
California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining - dsr12
https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/california-covid-19-traffic-report-finds-silver-lining/
======
JohnJamesRambo
I've been meaning to ask in /r/theydidthemath if the quarantine is actually
reducing violent crime, car accidents, pollution, other infectious diseases,
STDs, etc. so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid
deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here.

~~~
hannob
The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without
the covid measurements.

Because it tells a very interesting story how many lives we're willing to
accept to be lost in normal circumstances.

Cars, air pollution, avoidable infections, ... - there's a lot of harm society
could avoid and doesn't.

~~~
Fjolsvith
> The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without
> the covid measurements.

I'm still waiting to see what has happened to the number of deaths caused by
heart attack, stroke, etc. that aren't COVID related. I'm betting those causes
of death have dropped by about the same amount of COVID deaths.

~~~
ckarmann
At least in some European countries where COVID cases has submerged the
healthcare system, it is a very bad time to have a stroke or a car accident
since the ER rooms are full and a lot of hospital resources are diverted to
fight the pandemic. So it increases the mortality of these other situations.

~~~
CraigJPerry
I’m not sure that’s true
[https://youtu.be/sN6Trgzf9kY](https://youtu.be/sN6Trgzf9kY)

~~~
_ph_
Not sure how this is a contradiction to what the previous poster said. There
is a huge variation across Europe and across regions of each country. There
are regions where the medical system is completely overloaded. Northern Italy,
central Spain and France. It plays a huge role, what phase of the pandemic a
country is in. The peak of hospital load is clearly yet to come in the UK.
Also, as the vlogger says, people are coming less to the hospitals with non-
covid diseases, partially because the local docters are loaded.

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aianus
~$1/resident/day sounds a lot less impressive

~~~
mirimir
Indeed. And what are net economic losses? I'm guessing that it's somewhere
between 100 and 1000 times that.

Edit: Sorry. Make that 10-100 times greater.

~~~
carbocation
> _Indeed. And what are net economic losses? I 'm guessing that it's somewhere
> between 100 and 1000 times that._

$40 million per day = $14.6 billion per year

The GDP of California is $2.75 trillion.

Your low end estimate of 100x would be a 53% drop in California's GDP, while
the 1000x estimate seems impossible.

~~~
ttul
0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow!

~~~
carbocation
> _0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow!_

Are you saying that you disagree that California losing 500% of its GDP seems
impossible?

~~~
gpm
I doubt we are even near 500%, but I'll go ahead and say I think it's possible
in the short term for California to be lose 500% of it's GDP. It's possible to
borrow against our future, both literally with money, and figuratively by
decreasing future productivity.

For instance, we're (probably) negatively impacting kids education, that's
going to have a negative impact on the economy for the next 50+ years. If we
fuck up the food supply chains too badly (e.g. migrant works, locusts in
africa [1], etc) more kids will suffer from malnutrition, which has a long
term effect. Increased poverty rates from the shutdown will likely increase
crime rates (and have many other ill effects), which will have a long term
effect. Putting the economy into a recession will no doubt significantly slow
down all sorts of R&D work delaying useful (and even life saving) inventions.
And so and and so forth.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/africas-huge-
locust-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/africas-huge-locust-
swarms-are-growing-at-the-worst-time/)

~~~
mirimir
That's a sobering argument. But I wonder how it compares to other major
disruptions, such as major wars. Or even the 2008 recession.

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zaroth
When you say something “saves money” do you think it’s reasonable to require
such a statement attest that there is a _net_ savings?

If I go on vacation and set my Nest to eco mode, am I saving money? Sure,
certainly I may be saving $5 a day in home utilities cost on my $300/day
vacation. But that is not to say that said vacation is actually _saving_ me
money.

It would be accurate to say that vacation may be costing me $295 net instead
of $300 face value. But just reporting the savings would be misleading.

~~~
carbocation
I don't think this comment deserves to be downvoted. It seems sensible. Sure,
it's mostly sensitive to the phrasing, but careful phrasing matters in matters
of finance and politics.

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pokstad
In Los Angeles, there may be fewer car accidents but I’m afraid the ones that
do occur will be more fatal. The lack of traffic is allowing people to drive
at unsafe speeds. While there is dramatically less traffic, there are still a
lot of cars on the freeway. The few times I’ve driven on the freeway, there
have been many high speed impatient drivers weaving unsafely between the many
remaining cars.

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lukevdp
Probably a silly question but what are the savings from?

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imjustsaying
>due to COVID19

It is more accurate to say due to the shutdown.

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aaron695
"Saving State $40 Million Per Day"

As a back of the envelope for that "$40 Million Per Day" we used to spend, we
would have gotten something of greater value. Probably far far greater value.

So we are also losing _over_ "$40 Million Per Day" through lost traffic.

There is no silver lining, it's just giving us a minimum of the value of
traffic.

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seesawtron
Does anyone else wonder from where did they cite the costs in Table 1? I can
imagine the reduction in accidents and fatalities and believe their reported
numbers with the "significant" p-values but there is no information on how did
they arrive at the reported costs. You had one job!

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rchaves
will US learn to be less car-centric after this?

~~~
dehrmann
No.

For one, this situation has nothing to do with cars, so there's no obvious
lesson about cars to be drawn from it. Accidents are relatively rare, and when
you frame the headline, as another commenter did, as $1 per person-day, it's a
lot less impressive.

It's also not viable in a lot of places. Mass transit and living close to
work, shopping, and services, is only viable in certain urban centers. NYC,
DC, Boston, maybe Chicago are good. LA, not so much (but improving), Dallas,
hah! And if you live in a suburb our outside the city? Car.

What will change is habits around traveling. Maybe there will be more working
from home (or maybe not). Maybe cities aren't as desirable (or they still
are). Maybe there's a broader economic reshuffle. Oil is incredibly cheap
right now. Those are the factors that will drive car use over the next few
years, not a dollar figure that is, not surprisingly, on the order of what I
pay for car insurance. If a $1000 annual insurance bill doesn't keep people
out of their cars, why would this headline?

~~~
WD-42
Funny you say accidents are rare. The death toll from covid in the US has just
barely surpassed the amount of car related deaths per year in the US.

~~~
bdavis__
in 2 months. 1/6 of a year.

~~~
antpls
We don't know how many people covid19 would kill if everyone were infected.
Given the data we have now about covid19, cars probably killed more people in
the last 15 years than covid19 will kill people in the next 15 years.

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ngcc_hk
Is it real cost saving? Many costs are infra and standby people. Not sure it
is real saving.

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onetimemanytime
> _California is saving $40M per day from reduction in car crashes due to
> COVID19_

I go to Vegas. Lose $100K in poker but win $190 at slot machines. How did I
do?

~~~
Redoubts
Save $190 in Vegas with this one weird trick!

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downerending
If we forbid all operations, a lot fewer people will die in surgery.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I remember Atul Gawande mentioning in one of his books that patient deaths
slow when their surgeons take a holiday.

~~~
downerending
Don't recall the details, but I think this was for a few specific kinds of
procedures (cardiac-related?).

There certainly is a problem with iatrogenic deaths (those caused by medical
attention itself), but it would be quite a bit too far to say that surgery is
on balance harmful taken as a whole.

(And indeed, the point of my remark was that a falling traffic fatality rate
isn't necessarily a good thing, once one looks at the entire picture.)

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_bxg1
> Saving State $40 Million Per Day During Shelter-In-Place

!!!!

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sieabahlpark
I mean, sure but how much is it losing from loss of revenue? I.e. sales tax?

Bad title and bad article.

~~~
Talanes
The scope that you seem to be expecting isn't possible right now. Anything
that's attempting to account for every amount of money lost or saved will end
up missing something. The title contains itself to the scope that it is
accurate at.

Trusting the reader to intuitively know California is losing massive amounts
of money from other things seems reasonable. Just because a title isn't
written for the most uneducated reader does not mean it is misleading.

~~~
travisporter
Yep. A silver lining is unambiguously defining a small upside to the larger
downside.

For instance, my niece’s pediatrician apparently has not seen or got calls for
any severe cases of flu due to social distancing despite still seeing
relatively similar amounts of patients

~~~
Tallasatree
The title was changed.

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transfire
The irony is that getting in a car is far more deadly than Covid.

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throwawaysea
This seems like a low effort illogical argument to push an anti car agenda?
Obviously the economic benefit of cars is far greater than $40M a day for CA.
Everything we do involves risk, whether it is driving or flying or simply
leaving the house. With risk comes the chance of injury and death. We still
decide to go about our lives because there is immense benefit in that. So I
don’t see why this is a problem.

