Sunday 26 April 2020

What the papers say

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The big story is the supposed death of North Koran dictator Kim Il Jong.

Meanwhile the EU censored itself to avoid angering China by criticising her handling of the virus.


Here in Romania we have 608 deaths of people with (not necessarily of) the Coronavirus, alas. Only 12 have died in Latvia, 46 in Estonia, 42 in Lithuania. In Belarus, with no lockdown, supposedly 67, but who knows?

It is very hard not to conclude that the virus was considerably less dangerous than we feared, thank God.


Latvia had a limited lockdown. The Telegraph publishes today an interview with the Latvian P.M., 
Krisjanis Karins.


By the time of the first Covid-19 related death in Latvia, the limit on public gatherings had dropped from crowds of 200 to groups of two, and strict social distancing rules were in place.


"In retrospect we actually shut everything down, went to two people, and two metres, before we even had our first confirmed death of Covid-19," Karins says. But the majority of businesses were allowed to remain open, with the exception of cinemas and theatres.

Large shopping centres were instructed to close at weekends. Cafes and restaurants could, in theory, remain open, but following the introduction of social distancing rules many lacked customers and shut down anyway. "By not shutting down our businesses and having the social distancing, we're trying to get that balance of keeping people healthy and at the same time doing the least amount of damage to the economy as possible in these times. Of course, our economy is taking a big hit as everyone's economy is."

Daniel Hannen writing about Sweden yesterday in the Daily Telegraph.

Modelling by country’s authorities suggests that the infection rate in Stockholm peaked on 8 April. If so, we need to consider the implication, namely that, once basic hygiene and distancing measures are in place, tightening the screw further perhaps makes little difference. Which would be good news for the rest of us. Adopting Sweden’s more laissez-faire response might not restore our economies to full health, but it would at least allow us to bring them out of their induced comas


..... “It’s bad news for us politically,” a Rightist MP admits. “The socialist government is up 21 points. But I am a patriot, and I want what is best for my country. I criticise ministers for not helping small businesses. But I don’t criticise them for sticking to the science when other countries gave in to populism.”

Unfortunately although the number of new cases peaked in Sweden on April 8 Swedish deaths are rising. Daily deaths per capita on Friday were the highest in the world. Still, I am very hopeful about Sweden.


This is from an article by 
Alistair Haimes, who has worked with data for 25 years, in The Critic.


Along month ago in 10 Downing Street, before public opinion (and Jeremy Hunt) turned against him, Sir Patrick Vallance was painstakingly clear that group immunity while sheltering the vulnerable is the only game in town, but that we should flatten the curve (“squash the sombrero”) so that the NHS would not be overwhelmed.


Yet faced with murky data, a clamouring press and terrifying reports from Italy, the current lockdown was hurriedly declared, in order to buy time for the NHS to build further capacity for the approaching storm. Given the paucity of data available when the decision was made, and how things could have gone, perhaps the government did the right thing. It has, indeed, used the time to create impressive capacity, and can now assert that the UK does have capacity (both hospital beds generally and ICU beds and ventilators in particular) for whatever comes our way.


But we’re still locked down. Like many things in life, it turns out that lockdown was much easier to get into than to get out of. It also turns out that the reasons for going in seem to be wildly different to the reasons for coming out; the key that locked the door doesn’t unlock it.


Charles Moore is always calm and cheering. He wrote on Friday under the headline, "With the right leadership restored, the British public will get through this crisis."

Here are some of the bad things which could have happened, but haven’t. Early on, the reasonable worst-case scenario for deaths was half a million. On current showing, we might not reach a tenth of that figure. Similar calculations suggested that intensive care beds could be eight times oversubscribed, meaning that thousands of patients would die in corridors or be turned away.



Nothing remotely like this has happened. Somehow, 40,000 NHS beds were freed up. Most have not had to be used. No one seeking treatment has been refused it. Imagine if we had been so badly organised that when the Prime Minister became ill he could get treatment only by grabbing an ICU bed needed by another patient. We never got near that.



Other major blessings include the fact that panic-buying was quickly dealt with and everyone can get the necessaries of life; that more than enough ventilators appeared; that broadband provision has produced digital solutions unattainable five years ago; that HMRC can agree furloughing applications within two days and start paying in less than a week.



Behind all this lies one other blessing: the public are behaving well. Precisely because we are behaving well, we do not realise how great a blessing it is. Of course, we social distance, wait in queues, volunteer to help. Of course we don’t riot or try to insist on having medical treatments that can wait. Of course we try to keep our children amused – even educated – at home, to shop for the self-isolated, and check on the elderly parents we are not allowed to approach.



We have been asked to stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives. This is exactly what about 99 per cent of the population has tried to do. You cannot buy social discipline like that. You cannot even compel it. It is a cultural achievement, a mark of civilisation.


Holman Jenkins at the WSJ thinks nothing could have stopped a respiratory infection from going worldwide.


Novel pandemic diseases are not a black swan. Our lockdown response was a black swan.

We started off sensibly. “This is not something [American families] generally need to worry about,” said CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier in mid-January. “It’s a very, very low risk to the United States,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci a week later.

Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, urged residents to go about their business normally as recently as March 11.

As coldblooded as it seems, these were the right statements at the time. Under “flatten the curve,” changes in public behavior aren’t needed until they are needed. Roll that around in your mind a bit. The better we do at equipping local hospitals, the less we need to bankrupt local businesses and their workers to slow the virus as it runs its course through society. That was the idea we started with.

Not even the U.K. Imperial College study that so alarmed the world’s policy makers recommended indiscriminate lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders. If we meant what we said, we’ve overshot in many places. Beds are empty. A ventilator shortage did not materialize. We failed to set aside enough capacity to treat other medical conditions like strokes and heart attacks. This is costing lives.

What happened? From Bill Gates to your local editorialist, a new priority waddled to the fore. We decided that, whatever contributes to killing Americans at a routine total rate of 8,000 or so a day, it shouldn’t be the coronavirus.

Accidents, yes—6% of deaths. Heart disease, yes—23%. Flu and pneumonia, yes—2%.


These deaths are allowed but not deaths from the coronavirus even at the cost of economic ruin for millions. Of course the media and public are free to decide that now they never wanted to flatten the curve; they wanted to be spared the virus altogether. But explain how this is to be done. And explain why. The Economist magazine says we can’t restart the economy without an “unprecedented” $180 billion testing regime. Unprecedented is an interesting word because China, a country of 1.4 billion people with eight cities larger than New York, either must have developed such a system with nobody noticing or hasn’t found it necessary.


Finally, an interesting article in The Hill in effect says Sweden got it right. I wonder why so many conservatives are anti-lockdown and all leftists I see - who should worry about poverty - are in favour of it being prolonged.


The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. 

The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.

In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.

Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.

26 comments:

  1. Science will ALWAYS be wrong when the list of logical fallacies is not applied to its STATISTICAL "evidence".

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  2. and all leftists I see - who should worry about poverty - are in favour of it being prolonged.

    Because they're not actual leftists. They don't give a damn about poverty or any economic issues. They're liberals (or progressives) who see the rights of men in frocks to use the ladies' room as being much more important than children living in poverty.

    It's actually a perennial problem with social liberalism and progressivism that such people want to remake the social order and they're happy to use coercion or even force to do so. If you go back to the 19th century social reformers were already behaving like scolds and busybodies. Progressives seem to be natural control freaks. They're not in favour of lockdowns because lockdowns are necessary - they're in favour of them because they derive personal satisfaction from controlling people's lives. At the moment they're having a simply wonderful time.

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  3. within kissing distance of grandparents, rubbing shoulders at sporting events and in crowded bars and, such is hectic modern life, jostling in overcrowded modes of public transport.

     I could say something about the return of those downright dangerous activities, to wit, fornication and casual and commercial sex but I imagine they didn’t stop.

    A third thing we are learning is that many of our fellow citizens will willingly dance to any tune governments play; however discordant.

    The are no doubt other things we are learning but I want to end with a confirmation rather than with an instance of new learning. As we know from the economic desolation they cause when in charge; from their national self-loathing; from their agenda to rob us of pride in our past; from their determination to tear down institutions (like traditional marriage) which have served us so well; from their overt hostility towards Christianity; from their intrigue to divide us by race and by sex, leftists are a plague on the world, more virulent than any virus. And, true to form, is their doleful advocacy in the current crisis.

    Peter Smith
    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/what-we-are-learning-and-sadly-confirming/?

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    1. There is a lot of truth in that. He might have said progressives and included Theresa May. The democratic left used to be Christian and socially fairly conservative.

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    2. We will not get back to a spooky “new-normal” which leftists, in particular, are rubbing their sanitized hands with glee about. We will get back to normal-normal and, yes, this will include being within kissing distance of grandparents, rubbing shoulders at sporting events and in crowded bars and, such is hectic modern life, jostling in overcrowded modes of public transport.

      I could say something about the return of those downright dangerous activities, to wit, fornication and casual and commercial sex but I imagine they didn’t stop.

      A third thing we are learning is that many of our fellow citizens will willingly dance to any tune governments play; however discordant.

      The are no doubt other things we are learning but I want to end with a confirmation rather than with an instance of new learning. As we know from the economic desolation they cause when in charge; from their national self-loathing; from their agenda to rob us of pride in our past; from their determination to tear down institutions (like traditional marriage) which have served us so well; from their overt hostility towards Christianity; from their intrigue to divide us by race and by sex, leftists are a plague on the world, more virulent than any virus.

      And, true to form, is their doleful advocacy in the current crisis.

      Peter Smith
      https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/what-we-are-learning-and-sadly-confirming/?

      Delete
  4. From how I understand Scandinavian culture, they practice social distancing even in the absence of any pandemic.

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  5. Another unknown about this strain of Coronavirus is its long-term effects on the patients. There are some pretty bad anecdotal stories of long-term issues from scarring of the lungs.

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    1. Yes indeed. Whether they justify closing the world economy I very much doubt. I read parents first and thought you were talking about parents shouting at children under lockdown.

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  6. An error in this. In Sweden, what seemed to peak on 8 April was not *deaths* but the “daily new cases” figure, which is largely arrived at by managing how many people are tested. The reported deaths in Sweden on 8 April were 96, fewer than the day before and the day after. The highest reported deaths total to date was on 21 April, but there are I think higher figures yet to come. Most of the Swedish charts neatly illustrate my “range of peaks” point.

    Having said all that, I am with Daniel Hannan. But the problem is, if the British people did not want a left-wing government they should not have elected one. Leftists love controlling everyone and everything, it is asking a lot to want them to kick the habit.

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    1. Thank you for pointing out my mistake, which I have corrected. Yes I agree with you but England is only a mildly conservative country and much less so thanks to New Labour and the Tory Blairite rule from 2010 to 2019.

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  7. Another small point, it is sad that Boris has gone on with Mrs May’s policy of blocking Daniel Hannan for winnable seats. Aldershot wanted him in 2017 but wasn’t allowed to have him. Boris found safe seats last year for others far less deserving.

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    1. How odd. He is a Whig. There was some controversy over expenses at the European toy parliament. I wonder if that was it. He is very liberal - social and economic liberal - and was very upset when a caller on a phonein suggested the Anglosphere was the product of Anglo-Saxons and would not be the same if they dwindled in number.

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    2. Daniel Hannan is an Old Liberal - in that he is against wild government spending. He is against the New Liberalism that has dominated British politics since the time of Sir William "we are all socialists now" Harcourt. Do you think Daniel Hannan would just keep silent as endless government spending orgies were announced in the House of Commons?

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  8. Coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide per one million population as of April 27, 2020, by country.
    Deaths Pop (m) Deaths per m
    Belgium 7,094 11.42 621.08
    Spain 23,190 46.72 496.32
    Italy 26,644 60.43 440.9
    France 22,856 66.99 341.2
    United Kingdom 20,732 66.49 311.81
    Netherlands 4,475 17.23 259.71
    Ireland 1,087 4.85 223.96
    Sweden 2,194 10.18 215.45
    Switzerland 1,610 8.52 189.04
    United States 53,846 327.17 164.58
    Portugal 903 10.28 87.83
    Denmark 422 5.8 72.79
    Germany 5,976 82.93 72.06

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  9. The Daily Telegraph is the only light in the darkness of the British "media" - all the television stations and most of the newspapers are just handmaidens of tyranny. My country is being destroyed before my eyes - but I am powerless to prevent its destruction. I watched the Prime Minister this morning and it appears the "lockdown" madness is to continue. At this point all we can really do is pray to God to open the eyes of our leaders. They are not wicked people - they have been deceived.

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    1. They are not wicked people - they have been deceived.

      Maybe they're not actually wicked but western political leaders are cynical, opportunistic and cowardly. And very dishonest about their actual agendas. They may have been deceived, but that doesn't make them good people.

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  10. Why I love Texas:

    HOUSTON, Texas — The police and sheriff’s union leadership in Texas’s largest county say they are not likely to enforce an order by County Judge Lina Hidalgo (D) requiring that masks to be worn by all in public. The order calls for officers to enforce the requirement with $1,000 fines on residents.

    Houston Police Officers Union President Joe Gamaldi, a frequent critic of Hidalgo’s approach to criminal justice, called the order idiotic and said the “draconian” measure would erode bonds between officers and the community.

    Harris County Fraternal Order of Police President David Cuevas told Click2Houston that he “does not know a single person in law enforcement that is going to enforce that order.”

    Claiming Judge Hidalgo is overstepping her authority, Cuevas said, “We are stretched thin. Murders are up 63 percent and we’re concerned about having a citation to issue to citizens because they are not wearing a mask?”

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/harris-county-mandatory-mask-order-coronavirus-15217911.php

    https://www.breitbart.com/border/2020/04/23/police-will-not-enforce-mask-order-in-texas-largest-county-say-unions/

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    1. The police and sheriff’s union leadership in Texas’s largest county say they are not likely to enforce an order by County Judge Lina Hidalgo (D) requiring that masks to be worn by all in public.

      The police are right in seeing this as a stupid oppressive law, but when the police openly state that they have no intention of enforcing the law society is sailing into very dangerous waters. You'll end up with a society that is ungovernable.

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    2. 'they have no intention of enforcing the law'

      That law is unenforceable in Texas.

      Delete
  11. Today I'll be back behind the Golden EIB Microphone for three hours of substitute-host-level Excellence In Broadcasting on America's Number One radio show starting at 12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific. I hope you'll dial us up either via the iHeart Radio app or on one of over 600 stations across the fruited plain, such as our old friends at WNTK New Hampshire, where you can listen to the full show from anywhere on the planet right here:

    https://www.wntk.com/listen-live
    or
    http://natrix.sugarrivermedia.com:8000/wntk

    The Coronapocalypse and its attendant Lockdown Without End seem likely to predominate, but we'll try to get to a few other topics, such as Kim Jong-un's whereabouts, the media silence on predatory Uncle Joe, and a possible end to the three-year torture of General Flynn. We seem set for another fast-moving news week, and we will do our best to stay on top of it.

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  12. Virus Deaths in Democratic versus Republican States

    When controlling for the differences in population across states, the number of deaths from coronavirus is over three times higher in states with Democratic governors than in states with Republican governors. As of Sunday, April 26, states with Republican governors have experienced 57.53 coronavirus deaths per million of population, states with Democratic governors have 179.74 deaths per million of population. Even excluding the state of New York as an extreme outlier, states with Democratic governors have 138.58 deaths per million from coronavirus, still over twice as many coronavirus deaths per million as deaths in states with Republican governors.

    https://lawliberty.org/virus-deaths-in-democratic-versus-republican-states/

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  13. The mainstream media is critical of Trump and his response to the coronavirus threat. But the last four months is not the proper measure for assessing anti-pandemic policy. Andrew Cuomo has been Governor of New York since 2011. He has had that entire time to prepare his state for a pandemic. Yet his state’s death rate is almost ten times the national average. If Cuomo were a Republican governor, this number would not be grounds for proffering his name as a presidential candidate, it would be grounds for impeachment for nonfeasance.

    James R. Rogers

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  14. This is what we can say about the future of the Batflu: that we don’t know, and can’t. It may disappear tomorrow. It may grow suddenly much worse. It may seem to disappear, then return.

    But whatever it does, if we don’t get back to work, we will starve.

    Fear has been abetted, much of it for obvious political purposes by those who actually want to wreck the economy because they think it is the only way to defeat Trump, or advance their political agendas. This derangement is acute in politicians, not only left but right, who get a kind of erotic thrill from their newfound power, which they long to keep. It is reinforced by the arrogance of specialized “medical experts.”

    It will be interesting now to see whether this psychic “pandemic” can be tamed: whether people, long cowed by their Nanny States, will find the courage to resist the latest micromanagement.

    All trends are reversible, as I like to say. If we are unlucky, the human race will suffer instead. Courage is among the unpredictables.

    Essays in Idlenessby David Warren
    https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2020/04/28/isaiah-says/

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