Are all countries' economies suffering due to COVID-19?

Are all countries' economies suffering due to COVID-19? | World Economic Forum: The pandemic is posing formidable challenges to policymakers, due to its global reach and impact. 

Economists have used a multi-country econometric model, augmented with global volatility threshold variables, to measure COVID-19's impact. 

It shows the global recession will be long lasting, with no country escaping its impact, regardless of their mitigation strategy. 

As a result, multi-country policy responses are needed.

What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 20 October

COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 20 October: Top stories: Global cases pass 40 million; tough new restrictions across Europe; Europe should learn lessons from Asia, says WHO.

Broadcast media and the second wave of fear

Broadcast media and the second wave of fear: Much of the broadcasting media is convinced a second wave of the coronavirus is coming, or that it is here already and has the potential to cause a mass of deaths. Even if they do not explicitly say so, the graphs and headlines they use allude to this. Yet the only wave I can see is one of mass-panic, caused particularly by the Government and the broadcasting media.

Farcical ‘press conferences’ are set up by the Government, with supine journalists uninterested in questioning any of the underlying assumptions behind Government policy. Questioning of the delivery of policy, rather than of the policy itself, is the favourite practice of these so-called journalists; a practice that produces a façade suggesting they hold the Government to account, when in reality they are doing nothing of the sort.

Our broadcasting media seems largely uninterested in scientific views that run contrary to the mainstream notion that COVID is plague-like. Whilst the disease is serious and proportionate measures are needed, the panic around it ever since Spring is unjustified.

Governo recua na obrigatoriedade da StayAway Covid

Governo dá passo atrás na obrigatoriedade da aplicação StayAway Covid: Na entrevista à TVI, o primeiro-ministro anunciou o recuo do Governo ao referir que foi pedido a Ferro Rodrigues, presidente da Assembleia da República, para reagendar a proposta de discussão. Um reagendamento que pode ficar para as calendas, apesar de o primeiro-ministro defender que se deveria debater como tornar a aplicação mais eficaz.

Para já, António Costa quer "resolver" a questão das máscaras, deixando para depois o debate sobre a obrigatoriedade da aplicação. Como há uma proposta do PSD para tornar as máscaras obrigatórias na rua por quatro meses, António Costa defendeu que se deveria fechar já esse capítulo: "Vamos já resolver o problema das máscaras. Quanto ao outro tema, vamos debater", disse.

Apesar das críticas, António Costa defende a segurança da aplicação, dizendo que esta até foi mais descarregada e logo numa fase em que a pandemia está "numa fase ascendente" que "vai continuar nas próximas semanas".

Social Distancing Signs

 Charming Local Covid-19 Social Distancing Signs

 

Covid-19 and weather

Fluctuations in the covid-19 numbers could have a lot to do with the weather: Obviously, that echoes Trump’s famous speculation that the virus would “just disappear” over the summer. Just as obviously, it didn’t. But Trump’s theory may not have been wrong so much as insufficiently refined. After all, it was based on a real observation: back in March, colder places were having more outbreaks than warmer ones. In the United States, however, that relationship broke down this summer.But don’t focus on the temperature; focus on how humans react to it. 

What A Summer Of COVID-19 Taught Scientists About Indoor vs. Outdoor Transmission: Making predictions about what will happen in the winter based on what has happened so far is simultaneously simple and difficult, experts told me. It’s simple, in that we already know what we need to know to tell that this virus isn’t just going to magically disappear. “I think winter will be bad, because things are already bad,” said Colin Carlson, a professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. From the beginning of the pandemic through Oct. 17, some 217,000 Americans died of COVID-19 and almost 8 million others tested positive for the virus. There’s no reason to assume that the shifting of the seasons is going to reduce the number of overall cases — so fall and winter are likely to go on being bad.

But understanding how seasons can change the pandemic is genuinely difficult. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, while we know that changes in weather have an impact on this virus, there’s a lot of nuance around those effects.

 

STAYAWAY COVID: APDSI emite recomendação

Recomendação sobre a Promoção do Uso Voluntário da APP STAYAWAY COVID: Perante a problemática da STAYAWAY COVID, a APDSI, emite uma recomendação (Promoção do Uso Voluntário da APP):

1- Com a atual arquitetura do sistema, a instalação do código de 12 dígitos na app dos infetados deverá ter o incentivo e o apoio dos intervenientes no processo, designadamente do médico no momento da consulta, dos laboratórios de rastreio e da linha Saúde24, ainda que a introdução do código no telemóvel dependa da vontade explícita da pessoa infetada (O código deveria ser automaticamente inserido no relatório do teste positivo. Se o código fosse sob a forma de QR Code, facilitaria a sua inserção pelo utilizador, bastando apontar a câmara do seu smartphone.);

2- O Governo deverá suspender o processo legislativo para tornar obrigatório o uso generalizado da app STAYAWAY COVID, iniciando em contrapartida uma campanha pedagógica dos benefícios da sua utilização voluntária, aproveitando os méritos da aplicação e tentando obviar algumas das suas limitações atuais;

3- O Governo deverá criar um efetivo plano de comunicação capaz de promover o esclarecimento dos cidadãos e dos profissionais de saúde, e com isso neutralizar as mensagens geradoras de medos e desconfianças sem qualquer fundamento técnico-científico, quer do ponto de vista informático quer da saúde pública;

4- O Governo deverá promover uma avaliação independente da eficácia da app.