The irony of this is that the countries who were worst at their handling of the covid problem will be at an advantage at the end of it.
It will not be pretty. So was it a wise move to shut down? Maybe, given the information they had at the time. Better to be safe than sorry. In hindsight with all the facts we have now maybe not but they didn't have those facts at the start.
More likely unintended consequences and costs will keep mounting. And at some point cross covid costs. After that political tunes will change.
It's not like the ant hill can just build a border around itself and survive for ever.
But people are resilient. People face death from other causes all the time. Yes, there will be a measurable increase due to covid-19 but in countries that are already ravaged by poverty, crime, disease, wars, etc, it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing.
From that POV, all other things being equal, one could expect that those countries might grow their economies while the rest of the world loses opportunities.
I'm not sure I buy that argument though. World economy is not entirely a zero sum game
Most countries in the world rely on global supply chains, and many countries are now closing their borders to external trade, meaning that their own prices will sky-rocket, likely causing layoffs and bankruptcies, causing stimulus packages and therefore inflation. The world is very interconnected (as I'm sure you know)
In addition, I believe that many people would suffer significantly _more_ if many more people were dying around them. They would have friends and family who died or who were tied to people who died. I don't think it would be something as simple as "eh, someone else's problem". In addition, it's not just deaths -- there is a lot of data showing that there are long-term lung issues that develop if you do survive.
Which countries, exactly, are closing their borders to trade? There are definitely a lot of restrictions being placed on travel and tourism, but banning cargo makes no sense in this context.
If anything, things will probably just get lonelier for merchant seamen.
Of course this assumes
1. some kind of immunity (which I'd think indications are pointing toward, or I'd expect to have seen more repeat contractions by now)
2. the response was dorked up down to the individual level (which is most decidedly not the case -- plenty of individuals (especially among highish-income) are choosing to self isolate and take precautions, and thus will not contract the virus for quite some time no matter how bad the government response was, so immunity within these groups will never form, so the government will not be able to reopen anyway)
So even in the absence of other considerations, the 2nd point above pretty much cancels out my original post.
Not necessarily, you can have a short-term immunization that only last a year or two. This is why the "herd immunity" might be a poor idea when we don't know much about this virus.
Anyway, i demanded a work/vacation visa to NZ for this October, i fear this won't be possible :/
That was a more extreme case of 20% to 25% of the population but losing a sizable percentage of productivity with the population is very expensive in ways apparent both on and off the balance sheets. It is the epitome of penny wise pound foolish to make such a trade - the bloody gains will fade away in time while the loss echoes.
* how much does it mutate?
* does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to another mutation?
* does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to the same mutation?
Higher the true R0 value for the virus, higher the threshold for reaching herd immunity and the eventual point the infection rate reaching 0.0; globally, without a vaccine, very possible corona will continue to exist years, if not longer.
Yes, but fewer of them, which is the point.
Now if a fully functional vaccine is developed, that'll of course change things. But there's no guarantee one is possible, so only time will tell.
* most cases are asymptomatic
* most people with respiratory infections (outside of a known pandemic) are never tested for anything
* most people who are tested for infections are tested with standard panels, not studied for novel viruses
Countries like the US which have no unified and sane policy are going to take a full decade to recover. Some parts will never recover.
Consider. Lets say that because people are terrified of the virus they protect themselves. Which to their credit most people are. And the growth rate drops from 35% to 5% a week. So how long does it take to get from 2% infected to 60%? Do the math and you find out it's 70 weeks or 18 months.
Their approach is highly experimental, which makes it all the more bizarre that they aren't testing very much. They have a "developing world" or "overwhelmed country" cases:deaths ratio (about 1:8) which suggests that they have a huge number of cases they don't know about. It's not clear why a country taking a radically experimental approach to COVID-19 would also test so lightly - it suggests that they don't want to know what's going on.
It's possible that they don't want to have embarrassingly high case numbers, but it's just as possible that their numbers are embarrassing in the other direction - i.e. while they've killed a huge bunch of oldies, they also haven't got nearly enough cases to have herd immunity.
We will also get to see, long term, what the morbidity effects of taking this approach are. They will not look super-intelligent if there is any kind of effective treatment or vaccine developed in the next 6-12 months.
They only look good when you compare them with hard-hit countries. The difference is that Belgians and Spaniards aren't patrolling every goddamn social media site announcing how well they've done with the virus.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
Getting the death rate is tricky, what you need to look at is the increase in mortality over the 5 year average.
This gives a number of covid deaths at 40-80k, and thus an infection of 3-15 million depending on the actual fatality rate.
That means letting it run free, assuming immunity once you have it, and a 65% herd immunity level, would mean at least another 100k deaths and possibly as high as 1 million. Most likely 250k more. There is no appetite in the UK currently for that.