6 ms·

>Plus people value different things. Do you realize how much this quarantine is costing us? >It kills less than a percent of the people it infects. At 30% pop

>Plus people value different things. Do you realize how much this quarantine is costing us? >It kills less than a percent of the people it infects. At 30% population infected, 1% is more than a million people. I'm sorry, our values seems radically different. >Do you have any idea how stupid most people are? I thought I did, but reading your comment did bring an enhanced understanding.

ggm 7y ago
The implicit belief in the comment you respond to, is that the mitigation cost will "kill" more than a million people. I suspect it goes to non-lethal costs more, and then its the usual problem of milli-morts against economic cost/benefit.
streb-lo 7y ago
Also, the fatality rate will rise if the virus gets out of control, which it very well could if people decide to forgo social distancing and self-isolating when possible.
microtherion 7y ago
Grandparent post has been voted into oblivion, so commenting here: > Do you realize how much this quarantine is costing us? Actually, I don't. I've seen a lot of people make the argument that lockdowns and other restrictions are "too expensive", but: * I have not seen a single serious attempt to model quite how expensive they will be. * Nor have I seen any attempts to model how expensive alternate approaches would be, e.g. the Swedish model. Quite a few people who propagate it seem to be under the impression that this is implemented with zero economic disruption, but that's definitely not the case. * And to be truly realistic, the models should consider the capabilities of countries to mitigate economic consequences through fiscal or monetary means. Many countries can currently borrow at very low or even negative interest rates, so they may have considerable leverage there.
- __blockcipher__ 7y ago
  You cannot mitigate economic damage with fiscal or monetary means in any serious way. That statement of yours indicates that you do not understand the difference between money and wealth. Money is an abstraction we use to measure (relative) value. Wealth is the sum total of physical goods/services/resources that we rely on. When you neuter an economy, as we have done in the US, you destroy real wealth. There is no way to counteract that by injecting money. It’s like trying to claim your company is growing because share buybacks made your per-share price go up, yet your market cap in an efficient market has been unchanged. It is no surprise then that someone who holds that view would have trouble seeing the real damage that a shutdown like ours does. We have postponed elective surgeries, leading to furloughing tens of thousands of medical workers across the country because in many areas hospitals are practically empty. We’re halting meat packing plants because some portion of employees have tested positive. We’ve stopped educating our children in person despite covid-19 being less deadly than Influenza in children (this is a fact at this point). We treated a really bad but manageable papercut by chopping off our hand, and in doing so we have widened inequality in _every dimension_. What does a poor school-aged child who does not own a laptop do with remote schooling? What do millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and are now unemployed do? What about those postponing important preventative care that will prevent future deaths from cancer, heart disease, and diabetes? How large of a spike in suicides, opioid overdoses, and psychosis are we going to see? We took a bunch of otherwise healthy people, instilled them with disproportionate, all-consuming fear, and have had people in social isolation, which not only produces its own mortality but will also retard the natural exchange of micro-organisms that our health relies upon. And the biggest joke of all is that eradication is impossible and therefore we didn’t prevent any mortality, we just postponed it, while destroying the quality of life of the 99.4% of the population who never would have died from this thing anyway (there’s debate as to whether the IFR is .3% or 1% but I think .6% is a very conservative number) — In answer to your question about models, you are right that we need more of them, and in rereading your comment I see you were more raising questions than advocating a pro-lockdown stance. In any case I encourage you to check out http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=6976 http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=69.... I’m on mobile right now otherwise I’d quote from it but they look at it in terms of wellbeing-years
  - 7y ago
- refurb 7y ago
  I have not seen a single serious attempt to model quite how expensive they will be How about the fed's estimate of a ~5% hit to GDP in Q2. The economic ramifications of the shelter-in-place are going to be massive.
  - runako 7y ago
    For those who don't have the numbers handy, US GDP is about $20T. If it were even spread out through the year (it is not), a 5% hit in Q2 would be $250 billion in that quarter.
  - fspeech 7y ago
    You blame the shelter-in-place order which actually improves over an uncoordinated economic shutdown that the epidemic is fully capable of generating on its own. You can't separate the effect of the shelter-in-place order from that of the viral epidemic. With a raging outbreak, even without a shelter-in-place order people will still not go to most businesses. You could have the same economic downturn without the benefit of a shelter-in-place order where people's actions are more coordinated. And this is without accounting for the cost of a possible social breakdown if enough people panic about not having fair access to healthcare when the hospitals are overwhelmed. If we could coordinate a perfect shelter-in-place the outbreak would have been gone by now. If people don't cooperate with each other we will have a much prolonged outbreak.
    - thepope 7y ago
      hmm, I'm OP and you might have a good point there. I will think about that. I'm not saying you are right ...lol btw i dont know why literally every single fucking thing i say on the internet no matter what always gets downvoted even when im talking about a neutral subject and being positive but where was i? oh yeah, I'm not saying your right but at first thought I think you are making a good point.
      - afiori 7y ago
        regarding the downvotes I can share an opinion based on similar experiences: in my case it often was about not being thoughtful in choosing what to say. Or in another perspective think about whether your comment is what you feel like saying or whether it is something that contributes to the discussion.
6510 7y ago
Someone elsewhere on HN introduced the amount of suffering in the world to the topic, specifically people suffering to allow western quality of life. The later qualification is more interesting than it seems as to me it doesn't make it much more shameful to have needless suffering if you do or do not need people. (How badly do we need those boomers? Inappropriate question? yes?) If 1% is 1 million then 30% is 30 million and 100% is 100 million? I thought we had more people? But lets assume for sake of argument that we've over reacted. Its pretty fantastic the way all countries in the world [few exceptions aside] took the matter so seriously and managed to take collective action this quickly. Despite all the death and suffering we now have a legitimate reason to be hopeful and imaginative about what else we can do and what it might cost. The situation is truly weirder than fiction: The Corona lock down might have saved [oh, say] 80 million elderly people (unscientific number). It might in 2020 also push 180 million [additional] incomes below $5.50/day, 150 m below $3.20/day, 60 m below $1.90/day. We can barely imagine the long term effects of that. Safe to say it ain't pretty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
- billyhoffman 7y ago
  Not the parent, but I believe what they are saying is 30% of the US population is ~100 million people. %1 of that infected population is 1M.
  - 6510 7y ago
    The US not doing a lock down would affect the entire world.
- thepope 7y ago
  Pow, right in the kisser!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ggm 7y ago

The implicit belief in the comment you respond to, is that the mitigation cost will "kill" more than a million people. I suspect it goes to non-lethal costs more, and then its the usual problem of milli-morts against economic cost/benefit.

streb-lo 7y ago

Also, the fatality rate will rise if the virus gets out of control, which it very well could if people decide to forgo social distancing and self-isolating when possible.

microtherion 7y ago

Grandparent post has been voted into oblivion, so commenting here: > Do you realize how much this quarantine is costing us? Actually, I don't. I've seen a lot of people make the argument that lockdowns and other restrictions are "too expensive", but: * I have not seen a single serious attempt to model quite how expensive they will be. * Nor have I seen any attempts to model how expensive alternate approaches would be, e.g. the Swedish model. Quite a few people who propagate it seem to be under the impression that this is implemented with zero economic disruption, but that's definitely not the case. * And to be truly realistic, the models should consider the capabilities of countries to mitigate economic consequences through fiscal or monetary means. Many countries can currently borrow at very low or even negative interest rates, so they may have considerable leverage there.

__blockcipher__ 7y ago
You cannot mitigate economic damage with fiscal or monetary means in any serious way. That statement of yours indicates that you do not understand the difference between money and wealth. Money is an abstraction we use to measure (relative) value. Wealth is the sum total of physical goods/services/resources that we rely on. When you neuter an economy, as we have done in the US, you destroy real wealth. There is no way to counteract that by injecting money. It’s like trying to claim your company is growing because share buybacks made your per-share price go up, yet your market cap in an efficient market has been unchanged. It is no surprise then that someone who holds that view would have trouble seeing the real damage that a shutdown like ours does. We have postponed elective surgeries, leading to furloughing tens of thousands of medical workers across the country because in many areas hospitals are practically empty. We’re halting meat packing plants because some portion of employees have tested positive. We’ve stopped educating our children in person despite covid-19 being less deadly than Influenza in children (this is a fact at this point). We treated a really bad but manageable papercut by chopping off our hand, and in doing so we have widened inequality in _every dimension_. What does a poor school-aged child who does not own a laptop do with remote schooling? What do millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and are now unemployed do? What about those postponing important preventative care that will prevent future deaths from cancer, heart disease, and diabetes? How large of a spike in suicides, opioid overdoses, and psychosis are we going to see? We took a bunch of otherwise healthy people, instilled them with disproportionate, all-consuming fear, and have had people in social isolation, which not only produces its own mortality but will also retard the natural exchange of micro-organisms that our health relies upon. And the biggest joke of all is that eradication is impossible and therefore we didn’t prevent any mortality, we just postponed it, while destroying the quality of life of the 99.4% of the population who never would have died from this thing anyway (there’s debate as to whether the IFR is .3% or 1% but I think .6% is a very conservative number) — In answer to your question about models, you are right that we need more of them, and in rereading your comment I see you were more raising questions than advocating a pro-lockdown stance. In any case I encourage you to check out http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=6976 http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=69.... I’m on mobile right now otherwise I’d quote from it but they look at it in terms of wellbeing-years
- 7y ago
refurb 7y ago
I have not seen a single serious attempt to model quite how expensive they will be How about the fed's estimate of a ~5% hit to GDP in Q2. The economic ramifications of the shelter-in-place are going to be massive.
- runako 7y ago
  For those who don't have the numbers handy, US GDP is about $20T. If it were even spread out through the year (it is not), a 5% hit in Q2 would be $250 billion in that quarter.
- fspeech 7y ago
  You blame the shelter-in-place order which actually improves over an uncoordinated economic shutdown that the epidemic is fully capable of generating on its own. You can't separate the effect of the shelter-in-place order from that of the viral epidemic. With a raging outbreak, even without a shelter-in-place order people will still not go to most businesses. You could have the same economic downturn without the benefit of a shelter-in-place order where people's actions are more coordinated. And this is without accounting for the cost of a possible social breakdown if enough people panic about not having fair access to healthcare when the hospitals are overwhelmed. If we could coordinate a perfect shelter-in-place the outbreak would have been gone by now. If people don't cooperate with each other we will have a much prolonged outbreak.
  - thepope 7y ago
    hmm, I'm OP and you might have a good point there. I will think about that. I'm not saying you are right ...lol btw i dont know why literally every single fucking thing i say on the internet no matter what always gets downvoted even when im talking about a neutral subject and being positive but where was i? oh yeah, I'm not saying your right but at first thought I think you are making a good point.
    - afiori 7y ago
      regarding the downvotes I can share an opinion based on similar experiences: in my case it often was about not being thoughtful in choosing what to say. Or in another perspective think about whether your comment is what you feel like saying or whether it is something that contributes to the discussion.

6510 7y ago

Someone elsewhere on HN introduced the amount of suffering in the world to the topic, specifically people suffering to allow western quality of life. The later qualification is more interesting than it seems as to me it doesn't make it much more shameful to have needless suffering if you do or do not need people. (How badly do we need those boomers? Inappropriate question? yes?) If 1% is 1 million then 30% is 30 million and 100% is 100 million? I thought we had more people? But lets assume for sake of argument that we've over reacted. Its pretty fantastic the way all countries in the world [few exceptions aside] took the matter so seriously and managed to take collective action this quickly. Despite all the death and suffering we now have a legitimate reason to be hopeful and imaginative about what else we can do and what it might cost. The situation is truly weirder than fiction: The Corona lock down might have saved [oh, say] 80 million elderly people (unscientific number). It might in 2020 also push 180 million [additional] incomes below $5.50/day, 150 m below $3.20/day, 60 m below $1.90/day. We can barely imagine the long term effects of that. Safe to say it ain't pretty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview

billyhoffman 7y ago
Not the parent, but I believe what they are saying is 30% of the US population is ~100 million people. %1 of that infected population is 1M.
- 6510 7y ago
  The US not doing a lock down would affect the entire world.
thepope 7y ago
Pow, right in the kisser!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]