The effective reproduction rate Rt of the epidemic is a topic that gets different attention in different countries. In Germany the media focuses highly on it. Up to the point that a daily change from 1.07 to 1.1 was ‘news’. Well technical that kind of change is noise, but if people click on it.
Sadly in the US it is not a topic for many people. There is a really wonderful site that visualizes the effective reproduction Number called rt.live. Mike Krieger built it, and does a marvelous job in communicating this crucial information. Like everybody I really enjoyed the books by Edward Tufte. The concept that the communication of information can be wonderful if done right is very intriguing. I have trouble finding another example where this has been executed as wonderfully as in the site created by Mr Krieger. The number is of crucially importance. I will ramble more about their meaning later, but even in this light I was struck by how well rt.live has been done. America is both: A place where people can start Instagram and then go on to make things like this, and it is an ignorant s*hole country that walks open eyed into the abyss.
Which brings me what I actually wanted to point out: The US might be in much deeper trouble then ‘it’ might think. Of course there is no longer a coherent national mind, like there was, when for instance the decision got made that ‘we go to the moon’. That is one of the problems the country faces. People love that they are American. But sadly there is no national positive plan to deal with anything. Not even a huge f*ing problem like Covid-19.
It has been in the US and in the news cycle since March. The George Floyd protests were already the next topic. The media likes to go through new topics every so often. Which is fine if you roll from shark attacks to celebrity divorces. If there is an actual reality shaping dynamic event at foot the fickle media attention can become a problem. Covid-19 is old news. And it simply does not care that it no longer had the publics attention. It is different from presidential candidates in that respect.
The real problem that the US ignores is one of math: With an Rt above one infections will rise. Exponentially. There are more infected people than there were during this pandemic. Demographics might have shifted. Many people who had the disease a couple of months ago would have not gotten tested, now they do. But still: There are more infected people than they have been. And they will infect more people. Until there is ‘herd immunity’ at an estimated 60% infection rate. There are officially 3 million cases. Less than 1% of the population. Of course there are more infected people. But not 40x or anything that one could hope that soon herd immunity could bring the numbers back down.
Change in behavior can also bring numbers down. If a significant part of the population participates. Sadly 5% of the population starting to walk around in full body PPE will have zero impact. It is the number of people that don’t pay attention at all that can drive an epidemic.
Lastly a vaccine and also clinical progress can lessen the impact of the epidemic. Clinical progress gets made. Day by day. Doctors are smart, they figure new things out. Little by little. Much does not make it into the media. Lots of little effects eventually add, without it been written about. We see this now. Downside is that this is not a panacea. Even if there would be a perfect vaccine next week, application of it will take a month – or probably more. If only half of people have it, be it because they don’t want it, or the infra structure to apply it is not capable enough, then its impact is not the binary switch off to the state of 2019 that people tend to envision – hope for.
Infections will grow and grow. The national regime makes an attempt to stretch things out to bring the prize home in November. It stopped giving daily briefings. It will try all sorts of PR maneuvers to distract the American mind from the looming doom. Tragically it will make matters worse by doing so. If the American president would have operated like that of any of the western European countries (aside from maybe Sweden and the UK) his reelection would have been a slam dunk. He blew that one. He always blows things, and then survived them. Naturally for him to think that it will be no different this time. But Covid-19 is not a weak foe like the Democratic Party.
Once infections grow there will be new problems: A second country wide shut down, now needed, while in hindsight it wasn’t the right thing to do in March, will be much harder on the financial system. The feds expanded their balance sheet from 4 to 7 trillion in a matter of weeks to dampen the effect. The big question is: At which level does the dollar loose its global role. Is that at the 10 or at the 100 trillion mark. The GDP of the entire planet is estimated to be at 140 trillion.
The Stock market or its comically skewed measure of the DJIA are pointing upward. Did so in the last months. It might continue its ignorance of the facts even through the next level of human and economic devastation that looms in the months ahead. Or the leather bubble might finally rapture. The bear might not have been dead as it has appeared. It maybe was just hibernating real fucking hard in the last months. It is impossible to know if this aspect will add to the epidemic impact. If people think their retirement is in tatters this would change their outlook on everything.
Healthcare capacity was big topic in March. It strangely no longer is. Last time the collision got avoided. But this time I don’t see how things should be magically different. Those 50,000 daily new positive tests will eventually condensate in the need for hospital resources. Which are still limited. Once number encroach on that border stuff gets generally much worse: Overworked staff can not take care of themselves, gets itself infected. Covid becomes nosocomial again. Which is pushing hard on lethality rates. We have been there before. In Wuhan, in northern Italy, in Spain.
The big question mark is how society as a whole will react to this. George Floyd protests were bigger than anything of their nature before. People in general are not in a good, sane, balanced state. The impact of tech / internet based world consumption has vastly intensified in the last months. And it was not on a healthy level before. We have no idea what that means for a society.
Lastly and globally the sharks are circling: Both Russia and China have a significant interest in a diminished role of the US. Russia so that it can continue its path of increasing its regional power position. The Krim is theirs already. One of the few map changes in this century so far. It would like to operate as the major European power.
China is on a more ambitious path: Hong Kong and then Taiwan is in its sights. That does not stop it from rubbing shoulders with India. It also wants to be a in position to be the dominant force in the inevitable massive changes on the Korean peninsula.
Western Europe and the highly developed asian countries all existed very well in a world that got stabilized by American power, influence and values. In the end of 2020 this situation could be a significantly different one. It is clear that China will come out as the winner here. The question is just by how much.