Pandemic economic reasoning

 ECONOMICS IN ONE VIRUS. AN INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMIC REASONING THROUGH COVID-19

The outline of the book:

1. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE ECONOMICALLY “WORSE OFF” DURING A PANDEMIC?

An introduction to economic welfare

2. SHOULD I BE FREE TO RISK INFECTING YOUR GRANDMA WITH A DEADLY VIRUS?

An introduction to externalities

3. DID WE CLOSE DOWN THE ECONOMY?

An introduction to public and private action

4. HOW MUCH WOULD YOU SPEND TO SAVE MY LIFE?

An introduction to the value of a statistical life

5. WHEN IS A LOCKDOWN CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

An introduction to cost-benefit analysis

6. WHY WAS I BANNED FROM GOING FISHING?

An introduction to thinking on the margin

7. WHAT GOOD IS A PANDEMIC PLAN WITH SO MANY UNKNOWNS?

An introduction to uncertainty and the knowledge problem

8. WHY DID PROTESTS AND MARCHES NOT LEAD TO OBVIOUS SPIKES IN COVID-19 CASES?

An introduction to endogeneity

9. WHY COULDN’T I GET A COVID-19 TEST BACK IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH 2020?

An introduction to regulatory tradeoffs

10. WHY WAS THERE NO HAND SANITIZER IN MY PHARMACY FOR MONTHS?

An introduction to the price mechanism

11. DOES THE PANDEMIC SHOW THAT WE NEED MORE U.S.-BASED MANUFACTURING?

An introduction to trade and specialization

12. WHY IS THAT GUY IN THE MASK GETTING SO CLOSE?

An introduction to moral hazard

13. WHY DID AIRLINES GET A SPECIAL BAILOUT BUT NOT MY INDUSTRY?

An introduction to public choice economics

14. WHY DIDN’T MY WORKERS WANT TO BE REHIRED?

An introduction to incentives

15. WHY WEREN’T WE WELL PREPARED FOR THE PANDEMIC?

An introduction to political incentives

16. CAN WE REALLY JUST TURN AN ECONOMY OFF AND BACK ON AGAIN?

An introduction to the nature of an economy

CONCLUSION: WHAT IS ECONOMICS GOOD FOR?

And a message on cost-benefit:

Cost-benefit analysis is a useful economic technique for considering whether a project improves societal welfare and to compare the societal net benefits of different projects. To do cost-benefit analysis well, we must account for all the direct and indirect impacts of the proposed policy on societal welfare, account for externalities, and ensure that we compare like-with-like in both timeframe and measurement. When it comes to COVID-19, cost-benefit analysis can, in theory, be used to examine the efficacy of lockdowns. However, there are huge uncertainties that make it hard to weigh up the precise costs and benefits of those policies. Even if the societal benefits do appear to exceed the costs on reasonable assumptions, that doesn’t mean the exact contours of the lockdown are “optimal policy.” In an ideal world, we’d find the policy mix that minimizes the overall societal costs of the pandemic.

This ideal world doesn't exist. 

Population health in the antropocene: a review

 HEALTH IN THE ANTHROPOCENE. Living Well on a Finite Planet

The health funding crisis (ten years after)

 Despesa sanitària a Catalunya

In a decade (2008-2018) the nominal growth of health expenditure has been 7,6%, 811m€ in absolute terms (!). If we apply de CPI to deflate such figure (14,6%), then  we conclude that we have reduced our expenditure in 887m€ after  10 years (!). In 2018, we were spending 8,3% less than in 2008 in real terms (!).  If we add a demographic growth of 3,3%, then the reduction in per capita terms is 11,6% (!). This is our "funding" for population health. The nominal growth in taxes during the same period has been 17,8%. Where is the money?

That's all folks, and now you can ask why Catalonia is asking for independence and why our politicians are not answering the outcry for a better funding for health.

My health depends on your health (at least)

 The COVID-19 Catastrophe. What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again

From the final chapter, by Richard Horton, The Lancet editor:

COVID-19 is not an event. Instead, it has defined the beginning of a new epoch. It took a virus to connect us in life and in death. We understand now, I think, our extraordinary interdependence and unity as a species. Yet our world is organised and ordered by separation, by partition – countries and continents, languages and faiths, political systems and ideological allegiances.

We surely have to use this occasion to resist and to challenge the past mood for estrangement and prejudice. We have to use this time for solidarity, for mutual respect and mutual concern. My health depends on your health. Your health depends on my health. We cannot escape one another. The liberties that we prize so highly depend on the health of all of us. We cannot say that the politics and priorities of my country are of no concern to you. They are, and legitimately so. Just as the politics and priorities of your country are a legitimate interest of mine. Sovereignty is dead.

The post-COVID-19 age will usher in a new era of social and political relations, one in which our liberties will be achieved through new means of cooperation and communication. One can be proud of one’s national culture and identity. But COVID-19 also shows the importance we should attach to our global human identity. We are social beings. We are political beings. COVID-19 has taught us that we are mutual beings too.

 

Emancipatory public health

NEW PANDEMICS, OLD POLITICS. Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives

Three selected paragraphs from the last chapter (the most interesting one):  

Experts in infectious diseases had been worried about the radical uncertainties of a new pathogen. It turned out that the science had so improved in the years since SARS that the uncertainties were well within the scope of the anticipated. The radical uncertainty was in the politics – something that none of the experts had thought to anticipate. SARS-CoV-2 is a politically sophisticated pathogen, whose impact lies more in what it does to the body politic than what it does to the human body. The politics of response to Covid-19 was a disorienting combination. The political right invited popular debate on public health expertise, in pursuit of its new-found agenda of disrupting institutions. In the name of free-thinking, agitators veered into pseudo-science and conspiracy theories. Liberals and the left valorized scientists and rushed to embrace a standardized set of suppression measures. Lockdowns were over-engineered and had momentous social and economic consequences; some critics detected authoritarian longings.

 Could Covid-19 become what Ulrich Beck called an ‘emancipatory catastrophe’?35 If so, what would be a new, emancipatory narrative for what we do about pandemic diseases, actual and threatened? I suggest that we begin with a return to a word introduced in chapter 1, and left waiting in the wings: ‘pandemy’. As our leading scientists insist, pandemic disease is too important to be left to the biomedical establishment. It’s a crisis in our way of life. In using the word ‘pandemy’, we can reclaim the concept of a holistic disruption, reaching backwards into the ecological, social, and health pathologies that have created virulent pathogens with pandemic potential, broadening to include other illnesses prevalent at the same time, and reaching forward into wider societal and political repercussions. In short, we can integrate the ‘One Health’ approach to where these diseases come from with the ‘people’s science’ practice of responding to them.

 Emancipatory public health begins with a conversation on this whole-of-society, whole-planet, ‘One Health’, democratic, and participatory agenda. The starting point is not the content of the policies but the process for getting to them. Those who are most vulnerable and most excluded will have some of the most important things to say. This means dismantling the ‘war on disease’ mindset and its politics, assembled over the last two centuries. If we do this, Covid-19 may yet be the emancipatory catastrophe we need.

 

Improving the role of boards

 How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World

Opioid prescription in Catalonia

Sistema d'Informació sobre Drogodependències de Catalunya

You'll find these information in p.152 of the report:

In Catalonia, Fentanyl consumption has risen 24% in 5 years, in daily dose per inhabitant, while Tapentadol has jumped 300%!!!

Somebody should understand why it is this so and take some action.

The opioid epidemic on the front line

 Killing Season

A Paramedic's Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic

Opioid epidemic as a crime (2)

 

Opioid epidemic as a crime

 

Covid-19 pharma revenues and production

Patients and AI

 Artificial intelligence, bias, and patients’ perspectives

By Topol et al. in Lancet

By training algorithms to predict labels related to clinical outcomes, rather than doctors’ judgments, we can start to push forward a new kind of clinical science. For example, by grounding patient reports of pain in objective radiographic features, we might develop a more comprehensive understanding of what causes pain. By not being doctor-centric and incorporating the patient’s perspective, machine learning has added potential for unravelling important mysteries of medicine.

 Garry Winnogard at KBR

Preventing alcohol abuse

 The effect of COVID-19on alcohol consumption, and policy responses to prevent harmful alcohol consumption

Harmful alcohol consumption damages health, causes diseases and injuries, weakens response to COVID-19,and leads to significant economic and societal costs. Comprehensive policy packages built on a PPPP approach including Pricing policies, Policing to counter drink-driving, Primary care-based counselling for heavy drinkers, and regulating alcohol Promotion activities, improve health, and support a stronger economic and social recovery in the aftermath of thepandemic.

 

AI in healthcare

 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Healthcare

A useful guide about the current situation of AI in healthcare,