TWO MILLION U.S. CORONAVIRUS CASES, 114,000 DEATHS--WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

On April 27, I posted a piece noting that the US had suffered its one millionth documented COVID-19 case, and more than 56,000 deaths from this deadly virus. Today, 43 days later, the toll has more than doubled. We've now had 2.044 million people diagnosed, of whom 114,118 have died.

The good news is that it took 43 days for the number of cases to double. That's far slower than at the start of the pandemic, when numbers were doubling every few days.

As discussed in a previous post, we've flattened the curve and slowed the advance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, social distancing, mask-wearing, hand washing and all the other life-changing steps that we've taken. Making those drastic changes works and has saved huge numbers of lives, although, as we know, at enormous economic cost.

The bad news is that the virus is still circulating almost everywhere in the world (enormous kudos to New Zealand for having defeated the virus, at least for now). In addition, with just 2 to 5 percent of us now possibly protected by antibodies, the SARS-CoV-2 virus still has hundreds of millions of potential victims in the US; all it takes is a bit of exposure.

All of which raises the question--where do we go from here? Do we fling open the doors of  the businesses and public spaces that have been closed, go back to work, and try to get back to something like our previous lives as quickly as possible? Or do we tiptoe back towards normalcy, cautiously opening up the economy and our lifestyles step by step, slowly enough and with enough testing and tracking to keep the virus contained? Or, more likely, stumble ahead with a confused and confusing state-by-state, city-by-city smorgasbord, with predictably mixed results?

We can be sure that Trump and his administration will push for a quick re-opening. Trump's eyes are fixated on the economy and its impact on his electability this November.

It's not hard to understand how vital it is for people to be able to have jobs to return to and to get  back to work.  Nor to feel the need to reclaim the freedoms and joys of our pre-coronavirus lives.

As these vital decisions are made, perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that once unleashed--as long as someone who has the virus is likely to pass it on to more than one other person--this virus can and will expand exponentially. This is a factor that is truly hard to grasp. We are used to things that change linearly. Push harder on the gas pedal and the car speeds up a bit, not by a factor of 10, 100 or 1000. Work more hours and you don't suddenly get rich. We're not used to things with the propensity to "go viral," where a small change can produce an enormous effect, or where a slight delay can mean the difference between 100 deaths and 100,000.

So step on the gas to get the economy moving again? It's a great idea, but not if we forget that the coronavirus is still there, still circulating, itching for another chance to explode.

REA

LOCKDOWNS HAVE WORKED TO CONTROL THE CORONAVIRUS--BUT ARE THEY WORTH IT?

If, as you've spent endless hours at home the last few months, you've wondered if the lockdowns and shelter-in-place policies that have upended lives around the world actually work, two major new research papers pretty much close the case.

Image credit: Prachatai/Flickr

Research teams at Imperial College, London and the University of California, Berkeley, used different methodologies to study the impact of the "non-pharmaceutical interventions" such as business closings, social distancing and home isolation that were put in place in different mixtures and different times in 11 European countries, and in China, South Korea, Iran and the United States.

The detailed findings are complex, but the bottom line is simple: lockdowns worked whenever and wherever they were applied. When implemented and followed consistently, within three weeks they successfully reduced the reproduction rate of the coronavirus below the critical number 1, flattened the curve of cases, and saved large numbers of lives.

The numbers that the two research teams calculated are impressive. The Imperial College team estimates that in Europe the lockdown and social distancing measures put in place in March prevented several hundred million Covid-19 cases and approximately 3.1 million deaths before the May 4 end of their data gathering.

The Berkeley group found that in the six countries they studied--including the US--the measures put in place prevented 62 million confirmed cases or an estimated 530 million actual cases.  
Assuming a case mortality rate of just one percent, that means that some 5.3 million lives were saved, again in the course of a few months.

"The lockdowns had a very large effect on cases and saving lives," says Solomon Hsiang, at the University of California, Berkeley.      "[Some people assert that] the lockdowns weren't necessary. This research nails that it was. Without them, we believe the toll would have been huge."

Researchers from both groups emphasize that some mixture of these life-changing but also life-saving measures needs to be continued, tailored to each country or region's population structure and economic needs. 

"We're just at the beginning of the pandemic," says Samir Bhatt, at Imperial College. "We're very far from herd immunity and the risk of more waves of the virus is very high. Care must be continued until a vaccine becomes available."

These two papers were published on June 8, at which point there have been more than 7 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 407,000 confirmed deaths worldwide. If most of the countries in the world had not taken the stringent steps they did to control the SARS-CoV2 virus, these two research papers show that those numbers would have been orders of magnitude higher.

Was it worth it? Clearly that's not a scientific question, nor should it be strictly an economic one. The answer depends on the value one places on human lives as well as on other important factors such as employment and economic well being. Both research teams are well aware of the huge economic impacts of lockdowns, social distancing, travel restrictions, business closures, and other measures taken to control the spread of the virus. But both of them emphasize that some mix of these measures will be needed for a long time. 

"There's no back to normal," says Hsiang. "It's a cost-benefit question--interventions of different kinds along with economic well-being. The longer you stay in lockdown, the fewer infections. If you undo lockdown, there's economic growth but more infections and death. Something still needs to be in place."

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You can download the full scientific papers from the journal Nature, here and also here.

SPEEDING PAST ANOTHER TRAGIC COVID-19 MILESTONE

On April 27, just 11 days ago,  I posted a piece noting that the world had just passed the grim milestone of three million COVID-19 cases and 210,000 deaths. It took this highly contagious and dangerous virus just 11 more days to infect another million people and kill another 65,000.  In the US during those same 11 days, 320,000 more people caught the virus and more than 22,000 died. 

To try to remind ourselves that these are people, not statistics, that means that every minute of those 11 days four husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and children died miserable deaths from this pandemic disease.

Anti-quarantine demonstrators in Colombus, Ohio, 4/18/20

Credit: M/Creative Commons

Nonetheless, countries, states and cities around the world are "re-opening," loosening the restrictions that have, when applied with determination and followed in good faith, slowed and in a few places even stopped the virus. This is said to be necessary to get the economy moving again. 

What is not said nearly as loudly if at all is that this promised economic recovery will be purchased at the price of tens or hundreds of thousands of human lives. Nor should we forget that the majority of those lives cut short will not be those of the rich, nor or the well-educated, highly skilled occupants of the kinds of jobs that can be managed largely online. No. Most of those who die will be ordinary people whose jobs require face-to-face contact or working close to others, and who have no choice but to go back to work when they're told to. 

The boosters shout, "Liberate out state,"  or "Let's get the economy going again." Trump eggs them on, and so it is happening now. That despite the fact that few places in the US are in a condition to do so safely. 

Let's at least be honest about the price, and who will pay it. 

REA

CALIFORNIA'S ECONOMY BOOMS WHILE ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT SHRINKS

As reported in Grist earlier this month, California's carbon emissions are down to the levels they were way back in the 1990s, while at the same time its economic productivity has soared. According to the state's Air Resources Board, “California now produces twice as many goods and services for the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the rest of the nation."

California windfarm--part of the state's energy success story

Credit: Creative Commons Zero--CC0 

If one believes economists and politicians who, like Donald Trump, are still pushing coal or other greenhouse-gas-spewing energy sources, California, which is leading the nation in the transition to renewable energy, should be failing. For those still interested in facts, nothing could be further from the truth. California's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are roughly one-half the US average, yet it produces twice as many goods and services for every unit of energy use.

Kudos to California for leading the way. However, there's still lots of room for improvement. Transportation still relies far too heavily on fossil fuels, and accounts for 41 percent of California's carbon emissions. To tackle this, the state has plans in place to multiply the number of electric vehicles on California's roads 12 times within the next 12 years.

If the state has the same success with that plan as it has had on its overall carbon emissions, it's likely to beat that deadline and still lead the country in terms of economic productivity, not to mention improved quality of life.

What are the rest of the states waiting for?

REA

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SEX AND TAXES

Sex Sells!  The Ad man’s motto since modern advertising began has never been truer or more evident than in our latest “Cultural Moment” of coming to terms with sexual misconduct itself.    

Is it just coincidental that just as the most momentous tax shift in recent history is working its way through the halls of Congress, potentially affecting the entire economy and every American’s life for decades to come, the news is dominated with story after story of sexual misconduct by powerful men?

Sex sells because of both its attractive and repulsive qualities.  But its most notable quality at present is its tremendous power to distract.  Certainly the issues raised by overly aggressive or predatory behavior need to be vigorously aired and legal or social boundaries re-defined.  But with its magnetic public appeal, sex is dangerously drawing media and national attention away from other critical issues: in particular the egregious Republican effort to shift the tax burden from corporations and the already-wealthy to nearly everyone else.  

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"

The Wizard of Oz, 1939

Credit: Creative Commons

The role that mainstream media might be playing in explaining and analyzing the tax “sausage” as it’s being made in unseemly haste in private party caucuses, without open hearings, serious debate or attempts to assemble a bipartisan coalition has somehow been superseded by the demands of reporting on the latest sexual harassment scandals.  

From Roy Moore to Harvey Weinstein to Al Franken and now Charlie Rose (with the specter of Donald Trump’s behavior looming in the background) sex has dominated both the news and the debate over national ethics and morals.  One result, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg has pointedly noted is that because of their responsiveness to issues of sexism, it “feels as if liberal institutions are devouring themselves over sex while conservatives, unburdened by the pretense of caring about gender equality, blithely continue their misrule.”

This is the climate in which a massive, detailed and highly controversial tax bill which permanently cuts corporate taxes from 35% to 20% and ends the estate tax while greatly reducing, phasing out or eliminating middle class benefits such as deductions for medical costs, state and local taxes, school loans and mortgage interest is being rushed through Congress. Not to mention the recent approval of more than a trillion dollar addition to the national debt which seems miraculously to have left deficit hawks in the GOP unfazed!

All under the guise of tax reform—surely a topic worthy of everyone’s serious attention—but now being railroaded by the demands of major donors and a Senate rules deadline.

Donald Trump’s election and presidency, for complex reasons, has clearly allowed a number of previously repressed and unresolved national issues to rise to the surface, some largely symbolic such as the removal of Confederate statues, and others such as sexism and racism  painfully real.

Yet behind the scenes, and certainly taking advantage of the fortunate distractions provided by juicy sexual scandals, Trump’s tweets about black athletes disrespecting the flag, and border walls, powerful and very determined masters of the universe are moving to alter the basic economic ground on which we all stand.  Whether by design or coincidence, the explosive “cultural moment” provided by our current obsession with sexual wrongdoing may just create the necessary conditions to allow them to prevail.

Les Adler

WHAT CAUSES SOARING INCOME INEQUALITY? IT'S NOT THE ECONOMY, IT'S THE POLITICS

It's common knowledge that income and wealth inequality--the gap between the rich, the very rich and the rest of us--has soared in the U.S. from the 1980s on.

M/Y Eclipse Superyacht 9 August, 2012: Credit Moshi Anahory

There's no shortage of statistics to paint this increasingly bleak picture. To list just a few:

Percentage of total wealth owned by the richest 0.1%:

2007            17%

2011             22%

Percentage of total wealth owned by the richest 1%:

2007            35%

2011             43%

Percentage of total wealth owned by the richest 20%:

2007             86%

2011              93%        

Percentage of total wealth owned by the lowest 80%:

2007             15%

2011               7%

You get the idea.

New findings reported in the American Journal of Sociology--which must come as a huge surprise to academics and conservative ideologues who believe that such wealth disparities result from inevitable economic forces--show that the most powerful factor determining how wealth gets distributed is political, especially who occupies the oval office.

"You can't explain income inequality without looking at political factors," concludes David Jacobs, the study's lead author. Or, as George Orwell put it, ". . . economic laws do not operate the same way as the law of gravity."

Sociologists at the Ohio State University analyzed 33 years of data at both the national and state level. That gave them 1615 cases that they subjected to careful statistical analysis. They measured the impact of more than 20 factors that economists have proposed to explain the distribution of income and wealth.

Their key finding: the presidential administration in power is by far the dominant factor driving inequality. The Reagan administration alone fostered an 18 percent increase in inequality, they found. The research did not pin the blame on any one policy, but rather on the cumulative impacts of changes to the tax codes, deregulation of financial markets and other businesses, weakened unions, and truncated anti-poverty programs.

"I believe it was a lot of policies that each contributed a little bit to growing inequality, and when you added them all up the results were large," Jacobs said.

To those of us who remember the Reagan administration, noted for its anti-labor union-busting zeal, this comes as no surprise. I recall noting the simultaneous appearance of more and more chauffeur-driven limousines and sidewalks full of homeless people.

Homeless group: Credit Franco Folini

In other words, money doesn't flow from one segment of the population to another by accident or by magic. There's no invisible hand prestidigitating dollars out of your pocket into the coffers of the one percent. The hand is quite visible, greased of course by an army of lobbyists and their bosses, who I'm sure already knew in their bones what Jacobs has now shown us. Investing a few tens of millions (or, so far this election year, $2.3 million per day!) in the right politician can result in policies that transfer billions or trillions to the rich. What a great investment!

For an in-depth look at this issue, take a look at the book Rigged by economist Dean Baker.