week is still staggeringly high. In the four weeks between March 7 and April 4, over two million Californians and one million Pennsylvanians filed UI claims. 

Figure A

In addition to the one-week change in UI claims (which is slower or even negative relative to the record-setting week before), Figure A shows the change in claims relative to the pre-virus period, or the average of initial UI claims for the four weeks ending March 7.

After Californians, Georgians filed the most initial UI claims last week, followed by Michigan, New York, and Texas. In fact, last week Georgia saw the largest percent increase in claims of any state compared to the week prior and relative to the pre-virus period. As we predicted, initial UI claims continued to increase across much of the South. Many other southern states were among the 10 states with the highest over-the-week percent change in UI claims (Arkansas, Mississippi, Virginia, Alabama, and South Carolina) or the ten states with the highest percent change relative to the pre-virus period (Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia, Mississippi, and North Carolina).

Although Southern states generally weren't among the hardest hit initially, likely because they were slow to take up social distancing measures, it is now clear that they are also experiencing job loss on an unprecedented scale. This underscores the importance of the need for policymakers in Southern states to bolster and expand access to their strained UI systems.

Table 1 shows the data displayed in the map as well as the change in UI claims over the last four weeks relative to the same four-week period a year ago. These extreme increases in UI claims over the past few weeks represent not only a devastating loss of income for these individuals and their families, but a massive strain on under-resourced state unemployment insurance agencies. To get these workers the unemployment they deserve and desperately need, federal funding is needed to support these agencies and states must leverage existing laws to get aid to workers quickly.

We expect nearly 20 million workers to be laid off or furloughed by the summer, although it could end up being even higher. While it may seem like job losses are an inevitable outcome of the social distancing measures necessary to slow the spread of disease, this is simply not the case. In other countries, like Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, the government has stepped in to cover most payroll costs for employers affected by coronavirus-related shutdowns. The United States could follow suit by doing the same and undertaking other transformative measures. At the very least, policymakers must address gaps, including insufficient aid to state and local governments, in the existing relief and recovery measures in a fourth package.

Table 1

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World Federalism, Global Democracy and Coronavirus [feedly]

I completely agree. But the slip between the cup of reason and the lip of thirst is awesome. One trembles at the the blood loss and treasure costs of nationalism expended,  before the unavoidable necessity of global governance is confronted. And, it won't happen all at once. But failure to move  forward, in this crisis, toward internationalism -- will exact a very steep price. History's harsh guidance on social memory tends to argue that we don't really pay attention, collectively, until the pain of false posturing is unendurable.

World Federalism, Global Democracy and Coronavirus
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/10/04/2020/world-federalism-global-democracy-and-coronavirus

 Fernando Adolfo Iglesias  

The coronavirus crisis shows the consequences of the enormous contradiction under which seven billion human beings live now: a world globalized by technology and economy but politically divided into almost 200 national states all taking separate and uncoordinated measures. Does anyone still believe this can work?

Financial instability. Climate change. Coronavirus crisis. Indifferent to the warning signals, we continue to keep our political systems bounded to the national/international model based on the paradigm of national sovereignty. Each govern to according to whatever best suits their national interest. "Sovereignism" they call it, and we all pay the consequences.

 

Has there been Chinese negligence during the start of the coronavirus pandemic? Was it a Trump's, or a Putin's, or a terrorist sect's plot? Did all the involved countries react appropriately? Are they doing it well? We do not really know, as there are no transparent global mechanisms for early detection and control of pandemics. We do not know, but our lives are at stake over this.

 

Of course, despite the sabotage of national populists, the United Nations and the World Health Organization still exist. But the coronavirus pandemic has made it clear that the capacities of the UN and its agencies are far below the requirements of a global society, which needs binding action at the global level: early warning systems, information sharing, delivery and enforcement of general norms, management of transmission across borders and vaccine-treatment research.

Basic regulations and mandatory standards are crucial to preserve world public goods such as human health, environment, financial stability and international peace.

 

Yet, although the UN and its agencies do exist, national states are free to refuse to take action and to follow the wrong measures, causing disastrous consequences for the rest. Exaggeration? It is exactly what is happening with coronavirus and global warming right now.

 

A new world will emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, everybody says so; but nobody knows if it will be a better or a worse one. If each country decides to play its own cards - as at the beginning of the 20th century - the consequences will be the same: disconnection, a rise in nationalism, an inability to face common challenges, extended crises; and then, authoritarianism, growing conflicts, tragedies, death and despair.

 

Fortunately, it is fated. Since the creation of the United States and the European Union, we human beings have developed two paradigms to avoid these nightmares, federalism and democracy, which have been extraordinarily successful at the national and regional levels. The time to apply them to the global scale has come.

 

Unfortunately, despite being amazing innovators in technology and pragmatic geniuses in economics, we human remain conservative in politics. Applying federalism and democracy to the global field still sounds like a utopian dream for most. At the same time, a network based on electrical impulses and encoded by ones and zeros almost covers the whole world regardless of how divisive it is for our economies, cultures and social relationships. Indeed, it now seems the most natural thing on Earth to everybody.

 

A federal-democratic global structure or a new nightmare, that is the question we face? A global democracy in which a world parliament delivers mandatory early-warning standards and binding health protocols in response to pandemics is needed. And it should be complemented by a world federalism that preserves national sovereignty on national issues but delegates decisions on global ones.

 

It's not a plot against national states but a desperate attempt to save democracy. It does not mean a world state, or a world government, based on a centralized executive power. On the contrary, world federalism and global democracy would reinforce the capacities of the global judiciary and parliamentary powers that embryonically exist at the global scale.

 

Specifically, I am calling for a UN Parliamentary Assembly whose directives should be binding but limited to critic global issues such as pandemics and climate change. They could be reinforced by an International Criminal Court able to sanction genocides and war crimes but also those governors who do not comply with coronavirus control protocols.

 

A world totalitarianism? Hardly. Totalitarianism has always been based on nationalism and wars against external enemies that do not exist at the global level other than in the unlikely case of a Martian invasion. Moreover, contrary to Orwell's 1984, world federalism does not mean the building of a central Big Brother but rather the decentralization of global and local attributions that the national state has misappropriated.

 

This will support a more balanced and decentralized local, provincial, regional and global decision-making system in which each level has its own capacities and limits and is able to limit and control one another. A network! millennials would say. A network as horizontal and decentralized as the digital world, and as interactive, participatory and fast as its platforms.

 

A 21st Century global political system for a 21st Century global society. As simple as that.

 

Maybe the coronavirus crisis has taught us how small the Earth is, how close we are to each other and that humanity is already a community of fate. Maybe we only learn from tragedies. If this is the case, the panic generated by insufficient responses to global crises, discontent and anger will continue to grow; and with it, nationalism and populism, with their simple responses to complex global issues and their threats to democracy and human life.

 

Science fiction? Science fiction is already our reality. It remains to be seen whether it will be like Star Trek or Star Wars.

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Enlighten Radio:Talking Socialism: The China Wet Market Podcast

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Enlighten Radio:Updated Agenda for the Talkin Socialism Show --- Friday 9 AM LIVE

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Some Coronavirus Pandemic Readings [feedly]

Excellent stuff from Timothy Taylor

Some Coronavirus Pandemic Readings
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2020/04/some-coronavirus-pandemic-readings.html

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