I came across this chart from @OpenTable, via @DrEricDing.
This chart shows that Restaurant reservations started about 2 week before states order restaurant closed. In some case, there may be a little anticipation of a closure, but most of the closure happed 4 or more days before. So I take this as evidence that even with state mandated closures, Covid19 was likely killing the restaurant business. Consumer choice may well lead ahead of policy.
The causality is important here because when states "reopen the economy," this does not mean that consumer will return immediately to pre-Covid BAU. Specifically, if it consumer choice leading to decline in patronage, then "reopening" will have minimal effect.
My family used to dine out 3 or 4 times per week. Gov Kent of GA is reopening the restaurants for us, but we are very unlikely to return to the restaurants anytime soon. It may take a month or more before we dine out again. I'm sure other Georgians feel differently about it, but my expectation is that it will be a slow ramp back up. Some more vulnerable residents may never return to former levels of patronage.
In my view, it is not "Stay-at-home" orders that are killing the economy. Rather it is new Covid-19 reality of collective and personal vulnerabilities that are radically changing economic behaviors. Reopening will be a slow process.
The states that open soon are going to find that their population who believe COVID-19 is a real threat will keep up precautions, but those who don't believe are the ones who will be going back to life as normal. The people who will get sick are those who have no choice but to go back to work and those who didn't believe they were at risk.
Here we are, May 1, 2020.
19,509,000 people have died so far this year.
234,000 from Covid-19.
19,275,000 from other causes.
We can go to Walmart and ride on the subway. But we cannot surf in the vast ocean or go to the state park to bird watch.
Unemployment is the highest in modern history and we are only getting started.
Stupidity reigns as never before.
A large percentage of the world population has been locked down for at least part of this year. That has slowed the spread of the virus and kept the official death toll down to 234,000. However as the expected death rate per country vs real death rate has been examined, the death rate in every country exceeds the COVID-19 official numbers. And there has been a decrease in accidental deaths because people are not being exposed to the dangers that kill them. For example the California Highway Patrol has reported car accident rates have fallen off a cliff this year.
If a significant number of people were not social distancing, a lot more people would get sick. About 20% of people who get COVID-19 end up requiring hospitalization. If the hospitals are maxxed out a lot more people are going to die because people who could be saved are not going to get the care they need.
This is a bit like Y2K. I'm in the IT world and it was a real threat, but people who could see it was a threat jumped on the problem and made sure it didn't become a disaster. Because it didn't become a disaster a lot of people today think it was over hyped. Maybe it was to the general public, but it was definitely something the IT world needed to pay attention to.
So far the COVID-19 pandemic has been bad in some areas, but it hasn't reached all corners of the world yet. About 80% of the world will cruise through this with only a mild case or an asymptomatic case. But 20% are at risk to die from this. Some part of that 20% will recover without hospitalization, but a fair portion need it to have a chance at survival and some will not make it no matter what we do. But letting everyone get it in a short period of time guarantees that hospitals will be overloaded and a higher percentage of those at risk will die. In an all at once scenario we could lose 2-5% of the population. Between the people who have critical and rare skills that will be lost setting back many projects and the massive psychological toll on the survivors, the scars would be with us the rest of this century.
The Black Death raged through Europe over 500 years ago, but even people who don't know much about history are aware of it. The scars are still visible centuries after it left living memory. Russia has always been a bit paranoid, the country has been overrun or nearly overrun several times. The most recent was WW II which killed millions of Russians and it still is reflected in Russian foreign policy today.
Losing a lot of people in a short time to one cause leaves psychological scars that last a long time. At least one ER doctor committed suicide over her experiences with COVID-19.
On another note I came across this data yesterday
COVID-19 – Global Health 50/50
What I found interesting was the percent cases by gender in each country. Many countries see more cases with men than women. The ratio is very skewed that was in India and Pakistan, but in much of Europe and Canada, it's the opposite way. More men appear to die than women in each country, but the ratio varies a lot country to country too. Many European countries are closer to a 50/50 parity than a lot of non-European countries.
Most of the countries with closer to parity have good health care systems and are fairly affluent which tends to lead to better diets and overall healthier lifestyles, so that may be the factor. The data for Japan is incomplete. They are among the longest life expectancy in the world due to good health care and affluence.