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So after reading a misleading meme on the internet I was compelled to compare the COVID situation in Canada over the past few months to that in the USA. This is what I notice.
The Canadian stock market has crashed by a thousand points since the beginning of the year and COVID cases in Canada have **increased** 700% since mid june... Compared to america where the stock market has **increased** by 3,000 points since the beginning of the year (thatsa 33% increase) and covid cases has **dropped** by more than 50% since the beginning of july.
The issue with lockdowns is they look great to everyone who is too ignorant to understand whats going on, but they devastate the economy and do no good because the second you let up the lock down no one has immunity and the virus spreads like it is new. So in the long run you get hit hard in the wallet AND in terms of the infection. Meanwhile the americans approach may have resulted in more infection early on but fewer in the long term and without damaging the economy along the way.
@freemo Canada's economy was almost certainly going to nosedive in the pandemic in any case - CAD is a petrocurrency. Lots of segments of industry globally, most severely air travel, cut way back on energy consumption since March. When selling oil is your business and everyone starts buying less oil, the value of your business is going to decline. Forgoing a lockdown can't change that.
Just a reminder to be cautious about interpreting correlation as causation.
@freemo To be more specific, *global* air travel reduction is the issue. A lot of that fuel is exported to foreign countries, and their choice to implement a lockdown, not Canada's, reduced their airlines' demand. Even Canada's domestic airlines are more dependent on international travel than American ones - because Canada is on the great circle routes between the eastern USA and Asia, and between the western USA and Europe & the Middle East, a lot of their business is sixth-freedom traffic. Travel restrictions between America and the rest of the world hit Canadian airlines hard, and Canadian lockdown policies were more or less incidental.
@khird Yes there is some truth to that, lockdowns hurt not just local economies but global ones as well.. But the point still stands lockdowns result in pretty big hits to economies.
@khird Also keep in mind the canadian dollar being a petrodollar is only loosely connected. the stock market isnt showing the CAD value directly it is showing the stock market.
If the candian dollar crashed due to petrol but everything else remained the same then the stock market index wouldnt go down as it is displayed in canadian dollars, even though its effective value has went down. So it is somewhat a moot point since we did not normalize the stock market to the candian dollars value.
@khird We see the same pattern across europe as well with a 6% yearly drop in stocks too.
Also the air travel, as you mentioned, is entirely connected with the lockdown. There is a much more dramatic reduction in air travel in large part due to the lockdown (travel restrictions).