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| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #12 1) Sweden Stays The Course Bloomberg News quotes Swedish officials as saying their non-lockdown strategy in fighting COVID-19 is having positive effects. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-says-controversial-covid-19-strategy-is-proving-effective Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, has taken his country’s anti-COVID effort in a different direction. The country’s primary schools, gyms, bars and restaurants open and following social distancing guidelines. The economy has not shut down. Tegnell told Norwegian television this past weekend that the population in Stockholm, the center of Sweden’s epidemic, could achieve herd immunity as early as next month. “We are starting to see so many immune people in the population in Stockholm that it is starting to have an effect on the spread of the infection,” he said. When he was asked when herd immunity, which would dramatically limit the virus’s spread, would be reached he replied: “Our models point to some time in May.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/18/stockholm-will-reach-herd-immunity-within-weeks/ As of Sunday, Sweden had reported 1,540 COVID-19 deaths (only 197 of them under age 70). That’s more deaths than Finland and Norway, but far less in relative terms than Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, or Britain. And the Swedish economy hasn’t cratered.  Volvo Cars will resume full production at its Swedish plants on Monday. “I have very high confidence in the Swedish authorities that manage this,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in a phone interview. “It’s a hard balance to strike, but I have full confidence in the measures that Sweden has taken.” 2) Tom Smith on the Stress Virus An excerpt from his insightful RCP article: “Deliberately closing down the economy, which has never been done before, has created a more infectious, possibly more lethal disease than COVID-19. Let’s call it the Stress Virus. For the Stress Pandemic there can be no vaccine. There is only one cure – more jobs, more economic growth. Federal, state, and local governments should immediately begin to open the economy. Conditions in states, cities, localities vary. State and local officials should act accordingly with a clear goal: remove restrictions as fast as prudently possible. “Closing the world economy has subjected the world population to unprecedented stress. Until a few weeks ago, especially here in the United States, a huge number of those now unemployed – some 17 million and counting – never entertained the slightest idea that they would ever lack a job. Now, out of the blue, they have been forcibly idled, worried about paying the rent, paying the mortgage, paying tuition. To say their lives have been disrupted is an understatement. The stress for them is enormous. Night and day. It is unprecedented. “Suddenly, businesses were ordered to shut down. No business starts with a plan to deal with no revenues. Many won’t survive this friendly fire. Barbara Kolm, president of the Friedrich August von Hayek Institute in Austria, estimates that 30% of businesses will never open again. Each day the economy remains closed, the number of businesses that will never reopen increases significantly. The stress on those business owners, on their families, on their employees is unprecedented. “It will not be eliminated by a government check. I am still unemployed. My business has closed and may never reopen. My retirement nest egg is being raided and is hemorrhaging value daily. These thoughts remain night and day. “Stress is an insidious, multifaceted enemy of good health. The immune system is weakened. It can encourage counterproductive conduct. How many more overdoses? Alcohol consumption in the United States has increased 50%. In Great Britain, 67%. How many more alcohol and drug-related accidents and deaths? Domestic violence? Child abuse? How many more heart attacks?” https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/16/the_stress_pandemic_142944.html 3) Liberal Governors: Don’t Blame Us; McKinsey Made Us Do It! CNBC reports that Governor Andrew Cuomo and other Northeastern governors plan to announce a joint reopening schedule and are worried about the political fallout if Trump proposes a reopening that’s too early for them. “The goal is to ‘Trump-proof’ the plan, said an adviser to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/new-york-taps-mckinsey-to-develop-a-trump-proof-economic-reopening-plan.html Central to the plan is hiring the management consultants McKinsey & Company. It will develop models on testing and other key data points that will help dictate when states can start reopening their economies. An adviser to Governor Cuomo told CNBC: “We think Trump ultimately will blink on this, but if not, we need to push back, and we are reaching out to top experts and other professionals to come up with a bullet-proof plan” to open on the state’s terms. McKinsey, a giant in the consulting business, often does commendable work. But its services are also often retained as boardroom luxuries, a way for corporate officers to avoid responsibility and shift blame. Britain’s Independent newspaper once noted McKinsey’s benefit to clients in this regard “probably explains their ability to bounce back after every failure and embarrassment. The firm understands what chief executives, their paying customers, truly value, and they carry on giving it to them good and hard.” 4) The Swiss Open Up and Salute America Switzerland is opening up its economy in waves. April 27: hair dressers and beauty salons, tattoo studios, hardware stores, garden centers and flower shops May 11: primary schools, retailers, and markets June 8: Secondary schools, universities, museums, libraries, botanical gardens and zoos. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-16/switzerland-to-allow-businesses-and-schools-to-reopen-gradually The decision on schools is notable because most U.S. states are canceling the remaining months of the school year. Swiss health officials, however, have found that “even when children are tested positive for the virus, their viral load, that is to say roughly the number of viruses circulating in their body, is often very low. Which would explain why they are bad vectors of the disease. It seems that it is adults who infect children, not the other way around.” https://www.rts.ch/info/sciences-tech/medecine/11255942-en-suisse-104-enfants-de-moins-de-10-ans-ont-ete-testes-positifs-au-covid-19.html In solidarity with America in the fight against COVID the Swiss projected the American flag on the Matterhorn. Beautiful.  5) New Jersey: We can’t have GOVERNMENT workers lose their jobs! More than 650,000 people in New Jersey have filed for unemployment in the last month, over 98% of them in the private sector. Governor Phil Murphy’s strict lockdown created those staggering numbers, but the governor so far doesn’t have much of a plan to open the state for business. But this weekend, he added to his tone-deafness when he warned that New Jersey’s government employees would soon start to worry about being laid off. “We will have layoffs that will be historic,” Murphy announced, as he called for Congress to ship billions to the states to bail state and local governments out. “I don’t know how many, but it is big, big numbers.” https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/historic-nj-public-worker-layoffs-coming-without-new-coronavirus-aid-from-feds-murphy-says.html No one wishes unemployment on anyone, and many public-sector workers perform essential functions. But the notion that they should be spared any furloughs or salary cuts while jobless numbers for the private sector keep skyrocketing is both perverse and unfair. 6) Illinois: Pension bailout, please! Who didn’t see this one coming? With other states lining up for bailouts, perpetually near-bankrupt Illinois wasn’t about to miss its chance at the trough. “Democratic Illinois Senate President Don Harmon is asking federal lawmakers to provide more than $41 billion to the state as part of the next coronavirus relief package, including $10 billion to stabilize a massively underfunded pension system,” reports the Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-coronavirus-don-harmon-40-billion-federal-request-20200418-pgseb5swvfcxvk3qtq7yuchcqi-story.html That’s about the same size as the state’s entire budget. What was that former Chicago mayor’s saying about not letting a crisis go to waste, again? 7) De Blasio Launches Snitch Line New York’s mayor has been urging New Yorkers to snitch on their neighbors for perceived social distancing violations.  And it seems to be working. This chart shows the calls to the New York 311 complaint line – the snitch calls are running at a level usually only reached by noise complaints and far outpacing the usual number two complaint – rat sightings. 8) Anti-Hero of the Day California Governor Gavin Newsom, the author of his state’s highly restrictive lockdown, has concluded that a politician should never let a pandemic go to waste. “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” Governor Newsom said. “So yes, absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.” https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2020/04/17/californias-reopening-economic-task-force-absurd/ 9) California Also Brings Us the Lockdown Picture of the Day The virus is transmitted primarily in cramped indoor spaces with poor ventilation, so this image from Venice Beach of a front-loader semi-permanently rendering a skate park useless by filling it with sand is sublime.  |
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[…] By Steve Balich -April 20, 202001 […]
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