International COVID-19 Megathread

[Lechasseur]

Though people are going to *need* some sort of indication when lockdowns will at least be eased soon  - otherwise a breakdown of its effectiveness, with chaotic and likely disastrous consequences, is inevitable.

In that context Austria is doing the right thing, even though timings can be questioned.

Yes agreed. Absolutely this.

[afleitch]

Though people are going to *need* some sort of indication when lockdowns will at least be eased soon  - otherwise a breakdown of its effectiveness, with chaotic and likely disastrous consequences, is inevitable.

In that context Austria is doing the right thing, even though timings can be questioned.

Given all mass sports events are off, most huge concerts etc (often the first measures taken) the summer already has a cleared schedule. Let workers back, shops open etc. Even cinemas have a cleared box office but could reopen with social distancing.

[Tender Branson]

What we’ll look like (after the lockdown, before the next hairdresser appointment):



(I’m the guy in 3rd row, left)

[FrancoAgo]

Just for get your attention, today i see with more attention the data from Lombardy and that from the National, so the "recovered" number w/o hospitalization of Lombardy is propaganda, they call so that positive in home isolation 

[Green Line]

Pray for Boris.  😥

[Helsinkian]

What we’ll look like (after the lockdown, before the next hairdresser appointment):

I shaved my head into a buzzcut a few days ago because of this.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Pray for Boris.  😥

Why him and not Bolsonaro? Where's the poetic justice in this?

Bolso could have shot himself up with hydroxychloroquine and everybody would have won.

[Fight for Trump]

Pray for Boris.  😥

They found out he was critically low on intelligence.

[President Johnson]

Hopefully BoJo recovers soon.

While Austria wants to start listing first restrictions, Merkel today said there is no such timetable for Germany.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://www.ft.com/content/f21cf708-759e-11ea-ad98-044200cb277f
Coronavirus: Is Europe losing Italy?
Furious at their plight being ignored and over resistance to coronabonds, Italians’ sense of betrayal deepens

A year ago Carlo Calenda ran in European parliamentary elections in Italy under the slogan “We are Europeans”, a rallying cry to defend his country’s place in the EU at a time of rising nationalism.

Now even Mr Calenda, a 46-year-old former minister and Italian permanent representative to the EU, is experiencing a crisis of faith in an idea he has spent a lifetime fighting for. 

“This is an existential threat, I am not sure if we are going to make it,” he says. “You have to consider my party is one of the most pro-European parties in Italy and I now have members writing to me saying: ‘Why do we want to stay in the EU? It is useless.’” 

[...]

“A massive, massive shift is happening in Italy. You have thousands of pro-Europeans moving to this position,” says Mr Calenda, who leads the recently formed liberal Action party.

[...]

There are already signs that Italian faith in the EU has been damaged. In a survey conducted last month by Tecnè, 67 per cent of respondents said they believed being part of the union was a disadvantage for their country, up from 47 per cent in November 2018.

A lot of damage has already been done.
There'll be HUGE economical damage for Italy, Spain and possible France. Will Germanic Countries want to pay? I don't know. I doubt it.


https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1246397358000267264

[Mike88]

Austria and Portugal accused of stockpiling drugs, causing shortages of coronavirus drugs in EU:

https://twitter.com/ReutersBiz/status/1247308169900105729

BRUSSELS, April 6 (Reuters) - Hospitals in the European Union are facing shortages of critical drugs to treat COVID-19 patients because of trade restrictions and excessive stockpiling by EU governments, EU and industry officials said on Monday.

Despite several calls for solidarity, many of the 27 EU nations have resorted to protectionist measures during the coronavirus outbreak, restricting sales of essential products, such as medicines, face masks and medical devices.

“Some EU member states have indicated that they are starting to see shortages of certain medicines used for patients with COVID-19 or are expecting such shortages to occur very soon,” the European Medicines Agency said in a statement.

(...)

Austria and Portugal are among EU states that are excessively stockpiling, said Kasper Ernest, secretary general of Affordable Medicines Europe, the trade body for pharmaceutical wholesalers.
TRADE CURBS

Many countries have also restricted the export of drugs that are deemed essential during the epidemic. Under some of these curbs, only when national needs are fulfilled, medicines can be exported. The restrictions hit mostly distributors.

The European Commission, the EU executive arm, is probing the legality of measures adopted by France, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, a spokeswoman for the EU commission said on Monday, adding that trade restrictions also apply to medical gear and devices.

(...)

[Meclazine for Israel]

OK,

After looking at the data yesterday, I have modelled the new data using anticipated recoveries from Italy, Spain and Germany.

The modus operandi is this: After 2-3 weeks, a positive diagnosis must end in one of two outcomes: a fatality or a recovery. Assuming deaths are correct, and based on the numbers reported, it is clear that recoveries are not being listed after three weeks at the right volume. I am predicting that we are missing around 92,500 recoveries in the data from Spain, Italy and Germany alone.

Hence I have added in the following recovery rates for these countries 2-3 weeks following a positive test:

• Spain: 3,500 per day (Total: 24,000 missing)
• Italy: 4,000 per day (Total 51,000 missing)
• Germany 3,000 per day (Total 17,500 missing)

Thanks to FrancoAgo who confirmed yesterday that the Lombardy region has actually more recoveries (28,000) alone in their region in reality than what Italy is reporting as a whole (21,000). It makes sense that medical professionals are not visiting people at home to test them if they are free of the virus. Who would want to visit 60 positively tested people per day to conduct a medical assessment on their status?

These additional numbers were added on the dates 2-3 weeks following the date where new cases were reported coming in at a similar rate.

Rather than wait for these countries to suddenly report a large number of recoveries on one day:



Recoveries from Australia

...I will be adding the anticipated rate of recoveries now to get more interpretable information from the 'Active Case' curves.

Once these anticipated recoveries are incorporated into the European data, the growth curves now look like this:



Where these curves dip down through the zero growth line illustrates the date at which the peak of Active Cases is reached.

[parochial boy]

First day under 600 new cases yesterday, and a drop on deaths too. A weekend effect, but the numbers are still well below the last two weekends.

We've started having discussions about "when do we open up" again, by which I mean the (who else?) SVP have been whining (what else?) about it. By which I mean, Magdalena Martullo-Blocher (Christoph's daughter, obviously), the Graubünden MP who refuses to live there, has been whining because the multinational she owns is losing money. There is, again, a cultural divide, the Romand politicians shooting down any attempts to open things up again. A Vaud UDC/SVP politician was even heard saying something along the lines of "those stupid Germans care more about their wallets than our health", so some divisions in that party bubbling up.

[lfromnj]

https://www.ad.nl/politiek/kamer-steunt-hoekstra-in-verzet-tegen-eurobonds~a622e58d/
Netherlands parliament rejects Eurobonds

[brucejoel99]

https://www.ad.nl/politiek/kamer-steunt-hoekstra-in-verzet-tegen-eurobonds~a622e58d/
Netherlands parliament rejects Eurobonds

The EU must have heavily f**ked up if they got the Netherlands of all places to stand firm against an EU policy.

[urutzizu]

The thing is, what is proposed here are not Eurobonds, at least not in the way that the Term has always been understood.

What Eurobonds are understood as, ever since they were proposed during the Euro crisis, is effectively a communitization of (mainly Southern European) Debt as the responsibility of all Euro countries. This is something that, as DavidB said in another thread, is DOA in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, and something even quite progressive and pro-EU voters here like myself are suspicious about.

But these proposed "Corona-Bonds" are something else entirely. They are, yes, common Bonds guaranteed by all Euro countries, but they would not affect Debt currently held by Italy (which would remain their exclusive responsibility) nor would they affect any future debts incurred by the spending of their national governments (which would also remain their responsibility). The money borrowed would only cover healing the damage caused to Europe (esp. IT and ES) through this Virus, something those Countries would not be able to do, because Bonds guaranteed solely by their Governments would have unsustainable BBB or so interest rates, which they cannot afford. And, crucially, the Money would not be spent by their Governments, but by the EU commission, which is of course led by a conservative German woman. Germans will not trust Italian politicans, but we should be able to trust one of our own, surely? Lastly, one of the main reasons why many people here were unhappy about Eurobonds back in the day, was because it was seen as bailing out Countries, who (or rather who's politicians) were at least partially responsible for the mess they created. A view that probably had at least a degree of legitimacy. No one, I think, would suggest that this is the case this time round.    

It is really sad in my opinion that the whole debate degenerated into "AHHH EUROBONDS", with almost no differentiation or substantive discussion about the actual proposal at hand. I don't blame you for calling them Eurobonds, because that is the way that this discussion has rather unwittingly been framed, but I think it has been a big strategic misstep by Conte, Sanchez et. al. that they did not make the distinction clear from the beginning.

But now it's done, and if we have really learned nothing here and stick our heads in the sand, then we can probably say good bye to the EU in all but name, and watch Italy and Spain become de facto client states of China and Russia. Something it would be hard to blame them for, to be honest.

[parochial boy]

But these proposed "Corona-Bonds" are something else entirely. They are, yes, common Bonds guaranteed by all Euro countries, but they would not affect Debt currently held by Italy (which would remain their exclusive responsibility) nor would they affect any future debts incurred by the spending of their national governments (which would also remain their responsibility). The money borrowed would only cover healing the damage caused to Europe (esp. IT and ES) through this Virus, something those Countries would not be able to do, because Bonds guaranteed solely by their Governments would have unsustainable BBB or so interest rates, which they cannot afford. And, crucially, the Money would not be spent by their Governments, but by the EU commission, which is of course led by a conservative German woman. Germans will not trust Italian politicans, but we should be able to trust one of our own, surely? Lastly, one of the main reasons why many people here were unhappy about Eurobonds back in the day, was because it was seen as bailing out Countries, who (or rather who's politicians) were at least partially responsible for the mess they created. A view that probably had at least a degree of legitimacy. No one, I think, would suggest that this is the case this time round.  

Which really makes it quite hard for any sort of moral justification to oppose them. What's the issue for the Netherlands, really? A marginally higher interest rate on their own debt, coupled with the risk of eventually having to cough up for and Italian/Spanish bail out? I mean, what does Mr Rutte think the impact on his own economy that the break-up of the Eurozone, even the EU would be? Does he think that Amazon and Unilever and all those other nice companies that use his country to siphon money off to the Cayman Islands would be so happy and friendly if suddenly there were capital controls on money coming into the Netherlands from all of these much larger markets?

The thing that I am holding out on is that at least there has been some sort of an intellectual sea change on the question. When you have a guy like Michael Hüther publically revising his opinion; or even a newspaper like the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (not a friend of fiscal profligacy, or the EU for that matter), starting to criticise the frugal four then you are starting to run out of an intellectual justification for your insistance. At the very least, if Spain and Italy and France keep up the pressure then there might be some compromise over very low interest loans decoupled from any conditions.

[lfromnj]

https://www.esm.europa.eu/assistance/programme-database/conditionality

Why is conditionality so opposed ?

[Lechasseur]

https://m.programme-tv.net/news/tv/252583-une-epidemie-cachee-lestimation-inquietante-de-ce-medecin-sur-le-nombre-reel-de-personnes-contaminees/amp/

According to one doctor in France who appeared on a show on TF1 (one of France's main public TV channels), for every person who's been officially diagnosed with COVID-19, there are 100 who have been contaminated.

So France probably has at least 7,5 million people infected, over 10% of the population.

[FrancoAgo]

Just for get your attention, today i see with more attention the data from Lombardy and that from the National, so the "recovered" number w/o hospitalization of Lombardy is propaganda, they call so that positive in home isolation 

I noticed you don't see this

[Mike88]

Portugal update:

12,442 cases as of today (+6% compared with yesterday), 345 deaths (+34), and 184 fully recovered (+44).

Specialists are now considering that Portugal is being successful in flattening the curve:
https://twitter.com/dntwit/status/1247477973323743232

The effect of social isolation: new cases of # covid_19 slow down in #Portugal. Three experts explain what comes next: http://bit.ly/2RiY1sh

Also, more than 121,000 tests have been done.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Confirmed cases: 4848
Suspected cases: 2476
Deaths: 129
Recoveries: 191

Official deaths started to spike since yesterday. A few hours ago it was 112 or something close to that.

[President Johnson]

Germany:
106,297 total infections
1,895 deaths
31,000+ recovered


I just found out that my county ranks #11 in Germany (out of 294) in total infections. It stood at 1,028 this morning (population is close to 400,000). Two bordering counties are even in the top 10 nationwide.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

But these proposed "Corona-Bonds" are something else entirely. They are, yes, common Bonds guaranteed by all Euro countries, but they would not affect Debt currently held by Italy (which would remain their exclusive responsibility) nor would they affect any future debts incurred by the spending of their national governments (which would also remain their responsibility). The money borrowed would only cover healing the damage caused to Europe (esp. IT and ES) through this Virus, something those Countries would not be able to do, because Bonds guaranteed solely by their Governments would have unsustainable BBB or so interest rates, which they cannot afford. And, crucially, the Money would not be spent by their Governments, but by the EU commission, which is of course led by a conservative German woman. Germans will not trust Italian politicans, but we should be able to trust one of our own, surely? Lastly, one of the main reasons why many people here were unhappy about Eurobonds back in the day, was because it was seen as bailing out Countries, who (or rather who's politicians) were at least partially responsible for the mess they created. A view that probably had at least a degree of legitimacy. No one, I think, would suggest that this is the case this time round.  

Which really makes it quite hard for any sort of moral justification to oppose them. What's the issue for the Netherlands, really? A marginally higher interest rate on their own debt, coupled with the risk of eventually having to cough up for and Italian/Spanish bail out? I mean, what does Mr Rutte think the impact on his own economy that the break-up of the Eurozone, even the EU would be? Does he think that Amazon and Unilever and all those other nice companies that use his country to siphon money off to the Cayman Islands would be so happy and friendly if suddenly there were capital controls on money coming into the Netherlands from all of these much larger markets?

The thing that I am holding out on is that at least there has been some sort of an intellectual sea change on the question. When you have a guy like Michael Hüther publically revising his opinion; or even a newspaper like the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (not a friend of fiscal profligacy, or the EU for that matter), starting to criticise the frugal four then you are starting to run out of an intellectual justification for your insistance. At the very least, if Spain and Italy and France keep up the pressure then there might be some compromise over very low interest loans decoupled from any conditions.

I guess, same reason as why you can't give citizenship to Dreamers without fixing the broken immigration system - you'll give incentive to more people to come to US illegally.

Germany, Netherlands and, in fact, all Germanic Countries, are afraid that there will be more and more "special" bonds and no structural progress.

12 years after financial crisis and Southern Countries (esp Italy) hasn't rebounded yet. Pre-corona!

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?end=2018&locations=IT-ES-DE-NL-FR-US&start=1990&view=chart

This time they'll probably get what they want, because too big to fail?

[Zinneke]

Call the Dutch bluff, collapse the euro, watch their savings go tits up.