6 ms·

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 th

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.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    But see, this is the kind of exaggerated information Ioannidis is concerned about. South Korea has not brought new infections and deaths down to zero.
  - irq11 7y ago
    ”Most young people survive but many of those surviving suffer permanent lung damage.” This is not true. You are repeating misinformation.
- antpls 7y ago
  For the record, in March 2018, 58 000 people died in Italy. We will see how many died this March 2020 : http://demo.istat.it/index_e.html http://demo.istat.it/index_e.html (see green section on the right, By Month) Also the following study from August 2019 (before covid19) shows that Italy has more deaths due to influenza every year than any other EU country : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197121...
  - robocat 7y ago
    > shows that Italy has more deaths due to influenza every year than any other EU country I’ve read that if an elderly person dies in Italy while they have the flu or coronavirus, then that is recorded as the cause of death. Some other countries put down other reasons like diabetes complications, or heart failure. Possibly due to pressure from insurance, or avoiding liability for iatrogenic diseases, or avoiding KPIs targeting lower death rates for infections in hospitals. You are jumping to conclusions based on a few numbers, without understanding the background of where those numbers come from or how to validly compare them between countries.
    - antpls 7y ago
      What proves me that you understand them better than I do?
      - robocat 7y ago
        Nothing. But you are the one making conclusions based on some data series. If Italy is an outlier, are there papers about it?
tflinton 7y ago
The economy is someways equivalent to poverty which is highly correlated with mortality rates. Some caution with your reasoning should be warranted.
core-questions 7y ago
> An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. I think this is almost the literal definition of the economy. I've been shoveling my entire life and eventually I will die.
ltbarcly3 7y ago
>> An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. I mean I want to agree in principle, but this is just an incorrect statement. It's a matter of what is a good-enough tradeoff of risk and reward. If you make people drive to work, some will die. If you want to mine lithium, some people will die in industrial accidents that wouldn't have died if you never built a lithium mine. If you are only willing to accept 0.000% risk, then we have to respond with a full economic shutdown whenever there is a flu outbreak, or even a common cold outbreak, because people will die if we don't stop the spread. All economic activity leads to deaths, most of the time the deaths are less obviously linked, and at a much lower rate, so we don't connect the fact that people commute to work in trains, and so the economic activity they are commuting into work to engage in directly causes their death in the form of the flu, train crashes, pedestrian accidents, and so on. There is also a question of net lives lost, or harm minimization. Economic activity also leads to resources which can be used to tend for the sick and elderly, or better nutrition, or education, and to sum up everything that isn't eating acorns you can find on the ground (except even that is a form of economic activity). I would assume that just letting covid run free would be dramatically worse than shutting down the economy for a few weeks, but then what the endgame is I'm not sure, it really does depend on the death rate in an ICU vs with limited medical support, and the amount of economic harm this causes. However, I think we can learn a lot from this outbreak. I was very, very embarrassed to wear my filter mask when I went to the store, so I only wore work gloves up until yesterday. Now I'm sitting in bed with a fever wondering whether I'm about to start coughing up blood (probably not, it's still more likely to be the flu). Next flu season (or, sadly, next covid season) I think I will wear my mask, though. If people start wearing fashionable masks and gloves in the winter, we can virtually eliminate lots of communicable diseases.
- BlargMcLarg 7y ago
  > It's a matter of what is a good-enough tradeoff of risk and reward. This also sounds very short-sighted. Yes, people die in a lithium mine, but in most countries, I'm the one taking the risk to become a miner or not. Understandably, the situation isn't that easy: in some countries, you may indirectly or directly be forced to risk your life for the economy. Yet often, I don't see the physical risk-takers being particularly rewarded for their risk-taking either, with few exceptions. Miners are definitely not one of them. Its a difference between who is taking the risk and who's life is on the line: I don't mind risking my own life. I do mind the government toying with it while a prime minister is sipping tea in his comfy seat. Reality is, the current economy is maintained through exploitation in one way or another, and its fragile balance is now attacked by a force that doesn't care about our economy. Every time people bring up the economy as an argument, its abundantly clear the people in trouble either can't make a buffer, or don't have the discipline to make a buffer. It wasn't that long ago we were forced to go through harsh winters using the harvest of a possibly failed summer and autumn. Yet today, the economy is in jeopardy if a quarter of all activity is told to shut down temporarily. Why can't make people a buffer? Why aren't people making a buffer? Why aren't governments prepared for this? Something unexpected can always happen, we're not gods nor do we have crystal balls. In a competent software industry, you'd be summoned for making a fragile software system where traffic stops coming through. Yet now we tolerate the same in regards to our economy. It really is time we take a step back and go on the defense rather than looking no further than 3 months.

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.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  But see, this is the kind of exaggerated information Ioannidis is concerned about. South Korea has not brought new infections and deaths down to zero.
- irq11 7y ago
  ”Most young people survive but many of those surviving suffer permanent lung damage.” This is not true. You are repeating misinformation.
antpls 7y ago
For the record, in March 2018, 58 000 people died in Italy. We will see how many died this March 2020 : http://demo.istat.it/index_e.html http://demo.istat.it/index_e.html (see green section on the right, By Month) Also the following study from August 2019 (before covid19) shows that Italy has more deaths due to influenza every year than any other EU country : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197121...
- robocat 7y ago
  > shows that Italy has more deaths due to influenza every year than any other EU country I’ve read that if an elderly person dies in Italy while they have the flu or coronavirus, then that is recorded as the cause of death. Some other countries put down other reasons like diabetes complications, or heart failure. Possibly due to pressure from insurance, or avoiding liability for iatrogenic diseases, or avoiding KPIs targeting lower death rates for infections in hospitals. You are jumping to conclusions based on a few numbers, without understanding the background of where those numbers come from or how to validly compare them between countries.
  - antpls 7y ago
    What proves me that you understand them better than I do?
    - robocat 7y ago
      Nothing. But you are the one making conclusions based on some data series. If Italy is an outlier, are there papers about it?

tflinton 7y ago

The economy is someways equivalent to poverty which is highly correlated with mortality rates. Some caution with your reasoning should be warranted.

core-questions 7y ago

> An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. I think this is almost the literal definition of the economy. I've been shoveling my entire life and eventually I will die.

ltbarcly3 7y ago

>> An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. I mean I want to agree in principle, but this is just an incorrect statement. It's a matter of what is a good-enough tradeoff of risk and reward. If you make people drive to work, some will die. If you want to mine lithium, some people will die in industrial accidents that wouldn't have died if you never built a lithium mine. If you are only willing to accept 0.000% risk, then we have to respond with a full economic shutdown whenever there is a flu outbreak, or even a common cold outbreak, because people will die if we don't stop the spread. All economic activity leads to deaths, most of the time the deaths are less obviously linked, and at a much lower rate, so we don't connect the fact that people commute to work in trains, and so the economic activity they are commuting into work to engage in directly causes their death in the form of the flu, train crashes, pedestrian accidents, and so on. There is also a question of net lives lost, or harm minimization. Economic activity also leads to resources which can be used to tend for the sick and elderly, or better nutrition, or education, and to sum up everything that isn't eating acorns you can find on the ground (except even that is a form of economic activity). I would assume that just letting covid run free would be dramatically worse than shutting down the economy for a few weeks, but then what the endgame is I'm not sure, it really does depend on the death rate in an ICU vs with limited medical support, and the amount of economic harm this causes. However, I think we can learn a lot from this outbreak. I was very, very embarrassed to wear my filter mask when I went to the store, so I only wore work gloves up until yesterday. Now I'm sitting in bed with a fever wondering whether I'm about to start coughing up blood (probably not, it's still more likely to be the flu). Next flu season (or, sadly, next covid season) I think I will wear my mask, though. If people start wearing fashionable masks and gloves in the winter, we can virtually eliminate lots of communicable diseases.

BlargMcLarg 7y ago
> It's a matter of what is a good-enough tradeoff of risk and reward. This also sounds very short-sighted. Yes, people die in a lithium mine, but in most countries, I'm the one taking the risk to become a miner or not. Understandably, the situation isn't that easy: in some countries, you may indirectly or directly be forced to risk your life for the economy. Yet often, I don't see the physical risk-takers being particularly rewarded for their risk-taking either, with few exceptions. Miners are definitely not one of them. Its a difference between who is taking the risk and who's life is on the line: I don't mind risking my own life. I do mind the government toying with it while a prime minister is sipping tea in his comfy seat. Reality is, the current economy is maintained through exploitation in one way or another, and its fragile balance is now attacked by a force that doesn't care about our economy. Every time people bring up the economy as an argument, its abundantly clear the people in trouble either can't make a buffer, or don't have the discipline to make a buffer. It wasn't that long ago we were forced to go through harsh winters using the harvest of a possibly failed summer and autumn. Yet today, the economy is in jeopardy if a quarter of all activity is told to shut down temporarily. Why can't make people a buffer? Why aren't people making a buffer? Why aren't governments prepared for this? Something unexpected can always happen, we're not gods nor do we have crystal balls. In a competent software industry, you'd be summoned for making a fragile software system where traffic stops coming through. Yet now we tolerate the same in regards to our economy. It really is time we take a step back and go on the defense rather than looking no further than 3 months.