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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Working for the clampdown

Working for the clampdown

by | 73 Comments

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I get a little worried that people are going to start succumbing to gloom porn and say “fuck it, we’re all gonna die anyway, so I’m going out today.” The lockdown can work. It worked in Wuhan, and there’s early signs it may be starting to work in Italy.

And there were 6500 cases on Saturday. This is a big drop. It could be temporary, but thing slowed down in Wuhan about ten days after they started the big clampdown (with a few spikes in there because of increased testing). Fingers crossed everybody.

And please stay the fuck home if you can.

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    Major Major Major Major

    Lockdowns can absolutely work, but we should also be communicating that the point of a lockdown is to stop runaway spread while we get test-and-trace up and running. The former isn’t good enough.

  2. 2.

    Roger Moore

    It’s incredibly important to have people with some patience in charge, so it’s especially awful that we have Trump instead.  Maybe if we get some evidence from the hard-hit blue states that the shutdown is effective, it can give people at the federal level the guts to follow through.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    Good news for a country that desperately needs some right now. Of course, the hard part will be maintaining the clamp-down until the number of new cases is small enough that test-and-trace is feasible (i.e. get into the South Korea situation).

    The problem here in the US is that a lot of places haven’t even started a real lockdown yet.

  6. 6.

    PenAndKey

    This, all of it. The problem with lockdowns is the lag between when they’re started and when their effects are observable. I’m sure there’ll be a goldmine of data to comb through once this is all over and that it’ll show a statistically relevant difference in growth rates between the states that enacted lockdowns and those that haven’t. If it weren’t so catastrophic the number crunching nerd part of my brain would be having a field day.

  7. 7.

    negative 1

    @dmsilev: Also that no one knows what ‘real lockdown’ means, so that they don’t panic.  Here in my not-hard-hit northeast US state, we have no entertainment/dine-in/gatherings but we don’t have a ‘shelter in place’ order.  Everyone is panicking that we will, so they are hoarding food.  This makes everyone else nervous about the food shortages, so they hoard, etc., etc.

    Also, today started ‘online learning’ for schools in the state.  All social media is calling this ‘homeschooling’ and every parent is complaining about having to ‘homeschool’ their child.  As a guy who works for the teachers’ union, I’m thrilled for our free marketing, however for the sake of the community I live in I have to echo Major x4’s sentiment that we should be talking about what it is we are trying to achieve.  Because already I hear the grumblings of parents teaching their kids being told ‘indefinitely’ — and not liking it.  I feel like having a goal (no new cases, growth rate under X%, until we get testing for everyone, etc.) will help us all have something to rally behind.

  8. 8.

    JoyceH

    I saw or heard something recently about how we can tell we’re ‘flattening the curve’. Not by new cases, because we’re so behind the eight ball on testing. The daily number of new cases is going to go up and up and be really scary, but a lot of those are cases that we would already have known about if we had a competent government. So the way to tell is by the death rate, morbid though that may be. Right now, our rate of daily deaths is doubling every three days. That rate will probably shorten in the near term. When the rate starts lengthening, when it takes longer for the daily death rate to double, then the curve has started flattening. Like I say, pretty gruesome, but a more accurate statistic to look for.

  9. 9.

    Another Scott

    My first entry on the coronavirus beat — Over three hundred doctors at Pittsburgh’s massive UPMC hospital system have signed a petition challenging administrators’ decisions to press forward with as many elective surgeries as they can. https://t.co/xzBp4yUHfV— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 23, 2020

    (Emphasis added.)

    WTF!!

    Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  10. 10.

    MagdaInBlack

    Too many companies are patting themselves on the back for being ” essential services” and sending their workers out while the management stays at home on their laptops.

    Mine is one of them. The only thing essential is that the money keep flowing in and up.

  12. 12.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Puddy chains@Puddychains
    Mar 22
    South Korea vs USA They both got their first case on the same day. South Korea is back playing baseball

    they’re playing with masks, but they’re playing

  13. 13.

    Jeffro

    Virginia about to close all PK-12 schools for the rest of the year.  Not sure if we will also go to “only grocery stores and pharmacies to remain open”.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    @negative 1: Even the “shelter in place” orders that we have here in California aren’t as stringent as, say, Spain. You can still go out for a walk, just keep away from other people.

    There are also, of course, numbskulls who think this doesn’t apply to them. like this bar owner in the LA area who stayed open on St. Patrick’s Day and was shocked, shocked that his neighbors called the police on him:

    In Griffin’s case, he said he didn’t know his pub was supposed to be closed when he opened it Tuesday at 7 a.m. The day before, the city of South Pasadena had issued a closure of all bars, but Griffin said that he wasn’t aware of the order and that no one from the city reached out.

    He said he was careful to advise customers to make only takeout or delivery orders. He also asked people not to sit down and eat food on the premises, Griffin said. But some did anyway. There was also live music playing in the pub.

    By around 7 p.m., South Pasadena police, tipped off by angry residents, showed up to Griffins of Kinsale for the third time — and on this visit, they were accompanied by someone from the L.A. County Department of Public Health. The pub was closed on what Griffin called his “most important night of the year.”

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    Nancy just finished speaking.  I didn’t hear most of it.

    The Senate just voted down Moscow Mitch’s plan again.  49:xx.  It needs 60 votes to advance.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  17. 17.

    negative 1

    @dmsilev: We’re lucky to not have an abundance of morons around me, or that they’ve temporarily shut up.  I don’t know how permanent that is, though.

    My most fun quarantine moment so far is my friend having to explain to his son that he can’t bro-hug his friends, no matter how little contact he has with them after that.

  18. 18.

    hitchhiker

    The numbers from here in Seattle are encouraging, too. I finally found a place to keep track of tests given v. positives v. negatives. It’s at the Atlantic, updated for every state and includes evaluation of the credibility of numbers.

    We’re not locked down, but we were early in both community contamination and in mitigation. By the time the NBA suspended its season on 3/11, both amazon and microsoft employees had been working from home for a full week, and many other businesses had followed their lead. There were just 39 positives on 3/4. We’ve also been doing more tests for a longer time period (almost 31,000 as of today), which makes the data about as reliable as it can get, tho’ admittedly that’s not saying a lot.

    The daily rise in new cases sits at 11%.

    Here’s state-by-state data from the Atlantic

    And here’s the Covid Tracking Project for Washington

    The Washington Post is keeping a running tab that includes percentage change in new cases every time they update the totals, here

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @hitchhiker: In CA, we’re about a week or two behind you. My employer started seriously moving people off-site on the 11th, and it took us about a week to complete the transition. Most places were on similar trajectories; the Governor announced the state-wide shelter-in-place on the 19th.

  22. 22.

    Michael Cain

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: they’re playing with masks, but they’re playing

    They’re playing (and streaming) intrasquad games.  No travel, no crowds.  No word on where the players are staying.  The league there is hoping to be able to restart spring training by mid-April.

  24. 24.

    hitchhiker

    And, even better news. FINALLY the team that was trying to look under the hood a month ago is up and running with home-based test kits to measure the scope of what we’re dealing with.

    I just saw this news, went to the site where you can volunteer to do a home test even if you have no symptoms, and they already have plenty of applicants.

    We might just get our arms around this motherfucker.

    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/new-coronavirus-surveillance-program-launched-in-seattle-based-on-home-test-kits/

  25. 25.

    Bruce K

    Greece is in lockdown mode now – no venturing outside except for absolutely necessary stuff, and for those, you need to be carrying an affidavit of some sort giving your name, address, and reason for being out instead of at home. You can send an SMS text message to get permission, and get a response to show on your phone if you get stopped.

    As of now (evening, March 23), 695 confirmed cases (out of 8644 tested), 17 dead. Epidemiologists are apparently estimating somewhere between eight and ten thousand total infected.

    Trying to stay connected with people.

  26. 26.

    dmsilev

    Olympics postponed, date TBD but probably next year. Amazing that it took the IOC and Japanese government this long to make the decision, but at least they got there.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Major Major Major Major: We have a specific problem with masks, in that there were a lot of early messages telling people NOT to use them, in order to keep them from hoarding the N95 masks that health-care providers needed. That got muddled quickly into a general message that masks are useless–when probably even crude homemade masks with no hope of filtering virus particles would do some good, by stopping flying-droplet transmission and reminding people not to touch their faces.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Too many companies are patting themselves on the back for being ” essential services” and sending their workers out while the management stays at home on their laptops.

    I’m a little surprised my employer has not done the same.  We’re a hospital with an associated research institute, and they’ve just told us to shutter all but essential research activities.  That means basically anything except ongoing trials, research into coronavirus that might have a direct impact on the current outbreak, and a few maintenance activities like keeping critical equipment, cell lines, and animal colonies alive.

  29. 29.

    Calouste

    Madrid is turning an ice rink into a makeshift morgue. Things are pretty bad when you go past “we can no longer deal with the ill” to “we can no longer deal with the dead”.

  30. 30.

    Matt McIrvin

    …More generally, I’m seeing a dilemma in which there’s some behavior that is good for slowing or stopping disease transmission, but it involves consumption of a limited resource, so it’s actually better for most people to NOT do the virtuous thing in order to avoid hoarding the resource.

    I just saw some calls for healthy people to not use grocery delivery so that the most vulnerable people can get delivery slots, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Worried the admonition’s effect might last longer than it should.

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    Olympics postponed, date TBD but probably next year. Amazing that it took the IOC and Japanese government this long to make the decision, but at least they got there.

    The 1940 Olympics were cancelled, because of war. They were scheduled to be held in Japan.

    A bit of ironic bad luck.

  33. 33.

    NeenerNeener

    We’re going to have another spike upwards shortly, aren’t we, from all the spring break kids going home to infect their families? It will be all over the country.

  34. 34.

    Xenos

    The view from Luxembourg, which has been close to but not in the hot zone, is instructive. People became generally aware of how dangerous it would be when illness exploded in Italy around the 10th of March.
    10 March – “Holy shit”
    12 March- “if you can work from home, do so”
    13 March – “everybody is working from home. Schools will close next week”
    14 march – “schools are closed, Minimum 2 week lockdown, we are in it now”
    14 March to 21 March – 50% increase in infections, every day, like clockwork. Hospitals reorganised into Covid and non-Covid centers (following the example of the Germans, who did this three weeks ago – damn!). Convention center converted into an enormous non-urgent care facility.
    22 March – 20% increase in infections
    23 March – 10% increase in infections

    With excess capacity lining up, now preparing to transport in sick people from Strasbourg and other French hotspots. Everyone expects another 10 weeks of lockdown. Social solidarity is the theme every day. Still cant find disinfectant wipes in the stores, but there is no tax on grain alcohol! And since we sent a lot of medical supplies to Wuhan in January, China just sold us a big supply of masks, medical gowns, and flew it in for free.

  35. 35.

    Brachiator

    Some people just don’t understand. A comment from a business associate.

    i keep seeing states like NY and other locking down. not florida. florida doesnt scare easily.

    until a bunch of kids spring breakers got on the news and said they dont care and the govenor of florida shut down the beaches.

    Some people think you just have to be tough and the virus won’t get you.

  39. 39.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    Tough love.

    They will learn when they get the whatever. Back of the hand, disease, dead……

    Has never worked but I’d bet it’s the longest running theory of human behavior modification ever.

  42. 42.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @JoyceH: but a lot of those are cases that we would already have known about if we had a competent government. So the way to tell is by the death rate, morbid though that may be. Right now, our rate of daily deaths is doubling every three days. That rate will probably shorten in the near term. When the rate starts lengthening, when it takes longer for the daily death rate to double,

    This and going by places like Iceland that have done serious testing of their population the number of deaths to the number infected comes out to 1 in 500.

    Going by that California official has 1,926 and 36 deaths, but far more likely the true number is 18,000 people infected.  We’re Tough Florida officially 1,171 cases and 14 deaths (not bad work Libertarians consider patient zero in Cal is Jan 25th and patient 0 in Florida was like two weeks ago)  so the likely true number is 7,000 infected.

  43. 43.

    Martin

    Here’s my analysis from yesterday. China locked down on Jan 23. Here’s the timeline:

    • +13 days: First measured halt in infections. It takes a few days longer to confirm a clear drop
    • +21 days: First measured halt in fatalities
    • +32 days: First clear drop in fatalities
    • +46 days: Fatalities return to level of day of lockdown

    So, everyone is looking at a minimum of 3 weeks after the lockdown starts before anyone starts to breathe a sigh of release, and I’m guessing lockdowns will last at least 7 weeks. Italy is seeing a drop in infections, but the halt in fatalities is still a week off, and a drop in fatalities likely a week and a half after that. What we don’t know is how a less orderly lockdown like Italy’s will compare to a more orderly one like China’s. My guess is that the timeline will generally hold, but the magnitude of the effect will be less, so that +46 may take a lot longer. US will actually take longer because we didn’t do a nationwide lockdown. CA will probably match Italy, but we’ll have to figure out if we can let off because Arizona took longer to lock down, etc. If we let off early, we risk starting the cycle all over again unless we have protocols in place to prevent that (which so far we’ve seen zero evidence are being planned anywhere in the country).

    So yeah, hold tight. Be prepared for 5 figure fatality numbers before we see numbers really ease up, be prepared for 6 figure fatality numbers in the end. This effort is guaranteed to help. I’m willing to bet that states that moved faster will have lower fatality numbers than states that didn’t. So if you’re in California or Washington or Ohio, you’re probably in good shape. If you’re in Texas or Florida or Missouri, bunker the fuck up now.

  44. 44.

    Another Scott

    C-Span is rebroadcasting some sort of FEMA meeting from 2 PM today, with Pence sitting at the head of the table. I’ve got it on with the sound off.

    He has some comically-large US flag lapel pin. It’s ridiculous. But goes with the territory.

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    Fair Economist

    @Martin: Georgia looks very bad. Perhaps the worst of all the footdragger states.

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: D’s not yet in the majority. 48+Pence vs. 47. Murkowski is the swing vote. 49 against the bill is I assume 47 Dems + Murk + McConnell (voting against so he can call to reconsider).

  46. 46.

    Martin

    @Fair Economist: Yes Georgia is bad. I think Florida will be worse for a variety of reasons, but I think both will surpass CA on fatalities, despite CA being the start of community spread and being many times larger in population.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    I think at this point Florida and Texas are the two big states that have yet to enter a lockdown/shelter-in-place mode.

    I think Dallas is shutting down. Not sure about other cities.

  50. 50.

    Another Scott

    @Fair Economist: The JH map has started showing US cases by county/city in the last day or so.  I’ve been watching Mississippi.  It’s all over the state.  Georgia, Louisiana seems to have it concentrated in the big metropolitan areas (as you’d expect).  Mississippi is weird.  Dunno if it’s because (somehow) they’re doing lots of testing or what.

    It’s criminal that Donnie’s demand for small numbers has guaranteed that this has spiraled out of control and into a huge disaster.  It’s going to take monumental efforts to have enough PPE and testing to keep everyone from being infected.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    Martin

    Good news, everyone!

    WASHINGTON—The White House is discussing easing social-distancing guidelines as early as next week as advisers and business leaders push President Trump to boost an economy beset by deepening job losses nationwide, people familiar with the discussions said.

    I guess everyone is cured.

  52. 52.

    PenAndKey

    @Martin: “advisers and business leaders”

    Two categories that should have absolutely no input into a pandemic response plan unless they’ve got a relevant MD after their name, yet here we are.

  54. 54.

    Immanentize

    @Martin: Meanwhile, in Mass. The Governor is shutting down all non-essential businesses starting tomorrow at noon.  Mass is acting pretty well so far.  Maybe it is all the health care workers — everyone has a family member, or friend, or neighbor who works in that industry.  I luckily have a nurse living on each side of me — a school nurse and a pediatric specialist.  The school nurse is likely going to go work at MGH later this week.

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    RE: The White House is discussing easing social-distancing guidelines as early as next week as advisers and business leaders push President Trump to boost an economy beset by deepening job losses nationwide, people familiar with the discussions said.

    I guess everyone is cured.

    Also, I guess the business stimulus isn’t needed if we are all going back to business as usual.

  57. 57.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Good news on the mask front, maybe we don’t need all the DYI ones. This is from the Industrial Fabrics Association (bolding mine):
    “A coalition of iconic American apparel brands and textile companies, responding to the urgent call of the White House for medical supplies, has come together to build a supply chain virtually overnight and fast-track the manufacturing of medical face masks to help hospitals, health care workers and citizens battling the spread of the COVID-19 disease.
    Parkdale Inc., the largest yarn spinner in the U.S. headquartered in North Carolina, helped lead the effort to build the coalition with Hanesbrands, Fruit of the Loom and six other companies to set up a manufacturing supply chain and begin ramping up production of the masks. The coalition consists of iconic American brands such as Hanesbrands and Fruit of the Loom, often competitors in the marketplace, who are banding together for the greater good of a nation facing one if its most monumental challenges.
    American Giant, Los Angeles Apparel, AST Sportswear, Sanmar, America Knits, Beverly Knits and Riegel Linen are also part of the coalition working tirelessly to respond to a national emergency in the nation’s time of need.
    Dr. Peter Navarro, assistant to the President and director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, worked with the coalition and helped expedite the production of these masks. The first face masks have been approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
    The companies expect to begin production on Monday and will make the first deliveries by mid-week. They are dedicating their assets, resources and manufacturing capacities to create a high output of facemasks. Once fully ramped up in four to five weeks, the companies expect to produce up to 10 million facemasks per week in the United States and in Central America.”

  58. 58.

    Martin

    @Immanentize: I’m shocked MA got as bad as it did. I figured if any state would recognize they needed to bunker up ASAP, it’d have been MA, and I figured that’d be the state with 9 gazillion masks in storage.

  60. 60.

    dmsilev

    @Martin: I was just going to ask whether your lockdown model had a provision for what happens when a raving lunatic gets bored 1/4 of the way through and encourages people to end it.

    CA and NY and so forth will, of course, tell him to go piss up a rope (sadly, not in those exact words), but what about FL and TX?

  61. 61.

    Suzanne

    @Major Major Major Major: Yes yes yes. Our leadership needs to be exceedingly clear about why we are doing this, and what we can expect to see, and when. Expectations management. Clarity and transparency.

    Otherwise, mistermix is right…. people will just not comply if they are not incentivized to do so.

  62. 62.

    Immanentize

    @Martin: They had 9 gazillion, but there are so many elective surgeries and procedures done here.  Until those were curtailed, the use of PPE is extraordinary.  When the Immp was in the hospital recovering from his surgery, I was just amazed at how much gets tossed out every hour in a hospital.  The use rate is so high that no amount of supplies can last long.  And, hospitals being businesses, had moved to a “just in time” model for most regular supplies

  64. 64.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: All models fail when the raving lunatic variable is introduced. That’s why you remove the raving lunatics from the problem space.

  66. 66.

    planetjanet

    @BeautifulPlumage: This is excellent news.  My FB feed has been filling up with a group trying to make masks at home.  Now, if we can just ramp up tests as quickly.

  67. 67.

    errg

    Does anyone know of a source for what exact measures all states are taking to fight the coronavirus?

  69. 69.

    Martin

    @Another Scott: Yeah, again, look at how China does ops and how quickly they can ramp. They ramped production to 200M/week in a weeks time.

    Lots of handshake contracts, cash instead of financing, etc. We’ve inserted a LOT of legal/finance/distribution layers in how we do things. They have them as well, but they can just skip them all if the situation requires.

  71. 71.

    Immanentize

    @Martin: so could the United States of Trump ordered it under the Korean war industries acts.  But he won’t.

    I don’t know why some WH press person doesn’t troll Trump by asking, “You were elected in large part because of your success as a businessman.  Don’t you think companies should be allowed to make profits during this crisis?”

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @Zzyzx: But it’s not really the dictatorship that makes it go. It’s just the business culture. Their strategic advantage is speed. The US could have the same advantage but chooses not to. Ours is efficiency of capital.

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