The benefits and harms of the scale of self-isolation

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A small summarizing overview of the economic situation on the planet. In fact, people, especially Western ones, are beginning to get used to getting along with a normal set of goods and services rather than an excess. And this is good in every sense - this is our small positive conclusion from the proposed review.

For those who are greatly depressed by the slowdown in world trade, in particular, exports from Russia, we suggest thinking: do we need to import and export anything at all (except perhaps an excess of hydrocarbons), can we not live independently on our own labor, intellectual and other resources ?!

The scale of self-isolation. More damage than World War II

Currently, at least 98% of the world's GDP is under blockade, with the last bastion broken at the end of March - Latin America and Russia were among the last to join the blockade.

Among the relatively large countries (more than $ 200 billion in PPP), only 3 countries without explicit restrictions are Belarus, Uzbekistan and Ethiopia.

The most large-scale connection to the quarantine regime occurred in the period from 12 to 17 March - during these 5 days, the countries that form more than half of the world's GDP, flew out of normal reproduction.

Surprisingly, even exotic countries and regimes have gone into quarantine. Who would have expected a quarantine from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Nigeria, Iraq and Angola!

And even the countries of South America followed a tough scenario, which have always existed relatively autonomously from the whole world, moreover, small countries - Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. The last two measures are almost like in Italy.

I note right away that "quarantine" does not imply recommendations or government laws, it has no meaning and is not of interest. We are talking exclusively about the backlash and only about it.

It is possible to prohibit visiting parks, restaurants, shopping centers or sports complexes, but if the traffic of people does not react in any way to these measures, then this is not a quarantine. Therefore the study is about the scale of the economy shutdown, not legal terms. Where is the toughest reaction?

Google on Thursday night implemented integral tracking of people's routes without personalization. This is actually a brilliant idea. Considering the number of devices connected to Google, the sample is more than representative and allows us to assess what is really happening in the world. Google records the location of devices and estimates the integral traffic of people in comparison with the comparable period last year.

Track in real time, but with a slight delay in publishing. The data covers almost the entire world. But they do not include China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Colombia, Algeria, Ukraine and Russia.

In Russia, thank the government for the information laws that restricted the activities of foreign IT companies.

For example, in Italy, it is clear that the first reaction of the inhabitants of Italy to the government's measures took place at the end of February, but was very insignificant (at that time there were only recommendations without directives from the authorities).

In early March, there was even a slight surge in visits to parks and recreation sites after most people were transferred to remote work (15% at that time). But from March 3, the measures began to tighten, and by March 15 the drop in traffic to parks, cafes, restaurants, cinemas was 90-97%.

Transport hubs / nodes also lost 85-92% of their traffic. By March 20, an average of 75-80% of people stopped going to work, i.e. only one in five went to work.

On average, 40% more people found their homes at one time than in the same period of time (Google smoothes weekends and holidays). But in Italy, there is not only a significant failure in visits to places of recreation and the cultural, sports and entertainment industries. They even stopped going to grocery stores and pharmacies. On weekdays, they go on average twice less often than usual, and on weekends they go 80-85% less often (this is about 6 times less intensive).

The actions of the authorities in Spain are practically similar to those in Italy, with the difference that the lag is 3 days, the reaction of the population is also similar.

Traffic in the sports, culture, entertainment and catering industries in Spain and Italy is 17 times lower than the norm - this is actually a permanent curfew throughout the country at once.

Among European countries, there are rather tough measures in France, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal and now in the UK. Germany held out to the last, but from March 18-20, they also began to tighten, but not so much. A similar thing happened in New Zealand on March 22nd and surprisingly South America joined, but from March 21st to 27th.

The weakest reaction is in Taiwan, Korea, Sweden and Japan with Singapore. Sweden is the only developed European country that has declared quarantine based on recommendations. Taiwan and Japan are the only countries in the world that neither in February nor in March did not restrict economic activity (on a large scale) and have minimal damage.

In South Korea, it was possible to pass the peak of diseases without blocking the economy, and now the situation there has returned to normal. The United States is a separate topic. There it is better to look at the states, the specifics are a little different, you need to do an isolated review on them.

It would be a mistake to think that grocery stores and pharmacies are the beneficiaries of the crisis.

There is a drop in traffic everywhere, but there may be an increase in turnover, but not everywhere and not always. People walk less but buy more. Usually, the specificity of such crises is such that people before the blockade show an unhealthy excitement (this was manifested in almost all countries of the world), but then everything calms down. The leaders have not changed - Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and Sweden with Hong Kong.

For transport hubs / nodes, everyone, without exception, has a drop.

Best in Korea and Taiwan, worst in Italy, Spain and France. Most countries in the world (among those who have already entered the quarantine regime) lose at least 66% in transport, i.e. three times the drop.

The number of people in the workplace is shown conditionally in view of the difficulty of identifying the work mode (different schedules for people, work mode and format), moreover, March 29 fell on a day off.

Although Google normalizes weekends, including applying predictive analysis of the location of people, these indicators cannot be 100% accurate, in contrast to traffic at transport hubs, parks or leisure venues, where identification is relatively transparent in terms of methodology and principle. However, up to half of people stopped attending work.

The same, but in the format of a table showing the date when the population's reaction to the measures of the authorities became noticeable in the tracking of movements.

Nothing like this has ever happened. This is definitely stronger and more painful than anything that has happened over the past 100 years, even the Second World War did not cause such large-scale economic damage. Then it was fragmentary (+ stretched in time) and was compensated by defense orders, but now everything fell at once and all over the world. Now we are talking about 98% of world GDP, which is in a blockade of varying intensity. This is incredible! The most significant rebalancing of players on the world stage since the Second World War is coming - in politics, in the economy, in all aspects.