This will be brief, and I don't want to "bury the story" yesterday about concrete things recyclers in wealthy societies can do to preserve their businesses.
Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter just published a big truth. In some of the 7 billion people world, there is enough stimulus to finance "flattening the curve". In other places, there is not.
A lot of people my age knew from the beginning of the reporting on the pandemic that the death rate would be over-reported. In the first months of any pandemic, there are two shortages to conserve - virus test kits and hospital beds.
Face it. Some people live in places without a hospital bed or a test kit for 100 miles. Others live in huge city slums like Agbogbloshie where a hospital bed is an unattainable luxury. Self-isolation, and lost income, will not work unless authoritarian governments order police to shoot the young.
Because your wealthy city/state/nation is conserving these, you wind up testing people who are suffering enough to go to the hospital. You are not testing people who roll with the new virus like it's a mild cold. Google Iceland's random coronavirus sampling...
Because you are testing this non-random pool of biggest sufferers, you are getting an artificially tall death/mortality rate. In Europe, the countries with the highest mortality from COVID-19 positive tests also have the highest average age of testee. In Italy, the average age of person tested (NYT this week) was 63. Average.
In emerging markets like greater India and Africa, the population is a) much younger and therefore much less at risk of death, and b) much less able to afford taking the economic hit of flattening the curve. Hospital beds and test kits are even more rare.
I just learned in the past month that my grandmother's sister died during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. My mom said she only found out decades later, that it was never spoken of in her Ozarks family.
My grandmother once said to me, "There are so many scary words today for so many kinds of cancer and flu. When we was growing up, we didn't know what people was dying of. We just called everything "the fever". Somebody "got the fever and they died. We didn't know any better."
People in informal economies are going to "get the fever". They will remember their great aunts as best as they can, or they won't. After all, up til this point, they are far, far more likely to die of Tuberculosis than Coronavirus. Both of those are, in undereducated informal markets, "the fever". I'm not underplaying this current pandemic - heck, we have to overplay it to reduce the spring-breaking Mardi Gras outbreaks. Hopefully it is obvious how much I appreciate the elderly in my life. One thing I brought home with me from Cameroon was the appreciation, affection, and respect West Africa bestowed on the few who survived to have white hair.
But from my "Poverty History Vantage Point", the common practices recounted to me from Depression-Ozarks survivors, seen in play in Peace Corps Africa, the Emerging Market Hoard Immunity is going to play out roughly, and then be forgotten as the fever of 2020.
Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter just published a big truth. In some of the 7 billion people world, there is enough stimulus to finance "flattening the curve". In other places, there is not.
A lot of people my age knew from the beginning of the reporting on the pandemic that the death rate would be over-reported. In the first months of any pandemic, there are two shortages to conserve - virus test kits and hospital beds.
Face it. Some people live in places without a hospital bed or a test kit for 100 miles. Others live in huge city slums like Agbogbloshie where a hospital bed is an unattainable luxury. Self-isolation, and lost income, will not work unless authoritarian governments order police to shoot the young.
Because your wealthy city/state/nation is conserving these, you wind up testing people who are suffering enough to go to the hospital. You are not testing people who roll with the new virus like it's a mild cold. Google Iceland's random coronavirus sampling...
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| 1980s, young in Africa were proportionately huge. Their grandchildren are huge-er. |
In emerging markets like greater India and Africa, the population is a) much younger and therefore much less at risk of death, and b) much less able to afford taking the economic hit of flattening the curve. Hospital beds and test kits are even more rare.
 |
| Words For "The Fever" |
I just learned in the past month that my grandmother's sister died during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. My mom said she only found out decades later, that it was never spoken of in her Ozarks family.
 |
| Michael sold oranges at a small roadsite table. He was a veteran of World War I |
People in informal economies are going to "get the fever". They will remember their great aunts as best as they can, or they won't. After all, up til this point, they are far, far more likely to die of Tuberculosis than Coronavirus. Both of those are, in undereducated informal markets, "the fever". I'm not underplaying this current pandemic - heck, we have to overplay it to reduce the spring-breaking Mardi Gras outbreaks. Hopefully it is obvious how much I appreciate the elderly in my life. One thing I brought home with me from Cameroon was the appreciation, affection, and respect West Africa bestowed on the few who survived to have white hair.
But from my "Poverty History Vantage Point", the common practices recounted to me from Depression-Ozarks survivors, seen in play in Peace Corps Africa, the Emerging Market Hoard Immunity is going to play out roughly, and then be forgotten as the fever of 2020.
 |
| In 1985, Andre was a French gold miner in his 70s who came to Cameroon in the Depression and never returned home |
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