International COVID-19 Megathread

[Former President tack50]

Since nobody is doing a rundown of coronavirus in Spain, here is the summary.

Total cases: 1221
Casualties: 34
Healed people: 29

All 17 Spanish autonomous communities have at least 1 case of Coronavirus, though the 2 towns in Northern Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) still have none.

By far the largest amount of cases, at 577 is located in Madrid, with La Rioja, the Basque Country and Cantabria all having more than 100 cases.

Today classes were cancelled for 2 weeks starting tomorrow in Madrid and the province of Álava (Basque Country)

[Former President tack50]

...And Euro 2020 has been postponed for twelve months

Ugh, this hasn't happened since WWII? That's insane.

Actually, first time ever considering the Euro soccer cup only exists since 1960.

[Former President tack50]

Not 100% purely related I know; but Kalwejt, I demand an explanation

Translation according to some reddit user:

Translation:

>Attention! Attention! Important information

>Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused panic, and burdened us with many new tasks and sometimes unpredictable behavior from many people, who expect from us and other public services constant assistance, *we ask you to stop all criminal/shameful/indecent activities until further notice*

>We appreciate the expected cooperation in refraining from committing crimes and offenses, and thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding. We will notify you in a separate announcement when you can return to daily criminal activities and continue the old cops-and-robbers arrangement

[Former President tack50]

So at which point will the human (not just the economic toll) of the lockdown become too much to bear? I mean there are all kinds of repercussions for mental health issues that 20-30% unemployment brings with it. It is rather worrying that there are so few voices that question the approach that has been chosen.

To be fair, Greece and Spain weathered 25%+ unemployment for several years, so it would not be the end of the world. My very own corner of Spain saw unemployment rates as high as 35% (Q3 2013). Of course, there are a bunch of cultural and economic differences that explain why unemployment in Spain or Greece is way higher than the rest of the EU, but still; if unemployment ""only"" rises to 25% it will actually be a lesser concern compared to other areas of the economy.

[Former President tack50]

So at which point will the human (not just the economic toll) of the lockdown become too much to bear? I mean there are all kinds of repercussions for mental health issues that 20-30% unemployment brings with it. It is rather worrying that there are so few voices that question the approach that has been chosen.

To be fair, Greece and Spain weathered 25%+ unemployment for several years, so it would not be the end of the world. My very own corner of Spain saw unemployment rates as high as 35% (Q3 2013). Of course, there are a bunch of cultural and economic differences that explain why unemployment in Spain or Greece is way higher than the rest of the EU, but still; if unemployment ""only"" rises to 25% it will actually be a lesser concern compared to other areas of the economy.

Which other areas of the economy are you thinking of?

Mostly the big GDP drop, the complete freeze on a lot of economic activity and the future restrictions on movement and what not. Of course those are correlated to unemployment (and unemployment is a lagging indicator as well)

Not to mention the psychological consequences on people, but that is besides the point.

In any case, I do think that if unemployment ""only"" rises to the 20-25% range it will still be manegable, especially considering the fundamentals of the economy are "better" than in 2008 (I expect a much faster recovery and no double dip recession for example).

Of course, it will still suck a lot, we should not lie to ourselves. Spain or Greece circa 2013 were not pretty, but it's well within living memory so we can get an idea of what to be prepared for (hope for the best, but prepare for the worst)

[Former President tack50]

For what's worth China seems that it will be lifting tomorrow the lockdown on Hubei province (but not the city of Wuhan where it all started).

Hubei was locked down on the 23rd of January, so if China is the example to follow, we are looking at roughly 2 months of lockdown, probably a bit more since it seems China was more effective at stopping it than Europe or the US.

As for the economic consequences, China's outbreak was very regional and localized so we can't extrapolate much from it. Still, from what I can tell before Covid China was expected to grow by about 5-6%, while now projections have China on the 2-3% range. That means that a regional and localized outbreak caused a GDP drop of roughly 3% if projections are right.

If this 3% drop extrapolated to Western countries (this measure will vastly underestimate the economic impact considering no western country has a regional outbreak, they are all national), some growth numbers for 2020 would be:

USA: -1%
Canada: -1.5%

EU-27: -1.5%
Germany: -2%
France: -2%
Italy: -3%
Spain: -1.5%
Poland: +0.5%

More likely these numbers underestimate the impact by a couple percentage points. So I would expect recessions on the order of 3-4% for most Western countries. This should be roughly comparable to the Great Recession of 2008 if I am not mistaken.

These numbers are also yearly for 2020, which means that numbers like say "Q2 GDP drops by 25%!" will be followed by equally as shocking headlines of "Q3 GDP rises by 15%!"

[Former President tack50]

Ha, surprising how mediocre Switzerland is on both the hospital beds and intensive care beds, despite having, by some distance, the most expensive healthcare system in Europe.

Maybe the private insurance model isn't all it's cracked up to be?

To be fair Switzerland has the most expensive everything in Europe

[Former President tack50]

Viktor Orban Takes Sole Command of Hungary With Pandemic Emergency Law

Hungary’s parliament handed Prime Minister Viktor Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, effectively putting the European Union democracy under his sole command for as long as he sees fit.

[...]

Hungary’s ruling party lawmakers overrode the objections of the opposition in a vote on Monday, handing Orban the right to bypass the assembly on any law. The Constitutional Court, which Orban has stacked with loyalists, will be the main body capable of reviewing government actions.

[...]

[Justice Minister Judit] Varga asked journalists not to “distort” facts, a crime the legislation makes punishable by as long as five years in jail for anyone deemed hampering the virus fight.

[...]

Orban’s track record indicates he may not give up the powers quickly. His anti-immigrant Fidesz party has continuously renewed a “state of emergency for mass immigration,” announced after the 2015 refugee crisis, even after the number of asylum seekers arriving to Hungary plunged.

https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1244635908424548354?s=19
https://twitter.com/balazscseko/status/1244612142831198209?s=19

This is how I am picturing Orban right now

[Former President tack50]

Well thanks for the daily dose of communist propaganda. Anyone whose been to China knows it’s a horrible place. Seems way poorer than Vietnam despite having 4x the per capita gdp. I’m pretty sure they inflate a lot of the their metrics. Like by not counting any infant mortality to boost their life expectancy.

Is this now an Atlas meme or what?

Everybody knows China is a horrible place for many reasons. The economy is not one of them, and it is a country that is growing rapidly. While not first world by any means, it is a solidly middle income country.

[Former President tack50]

Well the Spanish government has finally presented the "opening up" plan. It will be done in several stages with the "new normal" being reached at the end of June if everything goes according to plan.

[Former President tack50]

Shopping Centers started reopening yesterday in Chile as daily new cases hit a new record of 888 new infections. Piñera wants to reopen schools at some point in May.

I guess Piñera wants his approval to become even lower?

[Former President tack50]

Meh, Germany's reproduction rate yesterday rose to 1.1. Hopefully this isn't a trend, because it means the numbers start rising again.

Isn't the R figure based on comparing cases recorded per day? Also, it's a flawed measure, because no-one infects 1.1 people.

That's not how maths work I am pretty sure. Iirc an R of 2 would mean that every person infects 2 people in turn right? Therefore an R of 1.1 should mean that on average each person would infect 1.1 other people. Or if you prefer integers, that a group of 10 people on average would turn on to infect 11 others.

Or for the more mathematically inclined, the equation would be something like f(x)=R^n where R would be the R value and n would be the "generation" correct? (basically a function of time)

I am not an epidemiologist or really know what R value is though, so anyone can correct me if I am wrong.

[Former President tack50]

Yeah the Spanish response to coronavirus has been an absolute disaster marked by chaos, rectification after rectification and what not.

It is certainly a candidate for top 5 worst response worldwide in my opinion

[Former President tack50]

Yeah the Spanish response to coronavirus has been an absolute disaster marked by chaos, rectification after rectification and what not.

It is certainly a candidate for top 5 worst response worldwide in my opinion

As bad as UK/US/Brazil?

I mean yeah, certainly. The numbers do not lie. Not sure if quite top 5, but we are certainly in the top 10 worst responses. I suppose the unholy trio of Johnson, Trump and Bolsonaro are even worse.

I will say that the main problem in the Spanish case has mostly been incompetence rather than actively taking bad decisions like say Bolsonaro or Boris Johnson; but it does not make it any better. The Spanish government had the right decisions for the most part but implemented in the worst ways possible. In that regard it sort of reminds me of Belgium though I am not sure how accurate this comparison would be.

I also can't give the government a good score simply because we are number 3 worldwide in terms of deaths only behind Belgium and the UK (excluding microstates) and literally number 1 in the world in terms of cases (again excluding microstates or city states like Singapore).

Ironically I do think very highly of my regional government because we had very few cases though I do think the "island factor" helped a lot.

[Former President tack50]

The issue with the ‘circuit breaker’ concept is, in the absence of a vaccine or some other deus ex machina like mass testing, herd immunity or the virus ‘losing potency’, the case level will immediately begin to creep back up again once these restrictions are lifted, meaning we could be back where we are now in December.

You could argue that we already had the deus ex machina event of the virus losing potency, as while infections seem to be back on the same level as March, deaths have not followed that and are still rather low (even if they have increased)

[Former President tack50]

Someone must be playing Plague.inc with the planet at this point tbh. I just wish they had called the virus "Your penis" at this point, so we'd get the "Your penis is destroying humanity" headlines

[Former President tack50]

Well, my region goes into tougher restrictions. The curfew has been reduced from 1am to 23pm. Reunions are also limited to a maximum of 4 people. Bars and restaurants must close at 23pm.

[Former President tack50]

Basically tell them they need to fend for themselves when it comes to their justice and healthcare systems, border controls, customs, regulatory environment, tell them they can no longer use the Swiss franc and revoke the agreement on cross border commuters. Faced with the reality of how completely dependent on Switzerland they actually are, it would basically leave them with the choice of complying, or their country completely collapsing in on itself.

Of course, it's all a complete fantasy and would never happen, but I think the dissapearance of Liechtenstein would be a net positive for the world. On balance.

Couldn't they just switch to Austria for those needs?

It's not like Liechtenstein is an independent enclave inside Switzerland like San Marino or Vatican City

[Former President tack50]

Seriously, my country is getting crazy:

In Barcelos, there are people renting animals just to have an excuse to leave their houses.

In Cascais, there are people walking with leashes but with no animals and when asked what are they doing, some say they are searching for their lost pet.

Jesus! Anyway, the new measures announced yesterday by Costa will start taking effect Wednesday at midnight.

Ah, I see good old picaresca is a thing across the border in Portugal too

Keeping with the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law

[Former President tack50]

Things have the potential to get very ugly on the Vaccine front soon, I fear. There is a lot of anger in Europe at Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as both companies have now said that they are not going to be able to deliver as many doses to the EU as originally agreed. So far so bad, but what riling distrust particularly, is the fact that AstraZeneca at least is both refusing to give a proper reason (only blaming vague "problems in the European supply chain") and only cutting commitments to the EU - other Countries, in particular the UK, are not affected for some reason. Making things worse is simmering anger/distrust over Brexit. The EU will now introduce a advance registration requirement for all exports to third countries, and some member states, such as the German Health Minister and many in the EU parliament are for calling for restricting or banning the exports of Vaccines entirely.

Clearly it is unacceptable for AstraZeneca to not keep it's commitments to the EU but to other countries without a proper reason, and if they cannot, they should be held legally accountable considering how much the EU invested in them for research and production capacity. But doing things like this is extremely irresponsible in my view. Mixing politics and vaccines is never a good idea, but especially not like this. If Europe would block the export of Biontech/Pfizer from it's European plants, other Countries would (such as the UK with AstraZeneca) respond entirely tit-for-tat, and crucial supply chains for the Vaccine distribution everywhere would be disrupted. It is a lose-lose for everyone. And it's feels like a cheap attempt to distract for the failures of the Government in the Vaccine rollout in many European countries, especially in Germany.

Wait, we are 5th?

Nice to see us performing well for once I suppose

[Former President tack50]

Germany's third wave response seems extreme to me tbh. Closing down supermarkets is borderline insane, as well as the "hard lockdown" (presumably meaning stepping outside = fine like it did here last year?)

[Former President tack50]

Why are we not getting all these thrombosis cases in the UK then?

From what I've seen the evidence for thrombosis being caused by the vaccine is real; it's just an exceedingly unlikely event to happen. (Somewhere in the order of 1 in 1 million)

[Former President tack50]

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1379621738850422787
Read this thread just out what the Trump team did.

I mean, that was bad for the rest of the world, but given how fast the US are vaccinating compared to other places, it was good for the country.

It is basically a "Prisoner's dilemma" type scenario where in the end the US ended up with the big payoff.

[Former President tack50]

Yeah, the situation here isn't great at all; and in fact my home region has registered the highest number of cases so far in the pandemic. Granted this peak is at 250 cases per 100k in 14 days if I remember correctly while much of mainland Spain was much worse in the winter peak, but apparently this summer wave has hit my region quite hard.

Thankfully since it is mostly focused on young people, not many are dying or hospitalized, and it seems that for better or worse restrictions will not be quite as severe (no curfews for instance; in fact our Regional Superior Court has almost gone full trumpist and saying that closing indoor dining is illegal lol)

[Former President tack50]

Idk if this fits better on the Spanish politics thread or here, but I'll put it here.

Today, there has been a bit of a landmark ruling by Spain's constitutional court; deciding upon a Vox complaint about the first state of alarm and its associated restrictions (which lasted from late March to late May).

Spain's constitutional court has declared that it was unconstitutional, by a 6-5 vote with I think some ideological crossing (3 conservatives voting against, 1 progressive in favour; the makeup of the court is 7 conservatives to 4 progressives I think)

The ruling is quite simple to understand actually. Spain's state of alarm only allows the government to restrict, but not completely abolish fundamental liberties (in this case, freedom of movement). And the court understands that Spain's restrictions in April, when you could not leave your house at all except for very limited exceptions, exceed the limits of the state of alarm; and that instead the government should have used the more restrictive "state of exception" (the 2nd of 3, more severe than alarm but less so than the "state of siege")

That is an state that has never been (legally) used in Spanish history, not even during the 2017 Catalan crisis (though it was floated as an option at the time), the 1981 military coup or the darkest days of ETA terrorism.

To be honest, I actually agree with the ruling, though it's a situation where the Sánchez government was screwed no matter what he did.

Had Sánchez opted to go for the state of exception, there are 2 main problems with it:

a) It is harder to activate, since it requires Congress to vote on it before it actually goes into place. So the covid restrictions would have taken a couple more days to be implemented

b) Perhaps more importantly, the state of exception is a bit too far-reaching. It obviously gives the government the power to eliminate the right to freedom of movement; but it also gives the government many exceptional powers that would have seen Sánchez (rightly) decried as a dictator, including:

-Police can now arrest people for up to 10 days before habeas corups (under normal times this is 3 days)
-Police can get into houses and what not with no court orders
-Police can intervene telecommunications with no court orders
-The government can supress the emission of propaganda, TV and radio programs, etc
-The government can stop any sort of meeting other than those from political parties, labour unions or business associations
-The Spanish Congress can, via majority vote, supress any sort of strike


So while I agree with the ruling, perhaps Spain's exceptional state systems need a bit of a reform; perhaps with some intermediate state between alarm and exception. Though this would require a constitutional reform so no way it actually happens.

In terms of actual effects, I think the only thing that will happen is that the 1 million fines issued during said state of alarm will be rendered moot and the state will have to pay them back. But nothing else.

TL;DR: Sanchez's initial covid restrictions have been ruled unconstitutional. I agree with that but it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.