5 ms·

> we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses The problem is that they are right with this. Shutting down the

by slg 7y ago

> we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses The problem is that they are right with this. Shutting down the city will probably destroy small businesses. Those same people also can't do much to help small businesses. It is understandable that they don't want to sentence these businesses to death when they are powerless to save them. This is why the relative inaction by the federal government is such a problem here. They are the only entity that has the power to stop the wide spread of the virus and absorb the economic repercussions of the shutdown.

davidw 7y ago
What happened in Italy is that they delayed... and then ended up shutting down everything anyway - just with a lot more infected people and deaths, and the exact same economic hardships.
- birdyrooster 7y ago
  Probably worse economic hardship with the added strain on the labor force.
yiyus 7y ago
Staying open is not a panacea for small businesses. Nobody is travelling, nobody is spending. My parents have a small shop (in Spain) and they had to close before the lockdown started because they were not selling anything. And, by that time, things were much better that they are now around here.
- slg 7y ago
  You are certainly right, but it is a question of blame. If the government shuts down your business and it never recovers you will likely blame the government. If the government lets you stay open and your business still fails you will likely blame the virus. EDIT: This is being downvoted, so let me make a clarification that I am explaining the government's potential reasoning but I am not excusing or agreeing with it.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    If the government doesn't shut down businesses, we get hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in addition to the economic crisis, which is here anyway. Spain's hospitals are collapsing, sick people are now laid on the ground, they are improvising by making new beds in expo halls, etc. It's not just Italy now, we're seeing how bad it gets and it only takes another week or two for the rest of the world.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    It seems to me that the root cause in all these things is a lack of appreciation for the manner in which people think. And further, that we (both our leaders as well as people in general) assign practically zero importance to this aspect of the problem. It seems to me that we almost don't even recognize that it's there (and here one must be careful: yes, if someone points this phenomenon out, we can all see it then - but change the topic of discussion to something else, and watch that knowledge seemingly vanish). In this case, I propose that a better definition of the problem is: people disagree on which variable to optimize. But neurotypicals don't think in terms of "optimizing a variable" (precise, logical thinking), for a given set of variables. Rather, they think in terms of what is "the right thing to do" (fuzzy, heuristic-based thinking), in a given situation. System 1 vs System 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... Everyone "thinks" (see: recursion) they think in System 2 (conscious, logical), because this is what we perceive, in infinitely high resolution - it seems like what we think and believe is purely the result of disciplined, rational thought, but it is not. Not even close. And it's not just those who are less intellectually capable than us....it's all of us. Now, it is obvious of course that the degree to which each individual person suffers from this will vary significantly. If we had a means of measuring this, this would give us a metric of the variance of this phenomenon between people at the personal population level. I would call this the relative variance of X. But there's another metric that is far less obvious: the ~absolute variance - this metric compares variance not between the peoples of Earth, but between them and a purely rational, emotion-free actor. It seems to me that the second metric would be an extremely interesting thing to know, and perhaps extremely useful. But alas, we have no data source. I wonder though: might there be a way to come up with an estimate that is plausibly accurate?
lifeformed 7y ago
Maybe this is a naive question, but... why can't we temporarily just stop the whole chain of debt instead of forcing individuals and small businesses to bear the brunt of losses? Right now the issue is that if we're not working, we're not making money, and we can't pay for rent and debts. But is the only solution to find a way for the government to give the people money and let the businesses collapse? Why can't we put the burden further up the chain? Doesn't it all end up at the banks? I pay my landlord rent, my landlord pays mortgage on the property to the bank. Can we pause rent and mortgages and debts for a few months? Sure, there would be big damage done to the economy still, but why do we have to let the damage happen at the individual level? I'm sure there's some simple explanation, but I don't understand why.
- massysett 7y ago
  The bank sells the mortgage to Fannie Mae. Fannie puts it into a mortgage-backed security. Your life insurance company or pension plan buys that mortgage-backed security. So it comes right back to you. There’s just no good way to compensate for weeks or months of economic activity that just doesn’t happen.
  - viklove 7y ago
    Basically our whole economy is based off of BS IOU's and the moment there is any problem in the world the whole system comes crashing down around us. Decades of economists and investors building layers and layers of obfuscated financial abstractions so they can get rich finally has its consequences. I guess it's been a while since we've eaten the rich. It was a long time coming.
- bigmanwalter 7y ago
  You're exactly right. But our leaders are afraid of everyone realizing just how easy it would be to end our debt slavery. The United States is run by a landlord and all his power comes from workers servicing his debts.
- brutal_boi 7y ago
  Very naively here (and prob wrong in many aspects) but I expect those you are talking about to have leverage on these decisions unlike us (the lowly pleb); I don't expect a bank ceo choosing to take that giantic hit of a burden when it can just be pushed globally on the society. You could even argue that if a bank is able to do thay, they could do it anyday and not require a pandemic event. Still, a stronger argument is that a bank is a business overall. They live out of debt. That kind of hit could also kill the bank I believe.
Enginerrrd 7y ago
In my county, during the 1918 flu, they just banned public meetings and enacted a mandatory mask law that said you had to wear a cotton mask if you went out in public. It worked really well. The town that enacted the mask law the earliest and pushed it the hardest did the best through the first 2 waves of infection. It worked so well, that they decided it was an over reaction and repealed the mask laws and then they got absolutely hammered in the third wave. I don't see why we couldn't do a mandatory social distancing & mask law (even an improvised one) and let people otherwise go about their business. It would help lessen the impact to businesses, and arguably could result in significant reduction in the transmission rate.
- llampx 7y ago
  In the Czech Republic there is such a mask law. One must wear something over the nose and mouth. As to why other countries don't enact the same, I don't know.
- rush86999 7y ago
  it's hard to do social distancing when we are social people or we might bump into someone despite trying. Also only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission. Regular masks don't really work and provide false sense of safety.
  - Enginerrrd 7y ago
    This comment is deeply flawed, if not blatantly false, please read the following before you consider spreading this information again: First off, social distancing is a risk mitigation strategy for droplet transmission. The idea is to provide sufficient distance between people and a cough or sneeze that a large fraction of the droplets settle before they could end up in someone's eyes/mouth/nose/next inhaled breath. Briefly invading someone's 2-3m bubble while accidentally bumping into them or walking past them really carries very little risk of exposure. It's more relevant to having a conversation with someone, particularly when indoors. Whether or not aerosols play a major role in transmission remains to be seen, but we know that the virus can survive in aerosols for hours, and aerosols can remain suspended in the air for a very long time. (That's where N95's may become more relevant, but pathogens that have a dominant aerosol transmission are rare. Things like TB and measles behave that way. SARS-CoV-2 would probably have a high R0 if it were dominantly transmitted this way.) Now, the statement "only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission" is just false in several different ways: First, when worn by healthcare workers, there is no significant difference between surgical masks and N95 respirators in preventing respiratory infections.[1][2] To quote the meta-analysis study[1]: >"We identified 6 clinical studies (3 RCTs, 1 cohort study and 2 case–control studies) and 23 surrogate exposure studies. In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection (RCTs: odds ratio [OR] 0.89, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.64–1.24; cohort study: OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.03–6.41; case–control studies: OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.25–3.36); (b) influenza-like illness (RCTs: OR 0.51, 95% CI 0.19–1.41); or (c) reported workplace absenteeism (RCT: OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.57–1.50). In the surrogate exposure studies, N95 respirators were associated with less filter penetration, less face-seal leakage and less total inward leakage under laboratory experimental conditions, compared with surgical masks." Next, let's look specifically at surgical masks when worn by the public in the case of SARS-CoV-1 in the following study[3]: >We also used this investigation to quantify the impact of behaviors (i.e., mask wearing, handwashing) that were promoted to reduce the risk for SARS. Wearing masks outside the home in a reference period corresponding to the 2 weeks before symptom onset for cases was significantly protective against clinical SARS. Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting. And finally, the above doesn't even address the fact that mask protections work BOTH WAYS. It has also been shown[4] that masks when worn by infected individuals help prevent the dissemination of infectious droplets and aerosols, and reduces the rate of viral shedding. To quote that study, specifically on placing surgical masks on the infected: >"Overall, masks produced a 3.4 fold (95% CI 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral aerosol shedding." Finally, there's evidence that even homemade improvised masks work surprisingly well! They perform only marginally worse than surgical masks in particle filtration tests.[5][6] (Remember how surgical masks, which perform worse than N95's in those same type of tests, showed no significant difference in their ability to prevent illness?) To quote the conclusion of study[6]: >"Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence, personal respirators providing most protection. Masks worn by patients may not offer as great a degree of protection against aerosol transmission." TL;DR In short, if everyone in public wore masks, it would not only be definitively protective for the wearer, but for those around them as well. [1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/) [2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/) [3](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article) [4](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/) [5](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_the_Efficacy_of_Homemade_Masks_Would_They_Protect_in_an_Influenza_Pandemic https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...) [6](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/)
Sawamara 7y ago
The problem is that they are not right. When there is an ongoing epidemic, it is not about "oh, lets reopen quickly." Reopening quickly NOW would mean: - The collapse of the hospital systems of ANY country currently on earth (save a few that are actually working for the people, not to make profit) - The endangering of many, if not all medical professionals - A huge reduction of workforce realistically, because there will be many people sick for multiple weaks, prepare to lose 5-10 percent of your FULL workforce if the hospitals are overloaded. So if the shutdown is not implemented, and not followed through, the economy will STILL collapse, and the consequences will be 3-4 times more deadly to the whole population. The only upside to the global epidemic is that finally the neoliberal haegemony is ending, and libertarian dreamers who were not facing tough situations before can actually see where their favorite policies lead in the actual real world. And we all will see it, because the inertia in the system will keep forcing politicians all over the world to ignore basic rules of society in favor of chasing a dream (some GDP growth preservation). We can all see it clearly if we take the time to think it through. You have a bellyache. You want to eat cake. You can either not eat it, or you can eat it, vomit it out, go to the hospital, and still not feel well. Oh, and the hospitals are overloaded with COVID-patients.

by slg 7y ago

davidw 7y ago

What happened in Italy is that they delayed... and then ended up shutting down everything anyway - just with a lot more infected people and deaths, and the exact same economic hardships.

birdyrooster 7y ago
Probably worse economic hardship with the added strain on the labor force.

yiyus 7y ago

Staying open is not a panacea for small businesses. Nobody is travelling, nobody is spending. My parents have a small shop (in Spain) and they had to close before the lockdown started because they were not selling anything. And, by that time, things were much better that they are now around here.

slg 7y ago
You are certainly right, but it is a question of blame. If the government shuts down your business and it never recovers you will likely blame the government. If the government lets you stay open and your business still fails you will likely blame the virus. EDIT: This is being downvoted, so let me make a clarification that I am explaining the government's potential reasoning but I am not excusing or agreeing with it.
- bad_user 7y ago
  If the government doesn't shut down businesses, we get hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in addition to the economic crisis, which is here anyway. Spain's hospitals are collapsing, sick people are now laid on the ground, they are improvising by making new beds in expo halls, etc. It's not just Italy now, we're seeing how bad it gets and it only takes another week or two for the rest of the world.
- mistermann 7y ago
  It seems to me that the root cause in all these things is a lack of appreciation for the manner in which people think. And further, that we (both our leaders as well as people in general) assign practically zero importance to this aspect of the problem. It seems to me that we almost don't even recognize that it's there (and here one must be careful: yes, if someone points this phenomenon out, we can all see it then - but change the topic of discussion to something else, and watch that knowledge seemingly vanish). In this case, I propose that a better definition of the problem is: people disagree on which variable to optimize. But neurotypicals don't think in terms of "optimizing a variable" (precise, logical thinking), for a given set of variables. Rather, they think in terms of what is "the right thing to do" (fuzzy, heuristic-based thinking), in a given situation. System 1 vs System 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... Everyone "thinks" (see: recursion) they think in System 2 (conscious, logical), because this is what we perceive, in infinitely high resolution - it seems like what we think and believe is purely the result of disciplined, rational thought, but it is not. Not even close. And it's not just those who are less intellectually capable than us....it's all of us. Now, it is obvious of course that the degree to which each individual person suffers from this will vary significantly. If we had a means of measuring this, this would give us a metric of the variance of this phenomenon between people at the personal population level. I would call this the relative variance of X. But there's another metric that is far less obvious: the ~absolute variance - this metric compares variance not between the peoples of Earth, but between them and a purely rational, emotion-free actor. It seems to me that the second metric would be an extremely interesting thing to know, and perhaps extremely useful. But alas, we have no data source. I wonder though: might there be a way to come up with an estimate that is plausibly accurate?

lifeformed 7y ago

Maybe this is a naive question, but... why can't we temporarily just stop the whole chain of debt instead of forcing individuals and small businesses to bear the brunt of losses? Right now the issue is that if we're not working, we're not making money, and we can't pay for rent and debts. But is the only solution to find a way for the government to give the people money and let the businesses collapse? Why can't we put the burden further up the chain? Doesn't it all end up at the banks? I pay my landlord rent, my landlord pays mortgage on the property to the bank. Can we pause rent and mortgages and debts for a few months? Sure, there would be big damage done to the economy still, but why do we have to let the damage happen at the individual level? I'm sure there's some simple explanation, but I don't understand why.

massysett 7y ago
The bank sells the mortgage to Fannie Mae. Fannie puts it into a mortgage-backed security. Your life insurance company or pension plan buys that mortgage-backed security. So it comes right back to you. There’s just no good way to compensate for weeks or months of economic activity that just doesn’t happen.
- viklove 7y ago
  Basically our whole economy is based off of BS IOU's and the moment there is any problem in the world the whole system comes crashing down around us. Decades of economists and investors building layers and layers of obfuscated financial abstractions so they can get rich finally has its consequences. I guess it's been a while since we've eaten the rich. It was a long time coming.
bigmanwalter 7y ago
You're exactly right. But our leaders are afraid of everyone realizing just how easy it would be to end our debt slavery. The United States is run by a landlord and all his power comes from workers servicing his debts.
brutal_boi 7y ago
Very naively here (and prob wrong in many aspects) but I expect those you are talking about to have leverage on these decisions unlike us (the lowly pleb); I don't expect a bank ceo choosing to take that giantic hit of a burden when it can just be pushed globally on the society. You could even argue that if a bank is able to do thay, they could do it anyday and not require a pandemic event. Still, a stronger argument is that a bank is a business overall. They live out of debt. That kind of hit could also kill the bank I believe.

Enginerrrd 7y ago

In my county, during the 1918 flu, they just banned public meetings and enacted a mandatory mask law that said you had to wear a cotton mask if you went out in public. It worked really well. The town that enacted the mask law the earliest and pushed it the hardest did the best through the first 2 waves of infection. It worked so well, that they decided it was an over reaction and repealed the mask laws and then they got absolutely hammered in the third wave. I don't see why we couldn't do a mandatory social distancing & mask law (even an improvised one) and let people otherwise go about their business. It would help lessen the impact to businesses, and arguably could result in significant reduction in the transmission rate.

llampx 7y ago
In the Czech Republic there is such a mask law. One must wear something over the nose and mouth. As to why other countries don't enact the same, I don't know.
rush86999 7y ago
it's hard to do social distancing when we are social people or we might bump into someone despite trying. Also only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission. Regular masks don't really work and provide false sense of safety.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  This comment is deeply flawed, if not blatantly false, please read the following before you consider spreading this information again: First off, social distancing is a risk mitigation strategy for droplet transmission. The idea is to provide sufficient distance between people and a cough or sneeze that a large fraction of the droplets settle before they could end up in someone's eyes/mouth/nose/next inhaled breath. Briefly invading someone's 2-3m bubble while accidentally bumping into them or walking past them really carries very little risk of exposure. It's more relevant to having a conversation with someone, particularly when indoors. Whether or not aerosols play a major role in transmission remains to be seen, but we know that the virus can survive in aerosols for hours, and aerosols can remain suspended in the air for a very long time. (That's where N95's may become more relevant, but pathogens that have a dominant aerosol transmission are rare. Things like TB and measles behave that way. SARS-CoV-2 would probably have a high R0 if it were dominantly transmitted this way.) Now, the statement "only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission" is just false in several different ways: First, when worn by healthcare workers, there is no significant difference between surgical masks and N95 respirators in preventing respiratory infections.[1][2] To quote the meta-analysis study[1]: >"We identified 6 clinical studies (3 RCTs, 1 cohort study and 2 case–control studies) and 23 surrogate exposure studies. In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection (RCTs: odds ratio [OR] 0.89, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.64–1.24; cohort study: OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.03–6.41; case–control studies: OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.25–3.36); (b) influenza-like illness (RCTs: OR 0.51, 95% CI 0.19–1.41); or (c) reported workplace absenteeism (RCT: OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.57–1.50). In the surrogate exposure studies, N95 respirators were associated with less filter penetration, less face-seal leakage and less total inward leakage under laboratory experimental conditions, compared with surgical masks." Next, let's look specifically at surgical masks when worn by the public in the case of SARS-CoV-1 in the following study[3]: >We also used this investigation to quantify the impact of behaviors (i.e., mask wearing, handwashing) that were promoted to reduce the risk for SARS. Wearing masks outside the home in a reference period corresponding to the 2 weeks before symptom onset for cases was significantly protective against clinical SARS. Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting. And finally, the above doesn't even address the fact that mask protections work BOTH WAYS. It has also been shown[4] that masks when worn by infected individuals help prevent the dissemination of infectious droplets and aerosols, and reduces the rate of viral shedding. To quote that study, specifically on placing surgical masks on the infected: >"Overall, masks produced a 3.4 fold (95% CI 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral aerosol shedding." Finally, there's evidence that even homemade improvised masks work surprisingly well! They perform only marginally worse than surgical masks in particle filtration tests.[5][6] (Remember how surgical masks, which perform worse than N95's in those same type of tests, showed no significant difference in their ability to prevent illness?) To quote the conclusion of study[6]: >"Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence, personal respirators providing most protection. Masks worn by patients may not offer as great a degree of protection against aerosol transmission." TL;DR In short, if everyone in public wore masks, it would not only be definitively protective for the wearer, but for those around them as well. [1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/) [2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/) [3](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article) [4](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/) [5](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_the_Efficacy_of_Homemade_Masks_Would_They_Protect_in_an_Influenza_Pandemic https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...) [6](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/)

Sawamara 7y ago

The problem is that they are not right. When there is an ongoing epidemic, it is not about "oh, lets reopen quickly." Reopening quickly NOW would mean: - The collapse of the hospital systems of ANY country currently on earth (save a few that are actually working for the people, not to make profit) - The endangering of many, if not all medical professionals - A huge reduction of workforce realistically, because there will be many people sick for multiple weaks, prepare to lose 5-10 percent of your FULL workforce if the hospitals are overloaded. So if the shutdown is not implemented, and not followed through, the economy will STILL collapse, and the consequences will be 3-4 times more deadly to the whole population. The only upside to the global epidemic is that finally the neoliberal haegemony is ending, and libertarian dreamers who were not facing tough situations before can actually see where their favorite policies lead in the actual real world. And we all will see it, because the inertia in the system will keep forcing politicians all over the world to ignore basic rules of society in favor of chasing a dream (some GDP growth preservation). We can all see it clearly if we take the time to think it through. You have a bellyache. You want to eat cake. You can either not eat it, or you can eat it, vomit it out, go to the hospital, and still not feel well. Oh, and the hospitals are overloaded with COVID-patients.