
More Than 5.2M More U.S. Workers Filed for Unemployment - uptown
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html
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ravenstine
And those are just the people who filed for unemployment. Based on my
experience of being a young person looking for work around the 2008 crash, I
imagine there are millions of young people who want to work but won't find
any, so they will simply move in with mom and dad. The total "unemployment" is
almost certainly much higher than 14%.

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heavenlyblue
To be fair that is the case pre-vivid, so there shouldn’t be much of a
difference for pure number crunchers.

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zebrafish
22MM total out of 157MM working Americans ~14%. More lost than have been added
since 2008. Does anyone have a good idea about the actual prospects of a V
shaped recovery?

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rauhl
So there are a few things to think about with respect to the recovery.
Disclaimer: I am not an economist.

One thing is that to a certain extent an economy is psychological. Yes,
certain things are physical realities (such as crop yields) or political
realities (e.g. states of war) or legal realities (like regulations against
selling homemade beer), but a lot else is purely based on sentiment. And it
doesn’t matter how good reality is if people think it’s bad: they won’t act in
the market more than they must to survive, and it will actually _be_ a bad
market, even if the fundamentals justify a good one — at least for awhile,
until enough contrarians seek to take advantage of good prices (a kind of
sentiment arbitrage, I suppose).

But something I worry about even more is well-intended interventions which
make things worse and prolong the poor economy. There’s precedent for this in
history: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was intended to alleviate the Great
Depression but instead exacerbated it. Specifically, I can think of laws
against so-called ‘price-gouging’ (which is a myth: no-one in all of human
history has ever paid more for something than he felt it was worth to him at
the time he bought it, because whenever anyone feels the all-in price for
something is more than the all-in value … he doesn’t buy it): by interfering
with the price mechanism which is the fundamental method for economic actors
to bid for their needs and desires to be met, it will result in less-efficient
allocation of resources (capital and labour) across the entire market. This
misinvestment will by definition lead to a poorer economy than would otherwise
be the case.

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ip26
_‘price-gouging’ [...] is a myth_

You're laying on the operating table in the ER with a heart attack. Surgeon
says, _" OK before we put you under, in compensation I want 70% of your income
for the rest of your life, or I'm not doing this. Deal?"_

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brenden2
This is an unpopular opinion, but I think it's worth considering that most of
these people are probably hourly wage earners, and so when things open up
again, they will probably be hired back very quickly. The people aren't going
anywhere, and they haven't been deleted from society. When businesses reopen
this number will probably drop substantially. The businesses themselves
(restaurants, retail, etc) haven't gone anywhere, they're just not operating.
Yes there will be some bankruptcies, but those companies will restructure,
assets will be sold, and something else will pop up in place.

If someone has a strong case for why this isn't true, I'd love to hear it, but
it's my current working thesis and I haven't been convinced otherwise. I know
it's unpopular because of politics and such, but I'm optimistic about
recovery.

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pxeboot
I am expecting to see record business at the local bars when the lockdowns
end. The demand is still there.

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ashtonkem
Doubtful. There’s not going to be a clear end time to this shut down, and I
for one won’t be going to a bar until I’m vaccinated.

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standardUser
There may never be a vaccine. If one can be developed, it may take years and
it may not be completely safe and recommended for everyone.

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JoeAltmaier
There are 115 vaccines in development now, in four very broad categories. This
is a well-understood process and will very, very likely lead to several viable
vaccines.

Further, inoculation can occur much sooner. That is, introducing antibodies
obtained from recovered folk, into vulnerable folk. This is nearing deployment
right now.

Don't be a wet blanket. Its not all bleak.

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macintux
We don’t even know yet that people who have been previously infected have
gained immunity. It’s fine to be optimistic, but there are no guarantees here.

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JoeAltmaier
That seems like more wet blanket. How often does recovery not give immunity?
Lets keep it real.

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ashtonkem
Recent studies point to 25-30% of people didn’t have detectable levels of
antibodies, or had too few for comfort.

Other coronaviruses, which are seasonal, have a reinfection rate of 30%.

More studies are needed, obviously, but dismissing real risks as “wet
blankets” is extremely foolish.

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JoeAltmaier
That seems very strange. How did they 'recover' if they have no antibodies?
Did the virus give up on its own?

A reinfection rate of 30% seems bad. How does that translate to an R0 I
wonder.

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ashtonkem
It’s not at all odd, Antibodies aren’t forever. Chances are you’ve been
reinfected with something you built up antibodies for dozens of times in your
life.

For reasons currently unknown to science, exposure to some diseases confers
lifelong immunity (chickenpox) but does not for other diseases (Flu,
coronavirus, various types of common cold).

We’re actually starting to see the first reinfections of COVID-19 patients.

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mobilio
[https://archive.md/QpWki](https://archive.md/QpWki)

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claudeganon
I understand from the perspective of competence why the US wasn’t able to
freeze mortgages/rents and absorb payrolls as other countries have, but it
really seems like they missed their shot to save Capitalism.

Millions upon millions of unemployed people, many watching their friends and
family die from disease, a psychotic, entrenched politics, that caters
primarily to corrupt elites...

Historically, things don’t go very well from here.

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DamnYuppie
Save capitalism? I think that is a great over reaction, the Great Depression,
crash of 87, nor of 2008 stopped it. So I am quite certain this will be but a
hiccup when we look back 10 years from now.

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standardUser
The Great Depression resulted in the welfare state. It forever changed the
balance between state and private sectors. It certainly was not a hiccup.

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generalpass
I received a message from our overlords that staying at home is staying safe.

I don't feel safe.

