J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 51

Not as bad as I had feared it would be. But the Coronav...

Not as bad as I had feared it would be. But the Coronavirus Depression was here in April: BLS: Employment Situation Summary https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm: ���Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April, and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it.... This is the highest rate and the largest over-the-month increase in the history of the series (seasonally adjusted data are available back to January 1948).... The labor force participation rate decreased by 2.5 percentage points over the month to 60.2 percent, the lowest
rate since January 1973 (when it was 60.0 percent). Total employment, as measured by the household survey, fell by 22.4 million to 133.4 million. The employment-population ratio, at 51.3 percent, dropped by 8.7 percentage points over the month. This is the lowest rate and largest over-the-month decline in the history of the series (seasonally adjusted data are available back to January 1948).... Establishment Survey Data: Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April, after declining by 870,000 in March���

#labor #macro #noted #2020-05-08

Matthew Yglesias: Coronavirus Mitigation Could Kill Thous...

Matthew Yglesias: Coronavirus Mitigation Could Kill Thousands. Suppress the Virus, Don���t Just ���Flatten the Curve��� https://www.vox.com/2020/5/6/21241058/coronavirus-mitigation-suppression-flatten-the-curve: ���With the disease seemingly beaten back domestically, Hong Kong is now in a position to start switching emphasis to a strategy focused on border controls.... The city has a clearly articulated strategy that it calls ���suppress and lift���: ease restrictions now when cases are at zero, but then clamp back down as necessary to push cases back down if they pop up. Taiwan has also had no new cases for several days.... New Zealand has not done quite this well, but the government believes it has successfully identified and isolated all of the country���s coronavirus cases and is lifting restrictions, on the claim that the virus has been ���eliminated��� in the country. South Korea���s outbreak is now down to single-digit numbers of new cases per week.... The United States, meanwhile, is moving to open up on the basis of a vaguely articulated assumption that settling for mitigation is good enough.... The United States has not really tried the strategies that have made suppression successful. To accomplish that, America would need to invest in expanding the volume of tests, invest in more contact tracers, and create centralized quarantine facilities.... Since the US didn't spend April doing that, trying to achieve suppression���along the lines of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and New Zealand���would necessarily involve more delay and more economic pain. But doing so would save potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of lives and almost certainly lead to a better economic outcome by allowing activity to truly restart���

#coronavirus #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-05-07

Jo Walton (2004): The Dyer of Lorbanery (Spearpoint Theor...

Jo Walton (2004): The Dyer of Lorbanery (Spearpoint Theory) http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/23rd-february-2004-the-dyer-of-lorbanery-spearpoint-theory/: ���There comes a point in writing, and it���s a spear-point, it���s very small and sharp but because it���s backed by the length and weight of a whole spear and a whole strong person pushing it, it���s a point that goes in a long way. Spearpoints need all that behind them, or they don���t pack their punch in the same way. Examples are difficult to give because spear-points by their nature require their context, and spoilers. They tend to be moments of poignancy and realization. When Duncan picks the branches when passing through trees, he���s just getting a disguise, but we the audience suddenly understand how Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane.... You certainly need to do a lot of set-up, carefully, towards what you want to do later, and the reason for that is so that when you actually get to doing it, it can stand alone at that point, be that point, because the spear needs to be behind it, and a spear-point supported right there with scaffolding doesn���t have any impact at all. It needs to be moving when it hits you, and it needs to have the spear already there, whether you and the reader built the spear together along the course of the book or whether the reader came into the room with it. And if you���re building the spear, you have to come by it honestly, even though you���re doing set-up, it all has to fit with what���s there it all has to work in its own context or you won���t end up with anything but a pile of splinters. And sometimes you don���t have room and it isn���t going to be fully there until afterwards, and I think it���s better to suck that up and trust the reader to think, to come back and re-read, to get the impact then, than to try to hammer the spear-point in when there hasn���t been time to build the spear���

#books #reasoning #sciencefiction #2020-05-07

Duncan Black: Two Sources Close To Jared And Ivanka https...

Duncan Black: Two Sources Close To Jared And Ivanka https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/05/two-sources-close-to-jared-and-ivanka.html: ���It did diminish, somewhat, but I wonder if any of the journalists who served as their de facto PR agents for a couple of years feel bad. Haha I keed.���

#journamalism #moralresponsibility #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publicsphere #2020-05-07

David Anderson: Cubic Fits & Department of D'OH https://w...

David Anderson: Cubic Fits & Department of D'OH https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/05/05/cubic-fits-and-department-of-doh/: ���The first thing a data analyst trainee should learn is that playing with Excel���s functions and tools is a great way to get into trouble when you don���t have an underlying understanding of the fundamental data���s behaviors AND don���t understand the functions and tools core assumptions.�� This is important.�� The second or third lesson a data analyst trainee will learn is to not use Excel but that is advanced training. Why does this matter? It seems like the White House is using Excel and not understanding the phenonomenon they are trying to model. Eyeballing the data, there sure as hell seems to be a day of the week seasonality. But let���s go beyond that. If we were to assume that a cubit fit is an appropriate choice to model the data, and that we can project out of the current data to the near future so that there are almost no deaths on May 15th, that requires a What the Hell response���

#coronavirus #economicsgonewrong #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-05-07

Things that have not aged well at al. From 2017: Letter i...

Things that have not aged well at al. From 2017: Letter in Support of the Nomination of Kevin Hassett to be Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers https://medium.com/@hassett.economists.letter/letter-in-support-of-the-nomination-of-kevin-hassett-to-be-chairman-of-the-council-of-economic-78c483f9821b: ���Dr. Hassett has a record of serious scholarship on a wide range of topics, including tax policy, business investment, and energy. He has engaged on an even wider range of topics in the public policy debate and in his work at the Federal Reserve and as a consultant to the Department of the Treasury during the Administrations of President George H.W. Bush and President William J. Clinton. In addition, we appreciate that Dr. Hassett has consistently made an effort to reach out to a wide range of people from across the ideological spectrum both to promote economic dialogue and to collaborate on research and public policy proposals.
For all of these reasons we believe that Dr. Hassett would be an excellent choice for Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and urge the Committee to move as expeditiously as possible to ensure that the Administration has the benefit of his economic advice...

Sincerely, Alan J. Auerbach, Martin N. Baily, Dean Baker, Robert J. Barro, Ben S. Bernanke, Jared Bernstein, Alan S. Blinder, Michael J. Boskin, Arthur C. Brooks, John H. Cochrane, Karen Dynan, Janice Eberly, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Martin S. Feldstein, Jason Furman, William G. Gale, Ted Gayer, Austan D. Goolsbee, Alan Greenspan, Robert E. Hall, Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, R. Glenn Hubbard, Randall S. Kroszner, Alan B. Krueger, Edward P. Lazear, Lawrence Lindsey, N. Gregory Mankiw, Donald B. Marron, Peter R. Orszag, Adam S. Posen, James Michael Poterba, Christina D. Romer, Harvey S. Rosen, Cecilia Elena Rouse, Jay C. Shambaugh, Robert J. Shapiro, Betsey Stevenson, James H. Stock, Michael R. Strain, Phillip Swagel, John B. Taylor, Laura D. Tyson, Justin Wolfers, nandMark M. Zandi���

#economicsgonewrong #moralresponsibility #noted #orangehariedbaboons #2020-05-07

Coronavirus!: Where I Guess We Are Now

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0YKEi7HeOrVGvKYtt9FEqH7nA

html: https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/05/coronavirus-where-i-guess-we-are-now.html

Edit html: https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f0800388340263ec1795ee200c/edit

Slides: https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/coronavirus.pptx

Edit Slides: https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0YKEi7HeOrVGvKYtt9FEqH7nA



#coronavirus #highlighted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-05-06

Worst Coronavirus Response in the World Led by the Most Incompetent, Ignorant, and Undisciplined President Imaginable: Donald Trump

Why a I not surprised that the most incompetent, ignorant, and undisciplined president imaginable backed up by the worst and most corrupt political party in the world produces the worst response to coronavirus in the world?: Andy Slavitt ���COVID-19 seems to be a uniquely tough American foe https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1257477774220066827. The rest of the world is figuring it out. The Czech Republic did it with masks. China with isolation. Germany with testing. Hong Kong with experience. New Zealand with alerts. Greece with discipline. The cost of these lessons is already too high. But it is not beyond our power to change it. But I���m afraid [that] to change this, we do have to first face it���

Other countries have the virus on the run. We have the virus plateaued���falling cases in Greater New York, rising cases elsewhere, and we are about to step down social distancing in much of "elsewhere"...

https://delong.typepad.com/files/coronavirus-extrapolations.pdf

Daily Readings:

NEJM Group: Updates on the Covid-19 Pandemic http://m.n.nejm.org/nl/jsp/m.jsp?c=%40kxNtXckRDOq8oG0jJvAXsIzN4mPECIPhltxoTSdTU9k%3D&cid=DM89089_NEJM_COVID-19_Newsletter&bid=173498255: 'From the New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM Journal Watch, NEJM Catalyst, and other trusted sources...

Worldometer: Coronavirus Update (Live) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/...

Financial Times: Coronavirus Tracked https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest...

CDPH: nCoV2019 Updates https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/ncov2019.aspx...

CDPH: News Releases 2020 https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/New-Release-2020.aspx...

Josh Marshall: Epidemic Science & Health Twitter List https://twitter.com/i/lists/1233998285779632128...

#coronavirus #highlighted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-05-04


this html file: https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/05/worst-coronavirus-response-in-the-world-by-the-most-incompetent-ignorant-and-undisciplined-president-imaginable-donald-tru.html

edit this html file: https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f0800388340263ec1713c1200c/edit

Jonathan Chait: Trump���s Use of Nonexpert���s Coronaviru...

Jonathan Chait: Trump���s Use of Nonexpert���s Coronavirus Model Not Going Well https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/trump-kevin-hassett-dow-36-000-coronavirus-model-deaths.html: ���President Trump���s habit of promising unrealistically low casualty counts is one of the more inexplicable unforced errors in the administration���s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. ���One is too many,��� he said on April 20, ���but we���re going toward 50 or 60,000 people.��� Just four days later, the number of confirmed deaths had already exceeded 50,000. A few days after that, he tacked on another 10,000 to the upper and lower bound, saying, ���we���re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.��� That figure is already moot. Trump���s normal sales pitch is to juxtapose his results against a horrific alternative.... Why, this time, did he establish a target he couldn���t meet? Indeed, why did he throw out numbers that were obviously going to be exceeded very quickly? A chief culprit in the blunder turns out to be Kevin Hassett, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers... Hassett is one of the subtler and more measured adherents of the supply-side creed, but this is a bit like being Santa���s tallest elf. In 1999, he notoriously co-authored Dow 36,000, a book arguing, via his own idiosyncratic calculations, that the stock market���s true value was massively higher than anybody forecast. (More than 20 years later, it remains well below that level.) Hassett is less kooky than Art Laffer, Lawrence Kudlow, or Stephen Moore, but... pinning your hopes to a Kevin Hassett spreadsheet turns out to be a giant error! Who could have guessed?

#economicsgonewrong #noted #orangehairedbaboons #2020-05-04

Christopher Eisgruber: To the Princeton Community: The St...

Christopher Eisgruber: To the Princeton Community: The State of the University, and Planning for the Academic Year Ahead https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/05/04/president-eisgruber-writes-princeton-community-about-state-university-and-planning: ���We will be dealing with COVID���19 for months or longer.�� This University, like all of America and the world, must proceed accordingly.... Our ability to restart our in-person teaching and research will depend upon whether we can do so in a way that respects public health and safety protocols.... [About] laboratories, libraries, and other facilities... we are optimistic.... We are also optimistic about resuming on���campus graduate advising and instruction this summer and in the fall.... Undergraduate education presents more vexing questions.... The interpersonal engagement that animates undergraduate life makes social distancing difficult.��That is partly because undergraduates live in close proximity to one another, but even more fundamentally because they mix constantly and by design in their academic, extracurricular, and social lives. Many people have pointed out that COVID-19 infections are rarely fatal or even severe in people as young as our undergraduates.... Young people can, however, spread the virus to others.... To bring back our undergraduates, we need to be confident of our ability to mitigate the health risks not only to them, but also to the faculty and staff who instruct and support them, and to the surrounding community. We do not yet know enough about the path of this pandemic, and the medical response to it, to determine whether that is possible.... We are accordingly asking faculty members to begin planning now under the assumption that their classes will be online in the fall. In the event that we are able to resume residential instruction, we will be able to pivot quickly back to the instructional techniques more familiar to all of us���though we should anticipate that even if we can return to on-campus instruction in the fall, University life will be subject to significant restrictions for as long as the pandemic continues���

#berkeley #coronavirus #noted #publichealth #2020-05-04