I find it extraordinary that the goalpost has completely moved without even a debate about it.
We were told to enter this lockdown to flatten the curve to under the capacity of the healthcare system so it is not overwhelmed.
Now we are being told we can’t leave the lockdown as someone more could die, ie the objective is not to remain under the capacity of the healthcare system but to go to zero deaths at all costs.
If the healthcare system has spare capacity, which seems to be the case pretty much everywhere, this lockdown is no longer justified.
I also find it extraordinary that unelected health officials have been allowed to dictate the freedoms of millions of people. These bureaucrats are experts in health and not economics, politics, and law and we're all beholden to them. They're qualified in a specific and narrow field but their decisions are impacting so much more. There's more to our lives and well being than an r0 number.
What we are experiencing right now is a considerable loss of freedom, this is what government intervention looks like, but into the most cherished aspects of our personal lives. How much of this control are governments going to try and hang on to after this is all over?
Where I live politicians do make the decisions. They are only given advice from the health area. Epidemologists are usually way more educated than your average politician. I would even go as far as saying, that those highly educated people might have a better grasp of philosophical issues than politicians, who are mostly all talk. If I look at politicians at high level here in general, I have to doubt their ethics in general. At least epidemologists did not yet prove to be a lobby tool.
As far as I know, they are not allowed to dictate the freedoms of millions. They simply report and provide guidance from their angle of expertise, and it is up to elected officials to aggregate the advice of all their consulted experts and their own judgement and hopefully with a bit of listening to their populace as well, to make the decisions.
You are correct. However, some elected officials have (for incompetence, or just wanting to deflect responsibility) completely abdicated from their functions, and they act (or say they act) like whatever the experts tell them.
"We'll reopen when the scientists say so" was a common mantra the past two months in my country. That's an admission of giving up responsibility, IMO.
On top of that, experts not always agree, which makes things even more confusing. Some say (again, my country) that masks and social distancing are "worthless" (in favor of indefinitely long lockdowns), others say that they might work, others say that they definitely work.
What would be a better course of action to take in this crisis?
Would you have preferred for your elected leaders to not have taken the consensus expert view?
Or do you think the consensus view of experts is not agreed upon currently?
The latter. I believe there's no real consensus at this point, save for a few points, of which the minutiae require more investigation. A lot on this virus is being learned "on the go" as the situation develops.
Also, some choices made at the time were made in haste, now, like the Science blog warned about "pandemic research exceptionalism", we need to make sure that public policy is subject to the same rigorous line of thinking (an extreme example of not doing so is the bleaching of a beach in Spain), IOW no decisions simply "because it's a crisis".
Public policy and elected officials need to be aware of these unknowns when taking decisions, especially since many of these, in one way or the other, carry negative externalities.
My take has been that they have taken a conservative action with regards to the virus, I've seen locking down as a way for the government to slow down time to try and work out what is going on before then taking a more considered point of view.
There was so much confusion in mid March about what would happen and lockdowns seem to have slowed things down a bit to get a clear head about what the path through is going to be like and I hope they don't rush their next decisions as there are so many things that are still not known.
In the future these current decisions could be wrong and will be wrong, I'm hoping that they aren't badly wrong but who knows... It seems to be considered on what mainstream scientific consensus but that's been wrong before but I feel it's the best we have given the situation.
The primary statement aside, I find it laughable when people parrot the talking points about "unelected" officials being an issue.
As if they were duly elected and making the same decision, the commenter would suddenly be appeased. Or when a judge makes a legal decision that's disagreed with, it's an "unelected official", but when it's to their liking, that concern disappears. Have some intellectual backbone, man.
By the way, if elected officials did their jobs properly and we were all free of the ridiculous political/social climate we find ourselves in, maybe unelected officials wouldn't have to step in to fill the void.
All the three parts of a functioning government (executive, legislative, judicial) have their own duties and responsibilities towards each other and the citizens.
The so-called "unelected officials" (bad term, I'd say, because it's too broad) do not have such responsibilities. They can be either used as scapegoats, as a way to remove responsibility from those who carry it, or use their current influence to push policy in one direction or the other.
All of this might happen, or might not happen at all. "if xxx did their jobs properly" is not an excuse not to remain vigilant.
Health officers are officers of the executive branch in nearly every typical jurisdiction I can think of. They are an extension of the governor/mayor/county executive, who can usually overrule/fire/replace/choose different decisions. And the elected officials are perfectly free to be accountable for the decisions of the executive.
I think the deeper issue here is the much-commented popular distrust or 2nd guessing of "experts". I guess a disease that has a long incubation time and highly variable susceptibility just brings out the worst in people's judgement capabilities.
> I think the deeper issue here is the much-commented popular distrust or 2nd guessing of "experts"
Experts are human, and so they make mistakes like everyone else. See the German study on the autopsies and thrombosis, for example. A similar finding was reported in my country and immediately slammed by some high profile experts (same with convalescent plasma therapy). Some experts are saying that social distancing is useless against this disease. Others let out contradictory statements to the general public.
For those who aren't equipped to understand that at least part of it (some of it is narcissism, but that's another story) is part of the general scientific discourse, it is absolutely understandable to not trust them fully. And even more when the same experts (speaking of my country) said in February that it wasn't a big deal (but few if any admitted they made a mistake).
A bureaucrat is specifically someone who is an elected official dealing with governance and policy. A bureaucrat who is an expert in health is exactly who you would want advising on an issue that is primarily driven by the management of a pandemic.
But the reality of it is none of these people are making the decisions, they're advising, your governors are making the final calls. So your governors should have information from economists, health officials and other areas and should be making decisions based on their best judgement of all that information.
I have a question in order to compare the USA situation to our own: what kind of statements do the expert panels make, when interviewed by the media or in official communication?
I don't follow US media all that closely, so I don't know enough to comment sorry. I think maybe you are leading to the thought that they still influence public actions through the media, and I'm sure that's true.
I say this because in my country the communication is very un-empathic and some prominent experts truly lack the skill, causing either denial or terror depending on who gets their message.
I'm being told that other countries carry their communication in a much more rational way, but I haven't been able to confirm this (hence the question).
I can only really speak for Australia, where communication has been fairly consistent and level-headed across the official channels at both a federal and state level of government. Most communication stresses caution, but maintains hope and lays out logical, fact based plans for restrictions that people can understand.
Who is saying the goal is “zero deaths at all costs”? I see governors seriously weighing the costs and risks, and talking about the response when (not if) reopening leads to new flare-ups.
Whitmer: “As we start to very shrewdly reopen (edited: autocorrect) sectors, we’ve got to measure every step of the way. If we start to see a spike, we have to be nimble enough to pull back...”
Newsom: “As we move into the next stage of reopening, we will do so with updated guidance to help qualifying businesses make modifications needed to lower the risk of COVID-19 exposure to customers and workers. Californians should prepare now for that second stage of reopening...”
Cuomo: “This is not a sustainable situation.” However, “You see that you reopen too soon or you reopen unintelligently and you can then have an immediate backlash.”
And so on. I concede there may be someone out there arguing for “zero” but I don’t see the goal of even the more aggressively locked down US states being “zero”.
The first 2 sentences are a reasonable point. But even if there is spare capacity, people who go into ICU are dying, so it's not like it's a clean cut judgement call that if there's spare capacity, people will be fine and it was just recovery from an illness. Spare capacity still = a death rate.
I think most all the policymakers are aware that there is going to be a judgement call about lives at risk versus economic cost of the lockdown. I don't think anyone is saying that 0 deaths must be achieved. We don't try to achieve that for anything.
The grownups in the room are weighing when to open and restart the economy against the data-backed risk of disease flaring up and causing a worse shutdown to be required. The kids are asking to go out and play without knowledge of anything.
Also people seem to forget that deaths are not the only problem. Getting out of the icu and surviving is not like a walk in the park where you get a little oxygen and continue with your life. Some % of people will never fully recover and live with health issues for the rest of their life.
I'm not trying to be snarky, but you do realize that the people who do not die from Covid-19 will still die eventually, right? We're not making a choice between death or no death, we're mostly making a choice between death now or death in a few years.
> I don't think anyone is saying that 0 deaths must be achieved.
You just used "Spare capacity still = a death rate" as an argument, that's a different version of "0 deaths must be achieved".
> The grownups in the room are weighing when to open and restart the economy against the data-backed risk of disease flaring up and causing a worse shutdown to be required. The kids are asking to go out and play without knowledge of anything.
Are you suggesting anyone who disagrees with this policy is clueless?
I'm saying that I observe that people who are most vehemently advocating for lifting the lockdown seem to be people who are not, shall we say, the most knowledgeable or informed about the severity and risk of the disease.
This "lock down" thing was completely improvised. I've checked various medical dictionaries, in French and English, and the term is not even there (you will obviously find terms like "quarantine" or "quarantaine", which is a different concept).
It's something invented by politicians. Which is why they also use terms like "shelter in place", which is a concept that was used until now for earthquakes, bomb threats, etc.
And because they improvised this concept, they have no idea how to get out of those "lock downs".
> If the healthcare system has spare capacity, which seems to be the case pretty much everywhere,
This has been achieved by:
1) Reducing quality of care. For one example, ICUs have a one to one nurse to patient ratio, but during covid-19 some ICUs dropped that to one nurse per six patients
2) Building field hospitals
3) Putting a lot of people onto palliative pathways, and not taking them into hospitals
4) Imposing lockdown
Healthcare professionals would argue this isn't spare capacity, it's rationing.
Now we have to look at ways to balance the harms caused by lockdown against the real risk of a second wave of covid-19 infection, and that's not easy to do.
The title is just doublespeak. The article ends with the line: "At 12 weeks, he says, the benefits from a shutdown exceed the costs."
The economy is a human invention, there is nothing natural about it. You can't go on the safari and find a wild S&P500. These consistent demands in the media for a blood sacrifice is outrageous and dehumanizing to the people that have to suffer the consequences.
While I'm a proponent of restrictions, your argument doesn't make much sense.
It's irrelevant if the economy is human-made or a natural phenomenon, because it is nevertheless what keeps us fed and with a roof over our heads.
There are indications that this depression is as bad as the Great Depression and might be even worse. It is true that there is no food shortage right now, but we might have one, at least from where I'm from, esp due to drought, which affected crops all over Europe. And guess what, during the Great Depression people starved to death.
So if the restrictions continue, I sure hope there's a better plan in place other than taxing the living shit out of the middle class that still have jobs and pay their taxes. Because we all know that the money required to keep the unemployed from starving will not come from the rich.
Food shortages would be the results of lack of agricultural output and disruption of supply chains, which by and large is not happening. (At least to no degree that would put you at risk of serious shortages in Europe)
Non-essential workers don't influence a food shortage. If those workers stay home their income may be hurt for a while, but in contrast to 1918 we have a social security system. Nobody's going to starve.
edit: For reference, Greece suffered from 18-25% unemployment for the last ten years. The economic effects of the pandemic will have bad consequences, but it's not an existential issue, it just sucks and will destroy some wealth.
> and disruption of supply chains, which by and large is not happening. (At least to no degree that would put you at risk of serious shortages in Europe)
It depends if you see the economy as a source of a result. I don't think the current system was built to feed people. It is the end result of centuries of political decisions, individual actions, wars, trade agreements, etc...
It's more an image of the balance of power rather than a tool thought from head to toes to run our socities.
So either we think that actually nothing changed in the environment and we can keep the system as it is or we consider that all the changes that have been stressing this system (covid-19, climate change) required some adaptation so that the system stay somewhat balanced.
I think it's where this becomes quite problematic, re-balancing this requires people with a huge amount of power (the wealthiest part of our society) to accept being less powerful. That's where we've been stuck for years now.
What we're seeing now is how this system should have changed before we were in this emergency situation because it clearly can't handle actual emergencies.
> "I don't think the current system was built to feed people"
And yet it does feed people, billions of us. Even more so we have less extreme poverty and fewer people suffering from malnutrition than any other time in human history, with poverty plummeting since 1960 at least.
The current system wasn't built indeed, it was evolved, in tune with the industrial revolution. And it works. In the 19th century over 80% of the world population was living in extreme poverty.
The progress has been immense, both technological and social, in only one century, a blink of an eye in the context of human history. Any such discussion should acknowledge this.
> "...rather than a tool thought from head to toes to run our socities"
Yeah, you know what economic system was designed like that? Communism. So I'm skeptical of any such claims.
Well you also can’t eat money. So at a certain point there just will not be any stuff to buy if the shutdown continues and people just get checks in the mail. That is magical thinking.
There is a reachable middle ground between "everyone stays home all the time" and "everyone goes back to work, consequences be damned." It requires close coordination between governments, widely available testing with quick turnarounds, and a mutual understanding that this is a serious situation and we all need to contribute by doing things like wearing a mask, being mindful of personal hygiene, and accommodating those who need space.
The real unknown is whether we have the political and social will to get there.
>The economy is a human invention, there is nothing natural about it.
So is agriculture. And we are currently looking at 30 million deaths due to famine this year with what has been done so far. If we continue the lockdowns it will be a lot more.
So the question is: are 3 million whites in their 70s worth 30 million people of color who are mostly children?
> Even before the pandemic hit, parts of East Africa and South Asia were already facing severe food shortages caused by drought and the worst locust infestations for decades.
Sounds like it isn't all caused by the pandemic.
With the US essentially joining OPEC, maybe we could divert ethanol destined corn to famine relief.
The notion that only old people are affected is wrong. And hospitalization rate doesn't differ much between age groups, only fatality rate. And if the healthcare system breaks down due to number of cases, you start seeing a lot of young people dying too.
So you'll get a significant percent of the workforce incapacitated, either because they get sick and need hospitalization, or because their parents or grandparents die. During such a pandemic the economy suffers anyway, because appetite for risk or for buying useless shit people don't need goes down.
N.B. people often point at Sweden these days, as being in a not that bad situation, however note that the Swedes are very disciplined and many of them have isolated themselves voluntarily. Given their culture, their slightly optimistic scenario can't be easily replicated and the jury is still out anyway.
And the comparison you're making is inhumane and possibly a false choice. We should strive to save both the "whites in their 70s" and the poor people of Africa.
> The notion that only old people are affected is wrong.
Let's not read too much into a sentence that's not super nuanced. It's not only old people, but it's mostly old people and people with severe comorbidities.
> And the comparison you're making is inhumane and possibly a false choice. We should strive to save both the "whites in their 70s" and the poor people of Africa.
Yes, ideally we'll always save everyone. Unfortunately, the world is rarely ideal, so we often have to make choices. If two people need a lung transplant and we only have one, what do we do? There's one 80yo smoker and one otherwise healthy 20yo. Do we flip a coin?
> It's not only old people, but it's mostly old people and people with severe comorbidities.
You realize that you're speaking of a majority of the population, right? 1 in 3 Americans are prediabetic. Nearly half of Americans suffer from heart disease.
> the world is rarely ideal
That's a platitude.
Also given we do talk about the real world, we also have to consider that a country's first priority is towards saving its own citizens. Not ideal, but a fact, driven by those who vote and pay taxes. Nobody is going to allow the death of their own citizens in order to save people living on another continent.
People bring the starving children of Africa into the discussion without actually caring or doing anything about those children.
> If two people need a lung transplant and we only have one, what do we do?
False analogy. Medical triage is at some point necessary, but that's not what we are talking about.
But I'm glad that you brought this point up, because young people that need oxygen or ventilators will die if they don't receive it.
> Nobody is going to allow the death of their own citizens in order to save people living on another continent.
It's not just about people on another continent though. Modern life costs money. Keep everything locked down, reduce economic output, and you will feel that. Social programs are too expensive so he US accepts a 10 year class-difference in life expectancy? That'll be increased with a halved economy and taxes drying up completely.
> False analogy. Medical triage is at some point necessary, but that's not what we are talking about.
Sure we are. You can measure the impact of an economic depression on life expectancy. The choice isn't between no deaths, just a tiny bit of inconvenience and every old person dies. It's a higher chance of death for the old and the severely ill vs a general shortening of life expectancy. And there's the uncertainty: we don't know whether we will, in the end, save anyone with a multi-month or multi-year wide-reaching lockdown. But we do have a good idea what will happen if we crash the economy.
Are you sure about that? Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. These shortages can cascade throughout supply chains.
The big one that no one seriously considers is people running out of money, and then their governments running out of money. It's hard to tax people who can't work.
Yes, because plenty of economies that modern westerners would describe as grossly inefficient and half-functional, at best, have managed to provide all of those things over the past century.
> Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses.
This is false. Consider reading the lists of essential businesses enumerated in the shutdown orders. Businesses that produce goods consumed by essential businesses are essential.
> and then their governments running out of money.
This is also false. Sovereigns that control their currencies cannot run out of money. Especially in a recession, when they have a lot more headroom to inflate[1] by borrowing printed money.
A government is not a household, and its budget is not balanced like one.
[1] During a recession, wealth is destroyed, and the money supply deflates. Deflation is bad. Deflation is incredibly bad. You can combat deflation by having your central bank cause inflation, by printing money, and lending it out - to the government.
How much money can we print until people lose faith in the currency? How many months can we do it for? It may take up to 2 years to discover and distribute a working vaccine. Can we print money to pay everyone's food and rent for 2 years?
Why aren't we treating every workplace as essential, since they produce an income for their workers?
> How much money can we print until people lose faith in the currency?
How much money do you think the recession will destroy?
Take that amount, and add a few percentage points of the total money supply to it.
> Can we print money to pay everyone's food and rent for 2 years?
1. This is nonsense. Not everyone is out of work because of the shutdowns.
2. If you want more businesses to re-open, we should be working on better mitigation for the virus. The more testing, the more contact tracing, the more PPE, the better we comply with social distancing requirements, the better we can prevent spread in workplaces, the more non-essential businesses can re-open.
For some reason though, nobody who wants to re-open wants to talk about the work that has to be done, to allow for re-opening to take place.
There's no shortage of work that can be done, to improve the health of the economy. Why aren't we doing it? Could it be because the same political factions that are pushing for re-opening aren't interested in paying for it?
>How much money do you think the recession will destroy? Take that amount, and add a few percentage points of the total money supply to it.
I think we'd have to print more than we could assume is safe. We're in an unprecedented situation right now. This isn't a normal depression. We shouldn't stumble into a battlefield and expect the old skirmish tactics to save us. We're acting unbelievably foolhardy and cavalier about the serious threat this poses to the poor.
People on hacker news, the media, and in the CDC have no real fear of being evicted or going without food, so why would they seriously consider it? If you're a doctor or an epidemiologist, your work is essential so your main threat is the virus. You're optimizing national policy for one variable (disease spread and deaths) rather than multiple variables (disease spread and deaths, starvation, suicides due to job loss, increased homelessness, and general welfare of the country).
>If you want more businesses to re-open, we should be working on better mitigation for the virus. The more testing, the more contact tracing, the more PPE, the better we comply with social distancing requirements, the better we can prevent spread in workplaces, the more non-essential businesses can re-open.
I wholeheartedly agree and think that we all need to realize that we have a great responsibility to do our part to protect our loved ones from this disease. Funding testing and contact tracing is a life or death decision.
>Could it be because the same political factions that are pushing for re-opening aren't interested in paying for it?
I can't know for certain since I'm not in those political spheres. I can predict that the wealthy want their businesses to continue operating while they will personally self-isolate until they get a vaccine (social distancing for me, not for thee). Regardless of how our national policies change, I expect that the poor will get no significant financial support, as always. I predict that if we do print money, it will just go to businesses. About 80% of the financial assistance distributed so far has not gone to individuals. It has mostly bailed out businesses like hotels and airliners (because we desperately need hotels and airliners for the next two years!).
That's the main reason why I don't buy the notion that the government will bail out individuals. It never has. It's a carrot on a stick.
Anyways, I appreciate the insight on QE to offset deflation. Do you know of any interesting books on that topic I could check out?
> Anyways, I appreciate the insight on QE to offset deflation. Do you know of any interesting books on that topic I could check out?
Anything from Steve Keen, he has a good endogenous theory of money. He had interesting models back during the financial crisis which showed that austerity was deepening debt deflation, QE to banks was somewhat OK, and QE to consumers (helicopter money) turned out to be the best solution.
> There's no shortage of any of those things in the Western world.
Yet. And let's not talk about more advanced things that are also needed. Like medicine, transportation, power etc pp.
"Hey, don't worry about the economy, we can always go back to how life was 300 years ago, we can easily do that with a fraction of the people". Ok, cool, but do you really want to live like that? Are you sure that everybody else wants to?
We will see a second wave of devastation in 6 months when foreclosures hit. We are fucked even if there isn’t a second infection uptick.
The handling of this situation is a perfect demonstration of how the current political system fails us.
Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument. The other half wants it to end so they can pay their bills.
> Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument.
I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed.
There are several states that are aiming for something like the South Korean solution: stay-at-home until the level of cases drops low enough that we can test mild symptoms, track contacts, and safely treat everyone who falls ill. This is literally the official proposal in my state, and we're relaxing the stay-at-home order now that the conditions are met.
I won't pretend that this proposal will be easy to execute. IIRC, Seoul just re-closed all its bars after an infected partier visited four bars that hadn't been following the social distancing rules.
As someone in my 40s, my risk of death is fairly low. But a substantial portion of hospitalized cases are younger people, and something like 30% of severe hospitalized cases are showing some loss of lung capacity, loss of kidney function, or micro-clotting with risk of stroke. I earn a living with my brain; stokes scare me.
So you can reopen the economy all you want, but I'm not setting foot in a restaurant, movie theater, airplane or barbershop until I'm vaccinated (or recovered). Whenever possible, I'll be buying from merchants who offer curbside pickup or delivery. And I've been trying to support local merchants as much possible, including takeout from several local restaurants.
> I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed.
Eh, well, I personally would like the lock down to finally actually happen.
Everyone prepare or get help to prepare and then actually have a lock down for 2-3 weeks and beat this virus. Instead we have this 1 friend meeting allowance and some non-essential businesses opening up or people acting incredibly selfish/stupid and doing parties, because they suffer oh so much from isolation.
These are things, that drag a semi-lockdown waaay out and make it actually bad for businesses. It would be half as bad, if not less, if people had discipline and we had acted with strong lock down initially or at any point since then.
I personally have not met with a single friend or person outside this household since the start of semi lock down here, with the exception of buying food, and do not plan to do so. I do not want to be the one responsible for bringing the virus into this household or giving it to anyone else. It might be easy for me as introverted or computer guy, but so what? Of course it will be harder for some other people! There are always differences. It's not like people could not survive 2-3 weeks actual lock down at home, when prepared properly and delivered food in emergency.
We could have a state organized food delivery service for emergency cases, where people did not prepare sufficiently. We could also have avoided people buying too much of certain goods by simply starting out with lock down + purchase per person limitations at the same time.
Another idea: Have a state supported fund for everyone who cannot work during lock down. Make it easy for the working from home population to support everyone else. Do not rely on private people organizing this themselves! I have yet to see the news announcement of there being some official place, organized by government, where I could donate part of my wage, so that people wgo cannot work currently due to the virus get some income. I have seen (and donated to) some private campaigns for gastronomy and similar, but not simply anything for trying to share wages.
The point is, that we need to get back to a point, where tracing all the infections is possible again, fast. Only then we should loosen restrictions. We could be there already, with a little discipline and more government support for helping people instead of relying on private actions.
> Everyone prepare or get help to prepare and then actually have a lock down for 2-3 weeks and beat this virus.
I don't think it's quite that easy. Wuhan shut down on January 25th, and they were still seeing 500 new cases a day by the end of February. This was despite a very strict lockdown, and a serious effort to find and isolate all the mild cases until they got better. Something like 80% of transmission was within households. Nobody was going out to party. Once this thing gets started, it's a beast to stop, taking something like 5 to 8 weeks bring a major urban cluster mostly under control.
Our state has been lucky so far. We have about 1 new case per 100,000 people per day, and less than 2% of our tests are coming back positive. So we're preparing to move ahead with contact tracing and a staged reopening.
OK, I don't know how long it would really precisely take of course, given proper lock down. Maybe it's even longer than 3 weeks.
You say that 2% of the 100.000 tests come back positive.
Who can monitor 2000 people around the clock and track every single person they have any contact with? Honestly, where do such capacities come from? Or are people just told to stay at home and it goes unchecked, whether they actually do?
I imagine that to be very difficult to contact trace perfectly. Each infected person could infect many others, if not properly isolated. 2000 is still a lot to trace. If we were talking about 100 to 400 maybe or so, then I could imagine that being done.
What's also telling is all these 'calculations' deny the public any agency. As if they aren't going to try and protect themselves unless the government forces them to. To believe that is insane.
As a member of the public and old enough to have a good sense of mortality, I don't care what happens to anyone's paper wealth if it means I don't die of this. I'm not going to a movie, or a bar, or a concert. Not happening.
It does seem like we are in a strange situation where we can produce all essentials for everyone, and in fact, we can do so so efficiently that we don't need everyone in order to do so.
Imagine a scenario where 5 people can provide for 10. It seems we are in such a scenario. But it used to be that the 5 essential workers would take the surplus of their production and give it to the other 5 non-essential workers in exchange for non-essential things like serving them a beer.
Now that those activities are risky to the 5 who can provide, they don't want to catch Covid. As well as currently restricted by the governments themselves. The 5 who produce the essential in enough quantity for all 10 have no incentive to give their surplus away to the other 5.
So logically, if it is true that we produce a surplus from people still employed which could cover all people no longer employed, then it seems all we need is to figure out how to self-organize in a new way, so the surplus are still being distributed to those who are not currently producing. And to find a way which does so while still allowing for social distancing and lockdowns and all that.
This is the ideal, but I really doubt we will figure a way. Thus, the best way we know for now is the traditional economy, which requires people to continue to wilfully spend money on non-essentials. So somehow, we need to strike a balance between Covid protection and motivating and still enabling people to spend on non-essentials.
> The 5 who produce the essential in enough quantity for all 10 have no incentive to give their surplus away to the other 5.
Maybe then, the other 5 should stop sitting on their asses and start contributing towards that "essential surplus". For example, they could divide the shifts in half and decrease the chances of getting COVID19 for everybody.
> For example, they could divide the shifts in half and decrease the chances of getting COVID19 for everybody.
That's one of the proposed alternative means of organizing that I've heard. Some of the criticism against it I've heard are the overhead logistically, like the follow up from one shift ending to the next beginning can slow things down. The other criticism I've heard is that the people currently working in those essential jobs don't want to let them go, even partially. There's a human instinct at play, those surplus are their retirement fund, they don't mind working the 40h a week to build it up. Another challenge is education and training, we didn't plan for this, we trained 5 people in essential work, and 5 other in non essential work, so its not like the other 5 can just pick up the work immediately.
I also heard some of the opposite happening, with Covid, essential workers are choosing to reduce their own shifts, to protect themselves, and that now causes a lack of surplus, because we reduced production from pre-Covid. Mixed with the lack of availability in people who have the training to take over their "missing shift", its a problem.
I still personally think it could be a good idea. As we drive up efficiency more and more with the use of technologies, automation, better techniques and processes, we'll just more and more face this problem, Covid or not. The 5 needed to produce for 10 might become 1 needed to produce for 10. I think we could solve the above problem if there was a political will and a populace movement behind it.
A good variant I've heard on it is to make the work week 10 day long, and split shift 5/5. So people work 40h on and take 40h off. That reduces the shift switch overhead, while still allowing two people to contribute to any given job.
I imagine, that working in shifts actually increases chance of infection, because of aerosols and surface contamination. However, you are right, that it would be fairer to do that.
Using value of statistical life figures of the federal government, and lives potentially saved by the shutdown, we are still saving much more in life $ value than the cost of the shutdown on economic output.
And, I might add, the situation isn't fully yet understood, so it's not like anyone making these calculations is doing so with the real known risk factored in.
Often public policy will use "quality-adjusted life years" saved as a more precise metric in decision-making, which allows for valuing e.g. an intervention that saves people 10 years of life on average more than one that saves 2 years of life on average. Using this metric, it's not clear that we're saving more in life $ value than the cost of the shutdown: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/economic-cost-o... .
"Life value" considers a life over the years, not life itself. The value isn't constant since the earning potential is a large part of that value. It should be obvious that it sinks with age, that is if you're 80, the projected earnings that you will achieve during the rest of your life is very different from the projected earnings of the same person at 20 years. If you wanted to take out an insurance that would pay you some sum for the rest of your life if you had an accident, that will also change dramatically if you're 20 vs if you're 80.
Saying that the value is constant is a PR thing, not scientific, and it's not what "we" (as in governments, insurances, hospitals etc pp) do. We look at age. We'll prefer to give a new heart to a 20 year old vs a 89 year old.
Just comparing the numbers is one thing, but there is an inherent unfairness: the risk of death is much higher in certain groups (mostly the elderly). And the economic damage is also distributed very unequally: some sectors are wiped out, some are barely hurt or even profit.
So the cost is in one group and the benefit is in another. It can't be easily helped but it's extremely unfair.
The first problem with this article is that they calculate peoples worth based on expected earnings but as if they’ve still got their whole carrier ahead of them. But in reality Covid-19 just is not very dangerous for people under 50.
And of course that whole reality thing where there is an end to giving people free money while nothing is being produced and the stores are not going to remain stocked if the factories are closed.
* Barro's calculation doesn't take into account the economic losses from an extended shutdown. But in an email, he says any decline in gross domestic product has to be weighed against the economic value of saving lives*
Not so simple. Consider that the shutdowns themselves can lead to even worse consequences:
And I just posted an article about millions becoming infected by tuberculosis, an even more serious issue.
Here is the thing...
The politicians and media in the west have utterly failed us, telling us not to wear masks. The WHO still continues to do this and YouTube censors anyone who disagrees. It’s not just bad for free speech — it’s irresponsible! In Austria, masks led to a 90% drop in cases, as they did across Asia.
The lockdowns are a last resort, after public policy has failed to contain the outbreaks
Masks are supposed to protect others from you. They keep the germs in, doesn’t let them escape when you cough or talk. An N95 mask with the valve is actually worse than doubling up surgical masks, because the germs can go through the valve under pressure.
What good is social distancing and quarantines when residents use elevators? Masks on the other hand greatly reduce R0 and aerosols.
Cuomo just found out the “shocking” statistic that most hospitalizations are from people who stayed home. Elevators play a huge role.
Masks and gloves are a way to return back to work, restore social life in common areas too. Please watch this video:
> Consider that the shutdowns themselves can lead to even worse consequences
Are you saying that when people cannot travel by airplanes, go to a theater or a restaurant, then this is inevitably causing children to die?
What kind of sick society is that, which cannot make a different economic arrangement?
I understand (obviously) there are jobs that are required for functioning of the modern society, but to claim that it cannot be organized (especially given we have Internet) so that people could avoid mass gatherings is insane.
What we are discovering under the lockdown arrangements is precisely which jobs are actually required in the economy, and which are there just to cause some financial figure to increase.
Other than the stupefying boredom and colossal holes in the safety net due to the ideological blinkers of politicians and their cronies, exactly what isn't being done that needs to be done in the real world?
The farmers around here are still as busy as ever with their lambs. The wheat is growing in the fields. The rapespeed is below and as fragrant as normal. Supermarkets are stocked, and food is on the shelf. The power is on. The Internet is working. The drains function and refuse is being cleared.
Are some people scared that we might realise just how much activity is really fluff?
> The farmers around here are still as busy as ever with their lambs. The wheat is growing in the fields. The rapespeed is below and as fragrant as normal. Supermarkets are stocked, and food is on the shelf.
Raw milk is being dumped because processing facilities to make it safe to drink are shut down. Meat processing centers are shut down or running at below capacity - beef is already disappearing from shelves. Vegetables likewise, farmers are losing ways to get to market.
The lockdowns have interrupted the path from source to store, and we're approaching a food shortage because of it. People will go hungry if we can't get the economy moving again.
Two Walmart supermarkets near me are shutdown because employees tested positive for COVID-19 and at least one has died. Which explains why they cancelled my delivery order a few days ago. The app didn’t mention why my order was canceled…
Instacart is more expensive but about 20% of what I order is out of stock.
So basic groceries aren’t as available as they were a month ago.
I think this is what is gonna happen (in the U.S.). Because of lack of coordinated shutdown of non-essential economic activity, much more people will become infected, causing eventual shut downs of more essential activity.
So reopening the economy in order to save it is completely backwards. It's like drinking alcohol when you're suffering from cold, which will cause more heat loss. It might feel better, but in fact, it is making things worse, by not conserving heat on the parts of your body that are less essential for your survival.
I lack the explanation of the cause of the shut down. Are they being shut down because they cannot find employees or because they they cannot find consumers?
If they actually over produce (i.e. the consumption decreased), then I don't see how you can claim this will lead to shortage. On the other hand, if they shut down because there is undersupply of labour, then surely the people can be employed once they actually become hungry?
Either way, the market mechanism should rectify both situations.
Workers testing positive, leading to quarantining the whole staff to prevent further spread.
For the ones that are still active, the reduced capacity is a mixture of limiting the number of workers to maintain social distancing, and workers just not coming in for fear of getting infected.
Something else I didn't realize, from that link, what is being processed is now unbalanced - the same throughput feeds less people because restaurants aren't open:
> Restaurants typically use the expensive stuff — strips, ribs, tenderloins and sirloin, Bormann said, while retail takes the chucks and rounds and trims. With restaurants mostly shuttered, “all of a sudden 23 percent of the animal isn’t being bought because food service is gone,” he said.
The lockdown is just a different way of getting the economy close to the state of full employment - by reducing consumption rather than by increasing production.
> Are some people scared that we might realise just how much activity is really fluff?
Absolutely. The people pushing this simply don't care about ordinary peoples lives. What they care about is this is a direct challenge to their carefully constructed status quo. The one that gaslights people into thinking is we change the power relations even a tiny bit the roof will cave in.
> What kind of sick society is that, which cannot make a different economic arrangement?
Aye. Specifically, the market must work in favour of society - if it's not working in a way that we find to be ethical, we have an obligation to regulate it. It must not be treated as a power that kills people and allows us to throw our hands up and say "that's fine" - if something is to kill hundreds of thousands of children, we must treat it as harshly as the pandemic we're currently in.
I am not saying that - in fact I am deeply skeptical of the UN’s claims when it comes to this.
However they are speaking about people in other countries. Even in the USA, livestock is euthanized and the food chain is severely disrupted. Supermarket food is going to cost more. Food insecurity exists even in the USA. Malnourishment is a big thing.
If you want to learn more about it, listen to what the UN is warning about:
Is YouTube censoring people just for suggesting masks, or are they taking down channels that are otherwise full of misinformation and just happen to also recommend masks?
They're now mandatory in some countries such as Slovakia.
How many of the "at home" deaths are care homes? Those have been an absolute disaster for their residents.
About YouTube - Well in practice it’s probably more flexible but taking them at their word, they said they’ll take down any videos that contradict the WHO. The WHO are against wearing masks. The CDC has changed their stance finally — since April. Wear masks when indoors!
About the "at home" statistic. What proportion of the population is staying at home? If it's say 90%, then even if the case rate among these people is five times lower than among the people who are not staying home, there will still be more 'at home' cases. Also, there's a big risk of bias - people who are in risk groups are more likely to stay at home, because they know that it would be dangerous for them to go outside.
I'm not saying that there's nothing to the statistic, just that we have to be very careful about how we interpret things, and make sure that we think about the contextual factors.
Generally speaking though, I also think elevators should be taken into consideration more. I haven't heard much about recommendations regarding elevators, but surely it would help if people take the stairs as much as possible? I always take the stairs since the pandemic started, even the few times I've been to the office, which is eight floors up. Granted, a lot of people can't take the stairs because of health issues or because it's just too many floors, but those of us who can, should.
> What good is social distancing and quarantines when residents use elevators? Masks on the other hand greatly reduce R0 and aerosols.
> Cuomo just found out the “shocking” statistic that most hospitalizations are from people who stayed home. Elevators play a huge role.
I don't understand your reasoning here. Obviously if everyone is following the lockdown then most new cases are going to be from people that "are staying home". In quotes because no one is truly isolated so of course there are going to be new cases, such as the elevators that you mention.
Are you suggesting that there wouldn't be significantly more cases if the lockdown was ended?
I find it interesting that it’s ok to call it Spanish Flu (while it wasn’t even originated there), but is politically incorrect to call this one the Wuhan virus or the Chinese flu. Political correctness has always a political intention I guess.
It's kind of a complicated issue. I do think that we should refer to the 1918 flu as just that. However, since that's so far back in the past, you won't find a lot of people pointing their fingers at Spain and accusing Spaniards of being inhuman scum. On the other hand, you have a LOT of people saying "Chinese flu" who then jump to the conclusion that the Chinese people themselves are to blame and inherently 'bad', aggravating racism against the Chinese. The Chinese government deserve a lot of criticism for so many things, including their persecution (and most likely execution in some cases) of Chinese citizens who reported on the pandemic. But hate crimes happening right now against Chinese, and people who happen to look remotely Chinese, are very real. I see little benefit in referring to the 2019 Coronavirus/COVID-19 as a "Chinese flu", while I see huge downsides.
In sum, while I think "Spanish" flu is more factually incorrect, I see talk about a "Chinese" flu as more acutely harmful. So - 1918 flu, COVID-19, IMO.
I mostly agree with your comment. My main counterpoint to this angle, which is strictly correct, is that many people lack the same kind of context that you described, and do interpret “Spanish flu” and “Wuhan/Chinese flu” as “caused by them”, and in some cases even missing the historical perspective. There might be something to be said about blame in one case and the other, but I don’t think is that relevant (although perhaps at some point there should be some debate on the responsibility of China -if any- in this pandemic)
"Citizens reporting on the epidemic have been made to disappear" would be a more factual description. And as can be seen from the first article linked above, "disappearance" doesn't necessarily lead to a fatal end.
But again, I think you were right to call me out on speculating. We just don't know, and if there's one thing we don't need more of right now, it's speculation from non-experts like me. Thank you.
I think intent matters here. Spanish Flu is from so long ago it already has a universal name, whereas I think referring to COVID-19 as the Chinese virus is usually only done by people who'd like to blame China.
In what way does assigning any blame help? Magically US citizens will be able to successfully sue China for lost wages? Magically there will be less deaths?
Accountability matters. When things go wrong it's important to assign blame to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future.
So in this particular case, a way blaming might help would be to recognize those organizations and governments that were incapable of preventing the spread of the disease and to recognize in the future a quicker need to mitigate and not to assume China will take care of it, assuming China deserves blame. It may also help by recuperating the economic loss by holding those responsible for it and requiring payments. These are common things that happen in all walks of life and the international context is no different. People and countries shouldn't get to walk away from massive fuck ups if it is possible to hold them to account. At least we can try.
There are ways to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future, without assigning blame. Blameless post-mortem.
I'm a reasonable man, I find accountability a positive virtue. I'm also not a foolish one, for I understand trying to assign blame for an act of god is definitely NOT normal. And I understand the "blameless post-mortem" is a tech-industry standard well understood, so I am surprised to find the "blame game" card being played here. Consider:
Every time a hurricane rolls off the coast of west Africa and trashes the Eastern seaboard, you don't see the US blaming west Africa.
You don't see Missouri trying to pin the Joplin tornado onto neighboring Kansas/Oklahoma in order to recoup billions of dollars of damages and loss of human life. You DO get a technical NIST report that is blameless (I have worked with this particular data) [0].
When an earthquake originates in one country but flattens the city in a neighboring country, you don't see one sue the other.
When a typhoon hits SE Asia, they aren't trying to readily assign blame.
What can be assigned blame is a nation's reaction to this force majeure. At that point the people should be holding their own leaders accountable, as the assumption should always be that the neighbors are incompetent, and our own leaders are the best. That is inconvenient for the current President precisely because he politicized the disease. If he had not politicized it, his followers would be more amenable for blameless post-mortems (literal post-mortems, let's remember people are dying). Unfortunately his response was lackluster, and rather than taking accountability (you know, the virtue I agreed w/ y'all on at the beginning), he would rather shift blame. But this implies that he was relying on China to do its part. Which then begs the question: If the US President wants to blame China, why was he sitting back and relying on China on good faith when no other nation was?
To summarize why I don't believe the bullshit that is "assigning blame" for SARS-Cov-2:
- Accountability is a virtue
- Blameless postmortem is a huge cross-industry technical standard, so abandoning that is immediately suspect
- US President politicized the disease; due to this he has political motivations to avoid the virtue of accountability and how he guided the US response (making the act of "blaming" even more suspect as being a political reaction)
- Doublethink of "Did the US President really rely on the Chinese response? Blame them, not him!" (only enabled because of politicization)
There are ways to understand why things went wrong and how to prevent them in the future, without assigning blame. Blameless post-mortem. But that's now been politicized.
How do you prevent a hurricane? The coronavirus could have been stopped. The wildlife markets could have been shut down. The spread could have been prevented. The transparency could have been better. I'm not saying China actually does deserve blame, maybe it was way out of control before it was possible to do anything, but this has been a horrible disaster the likes we normally don't see and we need to do what we can to prevent it from ever happening again or if it does to handle it better. Blame is a useful tool, it feels like you're trying to avoid it for unstated reasons when it seems entirely useful in this context.
> Blame is a useful tool, it feels like you're trying to avoid it for unstated reasons when it seems entirely useful in this context.
I've demonstrated that everything except blame is useful when doing analyses of engineering failures or disaster analysis. I have professional experience in this both in the computer science world and in the traditional engineering world.
Identifying root causes like "lack of testing prevented deployment of limited resources optimally which exacerbated these effects: X, Y, ..." is a useful and actionable way to identify and address problems. And then people can look at these blameless analyses and make their tough decision, and then go beyond and demonstrate accountability for their choice. This can be repeated as many times as necessary all around the world, within nations or across nations in a collaborative response (such as the joint vaccine development initiatives).
Adding "blame" just exacerbates emotions (political or personal or what have you), clouds judgement, and usually results in a worse outcome by whatever measure of the disaster (usually number of deaths). That's my "unstated reason": blaming is an active choice that leads to more deaths as history has shown repeatedly, whether by famine due to supply chain issues plus political rejection of food aid, or a "not invented here syndrome" of rejecting medical supplies, or societal instability resulting in mass protest and political revolution (and more death and starvation), for example.
I don't blame Trump for Covid. Just like I don't blame China for Covid. There are a set of things China could have done differently, just like Trump could have done things differently. "Blame" is really saying "Trump should have never had to do any preparation differently because China should have done things differently," which is the definition of living in an alternate reality. Life says "tough shit" and doesn't treat him like a special snowflake. Plus it does not inspire confidence in the kind of leadership principles the President is following: just how many other things is he relying on others like China to do so that he doesn't have to make any preparations?
If I were inclined to distrust China, instead of blaming them I would be crapping my pants with how emphatic the President repeatedly assures the American people that he relied on them to manage such a disaster for him (and us). That is what he is saying when he tries to blame them.
I think China did as well as they could -- it was a bad outcome because it escaped -- but shutting down their entire society for a few months to bring their new cases down to 0 was effective for them. Sucks it escaped their borders but it's no longer their problem at that point. And it is scary that the whole free world is looking at the authoritarian regieme and going "gee they got down to 0 new cases" and then look at the Leader of Free World USA's high daily new case load and cringing. And then looking in horror at Want-To-Be European Leader Of Free World Germany reopening and watching their daily case rate rise.
Why is it "interesting" to you? Is it not an entirely natural progression, that people would start realizing the stigma arising from associating diseases to geographical locations, and start changing the status quo?
I agree with the stigma associated to locations. I believe this stigma also affects past events, even if less so. So I think the argument for renaming the 1918 pandemic holds as strongly as not naming any new one based on the geographical location.
This is a false equivalence and you even hint at that very fact yourself ("Spanish Flu" => Spanish first broke worldwide censorship vs "Wuhan Flu" => Place of origination).
There was no worldwide censorship of Covid-19. So what must be "interesting" is the lack of any real argument being made in your post, instead leaving a convenient gap where an argument should be so everyone can get into a trollsy debate about projecting their own political feelings upon this awful contentless comment.
Correct, my comment was devoid of opinion or arguments, it was just that, a comment. I also don’t see how your last paragraph contributes any better to a healthy debate though.
Regarding the false equivalence though, I didn’t imply that, since I don’t think you need to go so deep into the interpretation of words. If any point was to be made in my comment is just the plain wording “Spanish/Chinese flu” associates the location and its people to the stigma. This, repeated over time, contributes to the social imaginary. Not every one knows the historical facts so well, and many people hearing the words “Spanish flu”, missing the context, will still make the negative associations. And let’s not forget that for a considerable part of the population in USA (not in Europe though), Spanish means “speaks Spanish”.
We were told to enter this lockdown to flatten the curve to under the capacity of the healthcare system so it is not overwhelmed.
Now we are being told we can’t leave the lockdown as someone more could die, ie the objective is not to remain under the capacity of the healthcare system but to go to zero deaths at all costs.
If the healthcare system has spare capacity, which seems to be the case pretty much everywhere, this lockdown is no longer justified.