Economic implications of a SARS/Coronavirus outbreak

[basilio]

It is not the govnuts job, we live in a capitalistic society. If they really wanted people to remain solvent and in their homes, we would not have the ridiculously high housing prices and be one of the most indepbted nations per capita in the world(private debt).
The only way to clean the swamp is with a good flood and that we have, the BLACK SWANS must be smiling.

I think you are mixing the situations here .
We have a health emergency which can only be stopped by enforcing a social isolation process that will have to drastically reduce normal economic activity. If the government doesn't take steps to protect the basics of peoples and businesses lives during this shutdown there will be an economic calamity as well.

The fact is in 2020 we have a national government precisely to intervene in society and the market place when events happen that are beyond the control of individuals or businesses. Whether that is a response to massive bushfires, unconscionable behaviour by institutions (Banks/Chuches) , or an international pandemic we need governments to protect the infrastructure of our society.

In this case we have to protect hundreds of thousands of peoples lives and our health system and the financial and social fabric of the country

 

[satanoperca]

"We have a health emergency" more people died yesterday on our roads, than have from this virus since the start of the year.
It is not an emergency, it is scare mongering that will cost everyone in our society than it should.

Five deaths so far in 2.5months, yet 8 people committed suicide on Sunday.

 

[basilio]

"We have a health emergency" more people died yesterday on our roads, than have from this virus since the start of the year.
It is not an emergency, it is scare mongering that will cost everyone in our society than it should.

Five deaths so far in 2.5months, yet 8 people committed suicide on Sunday.

So what is happening in Italy SP ? Or Iran or Japan ? What happened in China when they ignored the first signs of the virus and then finally closed down the whole country for 2 months ?

This is not a beat up. We can see exactly what will happen to us if we don't act quickly and decisively. We are not reacting to 5 deaths now. We are seeing what happened to the countries that didn't respond early and properly and want to ensure we don't look like them.

 

[satanoperca]

People die, viruses are a part of life, this is just stupid, the strong survive, the weak perish, that is the law of the land/nature.

How long do you want a country to go into lock down for?

How many people can exists on this single planet without a future virus taking hold?

Is this not nature fighting back to what we have done to her/he?

 

[basilio]

This is how Donald Trump treats the Coronvia virus threat to the whole world.
Absolute xxxxing criminal behaviour.

I want to repeat my disgust at the criminal sociopathic behaviour of the Thief-in-Chief

Not surprisingly German Ministers are white hot about Trumps effort to buy out the German firm on the condition it produced a vaccine only for the US. If I had to see any single event that would create an international push to denounce Donald Trump this would be it.
If this is correct, and all indications to date point that way, he and the US will have forfeited all international respect for his behaviour.
............................................................................................
German ministers have reacted angrily following reports US president Donald Trump offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive rights to a Covid-19 vaccine.

“Germany is not for sale,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told broadcaster ARD, reacting to a front page report in Welt am Sonntag newspaper headlined “Trump vs Berlin”.

The newspaper reported Trump offered $1bn to Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine “only for the United States”.

The German government was reportedly offering its own financial incentives for the vaccine to stay in the country.

The report prompted fury in Berlin. “International co-operation is important now, not national self-interest,” said Erwin Rueddel, a conservative lawmaker on the German parliament’s health committee.

The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said a takeover of CureVac by the Trump administration was “off the table”. CureVac would only develop vaccine “for the whole world”, Spahn said, “not for individual countries”.

Last week, the firm mysteriously announced that CureVac CEO Daniel Menichella had been replaced by Ingmar Hoerr, just weeks after Menichella met Trump, his vice-president Mike Pence and representatives of pharma companies in Washington.

CureVac quoted Menichella on its website as saying shortly after the visit: “We are very confident that we will be able to develop a potent vaccine candidate within a few months.”

On Sunday, CureVac investors said they would not sell the vaccine to a single state.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/l...stralia-france-italy-spain-update-latest-news

 

[sptrawler]

Rumpy from reading the article carefully I believe the story is accurate.

Clearly an official Government spokesman is not going to publicly highlight such a US centered approach by Donald Trump. That is just not good poolitics.

The relevant quotes from the story are
Earlier, when approached about the report by the Guardian, the German health ministry would only confirm the accuracy of the quotes attributed to one of its spokespersons in the article.

“The federal government is very interested in vaccines and antiviral agents against the novel coronavirus being developed in Germany and Europe,” the spokesperson quoted in the original article had said. “In this regard the government is in an intensive exchange with the company CureVac.”
The German health ministry spokesperson declined the opportunity to correct any inaccuracies in Die Welt’s account.

This was the opportunity to correct any error the newspaper had made in its reporting of Donald Trumps efforts to buy the company solely for US distribution. They declined to make any such correction.

Why would they buy a company solely for U.S distribution, when the U.S economy is built on selling Stuff to as many people as would buy it, sounds bloody ridiculous.
Are you trying to say, when they have enough for themselves, they wouldn't make any more?
People need to get a grip, is there any wonder, there was a run on toilet paper.

 

[basilio]

Why would they buy a company solely for U.S distribution, when the U.S economy is built on selling Stuff to as many people as would buy it, sounds bloody ridiculous.
Are you trying to say, when they have enough for themselves, they wouldn't make any more?
People need to get a grip, is there any wonder, there was a run on toilet paper.

Please think for a minute. The meeting was with Trump, Pence and reps from Big Pharma. Big Pharma lives to make and sell drugs as expensively as they can. Full stop . End of story

Of course they would make more. You would just have to pay through the nose for it. And frankly, thinking about Donald Trump, I would be confident in saying he would deny such a vaccine to any countries he saw fit.

The alternative process is working like hell to find and make a viable vaccine and then find a way to produce it in enough quantities to vaccinate billions of people.

This story explores the big picture on that process.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ine-be-ready-human-trials-global-immunisation

 

[sptrawler]

Please think for a minute. The meeting was with Trump, Pence and reps from Big Pharma. Big Pharma lives to make and sell drugs as expensively as they can. Full stop . End of story

Of course they would make more. You would just have to pay through the nose for it.
The alternative process is working like hell to find and make a viable vaccine and then find a way to produce it in enough quantities to vaccinate billions of people.

This story explores the big picture on that process.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ine-be-ready-human-trials-global-immunisation

If the U.S has a capacity to make more vaccine than the German company,once it is proven as usable, the U.S company should be sold the rights to produce it.
If they wont sell the rights then the U.S company should buy the German company and start mass production.
This is serious $hit, it needs to get produced as fast as can be done.
Personal dislikes need to be put on the back burner, if the German Government has a problem sell it to the U.K and U.S, where they both can make it in bulk and fast.
People need to start focusing on the problem, rather than just finding another way, to bucket on Trump.
What if Germany, will take three times as long, to make the same amount of vaccine?

 

[Smurf1976]

"We have a health emergency" more people died yesterday on our roads, than have from this virus since the start of the year.
It is not an emergency, it is scare mongering that will cost everyone in our society than it should.

The issue is the rate of increase not how many are dead thus far.

Hospitals simply don't have the capacity to cope with the infection rate being more than a few % of the population at a time. Exceed that limit and then the death rate spikes from all sorts of other things as well - heart attack, stroke, car accident all become far more likely to kill you when you can't be admitted to hospital after having one because it's already full.

About now is the time "efficiency experts" disappear from the health system real quick, never to be seen again, and everyone starts realising that higher taxes to fund spare capacity in hospitals would have been a better idea after all.

Do all the elective surgery as a matter of course with the hospitals running at 80% of capacity. So you've got empty wards, you've got spare ambulances, you've got doctors working only standard hours and so on. Then when something like this happens we cancel all the elective stuff, run the hospitals up to 100% capacity, have the staff working overtime and so on.

Business efficiency gurus will say we can't afford that. In doing so they are saying that the situation we have now is cheaper and not too much of a problem really. Suffice to say I disagree.

Efficiency is brilliant up to a point, it's the very thing that makes our current way of life possible so it's by no means bad, but go beyond that optimum point and it ends with a meltdown. Everything from engines to warehouses do that, there's a point beyond which further efficiency comes at the price of reliability and if you accept that, if you want to have that efficiency, then you have to accept the occasional spectacular blowup as part of the cost.

The warning signs have been there for years but were ignored. Every state has a waiting list for surgery and that's a huge alarm bell because it means hospitals aren't being run with spare capacity. That being so, it was inevitable that we'd face something like this sooner or later.

It's the same in most countries of course but if you look at those who've contained it, well the key thing is they had the resources to throw at it. That's the bit most countries have failed at and that increases the economic cost hugely since it greatly ups the required disruption to everything else.

 

[satanoperca]

Sprawler, lets see if they have a vaccine first, let it trial it first, before everyone gets excited, developing vaccines is a little more complicated than one would think and getting it to market takes a longer longer than a few months.

And if they have one, what stops someone reverse engineering it and mass producing it themselves in these times

 

[basilio]

If the U.S has a capacity to make more vaccine than the German company,once it is proven as usable, the U.S company should be sold the rights to produce it.
If they wont sell the rights then the U.S company should buy the German company and start mass production.
This is serious $hit, it needs to get produced as fast as can be done.
Personal dislikes need to be put on the back burner, if the German Government has a problem sell it to the U.K and U.S, where they both can make it in bulk and fast.

Who says the US has more capacity to make the vaccine ?

Never, ever mentioned.

The story was simply that Trump offered a $1B for the company and part of the deal was exclusivity for the US

It seems that the CEO saw the dollar signs and was interested in taking the money until the rest of the Board arched up over the deal. He was then replaced.

I repeat. I think this story if verified should break Donald Trumps Presidency

 

[sptrawler]

I repeat. I think this story if verified should break Donald Trumps Presidency

No one would have guessed that.

If it's not verified you still want his Presidency broken, he can't win either way.

 

[Smurf1976]

If the U.S has a capacity to make more vaccine than the German company,once it is proven as usable, the U.S company should be sold the rights to produce it.

By all means give them the rights to produce it but that means exactly that - they can be one of the many who'll be producing it, they won't be having any sort of monopoly over it since we'll give the rights to Bangladesh and Iran as well.

 

[sptrawler]

By all means give them the rights to produce it but that means exactly that - they can be one of the many who'll be producing it, they won't be having any sort of monopoly over it since we'll give the rights to Bangladesh and Iran as well.

Absolutely, which is what I was saying sell the rights to whoever can make it the fastest, the more the merrier.
If they wont sell the rights, then someone will buy out the company, it's a guaranteed money spinner.

 

[sptrawler]

It sounds as though the States are getting serious.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/fines-prison-time-not-self-isolating-australia-coronavirus-021618729.html

 

[basilio]

Sprawler, lets see if they have a vaccine first, let it trial it first, before everyone gets excited, developing vaccines is a little more complicated than one would think and getting it to market takes a longer longer than a few months.

And if they have one, what stops someone reverse engineering it and mass producing it themselves in these times

Patents. US Parma muscle. US government political support for US Prma.
Same process they have been using for 50 years
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/25/high-drug-prices-caused-by-us-patent-system.html

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

People die, viruses are a part of life, this is just stupid, the strong survive, the weak perish, that is the law of the land/nature.

How long do you want a country to go into lock down for?

How many people can exists on this single planet without a future virus taking hold?

Is this not nature fighting back to what we have done to her/he?

I would agree though not in such passionate terms @satanoperca

btw I only realised the internal humour in your name until I wrote it out. Perch well.

The virus mainly kills the old such as I, which is of no consequence to me or any of the youth who will survive to procreate and pass on my genes. The disruption is economic not human, or only human in that people are affected by the economic fallout.

Lockdowns may, and I say may work, in an economic sense. We will need to see the data from China, and a satellite image of pollution may be sufficient to gauge this.

I believe MR. Xi is hooshing the Chinese back to work

Being social getting up close, shaking hands, living in each others houses, bars or cafes is probably not wise as many Italians have done early on in their exposure. It is not the way to go.

Lockdowns as you say can only last so long.

gg

ps. Democracy is the worst system to have in a plague such as this. Just look at twitter where Professorial fools such as Peter van Onselen and other non-qualified commenters such as journalists and bloggers rule the roost and influence panic, the populace and government.

pps. Don't get me started on politicians.

ppps. Buy materials on the ASX in 2.7 weeks.

 

[basilio]

No one would have guessed that.

If it's not verified you still want his Presidency broken, he can't win either way.

And are you still happy with him SP ? Do you reckon he's doing a good job ? Honest ? Capable ? On top of the Corona Virus ? Making good choices for the country ?

Using his Executive power Wisely for the Good of the Country rather than pardoning the ever widening circle of advisors who have lied or schemed to protect him ?

Just wondering..

 

[satanoperca]

btw I only realised the internal humour in your name until I wrote it out. Perch well.

An inquiring mind is a healthy one, few have picked up on it.

I agree, buying materials in coming weeks in a good move.

 

[sptrawler]

Patents. US Parma muscle. US government political support for US Prma.
Same process they have been using for 50 years
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/25/high-drug-prices-caused-by-us-patent-system.html

From what you posted:

• One in four Americans are unable to fill prescriptions due to high prices.
• Today’s drug patent monopolies are stronger than at any point in the last century, raising prescription prices.
• Until the U.S. patent system is reformed, the pharmaceutical industry will continue to deny competition, block incentives discoveries and promote ineffective drugs.

Well there isn't much point in having a pandemic stopping drug, if people can't afford buy then die, you've lost the customer.
The third point above:
What is the point of blocking incentives discoveries and promoting ineffective drugs, when those who need it will either die or get immunity and the virus will subside, then you have no one to sell the drug to.

Do you read what you put up?