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Forums - General Discussion - Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

Immersiveunreality on 16 April 2020
Nighthawk117 said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Ok.

Where does the UN get their funding from? The member countries. Which is the biggest country economically and therefore the biggest contributor? The US.

So if the UN funds the WHO then the biggest individual donor country would be... the US still.

The USA's funding of the UN is another problem.  To be addressed in a separate thread.

European countries like Belgium are storing nuclair weapons for the USA since WW2 maybe?

Imo that is something to be adressed when the funding stops or even right now.

Ontopic: colleague his dad died from virus,around 60 years old and was planning his retirement.



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Mandalore76 on 16 April 2020
JRPGfan said:
Nighthawk117 said:

Does the WMO own any weather satellites?  Hard to predict the weather and track hurricanes if you don't have any weather satellites at your disposal.

Look, I'll admit the WHO is a much more beneficial agency than the WMO, but still there's no need for the USA to be the biggest donor.

14% of it is payed by the US, which is granted the most of any nation.
However factor in the size of economies of a nation like the US being so big.... again it makes sense they contribute more than smaller nations.

USA: GDP: $21.44 trillion  ~14%
UK: GDP: $2.83 trillion ~8%
Germany: GDP: $3.86 trillion ~6%

Other nations do their parts too.
So yes, USA should be the biggest donor. 

It has a higher population, and economy than most other places of the world. Also likely benefits more from WHO than alot of other countries.
In the end, the money spent on the WHO goes into stuff like Medicine/vaccine/Prevention & controll outbreaks/Survalance and early warning/... and a whole mess of other things.

Lets pretend the US stops paying their part.... and as a result, the outbreak controll becomes so bad, another virus breaks out into a pandemic.
The "saved" moeny the US saved, could be lost due to another virus outbreak.

Ontop of this, think how many lives this saves.... the Money the USA gives to the WHO is saveing lives, across the world (and protecting themselves).
Alot of it goes to the middle-east and Africa, but they need help those places.

Pull funding, and people will die as a result.
Trump action (if followed though) will likely cost human lives.

You skipped over China in your comparison for some reason.  US GDP is 37% higher than China, but China contributes 50% less to the WHO?



Torillian on 16 April 2020
Mandalore76 said:
JRPGfan said:

14% of it is payed by the US, which is granted the most of any nation.
However factor in the size of economies of a nation like the US being so big.... again it makes sense they contribute more than smaller nations.

USA: GDP: $21.44 trillion  ~14%
UK: GDP: $2.83 trillion ~8%
Germany: GDP: $3.86 trillion ~6%

Other nations do their parts too.
So yes, USA should be the biggest donor. 

It has a higher population, and economy than most other places of the world. Also likely benefits more from WHO than alot of other countries.
In the end, the money spent on the WHO goes into stuff like Medicine/vaccine/Prevention & controll outbreaks/Survalance and early warning/... and a whole mess of other things.

Lets pretend the US stops paying their part.... and as a result, the outbreak controll becomes so bad, another virus breaks out into a pandemic.
The "saved" moeny the US saved, could be lost due to another virus outbreak.

Ontop of this, think how many lives this saves.... the Money the USA gives to the WHO is saveing lives, across the world (and protecting themselves).
Alot of it goes to the middle-east and Africa, but they need help those places.

Pull funding, and people will die as a result.
Trump action (if followed though) will likely cost human lives.

You skipped over China in your comparison for some reason.  US GDP is 37% higher than China, but China contributes 50% less to the WHO?

Can you give the actual numbers you're basing this off of because it sounds like China is not that far off from being equitable with the US based on your description. 



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Barozi on 16 April 2020
Nighthawk117 said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Who should be then?

The UN.

uhm explain?

How would that make things any different?

The UN (and WHO since it's a part of it) can't enforce taxes upon any governments or citizens and it can't generate profits because that's surely not the point of an organization like this. So how else are they supposed to get their funding from?

Why would you want to give money the "parent organisation" which could distribute these financial ressources in any way they want instead of directly donating money to the sub division to make sure it's spent on health in this case.

And as others already mentioned the UN gets their money from the same sources as the WHO so what's the point?



JRPGfan on 16 April 2020

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/us-weekly-jobless-claims.html

"Weekly jobless claims totaled 5.245 million, the Labor Department reported."
"That brings the crisis total to just over 22 million"

This virus caused 22million people to lose their jobs in the US.

That seems like a insanely large number (to me, I live in a small country ok!?)

I hope we only get 1 wave of this outbreak (it would be too frekkin depressing if we actually get another wave of it).
Like in denmark, we got the R0 = under 0.6, which should mean that each person that gets infected only transmits it to on avg ~0.6 others.
Give it enough time, maybe it goes away entirely.

The issue is our Prime Minster is starting to open up things gradually again.
When its likely too soon to be doing so. I think it likely we see a another infection spike due to this (here).



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SvennoJ on 16 April 2020
JRPGfan said:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/us-weekly-jobless-claims.html

"Weekly jobless claims totaled 5.245 million, the Labor Department reported."
"That brings the crisis total to just over 22 million"

This virus caused 22million people to lose their jobs in the US.

That seems like a insanely large number (to me, I live in a small country ok!?)

I hope we only get 1 wave of this outbreak (it would be too frekkin depressing if we actually get another wave of it).
Like in denmark, we got the R0 = under 0.6, which should mean that each person that gets infected only transmits it to on avg ~0.6 others.
Give it enough time, maybe it goes away entirely.

The issue is our Prime Minster is starting to open up things gradually again.
When its likely too soon to be doing so. I think it likely we see a another infection spike due to this (here).

The last 7 day comparison between 3 day averages for the reported cases in Denmark indeed comes to an R0 of 0.59
That assumes that test results have already stabilized from the Easter dip though.
Making the comparison for today (assuming it won't go further up than the 198 cases reported today) the R0 would be 0.67

It's going down anyway. The key point is, will they be able to detect, trace and contain future cases fast enough. 200 new cases a day are still a lot to track down the chain of infection or you will miss more with mild symptoms that will increase the spread again.

It doesn't seem to want to go away entirely, China is still reporting new cases, so is South Korea. Yet with early detection and efficient tracing it should be safe to start opening things up again.

By the same math, the R0 for the world yesterday (based on a 7 day period) was 0.96. Influenced by the Easter dip and still many missed cases.
USA current R0 = 0.91
Europe current R0 = 0.92
Canada current R0 = 1.01, crap we're increasing again.

That's all 7 day averages with weekends, Easter, changing amounts of tests and test criteria influencing results.
The USA is fixing death counts atm so there the R0 based on reported deaths currently is 1.17

However the base R0 for the virus is 2.2, we're well under that which ever way you look at the data. For comparison, Russia's R0 currently is at 2.07



Mandalore76 on 16 April 2020
Torillian said:
Mandalore76 said:

You skipped over China in your comparison for some reason.  US GDP is 37% higher than China, but China contributes 50% less to the WHO?

Can you give the actual numbers you're basing this off of because it sounds like China is not that far off from being equitable with the US based on your description. 

GDP by Country
#
Country
GDP (abbrev.)
1
United States
$19.485 trillion
2
China
$12.238 trillion



Torillian on 16 April 2020
Mandalore76 said:
Torillian said:

Can you give the actual numbers you're basing this off of because it sounds like China is not that far off from being equitable with the US based on your description. 

GDP by Country
#
Country
GDP (abbrev.)
1
United States
$19.485 trillion
2
China
$12.238 trillion

So the US is spending 6 million per 1 trillion GDP while China is spending 4.75 using the same units. Honestly doesn't sound that bad. Where is Trump getting his 500 million number he likes to throw around for US WHO spending?



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Barozi on 16 April 2020
Torillian said:
Mandalore76 said:

GDP by Country
#
Country
GDP (abbrev.)
1
United States
$19.485 trillion
2
China
$12.238 trillion

So the US is spending 6 million per 1 trillion GDP while China is spending 4.75 using the same units. Honestly doesn't sound that bad. Where is Trump getting his 500 million number he likes to throw around for US WHO spending?

The numbers above only show the membership fee.

The vast majority of the budget comes from voluntary donations.



Torillian on 16 April 2020
Barozi said:
Torillian said:

So the US is spending 6 million per 1 trillion GDP while China is spending 4.75 using the same units. Honestly doesn't sound that bad. Where is Trump getting his 500 million number he likes to throw around for US WHO spending?

The numbers above only show the membership fee.

The vast majority of the budget comes from voluntary donations.

I see, so there's a better idea of it here:

https://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/who-top-contrib-20200415/

which shows that China hasn't done any notable amount of voluntary contributions. 



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