4 ms·
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
by 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 agoLooking 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 agoSurely the important number is per lives saved rather than per lives lost?
- nostromo 7y agoCosts 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 agoBetter the dollar number is staggering than the death number. Would you rather it be reversed?
- nostromo 7y agoFor 6T I feel like we could prevent the half a million malaria deaths that happen each and every year since forever and have money left over to tackle the 100k obesity deaths each yeah in the US. I’m not saying our response is wrong by the way. But it’s a jaw dropping number. It’s a building a moon base, or universal healthcare for a decade, or a mission to mars, or high speed trains up and down America’s coasts number.
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago> But it’s a jaw dropping number. I mean yes, of course it is. But does it do anything to stare and point at it with your jaw dropped? What does the alternate timeline look like where the government had no need to distribute significant amounts of money to employees and businesses?
- zaroth 7y agoThe truth of it all is still very much not known. Early antibody studies have shown that prevalence is much, much higher than positive case count would indicate. Potentially 50x - 85x more cases than positive tests based on the Santa Clara / Stanford study. In Boston last week they mass tested at the Pine St homeless shelter and found 50% of them positive and 100% of those were asymptomatic. If when the dust settles the reality is that the curve wasn’t flattened at all, most everyone was already exposed, and the true IFR was more like 0.25%.... then we flushed $6 trillion down the toilet.
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago> If when the dust settles the reality is that the curve wasn’t flattened at all, most everyone was already exposed, and the true IFR was more like 0.25%.... then we flushed $6 trillion down the toilet. Isn't that like going all in with two aces in texas hold'em poker, and saying "If when the dust settles the reality is that the other guy had a 7 and a 2, and the board was a 3, 4, 5, 6 and a J, then I flushed all my stack down the toilet"? You make the decisions based on the information you have at the time. If you're forced to make a probabilistic call based on what you know then, your decision doesn't become wrong based on the future outcome. And if you look at New York City for example, can you imagine any scenario where when the dust settles it turns out that we didn't have to do any of that social distancing and stimulus injecting? Are you making the case that one of the possibilities in this forest of unknowns is that maybe we didn't have to do anything? How does that match up with what we're seeing happening in say, NYC?
- morsch 7y agoThose 6T haven't been spent, right? Those are funds committed towards "stimulus programs" (whatever that means in the end) that will run over months or years. It's still a staggering number, staggering also in comparison to other world economies. That is probably the intended effect.
- greedo 7y agoYour calculus is off. The $2T spent (not $6T) is not for the 40k deaths, but for preventing 400K additional deaths. At $5K per saved life, well worth it. If you want to fault the spending, talk to Congress and the WH about why it's so misallocated.