Kevin Drum

A blog of my opinions. Plus charts and cats.

  • A Price War Has Sent Oil Prices Plummeting

    March 9, 2020

    The latest coronavirus obsession is the collapse of crude oil prices over the past couple of weeks:

    The nickel version of this story is that oil prices started declining in February due to fears of lower demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. OPEC tried to cut a deal with Russia to reduce output all around, but Russia balked. Saudi Arabia then decided to bring out its big guns, lowering prices immediately by about $7 per barrel and announcing that it would increase output in order to take share away from Russia. At that point the decline turned into a rout, with the price of WTI crude collapsing to $28 as I write this. Needless to say, there’s no telling where it will be when you read this.

    Anyway, just another thing to keep your eye on. On the bright side, this certainly means we’re not going to have a recession based on a spike in oil prices.

  • Donald Trump’s Non-Benign Boobery

    March 8, 2020

    Jim Loscalzo/CNP via ZUMA

    I got a lot of flak for saying this on Friday:

    In just a couple of weeks, Trump has gone from being a boob, but a relatively benign one, to a boob who could end up killing a lot of people.

    It’s easy to see how this could be misinterpreted, so it’s worth explaining what I meant. It’s simple: Donald Trump does a lot of stuff that pretty much any Republican would do. He tries to repeal Obamacare. He puts kids in cages on the border. He cuts back on food stamps. This is policy stuff.

    But then there’s the boobery that comes out of Trump’s mouth. This is all on top of what any normal Republican would do, and for the most part it’s both stupid and embarrassing but not especially harmful in a concrete way. With a few exceptions, it might be hurtful to hear this stuff but it won’t kill you. This is what I meant by “relatively benign.”

    Trump’s reponse to the coronavirus is entirely different. On the policy side, he has FUBARed massively. He ignored the outbreak at first. Then he shut down travel to China and figured that would be enough despite unanimous expert opinion to the contrary. He waited weeks to appoint a coronavirus czar, and when he did he chose the unqualified Mike Pence. One result of this has been the testing debacle. Another is the cruise ship debacle. There’s no telling what’s next.

    But then, on top of all that, there’s the Trump boobery. Coronavirus is no big deal. Everyone who wants a test can get one. He’s not taking any special precautions himself. He’s going to keep holding his rallies. He doesn’t want to unload a cruise ship because it might hurt his “numbers.” This is, as usual, stupid and uninformed, but it’s also genuinely dangerous. Above and beyond the policy shambles coming out of his dysfunctional administration, Trump’s rhetoric is likely to cause his supporters to do dumb things that will increase the death rate from coronavirus. Normally his mouth is childish and hurtful, but now it’s worse. It might start getting people killed in large numbers.

  • Bern Researchers Produce New Coronavirus Fatality Estimate

    March 7, 2020

    Waiting for a train at LA's Union Station in the coronavirus era.Kevin Drum

    There are two obvious biases when trying to estimate the death rate from coronavirus. First, there’s the likelihood that there are a lot more infected people than the official reports say. This includes people without symptoms as well as people who have mild symptoms and simply never seek treatment. Second, at any point in time there are people with the virus who are going to die but haven’t died yet. The first bias tends to produce overestimates of the death rate while the second produces underestimates.

    A team of researchers from the University of Bern has applied some sophisticated statistical techniques to the known data in order to (try to) correct for these biases. They produce an overall estimate for the case fatality rate of 1.6 percent. That is, out of everyone infected with the coronavirus, 1.6 percent will eventually die. They also produce estimates for age groups, which are even more skewed toward the elderly than previous estimates:

    Up through age 50, the death rate from coronavirus is less than half a percent, and nearly zero among children and teenagers. At age 70, the overall death rate is 9.8 percent and jumps to 20 percent if you have any symptoms. As always, this is only one estimate and shouldn’t be taken as the final word.

    By the way, this is why health professionals are reluctant to close schools due to the coronavirus: young people are unlikely to be affected by the virus, and during the swine flu outbreak of 2009, when schools were closed, it meant that many parents had to stay home. Keeping kids home not only increased the risk that they might infect older people—who were far more vulnerable—but it also kept parents at home, including health care workers who were needed to care for other patients. On net, keeping kids home actually increased the transmission of the virus instead of reducing it.

  • It’s Long Past Time For Donald Trump to Quit the Clowning

    March 7, 2020

    NBC News

    The more that Donald Trump’s latest coronavirus press avail sinks in, the angrier I get. There he is, wearing a campaign cap and mugging for the camera. Interrupting Alex Azar when he’s on the verge of telling the truth about something. Bloviating about how he’s an innate medical genius. Complaining that he doesn’t want to unload passengers from a cruise ship because it might hurt his “numbers.” Griping that the Dow was all set to hit 30,000 until this whole virus thing hit. Bragging about the small number of deaths so far. Apparently demanding that every actual professional kowtow to him in public. Saying that he’s not to blame for cutting back on pandemic preparedness because “this is something that you can never really think is going to happen.” Clowning about how the testing has been perfect, “like the letter was perfect.” Snickering about how he told Mike Pence not to compliment a governor who had been mean to him. Bragging that he’s not bothering to take any special protections.

    Jesus. Does he think this whole thing is just a big joke? Is he going to keep acting like a combination of court jester and Pollyanna-in-chief when the number of deaths hits a hundred? Or a thousand? Is there anyone left on his staff who can tell him to start acting like a president?

    I have never wished medical problems on anyone. I didn’t want George Bush to choke on a pretzel or Dick Cheney to have a heart attack. Just not my style. But honest to God, if there’s one person on this planet who deserves to be infected with coronavirus, it’s Donald Trump.

  • The Faces of Pandemic

    March 7, 2020

    The pictures below were taken sometime around 1912. On the left is my grandmother, Mary, age 15 or so. Next is her sister Alice, age 16. On the right is Mabel, age 20. They all lived in Aurora, Colorado, and both Alice and Mabel were college graduates, which was unusual at the time. Mabel was a schoolteacher and Alice would later work for the Gates Tire and Rubber Company.

    Here they are again in early 1918. Mary is on the left, Mabel in the middle, and Alice on the right. Not a care in the world.

    Finally, here’s an entry in the family Bible a few months later:

    The Spanish flu of 1918 first broke out in Haskell County, Kansas. From there it spread overseas, where it eventually mutated into a far deadlier strain that found its way back to Boston and then across the country, reaching its peak in October and early November of 1918.

    One of the unusual aspects of the Spanish flu was that it mostly killed young adults: half of its victims were between the ages of 20 and 40. So when it roared through Aurora it was mostly young people who were its victims. Alice (age 22) died on November 9. Mabel (age 26) died on November 22. William Smith (age 33), a stepbrother, died on November 28. My grandmother never got over missing her sisters.

    Coronavirus won’t be this bad. Not even close. But there are faces behind the masks, and there are going to be a lot more if we don’t get our act together fast and put serious professionals in charge of stopping it. Mike Pence might be a decent guy, but he’s just not cut out for this role. People are going to die because Donald Trump cares only about his own image and appointed Pence largely to guarantee that he’d have a high-level scapegoat if things go south.