With 67000 cases today for the England/France/Spain/Italy/Germany combination.....core Europe sets a number higher than any number recorded in the US since July with almost exactly the same population.
After months of tedious crowing from the Europeans it seems the virus respects nobody. Should we slap travel bans back on these paragons of virtue....or just be big and accept everybody is a bit stumped short of a vaccine,
The way that the people in the UK especially are constantly crowding around in massive groups is just complet ely insane
It is mainly the younger generation that have absolutely zero respect for Covid, or their fellow citizens
The government has lost complete control.....
And Mozart accuses other people of dishonesty. So tell me how many of these countries is currently in lockdown?
As bad as the situation has now become in Europe, I would rather have this over the American situation,
The survival rate for Coronavirus is now much higher, due to the time that the lockdown brought.
Also, the vaccine could be imminent, which would mean this is the last time a short term lockdown would need to be considered.
The lockdown was just for 6 weeks before life almost got back to normal,
"The lockdown was just for 6 weeks before life almost got back to normal"
6 x 7 = 42...coincidence?
It’s not about being in lockdown currently Anger. It’s about the long term trajectory of the disease ....nobody is talking about current lockdowns.
What the European lockdowns show, is in the absence of an immediate vaccine follow up they simply delay the virus at great economic costs. One trillion dollars lost in the recovery relative to USA and the virus is now more potent in Europe than the USA.
That ladies and gentlemen is the picture of a failed policy.
"It’s not about being in lockdown currently Anger. It’s about the long term trajectory of the disease ....nobody is talking about current lockdowns.
What the European lockdowns show, is in the absence of an immediate vaccine follow up they simply delay the virus at great economic costs. One trillion dollars lost in the recovery relative to USA and the virus is now more potent in Europe than the USA.
That ladies and gentlemen is the picture of a failed policy."
Its quite simply a lockdown is put in place, number of cases go down, a lockdown is ended the number of cases go back up. No one expected the virus not to come back once the lockdowns where ended.
What Europe countries tired to do was open up after the lockdowns gradually as far as they could while keeping the levels of the virus at manageable level, aka keeping the R0 at or below 1.0. The lockdowns in many countries did get the R0 below 1.0. But nearly all European countries under enormous pressure from different sectors of business and employment opened up to far, allowing for a resurgence of the virus.
The trajectory of the virus is not fixed, various European countries are trying different strategies to reduced and stabilize the spread of the virus, with varying degrees of restrictions. Its undoubtedly a case of trail and error as they try to figure out the best path to go forward.
The lockdowns prevented certain countries health care systems from collapsing something that happened in Northern Italy that contributed to deaths there. They bought time for better treatments to become available increasing the survival chances of patients who contract the virus now and in the future. Even if all its doing is delaying the spread of the virus then if a vaccine is made available there will be potential thousands of people more still alive to actually get vaccinated. A vaccine is not much good to you when your already dead.
By the OECD figures you linked which you say shows Europe loosing an additional 1 trillion dollars due to Covid restrictions, the figures for next year indicate Europe will have better economic growth than the USA recouping a third of that 1 trillion back. But really Europe doesn't care about the political right in America's ghoulish fixation of wealth over health, you can keep your billions or trillions, Europe will keep its thousands of extra lives.
"Its quite simply a lockdown is put in place, number of cases go down, a lockdown is ended the number of cases go back up"
That's the theory and the logical deduction, but stragely the stats for Cape Town does not back it up...keep in mind that the effects can only be observed 2 to 3 weeks after the "cause".
"That's the theory and the logical deduction, but stragely the stats for Cape Town does not back it up...keep in mind that the effects can only be observed 2 to 3 weeks after the "cause"."
Can you link me to the stats for Cape Town please?
I had a thread on here...will update over the weekend.
Anger you dumb clod.....this from your favourite source, the World Health Organization:
‘Prevention or treatment? How much health would a million dollars buy?
US$ 8 MILLION WOULD BUY 574 170 HEALTHY LIFE YEARS’
Here’s the link, which was your next question:
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/281525/Milion-dollar-Prevention-treatment.pdf
.... ..
So let’s examine their conclusion:
1 574170 life years at an 85 year life expectancy is 6755 lives.
2 And $1 trillion is 125000 installments of $8 million
3 So by the WHO‘S own numbers $1 trillion will buy 6755 x 125000 lives.
You know how many that is Anger....let me help....that’s more than 844 million lives. More than all the people in the US and core Europe(Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the U.K.) combined.
And you are so ignorant that you can’t see the trade off reduced to Lives is hopelessly inadequate?
Take a basic economics course....Smart people don’t get tied up in emotional knots.
Nice try.....you would have been better off challenging the WHO number which is patently ridiculous. Nonetheless if a million dollars properly spent has the capacity to save a life, which I’m sure it does......the trillion dollars the US is ahead of Europe, is equivalent to a million lives.
That doesn’t mean the funds will be spent solely on health, but they could....the capacity is there.
And the potential to save a million lives is way in excess of the incremental European lives gained by lockdowns.,,,, which of course need to be discounted for the age and frailty of those that were saved, if any.
America did what it thought was necessary to deal with the virus, but it also had a healthy desire to get the economy working again.....an instinct which was very muted in Europe. And it’s cost them a vast price which will be paid in a lot of ways.
Your inability to see the social trade offs doesn’t surprise me though. It’s not in the little socialist book,
And today core Europe (Germany, Italy, Spain, England and France) posted a new case number higher than the highest number the US has ever posted. The European criticism of the US is looking increasingly like a case of early mouth.
That doesn’t mean the funds will be spent solely on health, but they could....the capacity is there.
And the potential to save a million lives is way in excess of the incremental European lives gained by lockdowns.,,,, which of course need to be discounted for the age and frailty of those that were saved, if any."
Potential lives saved is better than actual lives saved? , are you reading what you're typing? Your arguing for a scenario that you know damn well will never happen. Firstly as I've already pointed out and you keep ignoring from your own link to OECD economic report, the OECD are predicting Europe's economy will out preform the US's next year, so a third of that one trillion will be recouped by next year.
So lets say America has 666 billion more to spend by the end of next year, no where near all of that will be spent on health, looking at American annual health spending in 2018 a more realistic scenario would be about 18% spend on health, so your now talking about 119 billion to go into health. Not an insignificant number by any stretch of the imagination and its a good thing, However compared to America's overall spending on health of 3.6 trillion dollars, that's only a boost of less than 3.5%. Considering American already spends more on health care per capita than other developed countries with generally poorer results, that extra funding might help a little but is unlikely to significantly improve the overall quality of American health care.
But its not like that his "hypothetical" covid economy cash investment into health is simply going to be made available to American's citizen with no strings attached. 32% of American's already have medical debts, 28% of those with medical debts owe an excess of $10,000 which if you tally up the math show American's owe well in excess of 300 billion dollars on medical debts. Additional investment into America's current health care system doesn't fundamentally change the fact its a completely unfair system that burdens the sick with huge debts.
There is no sign from the political right currently in power to change the current health care system in America aka substantially improve the lives of its citizens by making health care more affordable and therefore more accessible, so to go an imply that America under its current political course will suddenly throw significantly more money into health is absolute codswallop.
"Your inability to see the social trade offs doesn’t surprise me though. It’s not in the little socialist book,"
Like most right wing American's I doubt you actually know what socialism is.
Nope you simply aren’t getting it, which is surprising.....Europe for the moment has lost less lives per capita than the US. But that difference is small. In the meantime the US has a trillion dollars based on it’s more accommodative Covid response.
That trillion dollars spent on healthcare would produce vastly more lives based on the WHO numbers.....and divide those numbers by10 and you still get vastly more lives.
So the US Covid policy has more life saving potential. Spent immediately it’s a no brainer. Worked through the economy at the 16.9% of GDP that’s healthcare’s share you get 169 billion dollars.
If a million dollars buys a life (far more expensive than the WHO suggests) you still get 169000 lives......far more than the difference.
Anyway you cut it.....the WHO way ......or a much more punitive way, the US will save many more lives than Europe. And that’s not even reflecting the documented medical costs of the lockdowns eg on suicide.
The article is out of date....since then Europe’s infections have surged way above the US. Likewise if you measured this in June the US would have looked much better.
The final verdict is still unknown.....what is known is Europe has wrecked it’s economy which will ultimately cost many more lives.
Yes 71688 cases....but on the same day Germany/France/UK/Spain/Italy had the same number of cases and Western Europe excluding Scandinavia had more than 95000 cases.
And the US is running about 50% more tests than Germany/France/Italy/Spain/UK...so undoubtedly those countries have higher undetected cases.
Things could change but at the moment the lockdowns in Europe appear to be buying little in terms of Covid cases....and creating much greater economic and social costs.
Today there are more new cases in the UK and France alone, than in the US with 2.5 times the population. These flare ups are disturbing ....there are some tough months ahead both sides of the Atlantic.