5 ms·

Right, but the economic impact is largely determined by the protective measures taken. It's entirely fair to conclude that less restrictive measures could have

Right, but the economic impact is largely determined by the protective measures taken. It's entirely fair to conclude that less restrictive measures could have led to substantially less economic loss for relatively little in terms of health impact. Some countries, like Sweden, are not nearly aggressive in social isolation as others. Time will tell whether this was the right approach.

nullc 7y ago
Your comment is inconsistent. "It's entirely fair to conclude" does not mesh with "Time will tell whether this was the right approach". If the same protective effects could have been achieved with a less disruptive move, then your conclusion would be justifiable. It is not, however, at all appropriate to jump to that conclusion yet-- time has not told. It will probably be years before good conclusions can be drawn from this due to the difficulty of correcting for starting conditions and intrinsic factors. Sweden is a relatively insular, already 'socially distant' community. It appears infections there started with fewer parties later. So it would take considerable analysis using data that doesn't exist yet (including the eventual outcome in Sweden) to draw any conclusions about what might have happened had their approach been applied to, say, NYC. Within the US-- a more comparable population-- there are many locations where the response was weaker and so far the results don't look especially good. Ultimately the fact remains that the majority of the economic "losses" we have now are hallucinatory. When a building is bombed it is physically destroyed and the labor and most of the materials that went into building it are irretrievably lost. The people inside are killed and cannot be productive in the future. In our current crisis, our losses are primarily losses of confidence (sure, there are some cases of agricultural goods spoiling). The people our response have saved but left without work are still alive and can go back to work when the crisis is over, particularly if we act to make sure they're protected in ways other than their health. Even if we cared exclusively about the economic consequences of this event it would be extremely foolish to favor the increase destruction of productive human lives in order to optimize for short term market confidence.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > "It's entirely fair to conclude" does not mesh with "Time will tell whether this was the right approach". It doesn't mesh because you're omitting, "...could have led to substantially less economic loss". It won't be years before good conclusions can be drawn. Some states are already reporting that cases have already gone past their peak. Most countries that had outbreaks in March are seeing rates of cases going down. We'll probably be able to have a good idea of the scope of this pandemic by the end of summer. The economic harm is not hallucinatory. What is hallucinatory about 3 million people out of work in the span of a few weeks? You write that these people can go back to work when the crisis is over, but that is not true. If your employer goes out of business, or has too few customers to sustain as many employees, people are going to have to find new jobs. You also write about the loss of productivity in terms of the people who died due to the virus. That is something to account for, but the bulk of the virus' victims are not of working age. Whether or not you're comfortable with valuing human live does not alter the fact that we put value on life all the time. Whether it's deciding insurance payouts, worker's compensation, or healthcare spending we're constantly expressing the value of lives in dollar terms. Current predictions put the economic impact per life saved by social distancing at ~$190 million. Even if we assume that social distancing is only responsible for half the economic downturn, we're still talking about nearly $100M per death averted. Saying that this is excessive, and concluding that restrictions were excessive is entirely fair. How much money would a state funded healthcare system spend on its worst case patients? A lot less than $100 million.
  - thedufer 7y ago
    > Current predictions put the economic impact per life saved by social distancing at ~$190 million. That sounds, on the face of it, implausibly high. To run some numbers - estimates of how much of the population would be infected without countermeasures run 40-70%, and death rates run 1-2% (this would be much worse if hospitals were overrun by an estimated 8 million ICU patients over a few months, but we'll use very conservative numbers). The US population, with 40% infected and 1% of those dead, leaves us with about 1.3M deaths, times your $190M per life is $25T, or about 15 months of US GDP. Is that really the claim here? The equivalent of bringing GDP to 0 for 15 straight months?
SomeoneFromCA 7y ago
Sweden has high death rate per 1M capita. Significantly higher than US. It appears that they are on the way to become the worst hit country.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Consider 20% of Sweden is over 65. (USA 16%) That factors into it. In fact, it factors into every discussion on mortality but is rarely broken down. Makes comparisons problematic.

nullc 7y ago

Your comment is inconsistent. "It's entirely fair to conclude" does not mesh with "Time will tell whether this was the right approach". If the same protective effects could have been achieved with a less disruptive move, then your conclusion would be justifiable. It is not, however, at all appropriate to jump to that conclusion yet-- time has not told. It will probably be years before good conclusions can be drawn from this due to the difficulty of correcting for starting conditions and intrinsic factors. Sweden is a relatively insular, already 'socially distant' community. It appears infections there started with fewer parties later. So it would take considerable analysis using data that doesn't exist yet (including the eventual outcome in Sweden) to draw any conclusions about what might have happened had their approach been applied to, say, NYC. Within the US-- a more comparable population-- there are many locations where the response was weaker and so far the results don't look especially good. Ultimately the fact remains that the majority of the economic "losses" we have now are hallucinatory. When a building is bombed it is physically destroyed and the labor and most of the materials that went into building it are irretrievably lost. The people inside are killed and cannot be productive in the future. In our current crisis, our losses are primarily losses of confidence (sure, there are some cases of agricultural goods spoiling). The people our response have saved but left without work are still alive and can go back to work when the crisis is over, particularly if we act to make sure they're protected in ways other than their health. Even if we cared exclusively about the economic consequences of this event it would be extremely foolish to favor the increase destruction of productive human lives in order to optimize for short term market confidence.

manfredo 7y ago
> "It's entirely fair to conclude" does not mesh with "Time will tell whether this was the right approach". It doesn't mesh because you're omitting, "...could have led to substantially less economic loss". It won't be years before good conclusions can be drawn. Some states are already reporting that cases have already gone past their peak. Most countries that had outbreaks in March are seeing rates of cases going down. We'll probably be able to have a good idea of the scope of this pandemic by the end of summer. The economic harm is not hallucinatory. What is hallucinatory about 3 million people out of work in the span of a few weeks? You write that these people can go back to work when the crisis is over, but that is not true. If your employer goes out of business, or has too few customers to sustain as many employees, people are going to have to find new jobs. You also write about the loss of productivity in terms of the people who died due to the virus. That is something to account for, but the bulk of the virus' victims are not of working age. Whether or not you're comfortable with valuing human live does not alter the fact that we put value on life all the time. Whether it's deciding insurance payouts, worker's compensation, or healthcare spending we're constantly expressing the value of lives in dollar terms. Current predictions put the economic impact per life saved by social distancing at ~$190 million. Even if we assume that social distancing is only responsible for half the economic downturn, we're still talking about nearly $100M per death averted. Saying that this is excessive, and concluding that restrictions were excessive is entirely fair. How much money would a state funded healthcare system spend on its worst case patients? A lot less than $100 million.
- thedufer 7y ago
  > Current predictions put the economic impact per life saved by social distancing at ~$190 million. That sounds, on the face of it, implausibly high. To run some numbers - estimates of how much of the population would be infected without countermeasures run 40-70%, and death rates run 1-2% (this would be much worse if hospitals were overrun by an estimated 8 million ICU patients over a few months, but we'll use very conservative numbers). The US population, with 40% infected and 1% of those dead, leaves us with about 1.3M deaths, times your $190M per life is $25T, or about 15 months of US GDP. Is that really the claim here? The equivalent of bringing GDP to 0 for 15 straight months?

SomeoneFromCA 7y ago

Sweden has high death rate per 1M capita. Significantly higher than US. It appears that they are on the way to become the worst hit country.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Consider 20% of Sweden is over 65. (USA 16%) That factors into it. In fact, it factors into every discussion on mortality but is rarely broken down. Makes comparisons problematic.