6 ms·

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how many lives we put to risk vs how much economic turmoil we can tolerate. With so little data on the latter (economic crashes absolutely can lead to deaths as well), it feels like we aren’t equipped to make educated policy decisions on how far we should go to limit the spread. I hope after all this we can create a more cohesive playbook for navigating these tradeoffs in the future. Many of these public health orders feel like knee jerk reactions lacking evidence. Better to err on the side of caution I suppose.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
If 10% of the population needs ICU and dies because they cant get it, then there is no business as usual.
- jamilbk 7y ago
  You make a valid point. At the same time, economic problems affect everyone while it seems that covid-19 harm scales with age. No easy solutions to be sure, but I have hope more data becomes available soon so we can implement more nuanced policies to achieve similar containment while preventing massive unemployment. Testing random samples of the general population would be a good first step.
- tflinton 7y ago
  That's an "if" though.
- drno123 7y ago
  In Italy, median age of people who have died of Corona is 83 for women and 79 for men [1]. Normal life expectancy is lower than that in the United States [2]. Lockdown measures will have severe impact on GDP, and GDP is correlated with life expectancy [3]. It can easily happen that by killing economy in order to save lives, we may actually be doing the opposite in the long term. [1] https://www.iss.it/web/guest//comunicati-stampa/-/asset_publisher/fjTKmjJgSgdK/content/id/5286166 https://www.iss.it/web/guest//comunicati-stampa/-/asset_publ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-pe...
  - hef19898 7y ago
    The US might not be the best country to benchmark other developed countries against, so. Personnaly, I have issues with people using economic data, read money, to define the value of other peoples lives.
  - pibi 7y ago
    Normal life expectancy is lower than that in the United States I read on your link that average life expectancy in Italy is 83.4, about 4 years more than US (at 78.9). So I don't get your point unless you are speaking about the age structure: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_structure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_str...
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    It's not just 83 year olds on the ventilator. What's the economy going to be like with millions 'working from hospital?'
joe_the_user 7y ago
An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. And in any case, if we sacrifice all the lives this virus could take to the economy, it won't help the economy at all - the massive dislocation involved in the deaths will certainly be far worse than the shutdown, if you really want to think that way. All that said, part of the collapse of things like the stock market comes through the financial system having been built up into finely tuned but extremely fragile edifice - end QE created an environment of limitless leverage and short-term thinking. This environment created the situation of not having future resources, of jury rigging everything to work in a super-efficient but fragile fashion (the 737Max being a perfect product of this paradigm). Covid shock is logical result - in another, a more far seeing society might have made preparations beforehand, had an epidemic team in place, etc. So a lot of things are collapsing because they weren't built to last to begin with, not because of the virus.
- jamilbk 7y ago
  I definitely agree with you, but I want to see more data. Without broad testing it’s difficult to ascertain the true death rate of the virus (many infected are asymptomatic). But my hope is we can come up with similarly effective measures (e.g. require n95 masks in public, keeping the elderly at home, offer voluntary isolated infection to low-risk individuals to increase herd immunity, etc) that can achieve both.
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    South Korea did extensive testing when they successfully eradicated the virus. As user rramach points out, Ioannidis cherry picks the data in many ways, including ignoring the extensive data of South Korea. Not did was Koreans' testing program extensively documented (by Korean scientific institutions, The Western press, and etc), we know they found most or the larger portion of cases because they were able to bring new infections and deaths down to zero. (e.g. require n95 masks in public, keeping the elderly at home, offer voluntary isolated infection to low-risk individuals to increase herd immunity, etc) These "get the economy going" measures are totally nuts. You know 10-20% of even fairly healthy people get pneumonia and require hospitalization for virus. Most young people survive but many of those surviving suffer permanent lung damage. Further, people between 50 and 65 make a huge contribution to the economy and taking them out for an extended period would be highly costly like all this is highly costly (but quarantine should eliminate the virus so could be even quick). Just much, quarantining just some people would require moving a vast number of people from place. IE, what happen with young people living with old people (as happens a lot). The movement of people from place to place would naturally ... spread the virus extensively. More over, where do you get the extra places for either the young living or the old leaving? The UK talked about plans, true but abandoned quickly when infection began because they are obviously impractical fantasies. Quarantining everyone is extremely simple and just requires doing what South Korea did but on a large scale.
robocat 7y ago
> Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. Actually I am judging countries by their ability to face facts, act proactively Over the last few months, act responsibly by making sensible decisions that are effective in controlling their outbreaks, while keeping their economy functioning. A++ for Taiwan (they started acting on Dec 31st, and they had preplanned what to do if faced with a virus outbreak). Very few infections, under control, economy working at 100%. A+ for South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Fast actions, effective tracing, economies running. D- for US: little pro-activity, rampant community transmission, head of state in the sand, focusing on not spooking economy while ignoring downside risks to same, extremely poor planning with poor medical stocks. Health system of many states likely to fail. Now headless chickening, with every state left to act for itself (except for some negative interference from GOP). Meanwhile democrats dropped ball on opportunity of a lifetime to act well and help before the shit hit the fan. B for China: first to have to act, zero pre warning. China acted and seem to have done better than many other countries that had plenty more warning (yes, China did downplay, but that seems to have been internal and not aimed at other countries. Either way, other countries had enough information from the 31st December or at latest mid-January but didn’t act). C- for New Zealand: some late actions, tried to protect tourism industry and now the whole economy is paying price with shutdown. Extremely poor communication with population (trying not to worry everyone?). Mostly wasted months with inactivity, lack of planning (from my POV watching what info was given to a nurse), lack of emergency medical equipment. However expect that we’ll now respond well given shock treatment of shutdown of whole country,
- kgwgk 7y ago
  If South Korea deserves two A+ maybe you could award them an A++ :-)
- bamboozled 7y ago
  Japan? What do you like about their approach?
- lioeters 7y ago
  Would you (or anyone) care to add some countries in Europe for comparison?

ClumsyPilot 7y ago

If 10% of the population needs ICU and dies because they cant get it, then there is no business as usual.

jamilbk 7y ago
You make a valid point. At the same time, economic problems affect everyone while it seems that covid-19 harm scales with age. No easy solutions to be sure, but I have hope more data becomes available soon so we can implement more nuanced policies to achieve similar containment while preventing massive unemployment. Testing random samples of the general population would be a good first step.
tflinton 7y ago
That's an "if" though.
drno123 7y ago
In Italy, median age of people who have died of Corona is 83 for women and 79 for men [1]. Normal life expectancy is lower than that in the United States [2]. Lockdown measures will have severe impact on GDP, and GDP is correlated with life expectancy [3]. It can easily happen that by killing economy in order to save lives, we may actually be doing the opposite in the long term. [1] https://www.iss.it/web/guest//comunicati-stampa/-/asset_publisher/fjTKmjJgSgdK/content/id/5286166 https://www.iss.it/web/guest//comunicati-stampa/-/asset_publ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-pe...
- hef19898 7y ago
  The US might not be the best country to benchmark other developed countries against, so. Personnaly, I have issues with people using economic data, read money, to define the value of other peoples lives.
- pibi 7y ago
  Normal life expectancy is lower than that in the United States I read on your link that average life expectancy in Italy is 83.4, about 4 years more than US (at 78.9). So I don't get your point unless you are speaking about the age structure: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_structure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_str...
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  It's not just 83 year olds on the ventilator. What's the economy going to be like with millions 'working from hospital?'

joe_the_user 7y ago

An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. And in any case, if we sacrifice all the lives this virus could take to the economy, it won't help the economy at all - the massive dislocation involved in the deaths will certainly be far worse than the shutdown, if you really want to think that way. All that said, part of the collapse of things like the stock market comes through the financial system having been built up into finely tuned but extremely fragile edifice - end QE created an environment of limitless leverage and short-term thinking. This environment created the situation of not having future resources, of jury rigging everything to work in a super-efficient but fragile fashion (the 737Max being a perfect product of this paradigm). Covid shock is logical result - in another, a more far seeing society might have made preparations beforehand, had an epidemic team in place, etc. So a lot of things are collapsing because they weren't built to last to begin with, not because of the virus.

jamilbk 7y ago
I definitely agree with you, but I want to see more data. Without broad testing it’s difficult to ascertain the true death rate of the virus (many infected are asymptomatic). But my hope is we can come up with similarly effective measures (e.g. require n95 masks in public, keeping the elderly at home, offer voluntary isolated infection to low-risk individuals to increase herd immunity, etc) that can achieve both.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  South Korea did extensive testing when they successfully eradicated the virus. As user rramach points out, Ioannidis cherry picks the data in many ways, including ignoring the extensive data of South Korea. Not did was Koreans' testing program extensively documented (by Korean scientific institutions, The Western press, and etc), we know they found most or the larger portion of cases because they were able to bring new infections and deaths down to zero. (e.g. require n95 masks in public, keeping the elderly at home, offer voluntary isolated infection to low-risk individuals to increase herd immunity, etc) These "get the economy going" measures are totally nuts. You know 10-20% of even fairly healthy people get pneumonia and require hospitalization for virus. Most young people survive but many of those surviving suffer permanent lung damage. Further, people between 50 and 65 make a huge contribution to the economy and taking them out for an extended period would be highly costly like all this is highly costly (but quarantine should eliminate the virus so could be even quick). Just much, quarantining just some people would require moving a vast number of people from place. IE, what happen with young people living with old people (as happens a lot). The movement of people from place to place would naturally ... spread the virus extensively. More over, where do you get the extra places for either the young living or the old leaving? The UK talked about plans, true but abandoned quickly when infection began because they are obviously impractical fantasies. Quarantining everyone is extremely simple and just requires doing what South Korea did but on a large scale.

robocat 7y ago

> Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. Actually I am judging countries by their ability to face facts, act proactively Over the last few months, act responsibly by making sensible decisions that are effective in controlling their outbreaks, while keeping their economy functioning. A++ for Taiwan (they started acting on Dec 31st, and they had preplanned what to do if faced with a virus outbreak). Very few infections, under control, economy working at 100%. A+ for South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Fast actions, effective tracing, economies running. D- for US: little pro-activity, rampant community transmission, head of state in the sand, focusing on not spooking economy while ignoring downside risks to same, extremely poor planning with poor medical stocks. Health system of many states likely to fail. Now headless chickening, with every state left to act for itself (except for some negative interference from GOP). Meanwhile democrats dropped ball on opportunity of a lifetime to act well and help before the shit hit the fan. B for China: first to have to act, zero pre warning. China acted and seem to have done better than many other countries that had plenty more warning (yes, China did downplay, but that seems to have been internal and not aimed at other countries. Either way, other countries had enough information from the 31st December or at latest mid-January but didn’t act). C- for New Zealand: some late actions, tried to protect tourism industry and now the whole economy is paying price with shutdown. Extremely poor communication with population (trying not to worry everyone?). Mostly wasted months with inactivity, lack of planning (from my POV watching what info was given to a nurse), lack of emergency medical equipment. However expect that we’ll now respond well given shock treatment of shutdown of whole country,

kgwgk 7y ago
If South Korea deserves two A+ maybe you could award them an A++ :-)
bamboozled 7y ago
Japan? What do you like about their approach?
lioeters 7y ago
Would you (or anyone) care to add some countries in Europe for comparison?