Covid 17, Hard lockdown Europe vs no lockdown Sweden, any difference in death trend?

Six European countries were heavily affected by Covid-19 or Wuhan virus: Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and UK. As of August 03, 2020, they have 460+ or higher deaths per million population (DPMP). Russia and Germany also have high cases but their DPMP are low, only 98 and 110, respectively.

Of the six countries mentioned, five have heavy lockdown policies while Sweden has no lockdown. Below are the charts of daily deaths of the six countries from March to August 03. Data from 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries.

Question 1: Can you guess which of them is Sweden?

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You got or guessed Sweden?

The answer is #6, the last.

The countries from #1 to #6 and their respective DPMP are: Belgium 850, UK 680, Spain 609, Italy 582, France 464, Sweden 568.

Question 2: Any difference in trend with the five high-lockdown countries with no-lockdown Sweden?

None. They all have similar trend of declining, low deaths, even zero on some days, in recent weeks.

Two lessons we can derive from the above data. 

One, lockdowns did NOT help in containing the spread of the virus. What helped was protecting the oldies and immuno-compromised people because they have the weakest immune system in the population to withstand the virus.

Two, herd immunity threshold (HIT) may have been attained already in Europe, Sweden in particular.

The Philippines (only 19 DPMP) should stop this continuing and indefinite lockdown policy, started March 16, ECQ-GCQ, MECQ August 4-18. These lockdowns are "guided by science" kuno. In my estimate, it's 50% political science, 30% military science, 20% medical science.

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Update: European Mortality Monitoring (MOMO), until July 2020.

https://www.euromomo.eu/

The six countries again:

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See also:

Covid 14, Selected articles by Mahar Mangahas on the pandemic, July 05, 2020 
Covid 15, False positives and Sweden success in "flattening the curve", July 18, 2020 
Covid 16, Philippines having the strictest lockdown policies in the world, July 28, 2020.

BWorld 445, Virtue signaling in energy

* My column in BusinessWorld, July 22, 2020.

Virtue signaling is the process and habit of taking a conspicuous but generally unproductive action supposedly to advance a good cause but actually to show off the “moral supremacy” of the person or group  compared to the rest of the population.

In the energy sector, it is the habit of some people and groups to tell others that they are anti-environment and anti-planet if they do not demonize fossil fuels, especially oil and coal, and embrace variable renewables like wind and solar.

While this behavior may be understandable in industrialized and rich economies which have ample power capacity, this behavior is counter-productive for poor economies with thin power capacity. The Philippines is a classic example of this and yet it is constantly and endlessly bombarded by many virtue-signaling groups and multilaterals that it must “decarbonize” as soon as possible.

Let us review some hard data. Some definitions and conversion factors: One Exajoule (EJ) = 23.88 million tons oil equivalent (mtoe), or 277.78 tera-watt hours (TWH). And one Gigajoule (GJ) = 23.88 kilos oil equivalent (koe), or = 277.78 kwh.

Of the countries and economies listed in the table on a per capita or per person basis, the Philippines has the smallest CO2 emissions, the smallest primary energy consumption (PEC), and among the smallest coal consumption. PEC includes all energy use from power and electricity to transportation, household and commercial cooking (see the table).

So what is the point in endlessly bombarding the Philippines public and government energy officials to hasten decarbonisation and quitting oil-coal usage, and push the country towards more energy poverty and economic underdevelopment?

Take these two stories in BusinessWorld of lobbying by groups for more decarbonisation:

1. “Renewables board studying changes in power contracting rules” (July 14, NREB planning to target 35% share of renewables to total power needs by 2030).

2. “Asia-Pacific must set loftier electrification goals — ADB expert” (July 20, talking primarily about solar).

I have also read and heard in some public lectures some officials of a big gas power company here demonizing oil-coal for their high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of CO2, without admitting that gas as fossil fuel is also a significant GHG emitter of methane. Even anti-coal campaigner Greenpeace also turned anti-gas, arguing that gas has high methane emission.

Meanwhile, I attended the Market Participants Update (MPU) organized by the Independent Electricity Market Operator Philippines (IEMOP) on July 3. The market participants are the various private players in the sector, the 279 members of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) like the transmission system operator, generating companies (gencos), distribution utilities, and electric cooperatives. Plus 1,581 participants of the Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) like retail electricity suppliers (RES) and contestable customers.

WESM and RCOA are two of the most beautiful provisions of the EPIRA law of 2001 that directly benefit electricity consumers. WESM ensures fierce competition among gencos and RCOA ensures competition in electricity retail and distribution. And that is why the EPIRA law should not be junked or tinkered with as proposed by some groups that irrationally advocate re-nationalization and state re-monopolization of the power sector.

I requested updated data from the IEMOP and here are some interesting trends in the Luzon-Visayas grids as a result of ECQ-GCQ policies.

One, the average electricity demand from April-June 2020 has changed by an average of -1,578 MW or -14.7% over April-June 2019. I see this figure as an indicator of a -10% to -12% GDP contraction by second quarter 2020.

Two, average prices (ESSP) over the same quarters have changed or declined by P5.59/kwh.

Three, for July 1-20, 2020 vs July 1-20, 2019, the decline in electricity average demand has tapered to -366 MW or -3.5% while prices (LWAP) have declined by P2.64/kwh.

The main lesson here is that if people want cheaper electricity and stable power supply, we should strengthen the spot market system, expand WESM to Mindanao soon, maintain the “energy-agnostic” policy of Secretary Alfonso Cusi and not promote energy favoritism and cronyism for variable renewables.
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See also:

BWorld 442, GDP, CO2 emissions, and coal-gas consumption, July 06, 2020 
BWorld 443, Vaccine to avert more IPD, pneumonia deaths, July 19, 2020 
BWorld 444, Economic hardships worse than virus risks, July 25, 2020.

PSA updated data on PH death statistics

Kudos to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) for updating the country's death statistics until June 2020. PSA Chief, the National Statistician and Civil Registrar General, is Dr. Dennis Mapa (BS Stat, MA Econ, MS Stat, PhD Econ, all from UP Diliman). Dennis is a friend and the last two weeks I was bugging him when they will release the updated PSA vital stats (births, deaths, marriages, etc). The death stats especially because of this persistent hysteria over the Wuhan virus -- that there are more diseases and deaths now because of the pandemic.

I often use PSA data in my BWorld column (GDP, inflation, employment, trade, deaths, etc.), Dennis sees it and he's very kind to update me on the death stats. Yesterday morning he pm me quickly after the numbers have been posted in their website. I thanked him for the heads up.

Now the data. Is the general assumption and belief that there are more deaths this year than in recent years, true?

Bad news for the pandemic hysteria movement and the hysterics, the answer is No. At least from these 2020 preliminary data below. The columns on variation or deviation from 2020 I just added and not in the PSA official excel file.

I also told Dennis that I'm interested on the (1) causes and (2) demographics of death stats, among others. He said that such breakdown will follow soon. Thanks bro.

As I argued in my some of my column on the Covid/Wuhan virus subject, people count only Covid cases and deaths but not hunger- and poverty-related sickness and deaths because of the indefinite, no timetable lockdowns. Metro Manila has been on GCQ (I call it General Colonel Quarantine) since about mid-May until at least August 15.

ALL the scary and hysteric scenarios of the pro-lockdown indefinitely "while cases remain high" groups are wrong. No massive deaths by tens or hundreds of thousands, no overwhelming of the country's healthcare system. There is only overwhelming alarm, panic and hysteria.

We should have ended this indefinite lockdown. Since end-April or May.

Covid 16, Philippines having the strictest lockdown policies in the world

The Philippines has the strictest lockdown policies perhaps in the whole world. And this is the main reason for the terribly limping economy.

I got data from Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports as of July 21, 2020. The report covers six areas measuring the degree of restrictions from the baseline day, the median value from the 5‑week period Jan 3 – Feb 6, 2020. These areas are Retail and Recretation (R&R), Grocery and pharmacy, Parks, Transit stations, Workplaces, and Residential. For brevity purposes, I use the figures in only three – R&R that covers restaurants, malls, libraries, museums, movie theaters; Transit that covers public transportation like buses, trains, taxi, jeepneys; and Workplaces for obvious reason.

GDP growth and contraction (negative change) data are added to show economic trend of countries. I arranged the countries on four blocks of major economies by region: ASEAN-6, rest of Asia-Pacific, North and South America, and Europe. Comparing the Philippines with these countries, the result is interesting, or depressing (see the table).

Sources: (1) Restrictions, https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/; (2) GDP growth, IMF WEO 2019;  Trading Economics.

Google likely does not trust China figures so it did not show restrictions data for that country.

For GDP growth decline from either full year or fourth quarter 2019 to first quarter 2020, the Philippines is second to China in having the steepest decline.

Many countries and governments imposed less restrictions, gave more freedom for their people while they manage the spread of the virus. In the process they have not unnecessarily choked their economies.

The results so far in Europe show that heavy lockdown countries and no-lockdown Sweden have similar flattening of death curves through time. If we keep that in mind, we should realize that we need to relax these strict and hysteric lockdowns. 

Meanwhile, a good article,
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/sweden-the-one-chart-that-matters/ 

Open up the economy, wide and clear.
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See also:
Covid 13, Hard lockdown and hysteria caused the 17.7% unemployment rate, June 09, 2020 
Covid 14, Selected articles by Mahar Mangahas on the pandemic, July 05, 2020 
Covid 15, False positives and Sweden success in "flattening the curve", July 18, 2020.

Agenda One News, Part 5

Another bravado-filled State of the Nation Address (SONA) by President Duterte yesterday. Some good news but many bad news, anti-business pronouncements.

This morning I was the second of three guests of Cito Beltran in his program, "Agenda", One News, Cignal TV. Here's the recorded fb stream, my interview at around 40 minutes mark, 

https://www.facebook.com/ONENewsPH/videos/760831271319747/.

PRRD talked about expropriating the two telecoms, attacked also the M.Mla water companies, electricity, etc. I said the implications on business will be negative. Yesterday even before the SONA, PH has the worst stockmarket performance in AsPac.

For 2022 elections, PRRD team can no longer campaign on anti drugs, anti corruption platform. Palpak  failure, he implicitly admitted it, in his words,

"...illegal drugs, hiding in the shadow of COVID-19, have stepped up their activities. The amount of shabu valued at millions of pesos seized…

drug syndicates continue to operate just like the countries of Colombia, Mexico, and it is being played inside the national penitentiaries....
The corrupt, the grafters and the influence peddlers also take advantage of the fear and confusion that the coronavirus generates...."

To win, they will use populist anti oligarchy, anti multinationals platform, like Chavez-Maduro in Venezuela. Explicitly attacked the Lopezes, Ayalas, MVP. Who's next? Plus drug price control of multinational pharma. New owners of ABS frequencies and assets will be on their side.

On anti-Covid vaccine and EO 104 or drug price control that he discussed in the SONA, I will post a separate blog article about it.

Meanwhile, I was also interviewed by Cito last July 3, mainly on the economic impact of continuing, indefinite lockdown (hard or mild) in the country. I don't have any screenshot of the interview, also the link, sorry.

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See also:
Agenda, One News, Part 2, July 04, 2019 
Agenda, One News, Part 3, August 30, 2019 
Agenda, One News, Part 4, February 11, 2020.

BWorld 444, Economic hardships worse than virus risks

* My column in BusinessWorld last July 16, 2020.

The Philippines needs to open up the economy fast and not prolong the lockdown, hard or mild. It has some of the worst economic indicators compared to its Asian neighbors.

First, in industrial/manufacturing production. The country has the worst, steepest decline in May 2020.

Second, in the stock market. The country has the worst performance both in the year to date (Ytd, Jan. 1 to July 14) and the past 52 weeks.

Third, in GDP growth. While it had the second highest growth next to Vietnam in the fourth quarter last year (Q4 2019), it experienced the second deepest decline by Q1 2020 next to China. Bad economic performances despite having one of the lowest death rates from COVID-19 in the world (see the table).

Two ASEAN countries reported GDP growth or contraction in Q2 2020: Vietnam with 0.4% and Singapore with -12.6%. This is deep for Singapore.

The Philippines’ GDP data for Q2 2020 will be reported on Aug. 6 and my own projection is -10% or deeper. I based this number on the deep decline in electricity demand in the Luzon-Visayas grids from April to June vs. the same months last year, of -14.7%. The data on monthly megawatt (MW) consumption I got from the Independent Electricity Market Operator Philippines (IEMOP). They conducted the first Market Participants Update (MPU) for 2020 on July 3.

If we open up the economy much wider and clearer, will we not court more COVID-19 deaths?

No. For two reasons. One, as shown in the above table, the feared explosion of death as expected by many people did not happen after five months of scare and alarm. Our 15 deaths per million population is just 1/7 of Germany, 1/28 of the US, 1/44 of the UK, or just 1/5 of the global average of 75.

Two, with or without this pandemic, we expect deaths as part of nature. From the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), average deaths per day: 1,591 in 2016; 1,587 in 2017; 1,618 in 2018; 1,658 in 2019 (January-September).

The 2020 projection is 1,684 per day. COVID deaths from March 11 (the first Filipino death) to July 14 is 1,603 over 125 days or 13 people per day. It is possible that with comorbidity, many of the COVID fatalities are largely due to cancer, pneumonia, heart or cardiovascular diseases and the patient got severe virus infection later because of their weak immune system but were registered as COVID-19 deaths.

The economic hardships have been severe so far and we expect the hardships to continue because of the indefinite, no timetable lockdown. People count the COVID-19 cases and deaths but they do not count the poverty- and hunger-related diseases and deaths.

It is true that the virus can evolve and mutate but it is also true that humans also adapt and mutate. On average there are 38 trillion bacteria and 380 trillion viruses in each human body (See “Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome” by David Pride, Associate Director of Microbiology, UCSD, and Chandrabali Ghose, Visiting Scientist, The Rockefeller University, https://earthsky.org/human-world/trillions-of-viruses-human-virome). Adding a few mutated viruses will not cause severe imbalances in our biological make up.

Open up the economy. Wide and clear. Those scared can wear double masks, double the recommended six feet of social distance to 12 feet, stay home, take the “better Praning than Libing” attitude (“better paranoid that buried”). These are individual actions and are 100% fine. But the healthy and not scared should be allowed to go out anytime anywhere, observing basic hygiene, mask-wearing, and minimum distance of three feet.
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See also:
BWorld 441, Decline in pneumonia incidence, June 30, 2020 
BWorld 442, GDP, CO2 emissions, and coal-gas consumption, July 06, 2020 
BWorld 443, Vaccine to avert more IPD, pneumonia deaths, July 19, 2020.

Interview with ABS-CBN on huge public debt

Last July 7, I got an invite from Ms. Kristine Sabillo of ABS-CBN for an interview re the Philippines' high public borrowings, reference to their story last July 3, https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/07/03/20/philippines-total-loans-grants-for-coronavirus-disease-covid19-response-data.

I accepted the interview, done last July 8 via Zoom. I thought it won't be shown anymore because of the final decision of Philippine Congress not to renew ABS' franchise for another 25 years. But they showed it via their facebook page the other day, July 23,

https://www.facebook.com/101836783205053/posts/3269887263066640/?vh=e&d=n

Other interviewees there were Sonny Africa of Ibon Foundation, Rene Ofreneo of Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), and DOF ASec Tony Lambino.

These were my 3-slides notes when she was interviewing me. 

(1) PH government outstanding debt was P6.6 trillion in 2016, still under an Aquino budget and borrowings regime, the Duterte admin came in the second half of the year. Then it quickly jumped to P8.2 trillion by end 2019, a P1.6 trillion increase in just three years, no economic crisis or pandemic.

By May 2020, pandemic-lockdown period, the debt further rose to P8.9 trillion.

(2) The budget deficit was -P353 billion in 2016, expanded fast to -P660 billion by 2019, again no economic crisis nor pandemic. By May 2020, the deficit was already at -P562 billion.

(3) More borrowings mean more taxes and regulatory fees, next year and the succeeding years. Taxpayers should be prepared for that. Under the TRAIN law of 2017, the big tax hikes came from higher excise tax rates in oil/petroleum, coal, tobacco, alcohol/beverages, automobiles, sugary drinks. Then expanded VAT coverage to more sectors, doc stamp tax. There was some revenue loss from personal income tax due to higher tax exemption, a good move by TRAIN law but was negated by higher taxes elsewhere.

Thank you Kristine, for the opportunity to briefly argue some points in your report.

Drug Price Control 49, The FEF statement

The Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) issued a well-written position paper the other day, July 22, about drug price control. They wrote,

"...  We would like to caution that the recently signed Executive Order No. 104 may do more harm than good in ensuring access to quality and affordable medicine for all Filipinos. 

We understand that more than half of the out-of-pocket health expenditures of Filipinos are spent on medicines. However, price capping is not the answer to making medicines affordable and accessible to the poor. It may work in the short run, but it could lead to medicine shortages in the long term. 

Business common sense will dictate a pharmaceutical company to pull out its product from the market – if not leave the domestic market completely – rather than sell at a price where it cannot recover its costs. When this happens, patients are made worse off – there are fewer available drugs in the market and consumer choice is reduced. 

Price capping creates a trade barrier in encouraging investments in pharmaceutical research and development. In this time of pandemic when the pharmaceutical industry is on a race to find a vaccine for COVID-19, innovation must be encouraged and not penalized...."

http://www.fef.org.ph/freedom/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/FEF-Statement-on-Medicine-Price-Regulation.pdf  

FEF is headed by distinguished Fellows like former Prime Minister Cesar Virata, former NEDA Secretaries Gerry Sicat and Felipe Medalla, former DOF Secretaries Roberto de Ocampo and Gary Teves (my former boss in Congress in the 90s then in his private consultancy firm Think Tank, Inc. 1999-2001), other known academic economists and business leaders, 

http://www.fef.org.ph/about-us/advisory-board/

Meanwhile, the US government made an early purchase order of 100 million doses of an anti-Covid vaccine being developed fast by Pfizer (US) and BioNTech (Germany), when their candidate vaccines hurdle all regulatory clinical trials, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/22/us-government-taps-pfizer-to-produce-millions-of-doses-of-coronavirus-vaccine.html.

The promising candidate vaccines are expected to be commercially available in late 2020 or early 2021.

Big question -- when these new vaccines become available in rich countries and emerging economies, will they be also available in the Philippines?

I think Yes, but perhaps after a year of delay when these have been launched in more mature markets which have no drug price dictatorship policies. This scenario is not imaginary and fictional but based on actual experiences where  many newly-invented and more disease-killing medicines were available in the developed world but are either not available in the Philippines, or made available only after more than two years (see Table 2), 

https://www.bworldonline.com/drug-pricing-in-asia-and-who-assembly/.

If this happens, desperate patients in the PH will have to buy the vaccines from the US, Europe, Japan, Singapore, S Korea, etc. And the people who clapped Sec. Duque's drug price control policies part 1 (2009) and part 2 (2020) will also clap at this scenario? That we will see soon.

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See also:

Drug Price Control 46, Pricing policies in 10 Asian economies, May 13, 2020 

Drug Price Control 47, Article in August 2010, June 01, 2020
Drug Price Control 48, DOH orientation on MWP, MRP, June 30, 2020.