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Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools
- mixmax 7y agoAlso, all public sector employees who do not perform critical functions will be sent home on paid leave, and all private companies are recommended to do the same. On top of this all public gatherings of more than 100 people is discouraged, and it is alsp encouraged for all bars and nightclubs to keep closed for now. These are expected to be signed into law within the week.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoAre businesses being provided lines of credit or other funding sources to continue paying employees while their income might decline in the short term? Or are they able/expected to pay out of cash reserves or existing business credit lines?
- macmac 7y agoThere are no immediate promises of such measures being made. Edit: Since this is being downvoted could someone provide a source for such immediate promises? I must have missed it.
- celticninja 7y agoThere are, they just aren't specific yet. The important part is the shut down, then they have time to work on the package
- mixmax 7y agoyes, the specifics aren't out yet but a package is being put together right now by the government. We don't know yet how much, but the numbers are in the billions. The government is aware that this is a dificult situation financially for a lot of companies and are working to resolve it. A lot of it will be through delayed payment of taxes and VAT to keep cashflow.
- dcolkitt 7y agoOne thing to keep in mind is that interest rates in Denmark is currently negative. That means that the government, and even large credit-worthy corporates, can borrow and actually get paid to do so. That makes weathering a storm like this relatively easy from an economics standpoint. It's easy to delay revenue and cover fixed costs without incurring any significant financing costs.
- roenxi 7y agoThat seems to be a cheerful economics standpoint that treats accounting as having primacy over physical supply of goods. It is good if they have a neat legal mechanism to stop companies going bankrupt but the economy is going to tank if everyone stays home and does nothing (or less than normal; in some roles that can work from home). Any economy that doesn't report that it is tanking is an economy built of lies and chicanery. The economy isn't a GDP or stock market index; it is a complicated process for getting people what they want and need based on an estimate of how much we can afford to give them. It can't weather everyone parking up in any meaningful sense no matter what numbers are published in the ledgers.
- dcolkitt 7y agoI disagree. The interest rate is not entirely divorced from tangible reality. Rather it's the emergent manifestation of the aggregate behavior and preferences of investors, savers, and foreign traders across the entire economy. A low interest rate is the direct result of indifference to inter-temporal substitution. It indicates that households are willing to shift consumption from the present to the future, that firms can readily defer capital investments, and that foreign producers are willing to cover temporary shortfalls in domestic production because they have high faith in the currency and financial system. All of those things are physical manifestations of how and why it would be easy for Denmark to weather a temporary supply shock. 3-6 months of reduced economic output can easily be handled by relatively painless deferrals in demand. Danish consumers will shift back vacations, home upgrades and new cars until later in the year. Danish businesses have very well maintained capital equipment, and can stretch maintenance and upgrade cycles. Chinese and Russian exporters have very high faith in the Danish Krona, and will sell goods today for the promise of Danish goods in the distant future.
- jjoergensen 7y agoTax and VAT payments can be deferred
- dv_dt 7y agoAnd if goods aren't flowing there really isn't VAT incurred for that time is there?
- martin_bech 7y agoFor starters VAT and payroll taxes deadlines will be extended, more measures will come. People who have been forced to cancel major events, will be refunded.
- chvid 7y agoVAT is postponed but only for larger companies. This will hit smaller companies hard; particular service sector such as hair dressers, restaurants, contractors etc.
- jyriand 7y agoIs there any reasoning/science behind 100 people? Why 100 but not 1000 or 50?
- kristiandupont 7y agoNot really. The PM was asked about that and she just said it was a pretty arbitrary number but something they deemed sound for now.
- gotstad 7y agoIt’s probably not feasible to come up with anything but an arbitrary number. But 100 allows for important meetings and some ceremonies. More than that are usually public events.
- pelasaco 7y agoThe good thing is that probably you can come up with an educated guess, if you put in a formula, based on that we saw until now how the propagation works. The bad thing is that you will come up with a number much smaller than 100 and it will lead to panic
- Danski0 7y agoIt has been motivated at least in Denmark (limit was 1000, now 100) and Sweden (limit 500) that larger events attract people traveling to it. This traveling and being among large crowds large is what they want to avoid. While smaller events, say a local low division football team, doesn't normally attract a tone else than locals. The exact number is arbitrary but has to be something, right now 100 in Denmark, 500 in Sweden and will likely change over time.
- jopsen 7y agoIn response to question she also emphasized that all unnecessary activity in society is essentially discouraged.
- Consultant32452 7y ago
- dkns 7y agoAre grocery shops considered critical?
- jmartinpetersen 7y agoThey are not public sector and thus not directly affected.
- kernaussage 7y agoAustria has taken similar measures as well.
- lossolo 7y agoPoland is closing too from Monday.
- daro7 7y agohttps://www.pap.pl/en/news/news%2C602846%2Cpoland-shuts-down-all-schools-over-coronavirus.html https://www.pap.pl/en/news/news%2C602846%2Cpoland-shuts-down...
- lwoo 7y agoSubcontractor for one of Polish mobile carriers here. Around 5pm we got a memo to work remotely starting tomorrow until further notice. Until now the company has been rather reluctant to embrace remote work to the full extent (maximum 1 day per week with quite a complicated procedure to go through to get approved). I've never worked remotely for this company so this is going to be an interesting time.
- ultimoo 7y agoI wonder if the US will see a similar shutdown in the coming weeks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hairofadog 7y agoSeattle area schools just shut down, and earlier today the governor put restrictions on gatherings of more than 250 people. Seems like it’s moving pretty fast. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/inslee-orders-halt-on-large-gatherings-in-seattle-region-asks-schools-to-prepare-for-closure-to-slow-coronavirus-spread/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/inslee-or...
- haasted 7y agoAnd a New York suburb is being quarantined by the national guard. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-rochelle-coronavirus-new-york/2020/03/10/707f5da6-62f4-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-rochelle-coronav...
- chromaton 7y agoFulton County, Georgia (Atlanta) shut down all schools after a teacher was diagnosed.
- chasd00 7y agoit won't be mandated by the federal government nation wide but you'll see it (and it's already started in some places) at the county level and maybe state level.
- cortesoft 7y agoSan Francisco is banning all gatherings of more than 1000 people.
- nikolay 7y agoSmart move! Ignoring the best practice of preventing loss of life during pandemics will be a costly mistake!
- simplyinfinity 7y agoAccording to cdc expert, kids up to 19 mostly don't get sick, or if they do, it's not as bad as in adults over 40 https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw
- undreren 7y agoEveryone is possibly a transmitter. We are protecting the old and weak, not the young and healthy.
- cortesoft 7y agoThey still get infected, so they can still pass it on to others.
- nikolay 7y agoWe know so little now that it's better to be safe than sorry! We're talking about millions of lives!
- mixmax 7y agoIn the press conference that was just held the minister of public health commented that he had been on a conference call with his Italian counterpart that had strongly advised him to shut everything down NOW, and not make the waiting mistake they did in Italy.
- bonzini 7y agoThey, and almost every other European country, have already made that mistake. This decision is comparable to what Italy did on February 29th when they had 10% of the cases they have today. But Denmark is (if you correct for the smaller population) already at 60% of the cases that Italy has. Switzerland and Norway are in that same boat. Spain is getting there, it's the country whose numbers are growing the fastest. France has elections on the 15th, 'nuff said. Only Germany is comparable to that 10%, and they aren't doing anything either. They do have more ICU beds than others, but it isn't a great consolation.
- JPKab 7y agoSomething that I heard from an epidemiologist the other day is how shutting down schools and daycares can be incredibly counterproductive, because such a high percentage of health care workers have children which suddenly are at home and need to be supervised, pulling these workers out of their duties. I suppose its ok early on, but seems problematic if enough people eventually get infected. Understood that schools are primary transmission vectors.
- pseudolus 7y agoDenmark has a substantial safety net with generous parental leave policies. Accordingly, it would expected that one parent or relative could help out without impacting their own income and job security.
- ajross 7y agoI haven't heard any authoritative sources talk about that. Do you have a cite? The world is in crisis. Arguing against public attempts to contain a virus based on "Something that I heard" is more than a little irresponsible right now. Surely the point is valid as a debate subject, but it needs numbers and it needs analysis. Prima facie, social isolation works, and at this stage is our only remaining hope at containment.
- techterrier 7y agoJoe Rogans show
- simplyinfinity 7y agoSource : https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw
- bcrosby95 7y agoProbably best to shut them down too early or not at all. Grandparents tend to be relied upon as babysitters in time of need, so if you wait until transmission among school children is widespread your actions just delivered the virus to some of the most vulnerable populations.
- laxd 7y agoNorway got more cases than denmark (622 vs 514), and our government is still asleep. The "wait and see" attitude makes shure they are always 3 steps behind.
- arcticbull 7y agoOr, alternatively, everyone's freaking out over something that just isn't as big a deal as everyone's making it out to be.
- berdon 7y agoThe risks of not freaking out and it decimating the populace should easily outweigh the risks of freaking out and it not having an impact. It's very difficult to even rationalize the latter because a freakout might mean the impact is negligible.
- arcticbull 7y agoAt this point more than enough data exists to show the population will not be decimated.
- berdon 7y agoAt this point more than enough data exists to show the population will suffer ~1% losses. We shouldn't need 10% to freak out. Not to mention long-tail fatalities that might arise if it becomes an annual virus like the flu. When all that had to happen was people treat it seriously to begin with rather than saying "But the flu is way worse".
- arcticbull 7y agoMaybe, or maybe not. Let’s say it’s 0.5% fatal and largely only to folks who are older and have comorbid conditions. Instead we panic 100% of people, leading to mass hysteria, loss of livelihood, global recession, military zombie apocalypse lockdowns and so on. What if our response causes more harm? It might well. Proportionality of response matters and so do second and third order effects. What if all the above causes more than 5000 suicides? Did we win?
- matsemann 7y agoMost big cities in Norway as well have drastic measures now. No gatherings over 100 people, encouraged to work from home etc.
- kgwgk 7y ago> encouraged to work from home That doesn’t seem very drastic.
- jopsen 7y agoIt's drastic for authorities to make such a recommendation.
- marvin 7y agoA large number of companies have instituted a work-from-home policy in response, mine among them. Indefinite duration. Priority given to people who ride public transport, and especially people who are vulnerable from a health perspective. Estimate approximately 70% of the company will be working from home for at least two weeks. Let's see if this works. Otherwise, it's soon the Wuhan routine or the default result: write off a low single-digit portion of the population in two months. The last option would be devastating.
- duxup 7y agoIt will be interesting to see how these things / if they help. The scale of impact and longevity of these shutdowns could be dramatic. Keeping kids home certainly restricts what parents can do. Some of whom may be needed to do other things. Is there really a lot of good data to know, this will do a thing?
- guerrilla 7y ago> Keeping kids home certainly restricts what parents can do. Some of whom may be needed to do other things. Nope, not in Denmark: if they're needed then they are exempt.
- duxup 7y agoExempt as in their kids can go to daycare?
- guerrilla 7y agoYes, of course, if it neccessary. That's what the following Danish translates to > Dog vil visse institutioner blive holdt åben for forældre, der ikke kan finde anden løsning, og for forældre, der varetager kritiske hverv og ikke kan finde anden løsning. From https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/danmark-bliver-lukket-ned-saadan-kan-det-paavirke-dig https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/danmark-bliver-lukket-ned-... DR is Denmark's public service radio/tv.
- aazaa 7y agoAll of these shutdowns, especially the large ones recently announced, raise the question: how long? How long do we continue and what criteria will be used to begin opening things back up? How long before other parts of the economy begin to fail?
- mixmax 7y agoIn Denmark it's 2 weeks starting friday. After that the lockdown will be reassessed.
- michaelbuckbee 7y agoUntil there's a vaccine this is all "flattening the curve" trying to limit the overall number of severely sick individuals to a level that they can get hospital care.
- nikolay 7y agoMy point as well. Things are not gonna be any better 2-4 weeks from now.
- ksec 7y agoOnly days ago, a Denmark university professor openly claimed ( actually more like lashed out ) at Hong Kong people /students over-reacting with CoronaVirus and there is no need to wear masks. I guess that didn't age well. Still wish more people have trusted the advice from HK from our experiences with SARS and how to handle information from CCP.
- thomasahle 7y agoDenmark still recommends that people don't get masks. Gje cultural difference between Asia and Europe regarding masks is interesting.
- bitL 7y agoAbout time... They might be able to reduce R0 < 1 and be done with the pandemics in 3-4 weeks. On the other hand, Spain and Germany are going to blow up next week, Italy-style.
- hef19898 7y agoWhat makes you think that? Seriously asking, because I don't see that risk right now. Also, if it does blow up like Italy we will just have to take it up from there, no point in arguing about the past.
- bitL 7y agoThis Reddit thread over at /r/europe has pretty compelling visualizations: https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/fguile/germany_vs_italy_covid19_cases/ https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/fguile/germany_vs_i... Germany lags 8 days behind Italy, Spain 7 days.
- hef19898 7y agoIt is not the most popular opinion, but unless the modeling is coming from legit experts, as compared to some people playing with numbers, I prefer to ignore them. I stick with sources like the WHO and local health authorities, simply becasue they have the knowledge, expertie, man power and data basis to come up with reliable numbers. That being said, Austria is closing schools starting next week, Bavaria is discussing the same. Denmark and Plnd are closing schools as well. So even if Italy is 7 days ahead, other Eurpean countries are closing down sooner.
- bitL 7y agoWhich is a good thing in both cases you mentioned. Though seeing those visualizations could put things in a proper perspective and prompt officials to act quickly while they could still do something about it. Many health experts are worried and are expressing their concerns publicly already. /r/covid19 is trying to keep all posts scientific and high quality, maybe you can monitor it over there for latest info.
- Neil44 7y agoIt's my understanding that the UK's reserved response so far is because a 'shut down' is not sustainable for a long time, and we feel that it's not the right time to start yet.
- disgruntledphd2 7y agoYeah, we're going to get a lot of interesting natural experimental data on pandemics and the responses to them from the differing actions of countries to this outbreak.
- fasicle 7y agoMadrid has also shut all schools and universities as of today, for 2 weeks.
- interestica 7y agoDid the article previously mention daycare facilities? Not explicitly stated right now.
- phillipseamore 7y agoInterestingly Iceland, which has most of it's infections from Italy (and the other Alpine countries), designated those countries as areas with high risk of infection long before those countries would admit it, is not looking into these kinds of closures. I understand that they request people not to gather in large groups, on a completely voluntary basis and anyone is free to self-quarantine with pay or benefits. The consensus over there is that the disruptions would be worse than an increase in infections. Closing schools and other limits would only delay the infections and they would likely become unmanageable when limits are lifted. The emphasis is on protecting those that are most likely to get seriously sick, and not limiting the number of infections of those that are not at (high) risk. They also consider that if those that have been infected build immunity, it would be better (and I'm paraphrasing) "to just get it over with." On Friday they will start testing around the country to get a better understanding of the infection rate, especially whether it's already prevalent in the community. This will be on an unprecedented scale, as they expect to test >2% of the population. The expected result is that the infection is already widely distributed in the community.
- kgwgk 7y ago30 intensive care beds may prove insufficient if there is widespread infection. Not only the elderly need intensive care: in Italy 40% of the patients in intensive care are below 60.
- phillipseamore 7y agoIt's expected that about 550-600 people would have to be sick (not just infected) before their 29 ICU bed's are at capacity.
- kgwgk 7y agoInfected people are more likely to be symptomatic than not, as far as we know (for example from the Diamond Princess). Even if it was only 10%, should I find reassuring that 6000 people (less than 2% of the population) would have to get infected for the collapse of the healthcare infrastructure to start?
- top_kekeroni_m8 7y agoSame thing happening in Slovenia on monday.