12 ms·

California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

135 points by dsr12 7y ago

ngcc_hk 7y ago
Is it real cost saving? Many costs are infra and standby people. Not sure it is real saving.
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I've been meaning to ask in /r/theydidthemath if the quarantine is actually reducing violent crime, car accidents, pollution, other infectious diseases, STDs, etc. so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here.
- mediumdeviation 7y ago
  That seems unlikely given that in the week of April 6 to 12, Covid 19 has risen to the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States[1]. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/16/coronavirus-leading-cause-death/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/16/coronaviru...
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    I’m also expecting some long term after-effects that will increase diabetes and heart disease as most people are locked up.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      non-essential procedures and doctor's visits have also been cancelled, and some medicines are now rationed also. Both will have a negative impact on the health of some people. I personally had a month long series of treatments scheduled that got cancelled, and now I have no idea when I'll be able to get that treatment. Better than dying from the virus, though.
      - Baeocystin 7y ago
        I've had a scan that was scheduled five months ago cancelled, and one of my vitally necessary meds was three weeks late getting filled. Good thing I'm worried about running out so had some to spare, but it's no joke that people are going to die due to simply not getting what they need.
        Exmoor 7y ago
        My wife had a similar experience. Her issue is probably not major, but it could also be a serious cancer and who knows when they'll start taking clients again, much less catch up to her. Making a rough guess of two months of shutdown, we've lost 1/6 of our annual non-emergency medical capacity for 2020. It'd be impossible to put a number on the cost in lives that means, but I think we can probably say with certainty that there are a non-insignificant number of people who will die or experience permanent medical issues because diagnosis and/or treatment was delayed. Perhaps I've missed it, but I'm honestly shocked this isn't priority number one for a partial reopening in regions with low infection rates.
      - hf8665 7y ago
        A lot of these "elective" "nonessential" services are really preventative. This was plainly brought into view for me with a dental procedure I had to cancel/reschedule. It's deemed non-essential, but is necessary to prevent me from losing an entire tooth or two. If it's not done reasonably soon it's only a matter of time before it turns into an emergency dental procedure.
    - meritt 7y ago
      Really? Maybe my local experience is an outlier but I've seen significantly more people cooking meals at home and exercising. The number of daily runners in my neighborhood has easily increased 10x. Are gluttony and sedentary lifestyles not the major contributors for type-2 diabetes and heart disease?
      - lazyasciiart 7y ago
        Has the number of runners increased more than the number of people going to gyms/sports leagues/swimming pools has dropped?
        bobthepanda 7y ago
        Also, are the people running new runners, or people who would otherwise be going to gyms?
      - dehrmann 7y ago
        I've had a similar experience, though I have no idea if the runners I'm seeing makes up for less activity throughout the day, gyms being closed, etc. It's possible that the 4% of people who go to the gym regularly are now running outside, and everyone else is even less active. Also, heart disease and type-2 diabetes are years in the making, and a month of moderate exercise and better eating won't make up for it overnight. Not to mention added stress.
        arcticbull 7y ago
        Takes 21 days to form a new habit, so there's every chance they'll continue!
        watwut 7y ago
        No, there is not. When the circumstances change, habits change too. When people go back to work, they will have less time at their hands. They will have to adjust to commuting again, taking kids to/from school again, being somewhere at time again. All of that will cut into their exercise time. All the people who are exercising out of boredom now will stop exercising out of being tired of doing lot of things again.
  - eanzenberg 7y ago
    This is bad analysis which uses historic numbers and plops COVID against them. Everyone right now is dying of COVID and not much else. Apparently it’s healing cancer and heart attacks. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
    - natrik 7y ago
      I get the point you're trying to make with the data, but could you expand more on "healing cancer and heart attacks."? Not sure I follow
      - Izkata 7y ago
        If they're making the same claim I've seen elsewhere: People who would have died anyway from cancer/heart attacks but also have COVID19 are getting counted as COVID19 deaths instead of other causes, causing a dip in those numbers.
    - dennisgorelik 7y ago
      I understand why total number of deaths decreased a little bit due to quarantine. But sudden drop in total number of deaths from 52,992 down to 35,863 in the last week - looks suspicious.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Aside from even the fatalities, the math still is that 50% of LA is presently unemployed. While some articles are somehow gleeful in the face of this calamitous reality, there is no where near a net balance. The Fed has spent at least $2 trillion dollars on this already. Probably closer to $6 trillion by the time we are done. It is an unimaginably large cost to shut things down relative to any possible benefit.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    > It is an unimaginably large cost to shut things down relative to any possible benefit. That's a failure of imagination.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    Looking at the ~40k US deaths and the $6T spent, we’ve spent $150 million in stimulus per death. Looking at the non-spending costs of lost productivity, opportunity costs, etc., it’s a staggering number.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Surely the important number is per lives saved rather than per lives lost?
      - nostromo 7y ago
        Costs always matter. It’s rarely said in polite company but it’s true. I suppose it’s impossible to know if we’re striking the right balance at the moment, but it’ll be interesting to see the analysis after it’s over.
        WD-42 7y ago
        I think you’re missing the point. It’s hard to tell when preventative actions work. It’s easy to tell when they fail. Right now the evidence is things would be a lot worse without them.
        7y ago
- gizmo686 7y ago
  Looking at the graph here [0], it would be very surprising if COVID was net saving lives. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-us-weekly-coronavirus-deaths-compared-heart-disease-cancer-flu-2020-4#covid-19-is-now-killing-more-americans-weekly-than-heart-disease-or-cancer-did-on-average-per-week-in-2018-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-us-weekly-coronavirus-...
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    Not looking good. :( I guess I thought a lot more people than that died from car crashes.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      I wonder if we'll see a big drop in flu deaths as overwhelmingly only the old and sick die of COVID, and those folks are at large risk from the flu also.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > I wonder if we'll see a big drop in flu deaths The flu season overlapped with a period that included initial reports and fear of a novel respiratory disease and then historic, mandatory countermeasures (for the vast majority of the population) against communicable respiratory disease; it would be bizarre if there wasn't a big drop in flu deaths.
        arcticbull 7y ago
        I meant in following years, as those who likely would have succumbed to the flu in following years succumb to COVID now. For the current period, there's absolutely no way flu, car and so on deaths don't plunge.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        Even in vulnerable groups, the case fatality rate doesn't seem high enough that it would make a big impact in future statistics for that reason (probably bigger impact through lasting behavioral changes.)
- robbiep 7y ago
  some partial data: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/04/16/could-americas-slump-in-crime-be-the-beginning-of-something https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/04/16/could-ame...
- product50 7y ago
  Look at the unemployment rate. What else validation do you need? You can't just ask people to stay locked in their homes and assume everything would be ok.
- nsomaru 7y ago
  Apparently the death rate (general) in South Africa has dropped as a result of lockdown
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here. Everything you said above are really down in North Korea, and have been so for decades. I doubt they're doing OK
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > reducing violent crime There are fears it will increase domestic abuse.
  - vvpan 7y ago
    It seems to be happening. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domesti...
- dehrmann 7y ago
  I'm expecting knock-on mental health effects to be pretty bad.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    Should at least be cushioned a bit by the absence of traffic noise and pollution related stress. Would be nice to have the benefits of both: very little motorized traffic AND no viral threat. We have no control over the latter, but we most certainly have some control over the former.
    - briandear 7y ago
      Domestic violence and child abuse is up. And suicides are increasing. And millions have lost their jobs. Pretty sure unemployed people or those that had their businesses destroyed aren’t basking in the lower noise and pollution reductions.
- hannob 7y ago
  The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements. Because it tells a very interesting story how many lives we're willing to accept to be lost in normal circumstances. Cars, air pollution, avoidable infections, ... - there's a lot of harm society could avoid and doesn't.
  - afthonos 7y ago
    Those are unfortunately baked into our accounting, much like “killed by bandits” was accounted for in medieval trade until states started being able and willing to provide meaningful security.
    - jfoster 7y ago
      But the assumptions in many of them were made a long time ago and don't necessarily apply anymore. In the case of air pollution for example, there probably exists a price that could be paid to significantly reduce it and improve the overall health of everyone.
      - afthonos 7y ago
        I don’t disagree. But we seem to be bad at re-evaluating old decisions (definitely in my case), and it doesn’t help when politics is basically a team sport in the US.
      - thawaway1837 7y ago
        The issue is that the price is paid by a set of people who are different from the people who benefit from this. And the people who benefit are the ones in power, whereas the ones who suffer are the ones without power. So the trade offs are largely not accepted because they are acceptable to society at large, but because the people who have the power to make the decisions are insulated from it. In the US wealth is a decent proxy for power, so this claim can actually easily be quantified. Simply draw maps correlating the wealth of a neighborhood with the adverse effect being discussed. Whether it’s air pollution levels, or it’s deaths due to car accidents, or mercury in water, or lead in walls, it will invariably be the case the problem correlated strongly with the wealth of the area.
- snovv_crash 7y ago
  In South Africa at least, violent crime has dropped by 75%.
- qplex 7y ago
  >Just trying to find the silver lining here. Oh, we could pretty much save the planet and live happily ever after if we could keep it like this. Only to find some rock barreling down on us some day, but ah... I digress.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    Ignore the skyrocketing rates of suicide, domestic violence, and child abuse.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Source?
      - mantas 7y ago
        Domestic violence was up 20% in my country in first weeks of quarantine. Police and social services were super worried it will get worse as quarantine takes longer. I can google you some local media articles if you want to double-check via google translate. It makes sense though. People spend more time together in close quarters. People lost jobs. Lots of stress all around. Perfect storm for beating that bastard you meet in the kitchen.
        3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
        Let’s be honest. Most of the people on this site work from home (no financial worry) and are unmarried or probably no kids. They wouldn’t have any idea about the real cost of this quarantine to the 22 million unemployed Americans (and growing) who’s families were hurting even before this forced, indefinite unemployment.
- evandijk70 7y ago
  At least in the Netherlands, definitely not: The first Figure in this article (Dutch) shows the number of deaths from any cause. https://nos.nl/artikel/2330786-oversterfte-door-corona-blijft-stabiel-blijkt-uit-cbs-cijfers.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2330786-oversterfte-door-corona-blijf... During the Corona outbreak, almost double the amount of people are dying compared to the same time last year.
  - rags2riches 7y ago
    There must be some sort of "flushing the pipeline" effect involved, provided that the virus kills the vulnerable to some extent. So I wonder how that will affect the numbers in the near future.
    - lukevdp 7y ago
      My guess is it will slip to slightly below the norm after the pandemic has passed. There are still a lot of people dying that had many years of life ahead of them.
    - genofon 7y ago
      of course everyone has to die at a certain point, when does make a difference and COVID is making a HUGE difference as you can see by the spike in mortality rate
- hyko 7y ago
  Public Health England’s all-cause mortality surveillance suggests not, at least in that country: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/879714/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_16_2020_report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  Violent crime should increase. Most violent crime is domestic abuse. Now all of America's abusive parents are out of work, stuck at home with their kids who are also stuck at home. So I think the pandemic will lead to more violent crimes in the household, at least. Dunno how other parts or life will be affected.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  I think it depends on the country, here in New Zealand we locked down early, and hard - we've only had 12 deaths - but the reduction in the road toll in the same time is roughly 20-30 so yes we're technically ahead on the deal. Generally though, covid deaths go up exponentially while road tolls likely don't go down the same way, our trade off is probably only likely if you get in early. In other news we're likely taking the first step of getting out of out ~1 month lock down later this coming week - our idea of getting out has been described as "lockdown with KFC", roughly equivalent to California's
- divbzero 7y ago
  For NYC the answer is “no”. 4,500 ≈ average deaths per month in 2017 [1] 6,125 = confirmed COVID-19 deaths from 2020-04-01 through 2020-04-15 [2] [1]: https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2017/table32c.htm https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2017/t... [2]: https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/case-hosp-death.csv https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/ca... Note that 6,125 doesn’t include COVID-19 deaths or non COVID-19 deaths, and is for the first half of April only.
- yread 7y ago
  Some deaths will decrease, others will go up. Treatments for other diseases are now being put off https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984?query=RP https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984?query=RP Cancers are not getting diagnosed early almost 50% in recent weeks than usual. That means worse stages at diagnosis and worse prognosis https://www.iknl.nl/nieuws/2020/door-de-covid-19-crisis-zijn-er-nu-minder-kankerdi https://www.iknl.nl/nieuws/2020/door-de-covid-19-crisis-zijn...
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  CDC all deaths data is available. FWIIW; the overall death rate is inarguably going down last time I checked.
- javierluraschi 7y ago
  If we look at the per-capita deaths, many affected countries seem to be moving towards surpassing the leading cause of death in the US, heart desease. At that magnitude, seems unlikely we are saving net lives. See https://twitter.com/javierluraschi/status/1251605333937500160?s=21 https://twitter.com/javierluraschi/status/125160533393750016...
sieabahlpark 7y ago
I mean, sure but how much is it losing from loss of revenue? I.e. sales tax? Bad title and bad article.
- flyingcroissant 7y ago
  Why would a study on traffic crashes consider sales tax revenue?
  - Octoth0rpe 7y ago
    Cars in wrecks need repairs and/or replacements, both of which are taxed.
- grecy 7y ago
  Articles can't be all things. It's a very valid article about a very certain topic, and gives a fascinating insight into how enormous the machine of our "regular" world is. I personally find it fascinating that for (almost) the first time in living memory we get to have a good long look at what happens when that machine stops. I hope we learn a lot from it. Only people who lived through rationing in WWII have witnessed a disruption of this size.
- Talanes 7y ago
  The scope that you seem to be expecting isn't possible right now. Anything that's attempting to account for every amount of money lost or saved will end up missing something. The title contains itself to the scope that it is accurate at. Trusting the reader to intuitively know California is losing massive amounts of money from other things seems reasonable. Just because a title isn't written for the most uneducated reader does not mean it is misleading.
  - Tallasatree 7y ago
    Nothing could be more opposite in the world we live in. This title is indeed a puff piece, intended on showing a "bright" side to the shut down. Its incumbent on the educated reader to see that. Unfortunately, it seems not many people critically think anymore. Edit: Just because its data, doesn't mean its important. I can't wait to see Cal DOT's surplus after this.
zxcvvcxz 7y ago
That's great let's keep everything shut down and save even more money.
zaroth 7y ago
When you say something “saves money” do you think it’s reasonable to require such a statement attest that there is a net savings? If I go on vacation and set my Nest to eco mode, am I saving money? Sure, certainly I may be saving $5 a day in home utilities cost on my $300/day vacation. But that is not to say that said vacation is actually saving me money. It would be accurate to say that vacation may be costing me $295 net instead of $300 face value. But just reporting the savings would be misleading.
- carbocation 7y ago
  I don't think this comment deserves to be downvoted. It seems sensible. Sure, it's mostly sensitive to the phrasing, but careful phrasing matters in matters of finance and politics.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Tallasatree 7y ago
    Thank ideologues.
aianus 7y ago
~$1/resident/day sounds a lot less impressive
- mirimir 7y ago
  Indeed. And what are net economic losses? I'm guessing that it's somewhere between 100 and 1000 times that. Edit: Sorry. Make that 10-100 times greater.
  - carbocation 7y ago
    > Indeed. And what are net economic losses? I'm guessing that it's somewhere between 100 and 1000 times that. $40 million per day = $14.6 billion per year The GDP of California is $2.75 trillion. Your low end estimate of 100x would be a 53% drop in California's GDP, while the 1000x estimate seems impossible.
    - ttul 7y ago
      0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow!
      - carbocation 7y ago
        > 0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow! Are you saying that you disagree that California losing 500% of its GDP seems impossible?
        genidoi 7y ago
        Why would losing 500% of California's 2019 GDP be impossible? It's difficult to imagine, sure, but that's just 5x $2.7T. The sheer number of n'th order effects of this crisis might just mean that most of the economic pain is in the long, fat tail spanning decades into the future. Amortize that cost as irreversible economic damage and it might be implausible, sure, but not inconceivable.
        gpm 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rchaves 7y ago
will US learn to be less car-centric after this?
- mattigames 7y ago
  no, it will not even learn to pick leaders that react quickly to pandemics.
- asveikau 7y ago
  As an American, I hope so, but it is also pretty deeply ingrained. Cities and towns have also already been built spread out and many homes are completely dependent on getting in a car as a necessary first action. Around cities, many are also priced out of where they work with transit not up to the task. But perhaps those who are able to WFH are getting a glimpse of what it can be like.
  - briandear 7y ago
    Spread out homes sound like a feature not a bug. Population density increases infectious disease R0.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      If we consider the pandemic an exceptional event... Why should we optimize for exceptional events and ignore the cost on a normal day? We should destroy our own health and the health of our planet so that you can feel good about not catching once-in-a-century infectious disease? Density has many upsides. Economists have shown that denser cities are correlated with productivity gains at a rate surpassing the density increases. The lack of it has many costs, and not just the economic ones or less efficient use of resources. Increased motor vehicles on a personal scale leads to obesity, stress. On a global scale, it is harmful to the planet. Note the news reports of clearer skies from a very cease in this activity.
    - xienze 7y ago
      Trying to undo your downvote brigade. People don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth. Density without serious mitigation efforts results in massive spread, see New York.
throwawaysea 7y ago
This seems like a low effort illogical argument to push an anti car agenda? Obviously the economic benefit of cars is far greater than $40M a day for CA. Everything we do involves risk, whether it is driving or flying or simply leaving the house. With risk comes the chance of injury and death. We still decide to go about our lives because there is immense benefit in that. So I don’t see why this is a problem.
transfire 7y ago
The irony is that getting in a car is far more deadly than Covid.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>California is saving $40M per day from reduction in car crashes due to COVID19 I go to Vegas. Lose $100K in poker but win $190 at slot machines. How did I do?
- Redoubts 7y ago
  Save $190 in Vegas with this one weird trick!
NoblePublius 7y ago
Over 400,000 Americans died in 2019 because they are too fat and we didn’t do anything. Weird.
lukevdp 7y ago
Probably a silly question but what are the savings from?
imjustsaying 7y ago
>due to COVID19 It is more accurate to say due to the shutdown.
_bxg1 7y ago
> Saving State $40 Million Per Day During Shelter-In-Place !!!!
seesawtron 7y ago
Does anyone else wonder from where did they cite the costs in Table 1? I can imagine the reduction in accidents and fatalities and believe their reported numbers with the "significant" p-values but there is no information on how did they arrive at the reported costs. You had one job!
aaron695 7y ago
"Saving State $40 Million Per Day" As a back of the envelope for that "$40 Million Per Day" we used to spend, we would have gotten something of greater value. Probably far far greater value. So we are also losing over "$40 Million Per Day" through lost traffic. There is no silver lining, it's just giving us a minimum of the value of traffic.
pokstad 7y ago
In Los Angeles, there may be fewer car accidents but I’m afraid the ones that do occur will be more fatal. The lack of traffic is allowing people to drive at unsafe speeds. While there is dramatically less traffic, there are still a lot of cars on the freeway. The few times I’ve driven on the freeway, there have been many high speed impatient drivers weaving unsafely between the many remaining cars.
downerending 7y ago
If we forbid all operations, a lot fewer people will die in surgery.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I remember Atul Gawande mentioning in one of his books that patient deaths slow when their surgeons take a holiday.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    Normalized by number of surgeries?
  - downerending 7y ago
    Don't recall the details, but I think this was for a few specific kinds of procedures (cardiac-related?). There certainly is a problem with iatrogenic deaths (those caused by medical attention itself), but it would be quite a bit too far to say that surgery is on balance harmful taken as a whole. (And indeed, the point of my remark was that a falling traffic fatality rate isn't necessarily a good thing, once one looks at the entire picture.)

135 points by dsr12 7y ago

Is it real cost saving? Many costs are infra and standby people. Not sure it is real saving.

I've been meaning to ask in /r/theydidthemath if the quarantine is actually reducing violent crime, car accidents, pollution, other infectious diseases, STDs, etc. so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here.

mediumdeviation 7y ago
That seems unlikely given that in the week of April 6 to 12, Covid 19 has risen to the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States[1]. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/16/coronavirus-leading-cause-death/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/16/coronaviru...
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  I’m also expecting some long term after-effects that will increase diabetes and heart disease as most people are locked up.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    non-essential procedures and doctor's visits have also been cancelled, and some medicines are now rationed also. Both will have a negative impact on the health of some people. I personally had a month long series of treatments scheduled that got cancelled, and now I have no idea when I'll be able to get that treatment. Better than dying from the virus, though.
    - Baeocystin 7y ago
      I've had a scan that was scheduled five months ago cancelled, and one of my vitally necessary meds was three weeks late getting filled. Good thing I'm worried about running out so had some to spare, but it's no joke that people are going to die due to simply not getting what they need.
      - Exmoor 7y ago
        My wife had a similar experience. Her issue is probably not major, but it could also be a serious cancer and who knows when they'll start taking clients again, much less catch up to her. Making a rough guess of two months of shutdown, we've lost 1/6 of our annual non-emergency medical capacity for 2020. It'd be impossible to put a number on the cost in lives that means, but I think we can probably say with certainty that there are a non-insignificant number of people who will die or experience permanent medical issues because diagnosis and/or treatment was delayed. Perhaps I've missed it, but I'm honestly shocked this isn't priority number one for a partial reopening in regions with low infection rates.
    - hf8665 7y ago
      A lot of these "elective" "nonessential" services are really preventative. This was plainly brought into view for me with a dental procedure I had to cancel/reschedule. It's deemed non-essential, but is necessary to prevent me from losing an entire tooth or two. If it's not done reasonably soon it's only a matter of time before it turns into an emergency dental procedure.
  - meritt 7y ago
    Really? Maybe my local experience is an outlier but I've seen significantly more people cooking meals at home and exercising. The number of daily runners in my neighborhood has easily increased 10x. Are gluttony and sedentary lifestyles not the major contributors for type-2 diabetes and heart disease?
    - lazyasciiart 7y ago
      Has the number of runners increased more than the number of people going to gyms/sports leagues/swimming pools has dropped?
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        Also, are the people running new runners, or people who would otherwise be going to gyms?
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      I've had a similar experience, though I have no idea if the runners I'm seeing makes up for less activity throughout the day, gyms being closed, etc. It's possible that the 4% of people who go to the gym regularly are now running outside, and everyone else is even less active. Also, heart disease and type-2 diabetes are years in the making, and a month of moderate exercise and better eating won't make up for it overnight. Not to mention added stress.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        Takes 21 days to form a new habit, so there's every chance they'll continue!
        watwut 7y ago
        No, there is not. When the circumstances change, habits change too. When people go back to work, they will have less time at their hands. They will have to adjust to commuting again, taking kids to/from school again, being somewhere at time again. All of that will cut into their exercise time. All the people who are exercising out of boredom now will stop exercising out of being tired of doing lot of things again.
- eanzenberg 7y ago
  This is bad analysis which uses historic numbers and plops COVID against them. Everyone right now is dying of COVID and not much else. Apparently it’s healing cancer and heart attacks. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
  - natrik 7y ago
    I get the point you're trying to make with the data, but could you expand more on "healing cancer and heart attacks."? Not sure I follow
    - Izkata 7y ago
      If they're making the same claim I've seen elsewhere: People who would have died anyway from cancer/heart attacks but also have COVID19 are getting counted as COVID19 deaths instead of other causes, causing a dip in those numbers.
  - dennisgorelik 7y ago
    I understand why total number of deaths decreased a little bit due to quarantine. But sudden drop in total number of deaths from 52,992 down to 35,863 in the last week - looks suspicious.
zaroth 7y ago
Aside from even the fatalities, the math still is that 50% of LA is presently unemployed. While some articles are somehow gleeful in the face of this calamitous reality, there is no where near a net balance. The Fed has spent at least $2 trillion dollars on this already. Probably closer to $6 trillion by the time we are done. It is an unimaginably large cost to shut things down relative to any possible benefit.
- akiselev 7y ago
  > It is an unimaginably large cost to shut things down relative to any possible benefit. That's a failure of imagination.
- nostromo 7y ago
  Looking at the ~40k US deaths and the $6T spent, we’ve spent $150 million in stimulus per death. Looking at the non-spending costs of lost productivity, opportunity costs, etc., it’s a staggering number.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Surely the important number is per lives saved rather than per lives lost?
    - nostromo 7y ago
      Costs always matter. It’s rarely said in polite company but it’s true. I suppose it’s impossible to know if we’re striking the right balance at the moment, but it’ll be interesting to see the analysis after it’s over.
      - WD-42 7y ago
        I think you’re missing the point. It’s hard to tell when preventative actions work. It’s easy to tell when they fail. Right now the evidence is things would be a lot worse without them.
      - 7y ago
gizmo686 7y ago
Looking at the graph here [0], it would be very surprising if COVID was net saving lives. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-us-weekly-coronavirus-deaths-compared-heart-disease-cancer-flu-2020-4#covid-19-is-now-killing-more-americans-weekly-than-heart-disease-or-cancer-did-on-average-per-week-in-2018-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-us-weekly-coronavirus-...
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Not looking good. :( I guess I thought a lot more people than that died from car crashes.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    I wonder if we'll see a big drop in flu deaths as overwhelmingly only the old and sick die of COVID, and those folks are at large risk from the flu also.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > I wonder if we'll see a big drop in flu deaths The flu season overlapped with a period that included initial reports and fear of a novel respiratory disease and then historic, mandatory countermeasures (for the vast majority of the population) against communicable respiratory disease; it would be bizarre if there wasn't a big drop in flu deaths.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        I meant in following years, as those who likely would have succumbed to the flu in following years succumb to COVID now. For the current period, there's absolutely no way flu, car and so on deaths don't plunge.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        Even in vulnerable groups, the case fatality rate doesn't seem high enough that it would make a big impact in future statistics for that reason (probably bigger impact through lasting behavioral changes.)
robbiep 7y ago
some partial data: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/04/16/could-americas-slump-in-crime-be-the-beginning-of-something https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/04/16/could-ame...
product50 7y ago
Look at the unemployment rate. What else validation do you need? You can't just ask people to stay locked in their homes and assume everything would be ok.
nsomaru 7y ago
Apparently the death rate (general) in South Africa has dropped as a result of lockdown
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here. Everything you said above are really down in North Korea, and have been so for decades. I doubt they're doing OK
dehrmann 7y ago
> reducing violent crime There are fears it will increase domestic abuse.
- vvpan 7y ago
  It seems to be happening. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domesti...
dehrmann 7y ago
I'm expecting knock-on mental health effects to be pretty bad.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  Should at least be cushioned a bit by the absence of traffic noise and pollution related stress. Would be nice to have the benefits of both: very little motorized traffic AND no viral threat. We have no control over the latter, but we most certainly have some control over the former.
  - briandear 7y ago
    Domestic violence and child abuse is up. And suicides are increasing. And millions have lost their jobs. Pretty sure unemployed people or those that had their businesses destroyed aren’t basking in the lower noise and pollution reductions.
hannob 7y ago
The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements. Because it tells a very interesting story how many lives we're willing to accept to be lost in normal circumstances. Cars, air pollution, avoidable infections, ... - there's a lot of harm society could avoid and doesn't.
- afthonos 7y ago
  Those are unfortunately baked into our accounting, much like “killed by bandits” was accounted for in medieval trade until states started being able and willing to provide meaningful security.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    But the assumptions in many of them were made a long time ago and don't necessarily apply anymore. In the case of air pollution for example, there probably exists a price that could be paid to significantly reduce it and improve the overall health of everyone.
    - afthonos 7y ago
      I don’t disagree. But we seem to be bad at re-evaluating old decisions (definitely in my case), and it doesn’t help when politics is basically a team sport in the US.
    - thawaway1837 7y ago
      The issue is that the price is paid by a set of people who are different from the people who benefit from this. And the people who benefit are the ones in power, whereas the ones who suffer are the ones without power. So the trade offs are largely not accepted because they are acceptable to society at large, but because the people who have the power to make the decisions are insulated from it. In the US wealth is a decent proxy for power, so this claim can actually easily be quantified. Simply draw maps correlating the wealth of a neighborhood with the adverse effect being discussed. Whether it’s air pollution levels, or it’s deaths due to car accidents, or mercury in water, or lead in walls, it will invariably be the case the problem correlated strongly with the wealth of the area.
snovv_crash 7y ago
In South Africa at least, violent crime has dropped by 75%.
qplex 7y ago
>Just trying to find the silver lining here. Oh, we could pretty much save the planet and live happily ever after if we could keep it like this. Only to find some rock barreling down on us some day, but ah... I digress.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Ignore the skyrocketing rates of suicide, domestic violence, and child abuse.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Source?
    - mantas 7y ago
      Domestic violence was up 20% in my country in first weeks of quarantine. Police and social services were super worried it will get worse as quarantine takes longer. I can google you some local media articles if you want to double-check via google translate. It makes sense though. People spend more time together in close quarters. People lost jobs. Lots of stress all around. Perfect storm for beating that bastard you meet in the kitchen.
      - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
        Let’s be honest. Most of the people on this site work from home (no financial worry) and are unmarried or probably no kids. They wouldn’t have any idea about the real cost of this quarantine to the 22 million unemployed Americans (and growing) who’s families were hurting even before this forced, indefinite unemployment.
evandijk70 7y ago
At least in the Netherlands, definitely not: The first Figure in this article (Dutch) shows the number of deaths from any cause. https://nos.nl/artikel/2330786-oversterfte-door-corona-blijft-stabiel-blijkt-uit-cbs-cijfers.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2330786-oversterfte-door-corona-blijf... During the Corona outbreak, almost double the amount of people are dying compared to the same time last year.
- rags2riches 7y ago
  There must be some sort of "flushing the pipeline" effect involved, provided that the virus kills the vulnerable to some extent. So I wonder how that will affect the numbers in the near future.
  - lukevdp 7y ago
    My guess is it will slip to slightly below the norm after the pandemic has passed. There are still a lot of people dying that had many years of life ahead of them.
  - genofon 7y ago
    of course everyone has to die at a certain point, when does make a difference and COVID is making a HUGE difference as you can see by the spike in mortality rate
hyko 7y ago
Public Health England’s all-cause mortality surveillance suggests not, at least in that country: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/879714/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_16_2020_report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
Violent crime should increase. Most violent crime is domestic abuse. Now all of America's abusive parents are out of work, stuck at home with their kids who are also stuck at home. So I think the pandemic will lead to more violent crimes in the household, at least. Dunno how other parts or life will be affected.
Taniwha 7y ago
I think it depends on the country, here in New Zealand we locked down early, and hard - we've only had 12 deaths - but the reduction in the road toll in the same time is roughly 20-30 so yes we're technically ahead on the deal. Generally though, covid deaths go up exponentially while road tolls likely don't go down the same way, our trade off is probably only likely if you get in early. In other news we're likely taking the first step of getting out of out ~1 month lock down later this coming week - our idea of getting out has been described as "lockdown with KFC", roughly equivalent to California's
divbzero 7y ago
For NYC the answer is “no”. 4,500 ≈ average deaths per month in 2017 [1] 6,125 = confirmed COVID-19 deaths from 2020-04-01 through 2020-04-15 [2] [1]: https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2017/table32c.htm https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2017/t... [2]: https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/case-hosp-death.csv https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/ca... Note that 6,125 doesn’t include COVID-19 deaths or non COVID-19 deaths, and is for the first half of April only.
yread 7y ago
Some deaths will decrease, others will go up. Treatments for other diseases are now being put off https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984?query=RP https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984?query=RP Cancers are not getting diagnosed early almost 50% in recent weeks than usual. That means worse stages at diagnosis and worse prognosis https://www.iknl.nl/nieuws/2020/door-de-covid-19-crisis-zijn-er-nu-minder-kankerdi https://www.iknl.nl/nieuws/2020/door-de-covid-19-crisis-zijn...
scottlocklin 7y ago
CDC all deaths data is available. FWIIW; the overall death rate is inarguably going down last time I checked.
javierluraschi 7y ago
If we look at the per-capita deaths, many affected countries seem to be moving towards surpassing the leading cause of death in the US, heart desease. At that magnitude, seems unlikely we are saving net lives. See https://twitter.com/javierluraschi/status/1251605333937500160?s=21 https://twitter.com/javierluraschi/status/125160533393750016...

sieabahlpark 7y ago

I mean, sure but how much is it losing from loss of revenue? I.e. sales tax? Bad title and bad article.

flyingcroissant 7y ago
Why would a study on traffic crashes consider sales tax revenue?
- Octoth0rpe 7y ago
  Cars in wrecks need repairs and/or replacements, both of which are taxed.
grecy 7y ago
Articles can't be all things. It's a very valid article about a very certain topic, and gives a fascinating insight into how enormous the machine of our "regular" world is. I personally find it fascinating that for (almost) the first time in living memory we get to have a good long look at what happens when that machine stops. I hope we learn a lot from it. Only people who lived through rationing in WWII have witnessed a disruption of this size.
Talanes 7y ago
The scope that you seem to be expecting isn't possible right now. Anything that's attempting to account for every amount of money lost or saved will end up missing something. The title contains itself to the scope that it is accurate at. Trusting the reader to intuitively know California is losing massive amounts of money from other things seems reasonable. Just because a title isn't written for the most uneducated reader does not mean it is misleading.
- Tallasatree 7y ago
  Nothing could be more opposite in the world we live in. This title is indeed a puff piece, intended on showing a "bright" side to the shut down. Its incumbent on the educated reader to see that. Unfortunately, it seems not many people critically think anymore. Edit: Just because its data, doesn't mean its important. I can't wait to see Cal DOT's surplus after this.

zxcvvcxz 7y ago

That's great let's keep everything shut down and save even more money.

zaroth 7y ago

When you say something “saves money” do you think it’s reasonable to require such a statement attest that there is a net savings? If I go on vacation and set my Nest to eco mode, am I saving money? Sure, certainly I may be saving $5 a day in home utilities cost on my $300/day vacation. But that is not to say that said vacation is actually saving me money. It would be accurate to say that vacation may be costing me $295 net instead of $300 face value. But just reporting the savings would be misleading.

carbocation 7y ago
I don't think this comment deserves to be downvoted. It seems sensible. Sure, it's mostly sensitive to the phrasing, but careful phrasing matters in matters of finance and politics.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Tallasatree 7y ago
  Thank ideologues.

aianus 7y ago

~$1/resident/day sounds a lot less impressive

mirimir 7y ago
Indeed. And what are net economic losses? I'm guessing that it's somewhere between 100 and 1000 times that. Edit: Sorry. Make that 10-100 times greater.
- carbocation 7y ago
  > Indeed. And what are net economic losses? I'm guessing that it's somewhere between 100 and 1000 times that. $40 million per day = $14.6 billion per year The GDP of California is $2.75 trillion. Your low end estimate of 100x would be a 53% drop in California's GDP, while the 1000x estimate seems impossible.
  - ttul 7y ago
    0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow!
    - carbocation 7y ago
      > 0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow! Are you saying that you disagree that California losing 500% of its GDP seems impossible?
      - genidoi 7y ago
        Why would losing 500% of California's 2019 GDP be impossible? It's difficult to imagine, sure, but that's just 5x $2.7T. The sheer number of n'th order effects of this crisis might just mean that most of the economic pain is in the long, fat tail spanning decades into the future. Amortize that cost as irreversible economic damage and it might be implausible, sure, but not inconceivable.
      - gpm 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rchaves 7y ago

will US learn to be less car-centric after this?

mattigames 7y ago
no, it will not even learn to pick leaders that react quickly to pandemics.
asveikau 7y ago
As an American, I hope so, but it is also pretty deeply ingrained. Cities and towns have also already been built spread out and many homes are completely dependent on getting in a car as a necessary first action. Around cities, many are also priced out of where they work with transit not up to the task. But perhaps those who are able to WFH are getting a glimpse of what it can be like.
- briandear 7y ago
  Spread out homes sound like a feature not a bug. Population density increases infectious disease R0.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    If we consider the pandemic an exceptional event... Why should we optimize for exceptional events and ignore the cost on a normal day? We should destroy our own health and the health of our planet so that you can feel good about not catching once-in-a-century infectious disease? Density has many upsides. Economists have shown that denser cities are correlated with productivity gains at a rate surpassing the density increases. The lack of it has many costs, and not just the economic ones or less efficient use of resources. Increased motor vehicles on a personal scale leads to obesity, stress. On a global scale, it is harmful to the planet. Note the news reports of clearer skies from a very cease in this activity.
  - xienze 7y ago
    Trying to undo your downvote brigade. People don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth. Density without serious mitigation efforts results in massive spread, see New York.

throwawaysea 7y ago

This seems like a low effort illogical argument to push an anti car agenda? Obviously the economic benefit of cars is far greater than $40M a day for CA. Everything we do involves risk, whether it is driving or flying or simply leaving the house. With risk comes the chance of injury and death. We still decide to go about our lives because there is immense benefit in that. So I don’t see why this is a problem.

transfire 7y ago

The irony is that getting in a car is far more deadly than Covid.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

>California is saving $40M per day from reduction in car crashes due to COVID19 I go to Vegas. Lose $100K in poker but win $190 at slot machines. How did I do?

Redoubts 7y ago
Save $190 in Vegas with this one weird trick!

NoblePublius 7y ago

Over 400,000 Americans died in 2019 because they are too fat and we didn’t do anything. Weird.

lukevdp 7y ago

Probably a silly question but what are the savings from?

imjustsaying 7y ago

>due to COVID19 It is more accurate to say due to the shutdown.

_bxg1 7y ago

> Saving State $40 Million Per Day During Shelter-In-Place !!!!

seesawtron 7y ago

Does anyone else wonder from where did they cite the costs in Table 1? I can imagine the reduction in accidents and fatalities and believe their reported numbers with the "significant" p-values but there is no information on how did they arrive at the reported costs. You had one job!

aaron695 7y ago

"Saving State $40 Million Per Day" As a back of the envelope for that "$40 Million Per Day" we used to spend, we would have gotten something of greater value. Probably far far greater value. So we are also losing over "$40 Million Per Day" through lost traffic. There is no silver lining, it's just giving us a minimum of the value of traffic.

pokstad 7y ago

In Los Angeles, there may be fewer car accidents but I’m afraid the ones that do occur will be more fatal. The lack of traffic is allowing people to drive at unsafe speeds. While there is dramatically less traffic, there are still a lot of cars on the freeway. The few times I’ve driven on the freeway, there have been many high speed impatient drivers weaving unsafely between the many remaining cars.

downerending 7y ago

If we forbid all operations, a lot fewer people will die in surgery.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I remember Atul Gawande mentioning in one of his books that patient deaths slow when their surgeons take a holiday.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  Normalized by number of surgeries?
- downerending 7y ago
  Don't recall the details, but I think this was for a few specific kinds of procedures (cardiac-related?). There certainly is a problem with iatrogenic deaths (those caused by medical attention itself), but it would be quite a bit too far to say that surgery is on balance harmful taken as a whole. (And indeed, the point of my remark was that a falling traffic fatality rate isn't necessarily a good thing, once one looks at the entire picture.)