Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

My guess is it solves a lot of demographic problems for them.

 

We lost 1 million here and most of the outrage is about being forced to wear a mask or get a shot.

 

I would believe that the population is upset by all of this. But most are scared to go public with it. And no doubt the Chinese gov't will perpetrate more lies that the U.S. was the cause of the deaths. At one point, they blamed the U.S. for importing the virus into China, first with frozen lobsters, then with a woman in the U.S. Army who was in China for some athletic competition. It's hard to tell what percentage of the population knows the truth, but I suspect that it's most likely the wealthier end of the spectrum in China. They are the ones that came to the U.S. on vaccination vacations in 2021. They also have the most to lose by speaking out against the government. Only a few college-age kids and young, idealistic professionals have had the courage to speak out. This is a country where holding up a blank piece of paper is considered a bold statement against the government.

 

Italy has been testing tourists for Covid on flights from China. They say nearly half of the passengers have Covid. The U.S. is considering similar testing for passengers from China.

Nearly half of passengers from China to Milan have COVID: Italian officials

 

Very disturbing thread on China. Just horrible

 

I just read as many free Substack analyses as I find time to. I recall that Jordan Schneider (China Talk) and economist Noah Smith had some deep dives on the issue that I started but then ran into the pay wall - they were pieces teased, but for paid subscribers, which is their right.

Brad DeLong had probably covered it. He puts out so much free content, 3 to 4 full-size newsletters a week, but I never get to all of them, although I never regret if I do.

But the short answer is I don’t think I’ve read anything that went beyond simply stating that the current favorable economic prognosis could be greatly disrupted depending on what happens with China and Covid and supply lines.

I’ll let you know if I come across something.

Edited to add: China Talk has an interesting interview with Tyler Cowen which came out tonight. He discusses the underappreciated possibility of great war with the invasion of Taiwan. That obviously is a concern. So much of the worlds semiconductor production flows through there.

 

We Have a Tripledemic. Not of Disease, But of Fear.
We Have a Tripledemic. Not of Disease, But of Fear.
Getting sick sometimes is the price of returning to normal. Dr. Vinay Prasad thinks it’s more than worth it.

further down in the article --

Even worse, the evidence for masking young children for Covid-19, flu, and RSV viruses is entirely lacking.
The two best studies on the topic take advantage of natural experiments. One experiment, in the Catalonia region of Spain, looked at the effectiveness of masking children to prevent Covid-19. The authors took advantage of a unique fact: that children six years and older in this region wore masks and those younger than six did not. If masking had a protective effect, then kids just younger than six years would have higher rates of Covid than those just older. But there was no such pattern. In a separate analysis in Finland, the authors compared two towns with different policies for kids between the ages of 10 and 12. One town masked, the other didn’t. There was no benefit seen from masking there either. The spread of COVID19 was identical. There was no difference at all.

Additionally, at this point, at least 9 out of 10 American kids have already had Covid-19. We know that having had and recovered from Covid-19—which confers what’s known as natural immunity—doesn’t mean you will never get Covid again. But if you were to, the odds are that it would be milder and less severe. Masking kids who had COVID-19 is pointless in two ways. One, there is no evidence to suggest that it will delay the time until they get it again. Second, it’s being done to prevent something that—for them, at this point in the pandemic—is usually less severe than the common flu or even some cold viruses.

 

The world economy has already been interrupted by China keeping its economy locked down for a second year (and beyond). That played a huge role in supply chain issues and inflation (combined with our own domestic labor shortages).

This might cause something of a relapse, but in terms of “world economy” not sure it could be worse than total lockdowns and factory closures.

 

An article on China's other bio-safety incident in 2019. Apparently in a lab in Lanzhou (which is a city of 3.2 million where I worked for a couple months many years ago), a sanitation system failed without being detected, releasing airborne brucellosis microbes into the surrounding community. About 10,000 people were exposed, and hundreds became sick. The article details the tendency of Chinese lab managers to cut corners on safety.

The basis of the Lanzhou safety incident was an inability to check expiration dates of chemicals and replace them once expired. They used live bacteria to develop the vaccine, and then were supposed to kill the leftover bacteria with a chemical (bleach maybe?), but the chemical was out of date.

China's struggles with lab safety carry danger of another pandemic