Haha....I am not American but you're delusional if you think that what the US does has no impact on the world economy. Sure, we can all put up our virtual walls and try to cut ourselves off from the USA. We'll only get so far. We'll need USA to get its house in order for many things beyond triathlon.

This is an interesting visual (2017 data from world bank)

I think it would be useful if you did not get so divisive and get into the one upmanship about how awesome your country is. I gave you the example of India. They listened to science. Narendra Modi got up in front of the nation in the middle of March and set off the world's biggest lockdown on March 22nd. But where do all those people go? They actually got more undistanced by going into lockdown. A Wuhan/Western style lockdown was not going to work there. But eventually the nation can't manage economically and had to open up. Cases are going up, but deaths are relatively OK (20K out of 1.3B so far). But could they have implimented a South Korea style approach vs replicating Wuhan?

But don't say some countries just need to listen to science because some did and then caved to other pressures to get going again. I gave you India as an example who did, but they could not afford a western/Wuhan approach. Iran did too, but eventually they need to get society going and now its back to biz as usual and their curve shape looks very much like USA on how cases are rising, but sadly their new daily deaths are rising a lot.

Dude... this is not over yet so don't celebrate too soon. Florida was looking okay just a few weeks ago and our dumbass governor was on TV declaring mission accomplished and dissing the haters but now we're screwed beyond belief.

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What's your CdA?

I’m sorry but I know little of what Vermont is doing. However it is pretty common sense that places with lower densities won’t have as much trouble distancing.

As for how NZ could go wrong:
They are basically bunkering to let death pass like the last plague in The Ten Commandments. But if there is no good vaccine and the virus keep mutating and lingering around, then NZ will be stuck inside their house while that cloud of death is lingering outside the house. If it lingers for a long time what will happen is the Other countries will have all their exposures and deaths and have moved forward and covid will become like the flu. NZ will have to at some point get exposed and at the expense of having amassed a large debt, and shut down economy only to be back to what they wanted to avoid.

Now, that is a possibility but Obviously nobody knows how things will turn out. If I were them on an island, I would probably use my biggest asset which is being secluded on an island and do exactly what they are doing. The same strategy won’t work in most places though.

First of all I think the best thing to do is to compare western countries.
But I do not understand why it is divisive to point out facts. Facts like how open is the society at this stage. Traveling, Death rate, Or what the head of state is saying. Would it be divisive to reference what Merkel is saying, or is that just for the USA.

To have a fruitful discussion we have to look at facts.
Decisions have consequences.
If you base you policies on fairy tails you will be in trouble.

The virus is not political, politicians are.

I have no problem criticizing Norway. There are a lot of things in this country that I do not agree with.
But I also live in a place where my son went back to school in May. Where he could take part in track and team handball practices.
Where people mostly followed the guidelines.
Where mostly everything has been up and running during.
Where you can travel abroad, but of course not to Sweden.

Elections have consequences. And now we can see that clearly in different countries........

I didn't say that.

I'm reluctant to trade blows with an obviously expert economist such as yourself, Dev, but your chart (GDP) doesn't really support the argument you are making. A more useful graphic would be one that shows trade as a % of GDP, eg "Trade Openness".



The US has the 6th lowest trade to GDP ratio in the world (26% compared to the world average of 56%).

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/...are-of-gdp?tab=table

But even this doesn't tell the full story. Admittedly 26% of a massive GDP is still a large amount of trade. Also, this was 2017, arguably before you see the impact of Trump's tariff war.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that the rest of the world doesn't buy and sell a lot of stuff to and from the US. I didn't say what you think I said. Let me re-quote myself, verbatim.


Cheers, Rich.

Your argument about trade to gdp is backwards. Countries with low trade to gdp are either closed or very large economies. The US is a very large economy that produces most of what it needs. Singapore imports almost everything, including a lot from the US. The countries with high trade to GDP ratio need the US more than the US needs them.

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Andrew Inkpen

Agreed
Of course some small countries with very significant links to larger countries may suffer much more than others. Ireland for one is currently at risk on two fronts due to what I think most outsiders consider incompetent governance in both Britain and USA - two of Ireland's most important trading partners. Trump's US with or without Covid is a chaotic headache and Johnson's Brexit UK is perhaps even worse.
Still, as much as I hope things don't go down the toilet. I would take a small amount of consolation from seeing the arrogance, ignorance, and dishonesty of both laid bare.

I wasn't arguing what you think I was arguing. I was just pointing out that a chart showing GDP doesn't tell the story very well.

Yes, the US feeds and waters itself. The UK, for example, trades a great deal more as a %age of its GDP. The US is our single largest trade partner if you are thinking about individual countries, but we trade about 6x as much with EU member countries if you add them together.

I'm not going to re-quote myself a 2nd time though..

I think you would as well


I welcome that

Sorry, I thought you were arguing against Dev. I agree - a GDP chart does not say much.

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Andrew Inkpen

The virus only cares about humans, not what border we are sitting inside. You said countries should listen to science, and I gave you examples of countries that listened to science until their economies could not longer debt finance it because they are too poor, so you moved the needle and said, "western countries only" and I gave you Montana + Idaho + North and South Dakota having similar numbers to Norway and you said they don't count because they are isolated and Norwegians travel and people in those states do not (not sure what data you base that on, but I'll give it to you), so it seems like you want to just bring it back to Americans can't make correct decisions because their leader does not listen to science (I agree with you) and Norway is better than America because it does.

Achillesheal is basically saying that every country that squashes the virus (and I live in Canada where we are close) is still "stuck on our island" until a vaccine comes out because the virus is a bit out of hand worldwide

Its more a general reply that overall the rest of the world needs the US to have its house in order for things to get back on track first health wise and then after that normal society stuff. The rest of us may be able to survive for some time with the US limping along and us having our virtual virus walls, but eventually we get hurt being isolated from the US. Obviously in Canada it hurts us more than many other countries. Those countries that export into the US market will be hurt, or those who export to China who in turn export to US will be hurt.

For many reasons, some parts of long course triathlon will also be changed if the US has its house upside down.

Here's my one sided narrative, you have in the US over 140,000 dead, hundreds of thousands recuperating with unknown after effects, millions (and increasing) who have lost jobs, and lifestyles, mostly because almost everyone, especially the leaders, from the beginning, decided for themselves what level of care they were prepared to accept or offer. And people died, not because they had a choice but because in many cases they had no choice. And I imagine you have no concept of quite how obscene your one sentence was.

The tables you posted on your post June 30th.#332, showed US mortality rates that diverged very quickly and at a much younger age than the other table used as a comparison. I was remarking on the age difference.

And cautioning that Florida opening up, as it has, was risking those very age groups that appear to have a higher level of fatalities than Sweden for the same age. I was suggesting that Sweden's population and the US population is vastly different in makeup and some of those populations and economic groups are at a higher risk as a result.

That was going on three weeks ago, and time has changed the picture, unfortunately.

To be honest there's not much point in discussing Sweden, they are a basket case and the US is doing it's best to catch up and jump into the same basket.

No... those two tables were comparing percent of deaths by age between US and Sweden. That is totally different from mortality rates. The columns must sum to 100%; therefore if Sweden has a disproportionally large number of deaths in their older age groups, by definition, their younger age groups will make up a lower percentage. US, on the other hand, had slightly lower proportion of older deaths; therefore it must have a higher percentage of younger deaths. But, the CFR per each age group is a different calculation and has no relation to proportion of deaths by AG.

I do not have US CFR data handy to show what you thought the first chart was.

We in Norway can travel to most European countries. But not our neighbor Sweden.
Same with Denmark.
I think that sums up the "Swedish success"

That statement reflects a widespread misunderstanding of Sweden's approach. (I'm not advocating, just clarifying...)

Sweden believes that by avoiding strict lockdowns while protecting at-risk people, they could handle the infection moving through the population. By definition, Sweden should have more cases, and that would be a good thing, based on their their model. And, other countries that are taking the approach of a strict lockdown to try to stop the disease should block travel from Sweden.

Sweden's approach is going wrong in 2 ways:

1. They are not getting significantly higher infection rates than other countries (they are higher, but not higher enough to matter).
2. They are not protecting their at-risk population-- a greater proportion of elderly are dying compared to other countries, and their elderly CFR is very high.

Long term, Sweden could still prove to be the right approach, but we will not know that for a year or two. Currently, lockdowns do not stop or eliminate the disease, they merely slow it down. If Sweden's infection rates pick up, they could emerge from restrictions entirely while surrounding countries must perpetually lockdown their boarders and businesses.

This is Swedish success:

That alone might look good for Sweden, except that in the past two days of deaths for them, that is more than their neighbor Norway had in the last 3 months. And they did not avoid the financial crush we all had, and now no one gets to go in or out of the county for the foreseeable future. Which will keep crushing their economy, while Norway gets to open schools, business, with 5000+ less people dead.

But I get it, compared to us, Sweden is going to look like a huge success, like virtually every other country in the world that got this 3+ months ago when we did. We are fighting with Mexico and Brasil now for who can handle the it worst. And I hear we are now going to do away with testing all together, that should definitely bring our daily counts down..

Nope.

Is that suppose to be impressive.
Norway had 200 deaths April 25, now 21 of June it is 255. That is 55 new in almost 3 months. Sweden has that in a day.
Sweden is a death trap

Make a graph with
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Finland

All those are similar nordic countries.
One chose a different strategy.
One has a lot of dead people.
The others do not.

Many economists were cheering for the Swedish approach.
This show that economy is not a science, but a social science where opinions and not data and knowledge is the most important.

As oppposed to the absence of opinion in epidemiology and immunology, etc. Public policy is political by nature. Don't throw social science under the bus because politics exists.

8 players and 2 coaches for the Florida Marlins baseball team have tested positive for Covid-19. Good job Florida! We finally get baseball back and you're gonna ruin it. This is why we can't have nice things...

Don’t forget the entire NBA is here in FL as well. That’s a ticking time bomb. One of the dumbass players already broke the bubble quarantine to go to a strip club in Orlando.

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