COVID-19 notes:
Rt Covid-19: two months ago, the Rt was above 1 in only 5 states; now, the Rt is above 1 in 34 US states (up from 29 when I snipped this just 4 days ago)
Long read (grab a coffee; only for the
historically-inclined) The Shape of
Epidemics
This essay sketches this backstory of epidemic waves, which falls roughly
into three eras: waves emerge first as a device of data visualization, then
evolve into an object of mathematical modeling and causal investigation and
finally morph into a tool of persuasion, intervention, and governance. … We
live now in a third era, in which the imagery of epidemic waves is widely
mobilized in both public health and public culture to describe, prognosticate,
and urge—to ask people to band together to “flatten the curve.”
'Recovered' doesn't
mean healthy again
Scientists just
beginning to understand the many health problems caused by COVID-19
only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the
novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and
health systems for years to come… “We thought this was only a respiratory
virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes
after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate
that in the beginning,”
Watch: It’s not
just the lungs: The Covid-19 virus attacks like no other ‘respiratory’
infection
What if we
hadn't locked down? Studies show we saved many millions of lives
COVID-19 case
clusters offer lessons and warnings for reopening
Outbreaks in restaurants, offices and other venues could guide strategies
for lifting social distancing guidelines
Open letter to Ontario Health Officials from Medical
Science Community (Dr. David Fisman (UofT) et al): Masks4Canada
Specifically, we recommend mandatory masking policies in ‘ACT’:
All indoor spaces outside the
home (such as schools, shops)
Crowds (anywhere that it difficult
to distance from others)
Transit (public transportation)
Coronavirus
traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows
if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than
the scientific community thought.
How the world
missed COVID19’s silent spread.
Symptomless transmission makes the coronavirus far harder to fight. But
health officials dismissed the risk for months, pushing misleading and
contradictory claims in the face of mounting evidence.
Must read: How to Lose
Control of an Epidemic (like COVID-19)
Regular Related Fare:
How Did COVID-19
and Stabilization Policies Affect Spending and Employment?
A New Real-Time Economic Tracker Based on Private
Sector Data
As per BCA June 26: An Expected Yet Sobering Downgrade: Wednesday’s World Economic Outlook update from the IMF was not surprising to most market participants, but it highlighted the sobering reality facing both investors and policymakers over the coming year. The IMF noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a more negative impact on activity in the first half of the year than they originally anticipated in their April forecast, and downgraded their expectations for global growth for 2020 by roughly 2 percentage points. The IMF also downwardly revised its expectations for the magnitude of recovery in 2021, driven largely by lower projected growth next year for emerging and developing Asia, Japan, and the US. The IMF highlighted that, for the first time in WEO history, all regions are projected to experience negative growth in 2020. For the global economy, the IMF expects growth this year to be -5%, made up of a -3% growth rate in emerging and developing economies, and a -8% growth rate in advanced economies.
Reopening from
the Great Lockdown: Uneven and Uncertain Recovery
WTO: Trade falls
steeply in first half of 2020
CPB Netherlands Bureau for
Economic Policy Analysis: World Trade
Monitor
Jobs Hit Is Four
Times Worse for Low-Paid Workers, Fed Analysts Say
State, local
governments need billions more in aid to avert 4 million layoffs, Moody’s finds
Default Wave
Arrives: Weekly Bankruptcy Filings Suddenly Soar Most In 11 Years
What Happens When a Mall Goes Dark?
Durable Goods
orders bounce back, somewhat (on a year-over-year basis,
durable goods orders remain down 21.4%)
US Spending
Surges At Record Pace In May As Government Wages Crash
Not COVID-19,
Watch For The Second Wave of GFC2
From my 3rd-fave economist, Stephen Moore (right behind #2 Art
Laffer and #1 Dave Malpass):
The Blue State
Jobs Depression: “This is not a coronavirus
recession. It is a blue state lockdown recession”
just in case… that was tongue-in-cheek, by the way; my actual top 3 are Steve Keen, James K Galbraith and … perhaps Michael Hudson:
Michael Hudson
discusses the deflationary impact of the coronacrisis and how modern, misguided
approaches to unsustainable debt loads are making matters worse.
What's Wrong
With America? "The Despair Is Smoldering in Society"
Millions of Americans have seen their wages stagnate for decades, even as
the wealthiest have grown fantastically rich. Economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case believe the health-care
system is partly to blame, and the coronavirus is highlighting the broader
dangers American society is facing.
Regular Fare:
Austria's
100-Year Bond Sale Is 8x Oversubscribed
Three years ago, taking advantage of an unprecedented collapse in global interest
rates Austria issued €6BN in 100 year bonds with a 2.1% coupon due 2117, with
the resulting issue becoming one of the best performing "serious"
assets in subsequent years returning as much as 140% in early March of 2020,
before stabilizing around a price of 190 cents on the dollar amid a frenzied
chase of any kind of duration in a world that is rapidly sinking into a
deflationary singularity. Today, Austria went for round two, issuing another €2BN in 100Y bonds,
only this time with the stunning yield of just 0.88%. That's right: in the
deflationary wasteland that is the "New Abnormal", investors are
willing to lock in a paltry return below 1% for 100 years, and they are doing
so in droves: the issue was 8x oversubscribed
Four Narratives
About Central Banks
fwiw, I very much concur with the author’s conclusion
Bubble Fare:
The Felder Report: The Biggest
Disconnect Between Prices And Profits In Stock Market History?
Other Fare:
Daniel Kahneman, Steven Pinker And Shami Chakrabarti Discuss Risk, Rationality And Coronavirus
Economic Development and the Death of the Free Market
Abstract: Free markets are, according to neoclassical economic theory,
the most efficient way of organizing human activity. The claim is that individuals
can benefit society by acting only in their self interest. In contrast, the
evolutionary theory of multilevel selection proposes that groups must suppress
the self interest of individuals. They often do so, the evidence suggests, by
using hierarchical organization. To test these conflicting theories, I
investigate how the 'degree of hierarchy' in societies changes with industrial
development. I find that as energy use increases, governments tend to get
larger and the relative number of managers tends to grow. Using a numerical
model, I infer from this evidence that societies tend to become more
hierarchical as energy use grows. This result is inconsistent with the
neoclassical theory that individual self-interest is what benefits society. But
it is consistent with the theory of multilevel selection, in which groups
suppress the self-interest of their members.
[The abstract is a bit dry,
but the topic is not, and is related to stuff I’ve referenced before from Tim : Morgan, Tim : Garrett, and Nate : Hagens, for instance; if that just whet your
appetite, see also: Tom: Murphy, George: Mobus, Gail: Tverberg, Darrin: Qualman, William: Rees, Ronald: Wright etc.]
Geopolitical Fare:
Ethiopia's Nile Dam Dispute Must Be Solved Soon
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Why it’s so damn
hot in the Arctic right now
Beyond a climate
of comfortable ignorance
Kevin Anderson et al: A factor of two:
how the mitigation plans of ‘climate progressive’ nations fall far short of
Paris-compliant pathways
The Paris Agreement establishes an international covenant to reduce
emissions in line with holding the increase in temperature to ‘well below 2°C … and to pursue … 1.5°C.’ Global modelling studies
have repeatedly concluded that such commitments can be delivered through
technocratic adjustments to contemporary society, principally price mechanisms
driving technical change. However, as emissions have continued to rise, so these
models have come to increasingly rely on the extensive deployment of highly
speculative negative emissions technologies (NETs). Moreover, in determining
the mitigation challenges for industrialized nations, scant regard is paid to
the language and spirit of equity enshrined in the Paris Agreement. If,
instead, the mitigation agenda of ‘developed country Parties’ is determined
without reliance on planetary scale NETs and with genuine regard for equity and
‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, the
necessary rates of mitigation increase markedly. This is evident even when
considering the UK and Sweden, two nations at the forefront of developing
‘progressive’ climate change legislation and with clear emissions pathways and/or
quantitative carbon budgets. In both cases, the carbon budgets underpinning
mitigation policy are halved, the immediate mitigation rate is increased to
over 10% per annum, and the time to deliver a fully decarbonized energy system
is brought forward to 2035-40. Such a challenging mitigation agenda implies
profound changes to many facets of industrialized economies. This conclusion is
not drawn from political ideology, but rather is a direct consequence of the
international community’s obligations under the Paris Agreement and the small
and rapidly dwindling global carbon budget.
Key Policy Insights
· Without a belief in the
successful deployment of planetary scale negative emissions technologies,
double-digit annual mitigation rates are required of developed countries, from
2020, if they are to align their policies with the Paris Agreement’s
temperature commitments and principles of equity.
· Paris-compliant carbon
budgets for developed countries imply full decarbonization of energy by
2035-40, necessitating a scale of change in physical infrastructure reminiscent
of the post-Second World War Marshall Plan. This brings issues of values,
measures of prosperity and socio-economic inequality to the fore.
· The stringency of
Paris-compliant pathways severely limits the opportunity for inter-sectoral
emissions trading. Consequently aviation, as with all sectors, will need to
identify policies to reduce emissions to zero, directly or through the use of
zero carbon fuels.
MIT: Study:
Reflecting sunlight to cool the planet will cause other global changes
“This work highlights that solar geoengineering is not reversing climate
change, but is substituting one unprecedented climate state for another,”
Gertler says. “Reflecting sunlight isn’t a perfect counterbalance to the
greenhouse effect.”
Adds O’Gorman: “There are multiple reasons to avoid doing this, and
instead to favor reducing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.”
Uncertainties in
Climate and Weather Extremes Increase the Cost of Carbon
Steve Keen video: Thermodynamics
2.0 keynote: Macroeconomics, Minsky, & fraud in Neoclassical climate change
economics
The conference organizers state that Thermodynamics 2.0 is about the
"bisociation of thermodynamics with other academic disciplines such as
physics, biology, sociology, economics... It is about merging two cultures, not
just bridging the gap."
I argue proper scientific methods should take economics over, not merge
with what is currently there. I show
that macroeconomics doesn't need microeconomics, illustrate modeling both
financial dynamics and pandemics using the Minsky system dynamics software,
& expose the appallingly bad work of Neoclassical climate change
economists.
Climate change has become
intertwined with the global economy. Here, we describe the importance of
inertia to continued growth in energy consumption. Drawing from thermodynamic
arguments, and using 38 years of available statistics between 1980 to 2017, we
find a persistent time-independent scaling between the historical time integral W of
world inflation-adjusted economic production Y, or W(t)=∫t0Y(t′)dt′,
and current rates of world primary energy consumption E, such that λ=E/W=5.9±0.1 Gigawatts
per trillion 2010 US dollars. This empirical result implies that population
expansion is a symptom rather than a cause of the current exponential rise
in E and carbon dioxide emissions C, and that it is past
innovation of economic production efficiency Y/E that has been the
primary driver of growth, at predicted rates that agree well with data. Options
for stabilizing C are then limited to rapid decarbonization
of E through sustained implementation of over one Gigawatt of
renewable or nuclear power capacity per day. Alternatively, assuming continued
reliance on fossil fuels, civilization could shift to a steady-state economy
that devotes economic production exclusively to maintenance rather than
expansion. If this were instituted immediately, continual energy consumption
would still be required, so atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would not
balance natural sinks until concentrations exceeded 500 ppmv, and double
pre-industrial levels if the steady-state was attained by 2030.
'Humans are not
prepared to protect nature'
Why do we find it so hard to change our behavior? German philosopher
Peter Sloterdijk explains how this is connected to the climate crisis.
Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological
annihilation and the sixth mass extinction
The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental
threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible.
Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species
have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is human
caused and accelerating. The acceleration of the extinction crisis is certain
because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates
Tweets of the Week:
Lisa Abramowicz: Corporate-bond defaults have
surged to a record high in Q2, even as central banks double down on their
support of credit markets
Danielle DiMartino Booth’s response:
The Fed is postponing, not preventing insolvencies. Imagine what this
chart would look like without the Fed willing spread tightening to ensure
zombies retain access to the junk bond markets. Half of the corporate bond
defaults worldwide and this party is not anywhere near over.
Martin L. Pall, PhD, Prof Emeritus of Biochemistry &
Basic Medical Sciences at WSU: “Putting in tens of millions of #5G antennae
without a single biological test of safety has got to be about the stupidest
idea anyone has had in the history of the world.”
This is scary-ridiculous and
ridiculous-scary: 45C!... in the Arctic circle!
Many air Thermometer records
have recently been broken in #Siberia. On 19 June Land Surface Temperature (LST) reached
45°C at several locations in the #Arctic Circle
Why scary? As Prof Nick Cowern says: This is the land of permafrost, trapped CO2
and methane.
Observed temperature anomaly (from GISSTEMP) over June 2019 - May
2020 vs projected average temperature
anomaly from 34 CMIP6 climate models over 2016-2025 using the worse scenario
ssp585. Unfortunately observations confirm the worse[case] IPCC projections...
Just a reminder: CMIP-6 models have higher climate
sensitivity than the previous one
Pic of the Week:
Quote(s) of the Week:
Taleb: “It's quite offensive to see people are
politicizing something like transmission of a disease. Without masks, we can't
pull out of this. Lockdowns are very expensive for society. Masks are not.”
Stephen Waldman: “It is an act of criminal malfeasance that
the United States’ federal government has not eased the tremendous fiscal
pressure on states and municipalities, enabling them to prioritize public
health and long-term economic wealth over immediate maintenance of tax revenue.”
“Human life is confusing. A
human’s purpose in life is to make it less so. The healthiest desire a human
can have is for confusion and obfuscation to be replaced with clear seeing.
This means wanting the truth to be revealed, whether it be for matters as large
as the global-scale agendas of secretive power structures, or matters as small
as the delusion-based mental habits hidden in your own subconscious. For the
lover of truth, it’s all the same desire.”
EXTRA (dog-lovers beware) FARE:
Other Fare:
7 Things in Our Universe That Have Astronomers Scratching Their Heads
Over 150 College Athletes Contracted Coronavirus After Being Pressured to Practice
Are Swedes Shunned for High Covid Rates—or Is It Really ABBA?
April Pot Sales Grew Like A Weed During Lockdowns
(potentially objectionable) Fare:
Dog meat festival opens in China but activists hope it is for last time
From 2018: Vegetarian Actor Ricky Gervais Speaks Out Against Yulin Dog Meat Festival
Extra Fun Fare:
Facebook Announces Plan To Break Up U.S. Government Before It Becomes Too Powerful
Study Finds Gap Widening Between Rich Pets And Poor Americans
Trump Defies Liberals By Chugging Entire Bottle Of Aunt Jemima Syrup
The Juice Media Honest Government Ad of the Week:
Coronavirus: Economic Recovery (DERP)
