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

Today is another milestone. 4 states recorded no new cases today, up from 3 states yesterday.

I think in about 3 weeks time a significant amount of restrictions will start to lift and life can start to get back to normal. (Minus overseas travel of course.)
Elective surgery restrictions got lifted today.



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John2290 said:
vivster said:

Sucks for Norway and other oil countries I guess, but it's time for them to ditch oil anyway and build a proper economy.

For everyone else nothing will happen. Oil companies are gonna be fine since oil will always be needed and they have lots of it. And job loss in a sector that should mostly die anyway isn't much of a concern either.

What I'm saying is that low oil prices are probably one of the least concerns anyone should have. Now or in the future.

You havn't fully understood this news yet? It cost the oil companies money to move the oil, are they going to do it out of a shear love of humanity and have people go hungry and exhausted doing it... Nah. Noone can even bail them out cause it would be so costly it would cause rapid inflation. 

There's a meme about Chian winning world war three without firing a bullet, well, it's not just a meme now. They won, no one else even has a pitance of a chance come the scarcity. We'll be begging them to help or fighting them to keep people fed. 

Yes, because suddenly no one will need oil anymore and won't pay for it and the oil companies will just keep everything and nobody has oil anymore. Yeah, that sounds totally realistic. Maybe you need to learn what the word "essential" means and then look up what humans will do when something "essential" is on the line.

It's one thing to be a bit worried, but you should listen to yourself. You are predicting war based on unsubstantiated fears. Which is funny, because unsubstantiated fears are the number one cause for wars. But maybe that's exactly what you want.



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shikamaru317 said:

https://reason.com/2020/04/20/l-a-county-antibody-tests-suggest-the-fatality-rate-for-covid-19-is-much-lower-than-people-feared/?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Antibody tests suggest that the actual number of cases is 40x higher than the number of confirmed cases. The vast majority get a mild version with no or mild symptoms and never get tested as a result. With the number of cases 40x higher than we thought, it brings the fatality rate down to between 0.1 and 0.2%, barely higher than the seasonal flu fatality rate of 0.1%.

I wouldn't read much into these studies. Many have been made and the results range from 5x to 100x which is too huge of a range to base any decisions on it. Infection rates vary greatly between countries and even within them. Also unless you take tens of thousands of completely random samples across the country your results will always be biased. I think the only unbiased test I've seen so far is the one from Italy where they tested a whole village, which also isn't representative of any wider demographic. And then there is the fact these tests are only snapshots in time. Tested people could develop symptoms within an hour of that test and previously negative cases could become positive. That's not even mentioning the high possibility of false positives or false negatives.

I'm pretty sure that world wide we'll stay comfortably below a mortality rate of 1% but it's just way too early to determine that. I wish that instead of these numerous tiny studies, they'd focus their effort completely on nothing less than mass testing. Which means testing millions of people no matter if there is suspicion of infection or not.



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Upto the 10th of april, the UK had ~9200 deaths claimed as due to the virus.
However thats just at the hospitals.

They started adding up the results from hospice & nurseing homes, and it appears that over 13,100 deaths happend with the nurseing homes ect included (upto the same periode). This means a 40%+ jump in deaths upto the 10th of april, compaired to what the UK has reported.

If that trend continued (and why wouldnt it) up to today, that means "real" number of deaths in the UK is likely around 23,000-24,000.

Also since they have now worked this stuff out, its likely they will atleast add some of those nurseing home deaths today to the tally.
So its likely worldometers.info will soon see a huge spike for the UK numbers.



Mummelmann said:
vivster said:

Isn't it just the oil companies that are fucked?

Back home (in Norway), the effect of this would be much more severe since oil and gas companies are more or less state-owned and the industry makes up about 35% of the total GDP. The state would essentially tank (pun intended). In a market where the interest and ownership are largely private though, the consequences are much less dire. So, yeah, I think and hope you're right. The oil industry has extremely high profitability and productivity rate per capita and employee, so the actual number of layoffs would be much smaller than if another sector or industry was hit as hard.

You finally made me post here because there are so many half truths and falsehoods in this post that I had to address it...

The oil industry makes up 14% of GDP and 19% of government tax revenue, plus a few percentage points for offshore service industry. (https://www.norskpetroleum.no/okonomi/statens-inntekter/)

Of the many oil companies that operate in Norway, the government has a significant ownership in one of them (Equinor), where they own 67%.

In addition, over 50% of petroleum exports from Norway aren't oil, but natural gas, where the price has fallen much less. 

Last edited by Teeqoz - on 21 April 2020

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Teeqoz said:
Mummelmann said:

Back home (in Norway), the effect of this would be much more severe since oil and gas companies are more or less state-owned and the industry makes up about 35% of the total GDP. The state would essentially tank (pun intended). In a market where the interest and ownership are largely private though, the consequences are much less dire. So, yeah, I think and hope you're right. The oil industry has extremely high profitability and productivity rate per capita and employee, so the actual number of layoffs would be much smaller than if another sector or industry was hit as hard.

You finally made me post here because there are so many half truths and falsehoods in this post that I had to address it...

The oil industry makes up 14% of GDP and 19% of government tax revenue, plus a few percentage points for offshore service industry. (https://www.norskpetroleum.no/okonomi/statens-inntekter/)

Of the many oil companies that operate in Norway, the government has a significant ownership in one of them (Equinor), where they own 67%.

In addition, over 50% of petroleum exports from Norway aren't oil, but natural gas, where the price has fallen much less. 

Sorry, got some figures jumbled up, oil and gas provide roughly 35% of the state's income (oil alone is just under 22%), but not nearly as much GDP. My mistake. My point wasn't the figures themselves though, but rather the potential consequences of the state losing massive income rather than private interest, and that this loss is offset further due to the immense productivity and profit per capita and employee that this sector allows. In other words; the private sector losing relatively few jobs and a large income is more desired than the state losing relatively few jobs and a large income.

Half-truths and falsehoods, again, I messed up the numbers. My biggest concern right now is whether the ongoing crisis will deplete more of the oil fund and cause issues a couple of decades from now (eldrebølgen) since these are basically future pensions and state commitment to a massive public sector with fairly highly paid administration and other groups making up an unusually large percentage of it (presenting problems in profitability and productivity per capita).

Norway's economy is deemed highly stable and has been for a long time, in no small part due to clever investment and good economical equilibrium between the public and private sector, but its biggest weakness is the relative level of wages and income across a workforce that is both lacking actual contribution is production and industry as well as employed within the public sector in very high numbers. My parents happen to be in the middle of the generation that will see the biggest impact of these potential weaknesses, especially if and when a prolonged shutdown and subsequent economic downturn forces the government to forego their percentage rules on expenditure covered by the oil fund (handlingsregelen).

But we digress (at least somewhat).

Edit; sorry, wrong again, petroleum makes up 37% of the total export value for the state (I'll leave the original to show my error). The number was backward, but the point still stands (and, it's not a criticism of Norwegian policy, although you seem to interpret the whole thing as such, it's merely an expressed concern from a fellow citizen).

Last edited by Mummelmann - on 21 April 2020

shikamaru317 said:

https://reason.com/2020/04/20/l-a-county-antibody-tests-suggest-the-fatality-rate-for-covid-19-is-much-lower-than-people-feared/?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Antibody tests suggest that the actual number of cases is 40x higher than the number of confirmed cases. The vast majority get a mild version with no or mild symptoms and never get tested as a result. With the number of cases 40x higher than we thought, it brings the fatality rate down to between 0.1 and 0.2%, barely higher than the seasonal flu fatality rate of 0.1%.

While it would be great to have a lower death rate, it also mean the virus is a lot more infectious and harder to stop. From that link:

Since the number of infections in Los Angeles County is much higher than the official numbers indicate, Ferrer said at the press briefing, the risk of infection is correspondingly higher, which reinforces the case for social distancing measures. At the same time, she said, the fact that 95 percent or so of the county's adult population remains uninfected shows those measures, including the statewide lockdown, are working.

Even with 40x higher than rest results, that still only gets Italy to 12% infected as a country. If it is that infectious as the study suggests herd immunity would also not be completely effective until most of the population has anti bodies. So it could still get 6 to 8 times as bad in Italy before they're done with it without stopping the spread early. That would mean another 150K deaths are possible in Italy, likely more. Taking the current 24K plus another 1K from the current serious cases, multiplied by 6. However there are likely still uncounted deaths.

So all this speculation does is reinforce the need for extending the measures.

Anyway a test of 863 adults, where about 35 were found to have anti bodies, is far too small imo. The margin of error they assume is too small imo, and it alread leads to 22 to 58 with 40 in the middle.

Plus you're always comparing apples with oranges. Testing methods and criteria are different everywhere as well as amount of available tests and testing capacity. In Germany it wouldn't be that much higher. What would be useful to do mas anti body tests in South Korea where the virus is now under control to see how many people it actually reached during the early stages. Testing all (or random 10%) of Wuhan would be better to get an accurate idea but China numbers are wonky anyway. 1.1 million tests is a lot as well, testing 1%, 110K tests is do-able but more and more bias can creep in. Small tests are only representative when results are big, not when it's a couple dozen positives.



Ka-pi96 said:
vivster said:

Yes, because suddenly no one will need oil anymore and won't pay for it and the oil companies will just keep everything and nobody has oil anymore. Yeah, that sounds totally realistic. Maybe you need to learn what the word "essential" means and then look up what humans will do when something "essential" is on the line.

It's one thing to be a bit worried, but you should listen to yourself. You are predicting war based on unsubstantiated fears. Which is funny, because unsubstantiated fears are the number one cause for wars. But maybe that's exactly what you want.

Dude, would you argue with this guy IRL?

So why are you arguing with him online?

I would prefer IRL because then I could laugh directly in his face instead of my monitor.

John2290 said:
vivster said:

Yes, because suddenly no one will need oil anymore and won't pay for it and the oil companies will just keep everything and nobody has oil anymore. Yeah, that sounds totally realistic. Maybe you need to learn what the word "essential" means and then look up what humans will do when something "essential" is on the line.

It's one thing to be a bit worried, but you should listen to yourself. You are predicting war based on unsubstantiated fears. Which is funny, because unsubstantiated fears are the number one cause for wars. But maybe that's exactly what you want.

There is no unsubstantiated fears, the fears are very reasonable and of course I don't want war, I want this to stop and go back to the way it was but unless something dramatically changes in the next few months, which I hope, wars are set in stone. Will it be total war? Probably not for the moment although ot's a bit wearying to see China so strong and every other nation so utterly weak atm, including the US. You can already see the traces of cyber and information warfare between china and the US, China using this to gain western support.

Is China is structuring for war of some kind, idk, if so does it mean war right now? Not unless they are the aggressor cause no one can go up against them without heavily damaging themselves by doing so. It took two years for the US to hit the middle east last time around in full shows of force, we'll lilely see a similar timeline here unless China pounces with the strength they have now in an effort to win the fight first. Maybe it'll remain somekind of modern cyber and economic fight as it is now or break out into proxy warfare in some type of cold war, that would be a great thing as it would hold of total war and provide a release valve. Idk, but the moment the virus got out of control and we all let the economies break down, the moves to conflict started wheter ya like it or not or wave your hand and say no. 

I don't want war, but at every point in history with sickness and scarcity there has been war, thinking that trend will change now, with more people on the planet than ever is plain ignorance. We're all hoping that something changes to prevent it while doing nothing to adress the festering problem, same thing happened with the virus. Lol, I just had to type China war into google and I'm after reading three articles about China preparing for war withthe samefacts across all three. Looks like that didn't take as long as I thought, China knows what's up and how this always ends. The US likely started preparing for war the moment they declared a drug war on Madurro. This particular one  although it's mostly opinion is talking a lot of sense https://unherd.com/2020/04/china-is-preparing-for-war/ However he is wildly over optimistic that the west should not, now prepare for war even if it means a self full filling prophecy and he has either ignored or is glossing over one crutial aspect of this for some other reason, that you can't pull out of China economically and expect that it won't be taken as an act to hurt China. Can you imagine having a nice life set up with someone in the wilderness and you give them the flu, then they get so mad that thet they start taking their half of the cabin that you both built together, brick by brick while there is a storm on the way? You'd be backed into fighting with that person wheter you wanted to or not. It's really that simple at the heart of it. 

And yes, at some point you can't let that oil sit there and the structures and people in place will fall away causing a huge warfare laiden problem for anyone who needs it. Ya think the oil conpanies are going to pay for essential maintainance or for the oil to be stored out of the goodness of their hearts when it costs them money to do so with no sight of profit? Idk how long that infrastructure can hold within maintainance but it's not the upfront problem if the conpanies involved dissolve. We're already indefinitely loosing, en mass, the palces this oil would end it's journey and the places along the way. Maybe a war economy to get things running would be the most minimal amount of long term harm, not that I want it, but I'm sure people in power are thinking the same way. 

Not sure in what kind of war torn savage country you grew up in but where I come from actual war gets less likely with every year. Globalization is a thing and there is no country that isn't globally connected to everyone else. So there is absolutely zero incentive for any nation to start a war, especially the biggest nations.

Just think about what kind of benefit a country would have from a war against all of the harm and repercussions and then realize that there is absolutely none.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

Mummelmann said:
Teeqoz said:

You finally made me post here because there are so many half truths and falsehoods in this post that I had to address it...

The oil industry makes up 14% of GDP and 19% of government tax revenue, plus a few percentage points for offshore service industry. (https://www.norskpetroleum.no/okonomi/statens-inntekter/)

Of the many oil companies that operate in Norway, the government has a significant ownership in one of them (Equinor), where they own 67%.

In addition, over 50% of petroleum exports from Norway aren't oil, but natural gas, where the price has fallen much less. 

Sorry, got some figures jumbled up, oil and gas provide roughly 35% of the state's income (oil alone is just under 22%), but not nearly as much GDP. My mistake. My point wasn't the figures themselves though, but rather the potential consequences of the state losing massive income rather than private interest, and that this loss is offset further due to the immense productivity and profit per capita and employee that this sector allows. In other words; the private sector losing relatively few jobs and a large income is more desired than the state losing relatively few jobs and a large income.

Half-truths and falsehoods, again, I messed up the numbers. My biggest concern right now is whether the ongoing crisis will deplete more of the oil fund and cause issues a couple of decades from now (eldrebølgen) since these are basically future pensions and state commitment to a massive public sector with fairly highly paid administration and other groups making up an unusually large percentage of it (presenting problems in profitability and productivity per capita).

Norway's economy is deemed highly stable and has been for a long time, in no small part due to clever investment and good economical equilibrium between the public and private sector, but its biggest weakness is the relative level of wages and income across a workforce that is both lacking actual contribution is production and industry as well as employed within the public sector in very high numbers. My parents happen to be in the middle of the generation that will see the biggest impact of these potential weaknesses, especially if and when a prolonged shutdown and subsequent economic downturn forces the government to forego their percentage rules on expenditure covered by the oil fund (handlingsregelen).

But we digress (at least somewhat).

Your numbers are still wrong though...

 https://www.statsbudsjettet.no/Statsbudsjettet-2019/Satsinger/?pid=89003

Petroleum (which includes both oil and gas) contributes 313 Bn of 1430 Bn in government revenue. Or 21.8%. (just check the source)

If an important point of what you are saying is the numbers, and you proceed to mess them up completely, those are falsehoods and half-truths, whether intentional or not.

The offshore oil and gas sector in Norway has contributed tremendously to the Norwegian economy, but it has also led to a "brain drain" from other potentially productive industries because oil and gas was where the money was. As this changes, other industries will pick up some of the slack from lower oil and gas revenues. And while oil and gas will suffer dramatically in the short term, the long term outlook remains largely the same (whether that was good or bad up front is irrelevant because that wasn't because of the current crisis. Revenues were always bound to decline in the long term).

The worst case scenario is that we will have to transition towards something more akin to Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and we have an oil fund equivalent to ~3x GDP (~8x annual government expenses) to help us with this transition that will take many decades. So we will be perfectly fine, because we have been planning for a future without oil since the beginning. 



Okey guys, time for another fun post.

This will be a post about our virus dude (Anders Tegnell) and people close to him on what they knew. Already back in January, Anders Tegnell knew the death rate of the Covid virus was the same as something called The spanish illness.

Anders Lindberg is an advisor to Anders Tegnell

Anders Tegnell also believes that 90-95% of the people who get the virus will only have very mild symptons.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MajAQvpY8 (25:45, swedish only)

Johan Giesecke our previous virus dude has made statement that the worse will be over in late May and Wuhan has achieved herd immunity.

"I think this will go fast. The worst could be over by the end of May. A large part of the population will become immune so that we achieve herd immunity. They seem to have reached it in Wuhan, he says."

Source: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vt.se%2Fnyheter%2Fgiesecke-vi-kommer-att-klara-det-har-om6551023.aspx

Swedish version: https://www.vt.se/nyheter/giesecke-vi-kommer-att-klara-det-har-om6551023.aspx

To sum it up, Anders Tegnell and people close to him believes 90-95% will have very mild symptons from the covid virus, Wuhan has already achieved herd immunity, the death rate is the same as The spanish illness and the worse will be over in May. (Note some countries that did lockdown that prevented the spread will w8 longer like germany, Finland).

As I pointed out before the entire world atm seems to make their decisions based on math models while we here in sweden is making our decisions based on evidence based medicine, that's why we seeing such a different.



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