COVID-19 # 34 (Required Parts are Highlighted)

It's simple, but this is a good summary:

Not sure about the positions on the curve, but I think the countries are ordered correctly.

India has locked down the entire country. That will try this with about twice as many people as China did.

Italy's daily death total popped up again. I am hopeful that is random noise in the data.

China announced that all restrictions in Wuhan will be lifted by April 8th.

Electricity consumption in Italy is off by 16% (the story is here, but the data from Bloomberg appears to be proprietary). That's comparable to my earlier post about energy use in China about 5 weeks ago.

Also, I feel like a total jerk for dissing PMI data(s) in class. I guess I should add that when it's too early to have all the data, and data is OK ... and PMI's do cross our desks fairly promptly. Anyway, the PMI's coming out of Europe are disastrous. Here's Germany's:

Services are harder hit because they require a lot interpersonal activity. Don't forget that for any rich developed country, service account for about 2/3 of the economy.

Yes ... time for movie reviews!

I bit the bullet and rewatched Contagion for the first time since it came out (yeah for easy cancellation policies for free trials of streaming services). It has huge similarities to the situation we're in right now. A new virus gets a start in China (Macau instead of Wuhan). It also comes from bats. Public spaces are commandeered for makeshift hospitals. Doctors get sick and die. People do unethical things, like spreading news of false cures on the internet. Young people do dumb stuff. But it also has dissimilarities. It's not a coronavirus, it's a paramyxovirus (like mumps, measles, and RSV). In the movie the virus goes from bats through pigs to humans. It's R0 is much higher: around 20. It's also a lot deadlier than our real one, with a fatality rate of 25%. Put those two together and they have a lot more deaths. Society breaks down much more seriously;there's little mention of shortages, but fairly quickly there's lots of thefts and looting. But they're able to develop a vaccine relatively quickly (we're still working on one for the first SARS). Anyway, if you can't handle it, don't watch. But it's pretty good "pandemic porn" if you do.

I had actually rewatched Outbreak for the heck of it around Thanksgiving, so it's still fresh in my mind. Their disease is far deadlier. But it also must have a much lower R0. It's more like Ebola (which is closer to a paramyxovirus than to a coronavirus). There's way more of the bad military tropes in this movie, and people in hazmat suits. It's not very similar to where we are now. Definitely engaging though.

My kids and I have a plan to rewatch Twelve Monkeys this weekend. Not at all like our current situation, but pretty freaky nonetheless. Warning: Terry Gilliam movies are not for everyone. But if you like crazy plot twists, this one is for you.

If you like oldies, I recommend Panic In the Streets. It's in black and white, but is streamable if you can find it. It's much more into the early public health aspect: how do we find the really small number of sick people so the epidemic never gets started. FWIW: I lived in New Orleans for most of the 90's, and while it's set in 1950, it has serious New Orleans ambience.