The Moyo Diaries: 6
Sorry for delay, but it’s been a very busy week. I’ve recorded two podcasts — one for The Insight (an important update on the state of the pandemic that I urge you all to listen to) and one for a friend’s Gene Food podcast that will drop in the next week or so — and have been trying to stay on top of the rapidly-changing Coronavirus pandemic.
What I’m Reading
There’s way too much stuff happening to give a complete summary here for each blog post, so please follow me on Twitter for the latest stories — I’ve been quite active there, and there’s a lot of good information being shared.
The Coronavirus pandemic has surpassed one million confirmed cases worldwide
US jobless claims hit 6.6 million as virus spreads — “This is the highest number of new unemployment claims in US history. But what is so terrifying is not just the magnitude but also the speed with which American firms have shed workers. Roughly 10 million Americans lost their jobs in just the last two weeks. To put that in context, 9 million jobs were lost in the 2008 financial crisis.” The CoronaDepression has arrived.
Those Who Stay: For some tourists, Bali is a safe haven from the pandemic — Bali is expected to be one of the worst-hit parts of Indonesia, due to the large number of foreign tourists (some of whom have been infected). Nonetheless, some have decided to stay there during the pandemic.
Here are the confirmed cases in Indonesia, by province (red is high incidence, green is low):
Coronavirus: Health Ministry identifies 20 existing, 22 potential hotspots in India — India is going to be hit hard by the virus, and the number of confirmed cases is starting to rise alarmingly. Theories that have been making the rounds on social media about “magical” protection offered by demography (India has a young population) and climate (heat and humidity might help to prevent the spread of the virus) were almost certainly wrong. Every country seems to have its own form of magical thinking about the pandemic, hoping that somehow they’ll be different. So far, apart from Sweden, they don’t seem to be.
South Africa gathered homeless people into a sports stadium — sounds horrific. Sub-Saharan Africa is another place that’s going to be hit hard, and the large number of HIV+ people in places like South Africa will make it far worse.
Smoking seems to be protective against Coronavirus infection — smokers are 1/3 as likely as non-smokers to be hospitalized, which contradicts the standard thinking that smoking is a risk factor. Guess I’ll keep smoking my kreteks (in moderation)…
Amongst the OECD, larger economies suffer more covid-19 deaths — Twitter has been an absolutely indispensable resource during the pandemic. Scientists exchanging new data and analyses, journalists giving their takes on stories, and people generally connecting in a way that I haven’t seen before on the platform. Gone is the social posturing and virtue-signalling that has made it a cesspool for several years — thankfully.
One of the most interesting interactions I had this week was with a blogger who goes by the name Random Critical Analysis. He has been graphing data on the virus from OECD countries:
The first chart, showing the relationship between air travel and GDP, isn’t surprising — rich countries tend to travel more. The second chart, though, is really interesting. It shows the relationship between GDP and Coronavirus deaths. There is clearly a positive correlation, but it’s the outliers that provide the real insights and suggest further avenues of research. Spain and Italy, for instance, have far too many deaths — perhaps as a result of their older demographic profile. New Zealand has far fewer than expected given its GDP, perhaps due to a combination of its remoteness and its early tough response to the pandemic. Lots to mull over here.
Turkey worries me —statistically-speaking, Turkey has had the worst response to the Coronavirus pandemic of any country in the world, followed by the US and Iran. This is in large part because Erdogan has largely dismissed the threat from Coronoavirus, and Turks are still going about their daily lives as if nothing has changed.
I was fooling around with the 91-DIVOC interactive visualization of infections by country, and tweeted this without thinking much about it. It has turned out to be my most viral Tweet ever, by far, with over 1.3 million impressions and nearly 600,000 interactions in the first 16 hours, almost all of them Turks:
I now have a lot more Turkish followers — welcome to all of you! I’ll try to focus a bit more on Turkey’s situation moving forward, though I suspect I won’t be allowed to visit Turkey after this, at least while Erdogan is still in power…
Moyo Life
Holly and I are very lucky that Frankie (the GM at the Amanwana) and his wife Ellen are so well connected. They have helped us with everything from extending our visas (due to expire in a few days) to obtaining my favorite gin through his contacts on Sumbawa, a nominally dry city. They have literally welcomed us into their family, and we are incredibly lucky to have had them here. Relationships, especially in times of uncertainty, are everything.
Frankie is from Flores, just east of Sumbawa, and Ellen is from Lombok, just to the west. Frankie was raised Catholic (his full name is Francis Xavier Syukur), as are many people in Flores — the Dutch colonial influence is still strong there. Ellen converted to Catholicism from Islam when they married.
On Sunday I did a 2–1/2 hour swim, my “long workout” day. I’m pleased that my old muscle memory from the hundreds of hours I spent in the pool every season when I was swimming competitively in school has come back.
The snorkeling here remains outstanding, and I see something new and beautiful every time I go. Some selections from the past week:
Random Thoughts
I’ve been tweeting about the food supply chain being particularly susceptible to disruption during the pandemic. Shelter-in-place isn’t really compatible with harvesting food, particularly food that is hand-picked by migrant workers. I have been urging people to plant gardens as a safeguard. If this does come to pass, those who have arable land will be far “wealthier” than those who have shares in companies or money in the bank. Riots start when food becomes scarce.
I’ve also been tweeting about Disney facing an existential crisis, as it seems to have been tailor-made for disruption by the Coronavirus. Bob Iger’s imperial expansion over the past 15 years into cruises, worldwide theme parks, live sports (via its acquisition of ESPN) and more and bigger theatrical-release films makes Disney particularly vulnerable to people not being able to congregate in groups during the pandemic. Its next earnings call will be in early May — worth checking it out. I predict that if the pandemic follows the course I think it will, Disney will be announcing Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization by the end of the summer. Its senior executives have already had their salary cut significantly to save money.
