COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak

[InsectPoison]

The EU may look bad in the current situation. However, that is the result of member states loving to bask in nationalist glory. If you want the EU to look better in crisis times, you should give more power to Brussels.

This is how you FastTrack the breakdown of the EU.

[duckzilla]

The EU may look bad in the current situation. However, that is the result of member states loving to bask in nationalist glory. If you want the EU to look better in crisis times, you should give more power to Brussels.

This is how you FastTrack the breakdown of the EU.

I don't think so. The EU does not have any policy instruments directed at health care. If you want the EU to be able to coordinate during a crisis, you need to give it this power. Alternatively, you can simply stop expecting the EU to do things like this.

The FastTrack to EU breakdown is having unrealistic expectations and blaming the EU for the carelessness of national politicians.

[deleted_user]

Full text of Bill Gate's op-ed in Washington Post which is behind a pay wall:

There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus. But the window for making important decisions hasn’t closed. The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of covid-19.

Through my work with the Gates Foundation, I’ve spoken with experts and leaders in Washington and across the country. It’s become clear to me that we must take three steps.

First, we need a consistent nationwide approach to shutting down. Despite urging from public health experts, some states and counties haven’t shut down completely. In some states, beaches are still open; in others, restaurants still serve sit-down meals.

This is a recipe for disaster. Because people can travel freely across state lines, so can the virus. The country’s leaders need to be clear: Shutdown anywhere means shutdown everywhere. Until the case numbers start to go down across America — which could take 10 weeks or more — no one can continue business as usual or relax the shutdown. Any confusion about this point will only extend the economic pain, raise the odds that the virus will return, and cause more deaths.

Second, the federal government needs to step up on testing. Far more tests should be made available. We should also aggregate the results so we can quickly identify potential volunteers for clinical trials and know with confidence when it’s time to return to normal. There are good examples to follow: New York state recently expanded its capacity to up to more than 20,000 tests per day.

There’s also been some progress on more efficient testing methods, such as the self-swab developed by the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, which allows patients to take a sample themselves without possibly exposing a health worker. I hope this and other innovations in testing are scaled up across the country soon.

Even so, demand for tests will probably exceed the supply for some time, and right now, there’s little rhyme or reason to who gets the few that are available. As a result, we don’t have a good handle on how many cases there are or where the virus is likely headed next, and it will be hard to know if it rebounds later. And because of the backlog of samples, it can take seven days for results to arrive when we need them within 24 hours.

This is why the country needs clear priorities for who is tested. First on the list should be people in essential roles such as health-care workers and first responders, followed by highly symptomatic people who are most at risk of becoming seriously ill and those who are likely to have been exposed.

The same goes for masks and ventilators. Forcing 50 governors to compete for lifesaving equipment — and hospitals to pay exorbitant prices for it — only makes matters worse.

Finally, we need a data-based approach to developing treatments and a vaccine. Scientists are working full speed on both; in the meantime, leaders can help by not stoking rumors or panic buying. Long before the drug hydroxychloroquine was approved as an emergency treatment for covid-19, people started hoarding it, making it hard to find for lupus patients who need it to survive.

We should stick with the process that works: Run rapid trials involving various candidates and inform the public when the results are in. Once we have a safe and effective treatment, we’ll need to ensure that the first doses go to the people who need them most.

To bring the disease to an end, we’ll need a safe and effective vaccine. If we do everything right, we could have one in less than 18 months — about the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed. But creating a vaccine is only half the battle. To protect Americans and people around the world, we’ll need to manufacture billions of doses. (Without a vaccine, developing countries are at even greater risk than wealthy ones, because it’s even harder for them to do physical distancing and shutdowns.)

We can start now by building the facilities where these vaccines will be made. Because many of the top candidates are made using unique equipment, we’ll have to build facilities for each of them, knowing that some won’t get used. Private companies can’t take that kind of risk, but the federal government can. It’s a great sign that the administration made deals this week with at least two companies to prepare for vaccine manufacturing. I hope more deals will follow.

In 2015, I urged world leaders in a TED talk to prepare for a pandemic the same way they prepare for war — by running simulations to find the cracks in the system. As we’ve seen this year, we have a long way to go. But I still believe that if we make the right decisions now, informed by science, data and the experience of medical professionals, we can save lives and get the country back to work.

[deleted_user]

Washington is a good state. I like living here except it's so expensive and the traffic is bad and the winters suck dick.

[RefluxSemantic]

Bill Gates is the only billionaire that I would vote for in an election (and wouldn't guillotine in the case of a revolution)

[fightinfrenchman]

First day "working" from home.

[iNcog]

-- deleted post --

[RefluxSemantic]

He seems like a genuinely good person.

[iNcog]

-- deleted post --

[Dolan]

One thing I'm not seeing discussed as much is the economic repercussions of this pandemic. The economic fallout is going to be catastrophic, possibly worse than the pandemic itself. Entire industries are going to go bankrupt, the world can only halt to a stop for so long. The unemployment rate is going to skyrocket in most countries and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. Governments can give cash cheques and subsidise wages for only so long. If it carries on I can see Italy and Spain needing a bailout, a depression is imminent. This pandemic has also revealed the north/south divide within the EU. Clearly there is a lot less "European solidarity" than previously thought and state-nationalism will always prevail in times of crisis like this. The whole Eurobond fiasco that France-Italy-Spain are pushing which is being rejected by Germany-Netherlands has shown that at the end of the day. This is one of the most significant events in the EU history. It will be interesting to see the dynamics of it.

But this is exactly that "Europe of nations" that populists like Le Pen and Salvini have been asking for. They got exactly what they wanted. In times of crisis the real nature of the EU was revelead: it's not that monster that dictates how things should be run from Brussels, as populists were claiming before, it's more like a loose association of states that harmonised their legislation to be able to trade more easily with each other and to allow unimpeded freedom of movement for people, services, goods and capital. And now that the truth has been revealed, they're still whining about it: why doesn't the EU help us more to tackle this. But isn't this what you've been asking for until now? You wanted a "Europe of nations", a loose association of trade, nothing else. And now you're asking for the thing that you used to despise and denounce: a stronger union that can practically override national institutions and dictate policy from a centre.

So people need to make up their minds. While I sympathise with Italy's plight and I think, wherever possible, we EU members, should try do more to help them, I can't agree with this attitude some in Italy are having right now: they are expecting the EU to be some kind of benevolent all-powerful entity that will magically fix all their problems, by giving them as much money as they want, as much medical equipment as they need and so on. It's unrealistic, because the EU is nothing more than the sum of its members, meeting around a table to make collective decisions. And if every one of its members is hit by this health crisis, nobody knows for sure how bad things will get in the future, so they can't really afford to waste their equipment and resources and then collapse from inability to handle the crisis later. I think this is what France did. In January, at the start of the global crisis, when nobody expected things to get so bad so fast, the French sent a huge shipment of medical equipment to China. Then later when the Covid19 outbreak hit France, they were caught unprepared, without enough equipment and supplies to handle the crisis. Other EU countries may have taken heed of what France did and learned their lesson.

You know what we did in Romania? After we realised every country is overwhelmed and nobody has enough stockpiles of medical equipment, the state called local producers and told them they need to re-purpose their manufacturing facilities to produce more disinfectants, masks, ventilators and so on. And we started producing everything we need to tackle Covid19 here, locally. And this is what other countries have started doing too. In the end, you realise that when a huge crisis hits that puts states in a life-and-death situation, nobody can pay attention to what's going on in your country and nobody has enough equipment to compensate your shortages. You'll have to get organised and produce them yourself.

[RefluxSemantic]

Technically the EU should have the political capability to pool some of our resources to make production and distribution of medical equipment more efficient. I also believe that down the line financial support for countries like Italy will happen to some extend. The problem is that it's just too early to start giving Italy support, when it's likely all other countries will face the same struggles soon. It would be a shame to have given Italy a ton of support and then not have the money left to help other countries that ended up struggling just as much. I just don't think that in the end politicians can justify spending billions to help Italy when they might end up being in the exact same spot a few months later.

[Dolan]

It's already happening. The EU has told members they can spend more than 3% on deficit to do whatever they need to tackle the crisis. Normally, the rules for financial stability established by the EU do not allow a member to have a deficit bigger than 3%, it's a rule that was put in place a long time ago, but enforcement has become stricter after the 2008 financial meltdown. So now the EU has decided to relax this rule for a period of time that will be necessary to take extraordinary measures to keep economies alive.

The European Central Bank has started buying both private and public bonds again (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date ... 66.en.html). This is basically a way through which they inject money in the economy, by buying including governmental bonds from any EU member that needs the extra funds. This is the EU's version of the US Fed money printer meme (https://brrr.money/). It's the EU's famed bazooka.

[RefluxSemantic]

It's already happening. The EU has told members they can spend more than 3% on deficit to do whatever they need to tackle the crisis. Normally, the rules for financial stability established by the EU do not allow a member to have a deficit bigger than 3%, it's a rule that was put in place a long time ago, but enforcement has become stricter after the 2008 financial meltdown. So now the EU has decided to relax this rule for a period of time that will be necessary to take extraordinary measures to keep economies alive.

The European Central Bank has started buying both private and public bonds again (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date ... 66.en.html). This is basically a way through which they inject money in the economy, by buying including governmental bonds from any EU member that needs the extra funds. This is the EU's version of the US Fed money printer meme (https://brrr.money/).

Is this real actually EU wide or just an Eurozone rule? I always thought it was the latter.

[Dolan]

The European Central Bank can only do policy in the Eurozone, so yeah, it's only for the EU members that adopted the Euro. But there are fewer countries in the EU that haven't adopted it (8 out of a total of 27 members).

[duckzilla]

Technically, the discussion around Eurobonds/Coronabonds and the ECB's bazooka is the same. Common bonds would mean that the bonds issued by a single Eurozone member are backed by all members. Since Germans don't want to be accountable for Italian debt, this is not very popular in Germany. However, the ECB already buys up governmental bonds from Eurozone members like Italy. The ECB itself is backed by? The Eurozone countries!

[Amsel_]

I've been getting a lot of amber alerts lately. Is spending a few weeks inside really that mentally damaging to normalscum that they'd start committing a bunch of crimes?

[gibson]

I've been getting a lot of amber alerts lately. Is spending a few weeks inside really that mentally damaging to normalscum that they'd start committing a bunch of crimes?

I just got 1 like 2 hours ago after not getting 1 for months

[evilcheadar]

The entirety of Pennsylvania is now under stay at home orders. There is no escape with cases now growing by 1k daily, just think of all the un-diagnosed people. gg hopefully get re

[Dolan]

Technically, the discussion around Eurobonds/Coronabonds and the ECB's bazooka is the same. Common bonds would mean that the bonds issued by a single Eurozone member are backed by all members. Since Germans don't want to be accountable for Italian debt, this is not very popular in Germany. However, the ECB already buys up governmental bonds from Eurozone members like Italy. The ECB itself is backed by? The Eurozone countries!

Eurobonds would be issued by each EU government whenever they would need funding from external markets. Obviously, this means it could be abused by some states, which could pile on too much debt, leaving the whole union to pick up the bill if they become unable to pay.

The ECB monetising and buying up bonds is a different scheme, because there is centralised policy oversight, it's less likely to be used arbitrarily since the ECB is led by financial experts without any political obligations, and the ECB is not limited in its ability to issue money. If, say, Italy issued Eurobonds to the tune of €750bn, markets may react by demanding a higher rate of return, since they might think Italy can't make good on those bonds and that the sum is too large for other Eurozone members to bail those bonds out. So actually this Eurobond idea may not even work in practice, because the market might take into account which state issues them and ask for a higher rate before deciding to buy. I mean, the Eurobond rate could fluctuate for all EU members, depending on which state issues them and their financial credibility.

[princeofcarthage]

Just days after spain saying cases are stabilizing huge surge in numbers :(

[duckzilla]

Technically, the discussion around Eurobonds/Coronabonds and the ECB's bazooka is the same. Common bonds would mean that the bonds issued by a single Eurozone member are backed by all members. Since Germans don't want to be accountable for Italian debt, this is not very popular in Germany. However, the ECB already buys up governmental bonds from Eurozone members like Italy. The ECB itself is backed by? The Eurozone countries!

Eurobonds would be issued by each EU government whenever they would need funding from external markets. Obviously, this means it could be abused by some states, which could pile on too much debt, leaving the whole union to pick up the bill if they become unable to pay.

The ECB monetising and buying up bonds is a different scheme, because there is centralised policy oversight, it's less likely to be used arbitrarily since the ECB is led by financial experts without any political obligations, and the ECB is not limited in its ability to issue money. If, say, Italy issued Eurobonds to the tune of €750bn, markets may react by demanding a higher rate of return, since they might think Italy can't make good on those bonds and that the sum is too large for other Eurozone members to bail those bonds out. So actually this Eurobond idea may not even work in practice, because the market might take into account which state issues them and ask for a higher rate before deciding to buy. I mean, the Eurobond rate could fluctuate for all EU members, depending on which state issues them and their financial credibility.

This is quite unrealistic to me. Eurobonds are backed fully by all members. If any member chooses not to cover these Eurobonds anymore, this country will be punished heavily by financial markets. It would basically mean bankruptcy. Given that there are Eurozone members with good balance sheets and, relatively, low debt, this is not going to happen. If Eurobonds became a thing, there would be identical interest rates, no matter which country actually issues these bonds, because this does not matter here. The entire Eurozone covers it. Not the issuing country. That means higher refinancing costs for economically strong countries and lower refinancing costs for many countries who already have high debt relative to gdp. Given that there are no mechanism to control other countries' expenditures, Eurobonds look like a blank check backed by strong economies.

Eurobonds cannot realistically be introduced without at least some instruments to punish countries squandering money and increasing their debt levels at the cost of other member countries.

The ECB's job is maintaining stability within the Eurozone. If any country, say Italy, would become unstable due to its debt ratio, the ECB's mandate would force it to buy Italian debt to stabilize the Euro. Since the ECB is backed by all member states, this "loan" is backed by them. If the issuing country now increases its debt ratio, the ECB's action reduces its cost of refinancing. At the same time, the refinancing costs of the backing countries rise due to their higher exposure to potentially toxic loans for the issuing country. This whole mechanism could lead to a situation comparable to the 2008 banking crisis, just with countries who act like banks here!

This might not look connected to the coronavirus crisis. But it actually is. Crises today are quite complex

[fightinfrenchman]

bail those bonds

[howlingwolfpaw]

Empire state building warning siren.... #eye of sauron, #Just Why? # To ease your fears and tension in these times.

[fightinfrenchman]

@howlingwolfpaw What?

[howlingwolfpaw]

@howlingwolfpaw What?

NYC tribute to 1st responders of the corona virus apparently.