5 ms·

This isn't meant to be directed at you, but it's hilarious to me what people are focusing on, or what supposedly triggers concern. And just what economic bubble

This isn't meant to be directed at you, but it's hilarious to me what people are focusing on, or what supposedly triggers concern. And just what economic bubbles folks are in, with such little perspective for those around them that share common infrastructure that is going to be stressed in the coming weeks and months. Look. I have multiple friends who have already had all of their shifts canceled for the rest of March. And guess what, nothing is going to be better April 1st. Those folks don't have investment funds to sell. They don't have 401Ks to skim from early, at great cost. They don't have friends and family with money and their emergency fund wouldn't even cover the costs of HALF of a Coronavirus test, let alone a weeks worth of rent. We need to be talking about suspending evictions, delaying mortgage payments, nationalizing health care, and more. And if you think this is over the top, go watch and read about Italy and get back to me in 2.5 weeks. I can't wait for the rest of America to understand just what a precarious and fragile system we've built.

astrophysician 7y ago
I mean, I don't know the OP's intention here but I think they're probably right, all of these actions will have an economic impact. It's not a statement about whether or not we should or shouldn't do something, I think we need to take lots of big proactive measures, but big proactive measures have lots of collateral damage that isn't negligible. Economic impact will be felt by everyone, from the top to the bottom of the income ladder, so that's also a legitimate pain point... > suspending evictions, delaying mortgage payments, nationalizing healthcare I mean sure, I don't think I would disagree with any of that at all (good luck with the last part though, we've been trying that for 40 years), but to say that this wouldn't have a detrimental impact on the economy is a bit confusing to me...it will and that will hurt, but the idea is that it will hurt less than something like COVID running rampant or without measures to protect workers who will be hurt most by the economic fallout.
bhb916 7y ago
Fragile systems are generally built using single points of failure. Centrally planned solutions are generally rife with them. I will trust the robustness of a system made up of 327.7M individual plans then the command solutions you are suggesting. We will fair much better than Italy even if the disease is more widespread here.
- entee 7y ago
  That's not likely. Italy has more hospital capacity per capita than we do [1], has lower cost hospital care, and has been more proactive about testing (almost 8x tests performed) [2]. More beds means less strain when things get bad. Lower costs means people don't wait to get care when needed. More testing means we know where to dedicate resources. The US is flying blind with a fragmented, expensive medical system that discourages those who need care or testing from getting that care. What might save us (marginally) is that much of the country is fairly rural, and we're far less dense so the spread rate might be lower. However strictly none of the doctors I've spoken to (one of whom is an infectious disease specialist at SF General) believes we have the capacity to deal with the crisis. To a person they say that if it starts spiraling in the US it will get very bad, very fast. By the way, those countries or areas that avoided the worst of it (Taiwan, Singapore, several provinces in China outside Wuhan, to a limited extent South Korea) have taken centralized, planned, dramatic action to do so. This is one place where central planning is probably the better choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/
  - kxyvr 7y ago
    Not to delve too deeply into this, but I believe you're factually incorrect about the hospital capacity of Italy versus the United States. What matters in the number of critical care beds because they have the equipment available such as a ventilator. A study from 2012 has Italy at 12.5 beds per 100k people, which puts them at the high end of middle for Europe. For example, Germany has 29.2 per 100k according to that study, which is more than double. The United States has 34.9 per 100k people in 2009 [2] and I believe that number has continued to go up. Also, to be clear, a better number is probably number of critical care beds per 100k of people over 65 due to how more likely they are to be affected. I don't know the current number for Italy, but the United States according to the link above is at 189.4. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229013572_The_variability_of_critical_care_bed_numbers_in_Europe https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229013572_The_varia... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4351597/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4351597/
ska 7y ago
Don't you think that is all part of what they had in mind with "cascading economic impact"? It's certainly how I read it.
lessoutoftouch 7y ago
There’s nothing hilarious about the situation, and your friends without shifts are exactly what OP was concerned about. There are hundreds of thousands of households relying on March Madness pay they won’t be getting. When I read your comment, it seems to me overly jerk-ish for no reason.
oxymoran 7y ago
For real. UBI would be such a godsend right now.

astrophysician 7y ago

I mean, I don't know the OP's intention here but I think they're probably right, all of these actions will have an economic impact. It's not a statement about whether or not we should or shouldn't do something, I think we need to take lots of big proactive measures, but big proactive measures have lots of collateral damage that isn't negligible. Economic impact will be felt by everyone, from the top to the bottom of the income ladder, so that's also a legitimate pain point... > suspending evictions, delaying mortgage payments, nationalizing healthcare I mean sure, I don't think I would disagree with any of that at all (good luck with the last part though, we've been trying that for 40 years), but to say that this wouldn't have a detrimental impact on the economy is a bit confusing to me...it will and that will hurt, but the idea is that it will hurt less than something like COVID running rampant or without measures to protect workers who will be hurt most by the economic fallout.

bhb916 7y ago

Fragile systems are generally built using single points of failure. Centrally planned solutions are generally rife with them. I will trust the robustness of a system made up of 327.7M individual plans then the command solutions you are suggesting. We will fair much better than Italy even if the disease is more widespread here.

entee 7y ago
That's not likely. Italy has more hospital capacity per capita than we do [1], has lower cost hospital care, and has been more proactive about testing (almost 8x tests performed) [2]. More beds means less strain when things get bad. Lower costs means people don't wait to get care when needed. More testing means we know where to dedicate resources. The US is flying blind with a fragmented, expensive medical system that discourages those who need care or testing from getting that care. What might save us (marginally) is that much of the country is fairly rural, and we're far less dense so the spread rate might be lower. However strictly none of the doctors I've spoken to (one of whom is an infectious disease specialist at SF General) believes we have the capacity to deal with the crisis. To a person they say that if it starts spiraling in the US it will get very bad, very fast. By the way, those countries or areas that avoided the worst of it (Taiwan, Singapore, several provinces in China outside Wuhan, to a limited extent South Korea) have taken centralized, planned, dramatic action to do so. This is one place where central planning is probably the better choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/
- kxyvr 7y ago
  Not to delve too deeply into this, but I believe you're factually incorrect about the hospital capacity of Italy versus the United States. What matters in the number of critical care beds because they have the equipment available such as a ventilator. A study from 2012 has Italy at 12.5 beds per 100k people, which puts them at the high end of middle for Europe. For example, Germany has 29.2 per 100k according to that study, which is more than double. The United States has 34.9 per 100k people in 2009 [2] and I believe that number has continued to go up. Also, to be clear, a better number is probably number of critical care beds per 100k of people over 65 due to how more likely they are to be affected. I don't know the current number for Italy, but the United States according to the link above is at 189.4. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229013572_The_variability_of_critical_care_bed_numbers_in_Europe https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229013572_The_varia... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4351597/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4351597/

ska 7y ago

Don't you think that is all part of what they had in mind with "cascading economic impact"? It's certainly how I read it.

lessoutoftouch 7y ago

There’s nothing hilarious about the situation, and your friends without shifts are exactly what OP was concerned about. There are hundreds of thousands of households relying on March Madness pay they won’t be getting. When I read your comment, it seems to me overly jerk-ish for no reason.

oxymoran 7y ago

For real. UBI would be such a godsend right now.