COVID-19

In all of Putin’s six addresses to the nation, he has never once mentioned support of big state enterprises. Konstantin Sonin, an economist and professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, says this was for a simple reason: There’s no need. “The entire Russian system is based on supporting Russian big state business. All the tools already exist: You go to the president or cabinet to ask for something, like preferential loans, at any time. These companies already have so many opportunities to do this that there is no need to come up with any new procedures.”

As India and several other countries contemplate opening up their economies, one argument that supports the strategy of a gradual release from lockdown is that the country’s young demographic profile will act as a protective shield. Covid-19 has had a more severe impact on populations of older adults across countries. In Italy, the likelihood of dying on account of the disease was estimated at 20% among those over age 80, but less than 0.5% among those below 50. The corresponding figures for South Korea are 13% and 0.5%. Areas where older demographic groups form a higher share of the total population are thus likely to see higher deaths and a higher fatality rate overall.

A team of researchers in the U.S. is working to determine what kinds of businesses are safe to visit, and which ones could be super-spreaders of COVID-19, as select businesses reopen in parts of the country. Oeindrila Dube, a University of Chicago professor, is part of a team using anonymous smartphone location data from April 2019 provided by U.S.-based data tracking firms Safegraph and Veraset, which gather location data primarily for market research. The data was used to power an interactive feature in the New York Times.