6 ms·

Quarantine, and the economic meltdown, will end up being worse than the disease.

PeterStuer 7y ago
Thing is we can change 'the economy', as in the way we choose to support or hamper people's living conditions, at will, not without huge efforts, but it is under our control. We can not change the spread of the virus or how our bodies respond to it at will.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  Some seem to agree https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192638/coronavirus-bill-gates-trump-reopen-business https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192638/coronavirus-bi...
adrianN 7y ago
How many people do you think that quarantine and economic trouble will kill? Because if 20% of the population gets Covid19 and 1% dies that's 15 million people. More realistically if we don't quarantine 60% will get it and 4% will die. That's 180 million people. That's more than twice as many people as died in WW2.
- nostromo 7y ago
  I’ll be very direct because of the dire situation at hand. If you die of Covid-19 you were already dying. This illness was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. 99% of fatalities in Italy are among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. The average age of fatalities in Italy is over the median life expectancy of an Italian man. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... We may have a wave of elders die this year if we don’t quarantine them immediately. (And the next year or two we’ll have fewer elders die than ever.) But there is no need to quarantine the whole world. The young and healthy need to start building up antibodies.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Yeah, a prior illnesses like high blood pressure or diabetes with which you can live many more years and which are very prevalent in the 50+ age bracket. We're still very early in the epidemic. The people dying now are naturally the weakest. Even among young people a percent or two needs hospitalization. If you cumulate up to 50 years, 10% or so need hospitalization and 2% need critical care. Good luck providing for them when millions are infected. You're also discounting all the additional deaths caused by a healthcare system that runs way over capacity.
    - nostromo 7y ago
      > You're also discounting all the additional deaths caused by a healthcare system that runs way over capacity. This hypothetical situation people keep referring to hasn’t happened in Wuhan or Italy. Young people didn’t die there in large numbers, despite a strained healthcare system.
      - adrianN 7y ago
        The situation in Wuhan or Italy is not over yet and they did implement the harsh measures that you criticize.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        > This hypothetical situation people keep referring to hasn’t happened in Wuhan or Italy. China built sixteen new hospitals in Wuhan in two weeks. Italy is overwhelmed. Listen to any Italian doctor. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-uk-deaths-cases-hopsitals-nhs-doctors-masks-ventilators-a9409806.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...
      - travisoneill1 7y ago
        It has happened in Wuhan. Mortality was 0.7% outside the quarantine zone and 5.8% inside.
  - baddox 7y ago
    But how much earlier are they dying than they otherwise would have? After all, anything that kills you is just killing you before something else would have killed you. It’s not very satisfying to say “they would have died anyway” without giving some time frame on that, since that’s literally always true.
lawn 7y ago
Yes... As long as you deem all the people that will die irrelevant.
- nostromo 7y ago
  We could all stop driving tomorrow and save millions of lives over an extended time. We could ban alcohol and save more. Banning sex could surely prevent the spread of HIV which has killed tens of millions. My point is that we are always balancing risk of injury and fatality with costs, and this should be no different. HN, I suspect, may start to feel differently when they start getting laid off. Google and Facebook ads will decline; Apple stores are closed; venture rounds will dry up. You’re not immune.
  - Kiro 7y ago
    800 people died in Italy just yesterday. Stop downplaying.
    - ddxxdd 7y ago
      I'm not the OP, but the world just lost hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth over the past month. When people start going hungry because of a lack of income, then we can really start comparing the harm of containment to the harm of the pandemic itself.
      - inferiorhuman 7y ago
        I'm not the OP, but the world just lost hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth over the past month Folks wealthy enough to own equity lost wealth, that's a pretty small minority though. That it's a eye popping amount of money just goes to show how unequally wealth is distributed. When people start going hungry because of a lack of income, then we can really start comparing the harm of containment to the harm of the pandemic itself. Dead people don't eat. People too sick to work in America won't have any income. With enough incapacitated and dead you'll still have your economic harm, only this time with a lot more dead bodies. If your customers are incapacitated / sick, dead, or too destitute (as a result of expensive medical care) they're not going to provide you any income either. Folks in the UK/EU will have some safety net, what happens if/when this explodes in India? Iran has a rather large middle class (especially considering the region). With the mass graves that they're building, how much economic productivity do you think's been sucked out of Iran? Do you think the CCP quarantined 100 million people on a whim without a care in the world for their economy? In the immediate term there's also a price war going on between Russia and Saudi Arabia. That is a much bigger deal right now. Longer term we've already got a number of high profile politicians (and immediate family) with the virus (e.g. wives of the Spanish and Canadian PMs, various American congress critters, UK MPs, etc., etc.). What's a power vacuum going to do to the economy? My guess is: nothing good.
xiler 7y ago
I'd say that's a bit of a false dilemma. Countries like South Korea and Taiwan have dealt with this problem far better than other countries despite having very few lockdowns [1,2]. Instead they have made use of government funded distribution of free masks and testing and now have a low or declining number of active cases [3,4,5]. [1] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3074469/coronavirus-south-korea-cuts-infection-rate-without https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/30... [2] https://chinapost.nownews.com/20200317-1094238 https://chinapost.nownews.com/20200317-1094238 [3] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3869320 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3869320 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_T... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S...
- __Joker 7y ago
  Yeah, people in SK and Taiwan seems to be more sensible than the people who are partying like there is no tomorrow. On the other note I am kind of bit understanding how climate change can be tough sell. Here the effect of COVID is almost visible and people are/were in denial. Think about the effects of climate change which is into future.
- unishark 7y ago
  South Korea passed new laws after MERS which allowed them to publicize personal health information. People get alerts telling them someone of a certain gender and age was tested positive and gives their prior activities. I suspect a lockdown would be easier to pull off in the US. Taiwan has been passing new laws since SARS that allowed them to quarantine people. They also track people on quarantine via their phones. If anything, I'd say the common denominator in handling this outbreak well is having experienced a similar outbreak recently and adapting to it, at least in part by swinging the pendulum further away from civil rights towards protecting the populace. Both SK and Taiwan's govts were also embarrassed and criticized after those respective previous outbreaks, prompting quicker action next time around. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145
senordevnyc 7y ago
You’ve been downplaying this on HN for weeks now. I find it disgraceful that you’re still at it. You’ve got zero expertise, you disagree with the vast majority of experts, you’ve been wrong about almost everything, and your take on this is dangerous and would cost the world tens of millions of lives and still destroy the economy. Please stop talking.
- dang 7y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly posting personal attacks and flamewar comments. That's not cool on HN at any time, and certainly not now. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thing is we can change 'the economy', as in the way we choose to support or hamper people's living conditions, at will, not without huge efforts, but it is under our control. We can not change the spread of the virus or how our bodies respond to it at will.

PeterStuer 7y ago
Some seem to agree https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192638/coronavirus-bill-gates-trump-reopen-business https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192638/coronavirus-bi...

adrianN 7y ago

How many people do you think that quarantine and economic trouble will kill? Because if 20% of the population gets Covid19 and 1% dies that's 15 million people. More realistically if we don't quarantine 60% will get it and 4% will die. That's 180 million people. That's more than twice as many people as died in WW2.

nostromo 7y ago
I’ll be very direct because of the dire situation at hand. If you die of Covid-19 you were already dying. This illness was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. 99% of fatalities in Italy are among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. The average age of fatalities in Italy is over the median life expectancy of an Italian man. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... We may have a wave of elders die this year if we don’t quarantine them immediately. (And the next year or two we’ll have fewer elders die than ever.) But there is no need to quarantine the whole world. The young and healthy need to start building up antibodies.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Yeah, a prior illnesses like high blood pressure or diabetes with which you can live many more years and which are very prevalent in the 50+ age bracket. We're still very early in the epidemic. The people dying now are naturally the weakest. Even among young people a percent or two needs hospitalization. If you cumulate up to 50 years, 10% or so need hospitalization and 2% need critical care. Good luck providing for them when millions are infected. You're also discounting all the additional deaths caused by a healthcare system that runs way over capacity.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    > You're also discounting all the additional deaths caused by a healthcare system that runs way over capacity. This hypothetical situation people keep referring to hasn’t happened in Wuhan or Italy. Young people didn’t die there in large numbers, despite a strained healthcare system.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      The situation in Wuhan or Italy is not over yet and they did implement the harsh measures that you criticize.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > This hypothetical situation people keep referring to hasn’t happened in Wuhan or Italy. China built sixteen new hospitals in Wuhan in two weeks. Italy is overwhelmed. Listen to any Italian doctor. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-uk-deaths-cases-hopsitals-nhs-doctors-masks-ventilators-a9409806.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...
    - travisoneill1 7y ago
      It has happened in Wuhan. Mortality was 0.7% outside the quarantine zone and 5.8% inside.
- baddox 7y ago
  But how much earlier are they dying than they otherwise would have? After all, anything that kills you is just killing you before something else would have killed you. It’s not very satisfying to say “they would have died anyway” without giving some time frame on that, since that’s literally always true.

lawn 7y ago

Yes... As long as you deem all the people that will die irrelevant.

nostromo 7y ago
We could all stop driving tomorrow and save millions of lives over an extended time. We could ban alcohol and save more. Banning sex could surely prevent the spread of HIV which has killed tens of millions. My point is that we are always balancing risk of injury and fatality with costs, and this should be no different. HN, I suspect, may start to feel differently when they start getting laid off. Google and Facebook ads will decline; Apple stores are closed; venture rounds will dry up. You’re not immune.
- Kiro 7y ago
  800 people died in Italy just yesterday. Stop downplaying.
  - ddxxdd 7y ago
    I'm not the OP, but the world just lost hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth over the past month. When people start going hungry because of a lack of income, then we can really start comparing the harm of containment to the harm of the pandemic itself.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      I'm not the OP, but the world just lost hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth over the past month Folks wealthy enough to own equity lost wealth, that's a pretty small minority though. That it's a eye popping amount of money just goes to show how unequally wealth is distributed. When people start going hungry because of a lack of income, then we can really start comparing the harm of containment to the harm of the pandemic itself. Dead people don't eat. People too sick to work in America won't have any income. With enough incapacitated and dead you'll still have your economic harm, only this time with a lot more dead bodies. If your customers are incapacitated / sick, dead, or too destitute (as a result of expensive medical care) they're not going to provide you any income either. Folks in the UK/EU will have some safety net, what happens if/when this explodes in India? Iran has a rather large middle class (especially considering the region). With the mass graves that they're building, how much economic productivity do you think's been sucked out of Iran? Do you think the CCP quarantined 100 million people on a whim without a care in the world for their economy? In the immediate term there's also a price war going on between Russia and Saudi Arabia. That is a much bigger deal right now. Longer term we've already got a number of high profile politicians (and immediate family) with the virus (e.g. wives of the Spanish and Canadian PMs, various American congress critters, UK MPs, etc., etc.). What's a power vacuum going to do to the economy? My guess is: nothing good.

xiler 7y ago

I'd say that's a bit of a false dilemma. Countries like South Korea and Taiwan have dealt with this problem far better than other countries despite having very few lockdowns [1,2]. Instead they have made use of government funded distribution of free masks and testing and now have a low or declining number of active cases [3,4,5]. [1] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3074469/coronavirus-south-korea-cuts-infection-rate-without https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/30... [2] https://chinapost.nownews.com/20200317-1094238 https://chinapost.nownews.com/20200317-1094238 [3] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3869320 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3869320 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_T... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S...

__Joker 7y ago
Yeah, people in SK and Taiwan seems to be more sensible than the people who are partying like there is no tomorrow. On the other note I am kind of bit understanding how climate change can be tough sell. Here the effect of COVID is almost visible and people are/were in denial. Think about the effects of climate change which is into future.
unishark 7y ago
South Korea passed new laws after MERS which allowed them to publicize personal health information. People get alerts telling them someone of a certain gender and age was tested positive and gives their prior activities. I suspect a lockdown would be easier to pull off in the US. Taiwan has been passing new laws since SARS that allowed them to quarantine people. They also track people on quarantine via their phones. If anything, I'd say the common denominator in handling this outbreak well is having experienced a similar outbreak recently and adapting to it, at least in part by swinging the pendulum further away from civil rights towards protecting the populace. Both SK and Taiwan's govts were also embarrassed and criticized after those respective previous outbreaks, prompting quicker action next time around. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145

senordevnyc 7y ago

You’ve been downplaying this on HN for weeks now. I find it disgraceful that you’re still at it. You’ve got zero expertise, you disagree with the vast majority of experts, you’ve been wrong about almost everything, and your take on this is dangerous and would cost the world tens of millions of lives and still destroy the economy. Please stop talking.

dang 7y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting personal attacks and flamewar comments. That's not cool on HN at any time, and certainly not now. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html