3 ms·

This would only be true if coronavirus was more deadly than the dramatic increase in poverty that the resulting economic destruction of the shutdown will cause,

• edmundsauto 7y ago
  You need to account for positive second order effects, e.g. reduced deaths from pollution. That pushes "extremely doubtful" firmly into "we can't even guess if quarantine will be a net plus or minus" in the 2020 death rate. It also heavily depends on how long quarantine goes on for -- would the mortality rates be changed from a 1 year recession? Or would it take many years?
  • 0xy 7y ago
    People don't just drop dead upon becoming unemployed. It's just a higher per year mortality rate. Also, economic destruction is not necessarily temporary. A very large number of industries, companies and communities will be permanently wiped out from this.
    • edmundsauto 7y ago
      How do we know the higher per year mortality rate from poverty will exceed the lower death rate from reduced pollution, reduced car accidents, etc? It's not clear how these balance. There are also industries growing, and industries that will be created. And some of the industries that may be permanently eliminated may be a net positive -- cruise lines are a complete blight. I don't know what the net-net will look like, but it's important to push back on the assumption that economic downfall will be all negative in terms of lives lost.
• glitcher 7y ago
  Source?
  • 0xy 7y ago
    Apologies, I thought it would be obvious that poverty causes higher mortality. http://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411 http://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-... https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/how-many-us-deaths-are-caused-poverty-lack-education-and-other-social-factors https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/how-...
    • glitcher 7y ago
      2.5x was a little too specific to be obvious.
• debaserab2 7y ago
  That's an impossible claim to backup. A traditional unemployment rate may result in a 2.5x increase in mortality rate, but this isn't a normal period of unemployment -- congress just injected an unimaginably large amount of money into the economy with the deliberate goal of keeping the unemployed afloat until things can re-open. You can't really look at a past study of unemployment effects and expect it to be anything like what we're about to experience; we literally have no idea.
  • 0xy 7y ago
    You're correct that we have no idea, but it's likely to be worse. Some communities won't come back from this. The economy cannot be paused without massive stimulus to keep it afloat (and no, the current stimulus isn't keeping it afloat). Some companies are entering bankruptcy as we speak. They aren't coming back.
    • pnutjam 7y ago
      I have it on good authority, that's a feature of capitalism. Someone will come along and open buy anything valuable. Good system, eh?
• Angostura 7y ago
  Unemployment is only deadly where incompetent government doesn't put policies in place to cushion businesses and individuals from the closedown. If your government isn't putting these policies in place, you should ask why
  • 0xy 7y ago
    I'm not sure how many tens of trillions of dollars we'd need to cushion every business from closing but it'd be substantially more than we are now, and we'd likely never pay off that debt. The US doesn't have the borrowing power to prop up that many companies and people for 18 months. That much printing is deep in hyperinflation territory.
    • scollet 7y ago
      I suppose we can eat tanks then.