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This is wrong. We are not forced to be inside because of the virus. It would have been totally possible to have this pandemic going on with zero lockdowns, whic

This is wrong. We are not forced to be inside because of the virus. It would have been totally possible to have this pandemic going on with zero lockdowns, which would have probably led to worse health effects, and less-bad economic effects. It's a pet peeve of mine when people claim that we must lock down or that the virus is forcing us to do this or that, as opposed to it being a political choice based on tradeoffs. In fact, I predict that after things open up, they will not shut back down, no matter how bad the second wave of the outbreak gets. People simply won't accept it.

res0nat0r 6y ago
Sure, we can let a million folks in the USA die because we love our capitalism, but 80%+ of the USA disagrees with that false dichotomy.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I don't think that's true. The mindset I've consistently seen is that people do agree with the dichotomy, and are just willing to sacrifice the economy because they don't think it's very important. How many times has the line been trotted out that we can't sacrifice human lives for the sake of the economy?
- umanwizard 6y ago
  First of all, that number is clearly exaggerated. No current evidence supports the claim that a million people in the USA dying of covid is remotely plausible. Now to the substance of your argument: this has little to do with capitalism. If most people are not working for a long period of time, in any society, even a non-capitalist one, then that society will rapidly become dramatically materially poorer. We make choices to improve material conditions at possibly increased health risks all the time. Longevity is not the only metric for overall quality of life. I would happily accept some increased risk of my own death for the lockdown to be over. Correctly navigating the tradeoff requires figuring out how much increased risk of death is acceptable, not asserting that it’s zero.
  - ebiester 6y ago
    It's not just Covid. If the hospitals are overwhelmed, that car accident you get into means you might not be able to get medical care, causing a small issue to become deadly. You may not be able to get treated for a heart attack. Further, we are seeing people still testing positive and having health problems over a month after first symptoms. If your entire supply chain is taken out, essential or not, you can end up with larger problems than when you started. If you think it's a problem that the meat packing plant has to close after a single case, wait until 75% of the plant is symptomatic. Finally, the solution is to have enough tests and contact tracing so that people can confidently open up, knowing that we can stop the rate of transmission. This shutdown should be used to prepare for a way we can safely reopen, a la South Korea.
  - mdemare 6y ago
    Without a lockdown, most of the country will eventually be infected. NYC currently has 21000 excess deaths, so extrapolating that to the rest of the country would mean 21000*328M / 10M = 690,000 excess deaths. That's assuming that nobody else in NYC is going to die of Covid 19, even after lifting the lockdown, so this is an extremely conservative projection, and it's already close to 1M deaths. What's implausible about this? Is Covid 19 less lethal outside NYC? Can R remain below 1 anywhere in the country, without a lockdown?
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      Sorry, you're right. I did the arithmetic wrong, thinking that 1M deaths would represent 3% of the population, instead of 0.3%. My mistake! The rest of my point still stands.
    - alexilliamson 6y ago
      I mean I agree it's plausible, but it also seems likely that it's more lethal in NYC because of population density.
      - mdemare 6y ago
        More infectious, sure? But more lethal? Why?
notfromhere 6y ago
It’s a false choice between the economy and people’s lives. The problem is that while labor economy was shut down, the financial system was not, so that rents and debts had to flow out of people that could not generate income, and the government has been ignoring the issue with nominal support. Not freezing debts/rents across the entire economy is how this whole thing spins into a depression
- treis 6y ago
  Every expense is someone else's income. Freezing debts/rents doesn't solve anything. It just shifts the burden. Ultimately we are losing the wealth that we otherwise would have generated. We are poorer and there's no way around that.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Yes, it shifts the burden from people who work for a living, to people who's living is worked for by other people. The former are far more important, and numerous than the latter. I eat butter, I don't eat dividends.
    - treis 6y ago
      If you're a renter you live in a home that a landlord built or paid someone else to build. And if people stop paying rent then they stop paying people to build. Construction workers lose their jobs and our housing problems are made worse. And don't have any illusions about the rich losing here. Most units are owned by small time landlords who will be wiped out by a rent freeze. Those units will be gobbled up on the cheap by rich people that can borrow money at cheap rates.
      - vkou 6y ago
        > And if people stop paying rent then they stop paying people to build. Construction workers lose their jobs and our housing problems are made worse. So what? They've already stopped paying people to build. Construction workers have lost their jobs already. While having to keep paying their rent, or mortgage. This is a temporary disruption, and needs temporary, stop-gap measures to stop the bleeding. Nobody's advocating to stop all rents forever. > And don't have any illusions about the rich losing here. Most units are owned by small time landlords who will be wiped out by a rent freeze. 1. No, they aren't. Most units are owned by real estate companies. 2. Couple it with a mortgage freeze, and none of them will be wiped out. You can, in fact, kick this can up the hill until it hits the capital markets...
hyko 6y ago
The “lockdown” is a Fabian strategy; one of the goals is to preserve our ability to stage an economic comeback after the health crisis has been resolved. In the near term, the economy is toast no matter what we do (short of a well oiled contact tracing and isolating machine). This paper seems to suggest there isn’t really a tension between protecting people’s health and saving the economy: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 You are correct that the lockdown measures are a choice and not a natural consequence of the virus though.
bjustin 6y ago
Even if widespread shelter-in-place orders were not in effect, if the virus spread through a lot of the people in a town, you can bet that people wouldn't be going out as usual. Nobody* will be eating at restaurants if they hear dozens of people in town got sick while eating out and died because local hospitals are over capacity. *there's always somebody

res0nat0r 6y ago

Sure, we can let a million folks in the USA die because we love our capitalism, but 80%+ of the USA disagrees with that false dichotomy.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I don't think that's true. The mindset I've consistently seen is that people do agree with the dichotomy, and are just willing to sacrifice the economy because they don't think it's very important. How many times has the line been trotted out that we can't sacrifice human lives for the sake of the economy?
umanwizard 6y ago
First of all, that number is clearly exaggerated. No current evidence supports the claim that a million people in the USA dying of covid is remotely plausible. Now to the substance of your argument: this has little to do with capitalism. If most people are not working for a long period of time, in any society, even a non-capitalist one, then that society will rapidly become dramatically materially poorer. We make choices to improve material conditions at possibly increased health risks all the time. Longevity is not the only metric for overall quality of life. I would happily accept some increased risk of my own death for the lockdown to be over. Correctly navigating the tradeoff requires figuring out how much increased risk of death is acceptable, not asserting that it’s zero.
- ebiester 6y ago
  It's not just Covid. If the hospitals are overwhelmed, that car accident you get into means you might not be able to get medical care, causing a small issue to become deadly. You may not be able to get treated for a heart attack. Further, we are seeing people still testing positive and having health problems over a month after first symptoms. If your entire supply chain is taken out, essential or not, you can end up with larger problems than when you started. If you think it's a problem that the meat packing plant has to close after a single case, wait until 75% of the plant is symptomatic. Finally, the solution is to have enough tests and contact tracing so that people can confidently open up, knowing that we can stop the rate of transmission. This shutdown should be used to prepare for a way we can safely reopen, a la South Korea.
- mdemare 6y ago
  Without a lockdown, most of the country will eventually be infected. NYC currently has 21000 excess deaths, so extrapolating that to the rest of the country would mean 21000*328M / 10M = 690,000 excess deaths. That's assuming that nobody else in NYC is going to die of Covid 19, even after lifting the lockdown, so this is an extremely conservative projection, and it's already close to 1M deaths. What's implausible about this? Is Covid 19 less lethal outside NYC? Can R remain below 1 anywhere in the country, without a lockdown?
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Sorry, you're right. I did the arithmetic wrong, thinking that 1M deaths would represent 3% of the population, instead of 0.3%. My mistake! The rest of my point still stands.
  - alexilliamson 6y ago
    I mean I agree it's plausible, but it also seems likely that it's more lethal in NYC because of population density.
    - mdemare 6y ago
      More infectious, sure? But more lethal? Why?

notfromhere 6y ago

It’s a false choice between the economy and people’s lives. The problem is that while labor economy was shut down, the financial system was not, so that rents and debts had to flow out of people that could not generate income, and the government has been ignoring the issue with nominal support. Not freezing debts/rents across the entire economy is how this whole thing spins into a depression

treis 6y ago
Every expense is someone else's income. Freezing debts/rents doesn't solve anything. It just shifts the burden. Ultimately we are losing the wealth that we otherwise would have generated. We are poorer and there's no way around that.
- vkou 6y ago
  Yes, it shifts the burden from people who work for a living, to people who's living is worked for by other people. The former are far more important, and numerous than the latter. I eat butter, I don't eat dividends.
  - treis 6y ago
    If you're a renter you live in a home that a landlord built or paid someone else to build. And if people stop paying rent then they stop paying people to build. Construction workers lose their jobs and our housing problems are made worse. And don't have any illusions about the rich losing here. Most units are owned by small time landlords who will be wiped out by a rent freeze. Those units will be gobbled up on the cheap by rich people that can borrow money at cheap rates.
    - vkou 6y ago
      > And if people stop paying rent then they stop paying people to build. Construction workers lose their jobs and our housing problems are made worse. So what? They've already stopped paying people to build. Construction workers have lost their jobs already. While having to keep paying their rent, or mortgage. This is a temporary disruption, and needs temporary, stop-gap measures to stop the bleeding. Nobody's advocating to stop all rents forever. > And don't have any illusions about the rich losing here. Most units are owned by small time landlords who will be wiped out by a rent freeze. 1. No, they aren't. Most units are owned by real estate companies. 2. Couple it with a mortgage freeze, and none of them will be wiped out. You can, in fact, kick this can up the hill until it hits the capital markets...

hyko 6y ago

The “lockdown” is a Fabian strategy; one of the goals is to preserve our ability to stage an economic comeback after the health crisis has been resolved. In the near term, the economy is toast no matter what we do (short of a well oiled contact tracing and isolating machine). This paper seems to suggest there isn’t really a tension between protecting people’s health and saving the economy: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 You are correct that the lockdown measures are a choice and not a natural consequence of the virus though.

bjustin 6y ago

Even if widespread shelter-in-place orders were not in effect, if the virus spread through a lot of the people in a town, you can bet that people wouldn't be going out as usual. Nobody* will be eating at restaurants if they hear dozens of people in town got sick while eating out and died because local hospitals are over capacity. *there's always somebody