What's Most Dangerous Today?

An interesting essay which tried to identify superspreader events and tease out commoalities among them. https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/

From his summary:

"When do COVID-19 SSEs happen? Based on the list I’ve assembled, the short answer is: Wherever and whenever people are up in each other’s faces, laughing, shouting, cheering, sobbing, singing, greeting, and praying."

I take this to mean that sporting events in the ways we're used to will be slow to resume. On the other hand, ordinary work should be quicker to resume. 

How about education--the theory being people can't go back to work if the schools are not open?  That's more difficult.

What the Pandemic Reveals

So far it seems that the elderly and impaired in residential/nursing homes and workers in meatpacking plants are especially susceptible to the novel coronavirus and at least the former are more likely to die. 

The unseen portion of our population is the category which is now proving vulnerable in Singapore, migrant workers, those living in group quarters.

There may also be vulnerability among the Haredim, the ultra Orthodox Jews.

All of these groups are outside the what I'd call the "core" population of our society, they're marginal-they aren't who we think of when talking about American workers.

Unfortunately for meat eaters, the packinghouse workers are essential.

Do We Get More Innovation With Federalism?

There have been some stories during the pandemic focusing on local and private efforts to innovate in response.  I don't remember them all, but there have been stories on individuals sewing face masks or setting up organizations to provide help and companies changing over to produce ventilators, face mask, personal protection equipment, coronavirus tests, etc.  Nasal swabs is the most recent one I've noticed; in this case people are using 3-D printers to produce them.

As an aside, I was surprised by a mention in the article of how well-established 3-D printing had become.

Back to innovation:  I wonder whether such stories could be found in any society, the desire to help and the spirit of innovation being innate in humans?  Or does the relatively decentralized nature of American society and the federalism of our government create a favorable atmosphere for such innovation which can't be matched by most other societies?  Or is the key how advanced the economy and technology of the society?

On Reopening After the Coronavirus

The Trump administration's task force has outlined a 3 stage process to reopen the economy.The steps make sense to me.  There's pressure from various places to go faster in reopening, particularly in southern states.

My own feeling is complicated:

• there's likely some, perhaps many, things which could be reopened with minimal additional risk to propagating the virus.  I' ve tweeted the suggestion that libraries could be reopened, at least to the extent that you can put a hold on a book or DVD online, then pick it up from the library.  That process could track closely to carryout orders from restaurants.
• the problem is the trade-off between having a strong simple rule which establishes a red line and more complicated rules which are harder to understand and enforce, particularly without a bureaucracy geared to that enforcement.  Using uniformed police isn't the answer. 

Bottom line: as usual the US will muddle through.

19 Billion USDA Program for Pandemic Aid

Here's the press release on the USDA  program(s) announced yesterday:  Highlights:

• "$16 billion in direct support based on actual losses for agricultural producers where prices and market supply chains have been impacted and will assist producers with additional adjustment and marketing costs resulting from lost demand and short-term oversupply for the 2020 marketing year caused by COVID-19."
• $3 billion in direct purchases of meat, milk and produce to be donated to NGO's.
• Using available Section 32 funds ($870+ million) also for direct purchases.
• Administrative support (likely for USDA agencies plus those involved in the distribution)

The first bullet is going to be tough to administer--if you dumped milk there's no evidence now, so it will likely rely on producer certifications for much of the evidence.  Of course all farmers are honest, except for a few bad apples. 

It's the "Coronavirus Food Assistance Program" or CFAP.

New Faces and Covid-19

The pandemic is impacting our politics in a number of ways. 

One impact is the rise to prominence of new faces, or the increased prominence of older faces. Those politicians who seem to do well in leading their organizations get good press. The governors and mayors of the country gain'; the legislators tend to recede. Gov.Cuomo of NY is one of the older faces, Gov. Newsosm of CA is one of the newer faces. London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, is definitely new.  All of the newly prominent faces can learn from the fate of Rudy Guiliani, who became prominent after 9/11, but failed to reach higher office.  

As we used to say: "different strokes for different folks".  

The Real Problem With the Trump Administration

I think the real problem with the Trump Administration is revealed in a Just Security timeline of the response to covid-19.

On Jan. 13, 2017 the Obama administration presented scenarios of pandemic responses to the incoming Trump administration:

Trump administration attendees include: Steven Mnuchin, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Stephen Miller, Marc Short, Reince Priebus (resigned), Rex Tillerson (fired), Gen. James Mattis (fired), Rep. Ryan Zinke (resigned), Sen. Jeff Sessions (resigned), Sen. Dan Coats (fired), Andrew Puzder (not confirmed), Dr. Tom Price (resigned), Gov. Rick Perry (resigned), Dr. David Shulkin (fired), Gen. John Kelly (resigned), Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Linda McMahon (resigned), Sean Spicer (fired), Joe Hagin (resigned), Joshua Pitcock (resigned), Tom Bossert (fired), KT McFarland (resigned), Gen. Michael Flynn (awaiting criminal sentencing), Gary Cohn (resigned), Katie Walsh (resigned), and Rick Dearborn (resigned).

Note all the turnover, both "fired" and "resigned". To me this says or conforms:

• too much change at the top, meaning leaders lack accumulated experience and familiarity with their agencies
• a likely disconnect between the President and the bureaucracy
• failure to attract top people as replacements--who wants to work for a boss like Trump
• a corrosive atmosphere at the top--a mixture of fear and apple-polishing.

Farm Income for 2020

From Illinois extension:

DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton reported this week that, “An updated economic analysis looking at the impact of COVID-19 projects crop farmers to see $11.85 billion in lower revenue in 2020 and all livestock sectors combined to see a $20.24 billion drop in receipts for the year.

And here, a report of "nearly $25 billion" in federal aid to farmers.

So farmers overall will make out okay this year?  

(Actually, because the aid can't exactly match the losses, some farmers will make out well, others will lose bigly.)


[Updated: see this report on where the aid might go.]

DOS and COBOL

Last week I saw references to both COBOL and DOS (see this FCW piece and this piece from Slate); I think both in connection with unemployment insurance systems which are running on ancient software.  I never did much programming with DOS (I was more into WordPerfect macos) but I did take courses in COBOL and did one application as a sideline to my regular job.  The System/36 ran COBOL as did the mainframes in Kansas City.

I can understand why both private and public organizations still run COBOL.  Every change of software runs the risk of creating new problems, so if you've got an application that runs without problems and supports the organization, there's little reason to switch to a newer language.  That's particularly true if the organization is adding new programs or functions, so available people and work hours are needed to support the new.

All that said, the downside of keeping the old programs is you have to live with the old silos and the old thinking, forgoing chances to integrate, and likely forcing you to invent kludges or bridges on occasion. For example, with issuing the federal payments under the current program (CARES), I suspect Treasury had to write new programs to match ID's in IRS files against those in unemployment files.

Impacts of the Pandemic--Social Science

Social science will have a field day analyzing the impacts of the pandemic.  Economists and other social scientists have had to make do with "natural experiments".  They look at the differences in outcome for those who win a lottery (for money, for healthcare, for college entrance) and those who don't.  Or they try to compare different but comparable political subdivisions.  Or, as when air traffic was grounded after 9/11 they look as disasters. As the pandemic subsides they will find:

• a vastly expanded set of such experiments, given how the timing of events has varied.
• a new scope to such experiments, examining the effects of the pandemic shutdown on all aspects of social activity.
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Social Media and the Virus

I often see references to "viral" social media--used to be a blog post, now it's tweets or memes (call them "events")  The metaphor works because there are parallels between social media events and viral infections.  Each event or infection can end with the person, or it can trigger an event or infection in another person.  When the average odds of replication (R)is equal to 1 or greater, you get exponential growth.

The difference is in the nature of the effect.  Social media events can be positive or negative, an infection can be slightly or very negative in effect. 

The Three Silos: Food Supply in the Age of Covid-19

The pandemic has revealed we have three silos in the food supply system:

• commodity agriculture supplying supermarkets and groceries.  This silo is working pretty well.
• food service agriculture supplying restaurants and fast food outlets.  Because the restaurant industry is closed down, except for delivery service (a possible fourth silo), this silo is in deep trouble.  Farmers supplying milk are having to dump, those supplying produce are having to dump. 
• the direct to consumer (Community supported agriculture and farmers markets).  This silo seems also in trouble according to this Times article.

The net result of the pandemic may be a setback for the farm-to-table movement.

[Updated: another Times article.]

My Sympathy to the Trump Administration

The bureaucrats in the Trump administration have my sympathy.  I've played a role in the FSA/USDA bureaucracy during times when we had to implement programs, new programs in a rush. What I didn't have to deal with was:

• social media--telephones and email were bad enough.
• the general public--only farmers and those who do business with them were paying attention, but that was more than enough.(The Senate minority leader was never on TV as he is now worrying about how we were going to implement.)
• a heated political and partisan atmosphere..
• IIRC 3 weeks was about the tightest time frame I had to deal with, which is a few days longer than those implementing the third stimulus act, signed a week ago.
• I think they have to construct or reconstruct the bureaucratic infrastructure needed to support the programs.  Things like setting up accounting structures, finding office space and providing IT for the new hires, etc. etc.
• the topper no. 1--doing this all in an environment where in-person meetings are dangerous and teleworking is new.
• the topper no. 2--top leadership which is either missing (as in vacancies) or missing (as in Trump).

There's probably more differences but those are the ones coming to mind now.

In a crisis situation there are a lot of decisions to be made and people do the best they can.  It's easy for kibitzers to criticize because they don't have the same information.  They have different information, often misinformation, but sometimes valuable information about aspects of reality which the bureaucrats have missed or aren't aware of.  It's hard to distinguish between the good and the unfounded.

I'll try to remember these factors when I criticize the administration on their handling of the programs, which I'm sure I will.

A Tale of Two Photos

Two photos in the Post told a tale. 

1. One was a picture with an article on Gov. Guomo, lauding his leadership.  It showed him at a briefing, seated at a long table with another official about 10 feet away from him.
2. The other was a picture of the vice president walking to the president's briefing with the members of the taskforce walking at his side, no one more than feet away.

Of course my interest was triggered by the contrast between Dems and Reps in observing social distancing.  On reflection, my initial reaction was unfair--people keep to old habits until they consciously override them.

Gas Lines, Flour, and PPE

I remember the gas lines in the 1970's when OPEC embargoed oil.  Everyone panicked.  Gas is essential after all. So we all got into lines at gas stations, and we filled our tanks. Every time the gas gauge got down to about half full, we got back in line again.  The effect was to aggravate the shortage, because the amount of gasoline sloshing around in car tanks increased, not to mention the gas wasted idling in long lines. The supply of gas had gone down but hoarding increased the demand.

We're seeing similar effects with Covid-19. People are stocking up  on flour and toilet paper. It's not quite as foolish as it might seem.  John Phipps has tweeted out his concerns that the food supply chains are adapted to supply restaurants and fast food chains with a sizable portion of our food consumption.  The dollars spent between home and restaurant are about equal, but of course it's more expensive to eat out. 

So flour mills would be supplying a large amount to the bakeries which supply hamburger buns and sub rolls. And since a good deal of our elimination of wastes occurs outside the home in normal times, the paper products people are set up to supply the middlemen. This means our current shortages in the supermarkets result from two causes: the fill-the-tank syndrome, stocking up for future disaster'; a slow change in the adaptation of supply chains. Obviously we don't need more food or toilet paper.

The medical community is dealing with shortages of  PPE (*personal protection equipment"), masks, gowns, etc. and other essentials like ventilators.  Here the cause seems to be; we do need more PPE., but countries and people are doing "fill-the-tank" hoarding.

What's in the Covid-19 Bill for FSA?

From Politico:

Special deal: The stimulus provides $9.5 billion in emergency aid for the agriculture industry and replenishes $14 billion in spending authority to the Agriculture Department’s Commodity Credit Corp., a Depression-era financial institution set up to stabilize the farm economy — the same USDA agency sending trade bailout payments to farmers. Producers ranging from dairy farmers and cattle ranchers to fresh fruit and vegetable growers are eligible.

How they got it: Livestock groups have been leaning on lawmakers for weeks to pony up funds for producers who have seen commodity prices plummet since January. Western senators including John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who chairs the Appropriations panel that oversees agricultural spending, made sure those provisions were part of the stimulus plan from the get-go. Then, top Democrats like Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, ranking member on the Agriculture Committee, pushed to include language making specialty crop farmers — like Michigan’s tart cherry growers — eligible for the emergency aid.

What's the Metaphor for the Covid-19 IMpact

I like metaphors, as I've said before.

The other day I ran across a metaphor used by someone, perhaps an economist, who said the course of the economy will be like driving a car on a highway--you run into a jam, a slowdown where all the traffic slows down, but once the jam is resolved you and the rest of the traffic resume their usual speed.

That's a reassuring image.  Let me offer a differ one, more realistic in my opinion;  In spring and fall you sometimes encounter fog banks on interstates.  In winter you sometimes get a storm which lays down some ice in an area where traffic isn't expecting it.  In these situations you can have a sequence of rear-end accidents, resulting in 20, 30, or more vehicles involved in some damage.  Some cars can run, but are blocked in;; some are a total loss.  Traffic is stopped for a time.

Now I'm not comparing the covid-19 impact to such an accident. Let's imagine a four-lane highway, like the Dulles toll road or the CApitol Beltway. There's a multi-car accident which blocks 2 or 3 lanes and damages some cars.  Rubbernecking slows the traffic in the unblocked lanes. 

That's my metaphor. It seems to me part of the question in sending people back to work is this: how many cars have been damaged in this accident--is the major problem a blockage of the lanes or the damage to the cars.

Damage to the cars in this example equates to impacts on employers and employees. If there's little damage, the economy could easily resume its speed. If there's lots of damage, it will take time to repair it. 

I'm thinking that the more damage we see, the greater the importance of getting the economy going again. 

Peeves: Flaunted and Dispersed

"Flaunt" means to show off.  When writing about people disobeying  Covid-19 rules you mean "flout".  Your "aunt" might be showy, a "lout" definitely isn't.

"Dispersed" means to scatter.  When writing about payments from stimulus programs, you mean "disbursed".   (Did your college have a "bursar"? )

Epstein Dead and Buried (Metaphorically)?

Gregory Cochran is an anthropologist who is very much a contrarian.  On his West Hunter blog he posts occasionally, mostly on the evolution of humans.  He seems to be on the conservative side, at least in that he argues for the impact of evolution on human traits, etc.  In other words, he's not politically correct.

With that understanding of his leanings, I was surprised to read this takedown of Richard Epstein, who recently speculated on the outcome of Covid-19, arguing that concerns were over done. Most notably he predicted deaths in US would be 500 or les.

I only know that predictions vary very widely, and everyone who positively asserts a prediction is overdoing it.

But Cochran's post is a great example of taking no prisoners.

Claw Backs on Covid Aid

Personally, my wife and I fall into the category Steven Pearlstein described Friday--people whose income is not siigniicantly impacted by Covid-19. See this more recent post on Politico.

I don't know whether we will receive anything under the measures now being put together in  Congress.

It strikes me that in the absence of the right infrastructure to focus payments you could include a clawback provision. For us, the IRS would know on our 2020 taxes that we received Covid money. If our adjusted gross income for 2020 doesn't show a decrease from 2019, i.e., we weren't hurt by the pandemic, then tax the Covid money, 100 percent or something less.

[Updated:  Here's Greg Mankiw proposing the same thing.]