Strategy of Confusion
It goes without saying that I am all for keeping the death toll as low, those of delicate health as protected, and the general situation in intensive care units across the country as relaxed as any possible.
Until about a week ago, I was convinced that the government is trying their best to accomplish just that but simply lacks in terms of proper communication. I might have been wrong, though.
Quite a number of policies issued of late show signs of confusion and distress — to suspect that our authorities also lack both direction and focus is not so far–fetched, I’m afraid.
Some weeks ago, I had a brief chat with one of my neighbours. Of course, we were also discussing the latest policies then issued and how these were, would, and might be affecting all of us: the economy, society in general, but also us mere individuals.
“Who do you think would have done better [as a chancellor in this situation]?” he asked. I confessed that I could not think of anyone in particular who would have done better. Simply because the situation was — and still is — such that a government (or anyone, really) can not succeed. The stated goal can only be to fail less miserably.
Never Rely on Statistics That Contain No Conclusive Information
To this end, one has to gather situation–related, empirical information and must not rely on statistics that may or may not apply — data, that have or have not been properly curated and considered in context.
To date, it is not even clear yet whether or not any of the statistics published thus far are accurate. Johns Hopkins University (JHU, United States) and Robert Koch Institute (RKI, Germany) may both be considered trustworthy sources, but the data they publish need to be taken with more than just a pinch of salt.
JHU calculates their results based on figures drawn from a wide variety of sources (including social media outlets), while RKI counts cases reported by national health services only. Quite naturally, this leads to deviation. Yet deviation is definitely not what you want, when accurate information is paramount.
Also, the wholesale collection of reported infections, deaths, and recoveries would be of use, if we already had a tested vaccine and were able to roll out a nationwide vaccination programme. Yet neither is to be expected for the time being. Consequently, these numbers, routinely disseminated, only contribute to either public despair or false hopes.
The given situation in a neighbouring (or any one) country is perfectly irrelevant for the development of one’s own strategy and tactics. To compare Italy, Sweden, Germany, the US, South Korea, and Austria (to name but a few) is comparing apples and oranges. In terms of population density and distribution, capacity of individual health systems and general resources, but also lifestyle and mentality.
We Are Doing Better, Because …
I hereby request that the next Austrian politician (whoever that may be) who is mindless enough to publicly declare that “we are mastering the crisis better than others, because we made the right decisions in good time”, be removed from office immediately. Because we didn’t. We were merely lucky enough to have not experienced an epidemic thus far.
Granted, it is true that some state leaders have missed an opportunity (or two) to take sensible countermeasures, but pretending that we have done better is disgustingly arrogant political chatter. This is true for both Austria and the EU, by the way.
Wuhan, the city where the virus first spread (as far as we know), has a population of more than 11 million people (roughly the population of Moscow; or Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Vienna combined). If all of Austria (around 8.9 million people) lived in Vienna and Lower Austria (the federal state surrounding Vienna), we would not only still have a lower population density but (probably) also a lower total of deaths and infections — even if we had not taken any particular precautions.
New York City, the most populous city in the US, and currently the American city with the highest death toll linked to Covid–19, has an estimated population of nearly 8.4 million people and a population density of nearly 11,000 people per km2 (Vienna: around 4,300). Still, they have, according to Worldometers, managed to test 845,000 people (tested across Austria: 247,754) already (all data gathered at the time of writing). This much for statistics and comparison with “all the others”. Considering these figures, some modesty and humility would suit us quite well.
We may be lucky to still have a lower number of cases, but then again we don’t really know. Individual countries count cases quite differently: some count all “known” cases, some only those who had to be hospitalised — and, of course, not all people who have died with corona did necessarily die from corona.
At any rate, the notion that we have “taken the right measures at the right time and therefore came through better” may prove a folly anytime soon.
On the one hand, because we have no way of telling whether the national shutdown actually was of any use as regards the containment of the virus — and pretty much the same goes for the lockdown — it may have been just a rather effective way to deal the economy a massive blow.
And on the other, because we don’t know whether there will ever be enough facilities, or equipment, or trained staff available and ready to treat critical cases; simply because there is no way of telling just how many will be needed, if worse comes to worst.
It is certainly tempting to think ten ventilators are sufficient to treat ten individuals, but that’s a naive fallacy, because it does not take into account malfunctions, that such devices are rarely employed under normal circumstances, and that they have not been invented for permanent use.
That is, a certain number of your capacity will break, because some of the devices have not been used in years and therefore not been properly maintained (or just because devices happen to break sometimes, even if you maintain them properly). That’s quite easy to anticipate, though, because if all available ventilators were in regular use, hospitals would have no free capacities for the treatment of Covid–19 patients.
To be on the safe side, one would have to calculate a failure rate of, say, twenty percent. Two out of ten devices being backup, held in stock to immediately replace failing devices. After all, everyone strives to avoid the much dreaded situation where staff have to perform triage.
In other words, there is always some residual risk, and we cannot “play dead” for ever.
Those who won’t have to play dead are a great many business people throughout the country. They are already out of business or will close shop anytime soon.
(Months ago, some experts predicted that around half of all restaurants and pubs in Austria would not survive the shutdown; others estimated even that two–thirds will be out of business by the end of this year. To put this into perspective, at the time of writing, there are about 6000 registered pubs and restaurants in Vienna. According to statista, the “Global No. 1 Business Data Platform”, the gross value added in the hotel and restaurant industry in Austria was around €19.4bn in 2019.)
Quite honestly, I cannot wait to hear what “our great saviour” will have to say when asked why we did not just close borders and introduce physical distancing instead of shutting down entire industries, without any empirical evidence of widespread infection — or the likelihood and nature of transmission.
Strict Measures … with Exceptions
When advocating “controlled action” to contain the virus, I did already mention the “1 Meter Rule”. Once it was replaced by the “2 Meter Rule”, I thought we would never hear of it again. Sadly, I was wrong: it came back with a vengeance.
Now we have a 1 Meter Rule again — or, actually, more than one. There has to be a distance of one meter between tables in a restaurant (or any other facility in the public, I suppose) and we are to observe a distance of one meter to others wherever and whenever possible (except, of course, they are immediate family or close friends). Which is also why four adults (and a yet to be disclosed number of children) may sit around a table in a restaurant — as long as the tables are placed one meter apart.
All right. I have a theory on this nonsense. The person who came up with it experienced some severe conflicts during potty training — either this or he has only a one–meter tape measure ready.
While this fixation on one meter is somewhat disturbing, the exceptions are quite funny. (The precious reader may or may not know it, but we do have a long tradition of exceptions in Austria. It’s sort of a trait of ours. We have an exception for everything — except for exceptions, of course … then again, I would not put money on that, either.)
For all I know, the average table has four sides. If it is small, there will be one person seated at each side (the kids will have to stand in some corner and wait their turn, then). If there is one person seated at each side, you will have to place tables at least one meter apart anyway — or how does anyone expect patrons to sit down or rise (in a comfortable manner)? Or how would waiters get to the tables to serve them?
If, on the other hand, tables are large enough for two people sitting next to each other on either side, chances are there is enough elbow room between you and the person at the adjacent table. After all, it’s a restaurant, not the canteen of a lower league soccer club.
And if you have patrons with kids, you may as well write off all policies anyway. It’s a rule for rule’s sake — and a matter that’s better be left to the individual manager.
(The other day, I watched a documentary discussing the effects of Covid–19 policies for the catering industry. A team of reporters accompanied the employees of a bar during the preparations for the reopening. In one scene, a waitress, armed with a tape measure, was instructed by the manager to ensure the prescribed safe distance be maintained. Asked why she moved tables closer together, she explained that they used to have a greater distance between tables before the regulations kicked in.)
And what of that “family or close friends” exception? Does that mean I may (accidentally) contaminate family and close friends but not perfect strangers? Cynical interpretation, I know. Yet still, what’s the logic behind this exception?
It is, of course, possible that the virus is already running in the family, and physical distancing is therefore useless. Yet then, it would be awfully nice, if the mishpokhe stayed at home, practising self–quarantine rather than happily “sharing” the virus with close friends (and perfectly unsuspecting strangers) in the pub or restaurant.
What if the family is not carrying the virus yet, but the close friends they meet did (unbeknown to themselves) contract it earlier, without showing symptoms up to the gathering? During a meal around a table there is plenty of time to pass on enough pathogens to strike down entire families.
Update (29 September 2020): Much Ado About Nothing?
From the early days of the lockdown (give or take a couple of press briefings) I do remember a statement from our gracious king, Basti I, predicting that “soon” everyone of us will personally know someone who will have fallen ill or even died from Covid–19.
Well, several months have passed and I still have to even meet someone who knows someone else personally who tested positive, or fell ill, or died of this particular virus — I’m not complaining, simply stating a fact.
Clearly, those were the days of “perplexity and uncertainty” and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what nonsense I would have told the public in his shoes. That said, I most certainly would have tried my best to keep the drama at a bearable minimum.
Even if that should have been the general scientific prognosis at the time, fanning the flames of fear was somewhat unnecessary. Dramatic predictions that fail to come true add little to your credibility. And, of course, they weaken your position, if further strict measures should actually become necessary at a later point.
However, if he already knew that this was a gross exaggeration of the general situation, he has boldly lied to our faces to sanctify future measures. That would have been populism at its worst — something one would expect of the likes of the sitting American president, yet not of the leader of a democratic country.
In the meantime, there has been a noticeable rise in resistance among the population even to relatively moderate protective measures — this is also a logical consequence of the tactics to take to political alarmism in the early days. Only a fool would expect the greater public to accept a further lockdown (let alone another national shutdown) easily.
Useless Measures (Or If They Come to Your Rescue, Run)
A weird example of an attempt to help restaurants and pubs, which are among the enterprises most severely affected by the lockdown in Vienna, is the “gastro voucher” (German: Gastro–Gutschein), introduced by the City of Vienna and the Viennese Chamber of Commerce.
The unsuspecting reader may think such sounds like a brilliant idea. People receive a voucher worth €25 (single household) or €50 (multi–person household), which they can spend in a restaurant or pub of their choice. Publicans will have a turnover that they might not otherwise have. Things are at last looking up again, right?
Not so quick. Let’s have a look at some numbers, shall we? (I dare say, the adverts campaign the Viennese Chamber of Commerce launched at around the same time — “1 coffee may save the day, 2 may save the café” — was just as successful at a considerably lower expense.)
The Voucher Scheme
The reported cost estimate for the “City of Vienna” (which translates to “Viennese tax payer”) is €40 million for the vouchers campaign. That’s quite a load of money, but 950,000 households (are said to have) received such a voucher. (It’s quite possible that they had to send out a million, because word got around that “some got lost on the way to their rightful recipients”. They were stolen, say others.)
If we only take the 950,000 official vouchers into the equation, we arrive at costs of around €42 from the city’s tax reserves per voucher on average — which looks not all that bad, when viewed superficially. We all know of huger black holes. Yet how does that roll out in reality?
A household comprising two working (and tax–paying) adults was “invited” to dine out (but not “wine and dine”, because alcoholic beverages were expressly excluded from the campaign) for a total of €50 at a restaurant of their choice (so this particular place accepted these vouchers) — after having paid €42 (in taxes). This calculation does not even include meals for kids they may have.
It’s quite unreasonable to expect responsible people to splash out money if the budget is tight already, so they could either share the remaining €8 among them or stay at home to keep from straining their budget even more.
If said household comprised three (or more) working adults — like young adults sharing an apartment to save rental costs — the same voucher was good for even smaller meals only. Show me three (or more) adults who get away with €8 (or €50, for that matter) for a decent dinner in a Viennese restaurant and I’ll show you a unicorn.
Only single or two–person households (if they, for whatever reason, happen to be exempt from paying taxes) were able to profit in this scheme. Having paid nothing for the voucher in advance, they were able to enjoy a free meal for the equivalent of €25 or €50 respectively.
It takes a darn fool to expect people in austere times to eat out in excess of the voucher’s face value. Hence, the campaign was practically good for nothing — not counting the unexpected income for those developing the concept and printing the vouchers, of course.
For those running a restaurant, however, it is safe to expect that they had more trouble than countable profit. In a restaurant I happen to know — and we are not talking some joint on the dark side of the moon — the total revenue attributable to the vouchers for the entire duration of the campaign was comparable to a slow morning on any day before the lockdown.
Each restaurant had to open an account and individually register each branch they wanted to take part in the campaign on a website that had been created for this purpose, the vouchers had to be scanned by the staff upon reception, the original stored in a dry place, the amount booked in the cash register system as cashless receipts to be settled later, and then the vouchers had to be confirmed again (on mentioned website) in order to redeem them and eventually receive the money (one fine day).
It’s (at the time of writing) not quite clear when exactly the money will be paid out to individual participants, but obviously not before the end of the campaign (30 September 2020). So basically, it was not a “boost for the economy” but rather a “promise to boost the economy” almost everyone involved would have been better off without.
If the City of Vienna had simply taken the projected costs of this campaign, divided the sum by the number of registered restaurants and pubs, and paid out €6,666 to each of them (no questions asked), it would have been considerably more effective — without causing a ballyhoo.
Tax Reduction to Increase Margins
Another useless venture was the temporary reduction of value tax on certain commodities in order to increase margins for entrepreneurs and so compensate them for some of the losses caused by the lockdown.
While actually not bad an idea, the execution of the concept left a lot to be desired. Evidently, some German entrepreneurs were not smart enough to grasp the concept and immediately passed on the reduction to their customers, which triggered a price war only large contenders could possibly win — even though the initial concept used to include a ban of passing on the reduction to customers (but this detail seems to have gone missing somewhere between the drawing board and the sales desk).
The Austrian government seems to not have grasped the mechanism of this tool at all, and bound entrepreneurs to pass on the tax reduction to their customers (which included a temporary adaptation of cash register systems, on top of all the trouble they already had to cope with).
Again, it takes a darn fool to expect people in austere times to buy commodities of high value they would not otherwise buy at that moment or, alternatively, rush to buy items that suddenly cost twenty cents less than they used to.
Granted, it’s nice to unexpectedly save, say, €200 on a new TV set. But how many TV sets does one, who struggles to pay the utility bill, or get a decent dinner on the table, need? And what difference does the tenner you may save on weekly groceries make, when the monthly rent of €800 (or more) is not suspended or at least reduced during a lockdown?
Please Return Home Safely
Yet the darndest nonsense of all has to be the “returning home from a high–risk country” regulation. People who travelled to high–risk countries have to produce a negative test (not older than 72 hours) upon their return or spend two weeks in quarantine — but only if the visited country already had been assessed as high–risk area at the time of entry. However, if the country was classified as a high–risk country during the stay, this rule does not appear to apply.
Because different countries have different risk assessment guidelines and different regulations to address a given situation, there is a significant gap in time, allowing people to try and find a route to return home without being properly tested or required to quarantine.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to keep people from leaving a country (which one ever) without a negative test result, regardless of time or direction? After all, the goal is (said to be) the containment of a virus — and this way, it would be considerably easier to trace possible contacts, too.
Now, you could, of course, tell me, “well, man, you got the policies all backwards — you are the idiot”, but then I would have to answer that I’m apparently not the only one.
The other day, I had a chat with a fellow who had just returned from a journey through three neighbouring countries, and here’s what he told me:
“We were supposed to leave every other seat empty, but our bus was packed, not one empty seat left, and none of the passengers were family or friends. We crossed three borders, but none of the officials even mentioned that we were not supposed to travel this way, let alone stopped us from leaving one country or entering another.”
In the early days of the lockdown, I had a chat with a neighbour, and here’s what he told me:
“A friend’s wife is working at an intensive care unit and had to tend a patient who tested positive, so she was sent home for two weeks to quarantine. Her husband [my neighbour’s friend] expected to be ordered for a test or, as a precaution, to be quarantined, seeing that he, as a family member, had also potentially been exposed to the virus. As he had neither been called, nor visited, or otherwise informed how to go about his situation, he decided to stay home as well. Just to be sure. (To date, no one has contacted this fellow to have him tested, or tell him to quarantine.)”
To be clear about this: Nothing against precautions here, and happy about every campaign the government introduces to support the economy, but isn’t it about time we had a framework of measures that is less ambiguous, easy to communicate, and even easier to comply with?
The infamous Spanish flu raged in Europe for two years — that was a hundred years ago — we modern people have struggled with this darn virus a quarter of that time already but we are still no smarter than we were on day one.