5 ms·

With this mindset and approach the US will continue to have 20 million + unemployed all the way through Christmas.

by eiji 6y ago

Symmetry 6y ago
I don't think that people are going to hurry to go back to restaurants while the pandemic is active, official lockdown or not.
- guscost 6y ago
  If anyone knows how to get a small dose of SARS-CoV-2 in a controlled manner today, please let me know. I'm not joking, I want this thing done as soon as possible, and I'm healthy enough where it's no problem. Sign up for challenge trials if you want to get in line: https://1daysooner.org https://1daysooner.org
- sershe 6y ago
  Or maybe they will? https://time.com/5834087/shanghai-disneyland-sellout/ https://time.com/5834087/shanghai-disneyland-sellout/
draw_down 6y ago
Well, that, plus people will get sick and die
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  If no lockdown happened, critical workers would have become sick and/or died, critical systems would have started failing - temporarily, but it's still not a good look when there's panic buying and no food in the stores - and a significant number of people would have stayed at home anyway. Plus bodies. So many bodies. They would have skewed older, but it's completely wrong to say this is a disease of the over-70s. There are a lot of people of working age who barely survived infection and now have semi-permanent or possibly permanent - no one knows yet - lung damage. The idea that we could have somehow managed this without any economic damage is pure fantasy. It has no absolutely foundation in reality.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    It may be wrong to say this is a disease of the over-70s, but it's not wrong to say that it's a killer of over-70s and the sick. Most critical workers are not over 70, and most do not have long-term health issues. So yes, there was always going to be economic damage. But that doesn't meant there would have been nearly this much.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
iso947 6y ago
Yup. Maybe it’s time to change our measure f a successful economy. Are enough people working to generate enough stuff for people to live?
- irishcoffee 6y ago
  In short, no. Food infrastructure and supply chains are on the edge of a knife. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/05/04/usda-buy-470-million-dollars-produce-234388 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/...
- steveeq1 6y ago
  But you can say that about anything. The flu kills tends of thousands of people in the US every year.
erokar 6y ago
This is more a fact than a mindset.
alistairSH 6y ago
What mindset? That preserving life is more palatable than making money? I'm ok with that. I'd rather be unemployed than dead.
- MrFantastic 6y ago
  The mindset that we can avoid all risk by staying in lockdown is wrong. The most at risk are people over 70. They already have a 6%+ percent chance of dying every year.
  - bkor 6y ago
    The lockdown is to lower the curve, not to prevent all risk. Maybe your government said something different. In Netherlands it's about ensuring that the hospitals can still cope. Loads of procedures have been postponed so that they could deal with Corona. The press in Netherlands showed the different ways of communicating a "lockdown". Though the actions were often similar, the way it was worded to the public differed quite a bit across countries. E.g. France talked about "going to war" (or something similar, cannot recall exactly). Spain and Italy both had different ways of announcing the same. Trying to only protect/lock down people in a risk group (70+, plus overweight / lung problems) seems not to have worked. The virus spread already quickly despite a lockdown for all. It'll probably spread more quickly if that wasn't the case.
- dustingetz 6y ago
  > Coronavirus pandemic will cause global famines of 'biblical proportions,' UN warns ... the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation. > "While dealing with a Covid-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic," David Beasley told the UN's security council. "There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself." source: google "covid19 famine"
- makomk 6y ago
  If unemployment is better than death, why stop at doing this for Covid-19? For example, the flu kills quite a lot of people each year, and even though Covid-19 is somewhat more deadly that's counterbalanced by the fact that stronger, longer measures are required to stop it. Why not shut down parts of the economy every flu season? (I've generally seen this kind of not one life argument go hand in hand with the idea that Covid-19 cannot be compared to any other cause of death, for obvious reasons.)
Michael_Murray 6y ago
With that mindset, you’ll have a few million dead people (who are not contributing to the economy) by Christmas. Nobody who’s talking “reopening” is thinking about the drain on our society that so many dead will be. This is not a mutually exclusive choice, but “YOLO” isn’t a good risk management theory.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  > With that mindset, you’ll have a few million dead people (who are not contributing to the economy) by Christmas. Guess what? Those few million? They won't be contributing to the economy either way, even without the coronavirus - because approximately all of them are over 70. This virus takes the old and the sick. So yes, a lot of people talking about reopening have assessed how much economic damage that 500,000-3,000,000 deaths would cause - and it's not much. Arguably, it's negative due to reduced health care costs. There's a lot of reasons to avoid killing off our old and infirm. But economics is generally not one of them.

With this mindset and approach the US will continue to have 20 million + unemployed all the way through Christmas.

by eiji 6y ago

With this mindset and approach the US will continue to have 20 million + unemployed all the way through Christmas.

I don't think that people are going to hurry to go back to restaurants while the pandemic is active, official lockdown or not.

guscost 6y ago
If anyone knows how to get a small dose of SARS-CoV-2 in a controlled manner today, please let me know. I'm not joking, I want this thing done as soon as possible, and I'm healthy enough where it's no problem. Sign up for challenge trials if you want to get in line: https://1daysooner.org https://1daysooner.org
sershe 6y ago
Or maybe they will? https://time.com/5834087/shanghai-disneyland-sellout/ https://time.com/5834087/shanghai-disneyland-sellout/

draw_down 6y ago

Well, that, plus people will get sick and die

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
If no lockdown happened, critical workers would have become sick and/or died, critical systems would have started failing - temporarily, but it's still not a good look when there's panic buying and no food in the stores - and a significant number of people would have stayed at home anyway. Plus bodies. So many bodies. They would have skewed older, but it's completely wrong to say this is a disease of the over-70s. There are a lot of people of working age who barely survived infection and now have semi-permanent or possibly permanent - no one knows yet - lung damage. The idea that we could have somehow managed this without any economic damage is pure fantasy. It has no absolutely foundation in reality.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  It may be wrong to say this is a disease of the over-70s, but it's not wrong to say that it's a killer of over-70s and the sick. Most critical workers are not over 70, and most do not have long-term health issues. So yes, there was always going to be economic damage. But that doesn't meant there would have been nearly this much.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

iso947 6y ago

Yup. Maybe it’s time to change our measure f a successful economy. Are enough people working to generate enough stuff for people to live?

irishcoffee 6y ago
In short, no. Food infrastructure and supply chains are on the edge of a knife. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/05/04/usda-buy-470-million-dollars-produce-234388 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/...
steveeq1 6y ago
But you can say that about anything. The flu kills tends of thousands of people in the US every year.

erokar 6y ago

This is more a fact than a mindset.

alistairSH 6y ago

What mindset? That preserving life is more palatable than making money? I'm ok with that. I'd rather be unemployed than dead.

MrFantastic 6y ago
The mindset that we can avoid all risk by staying in lockdown is wrong. The most at risk are people over 70. They already have a 6%+ percent chance of dying every year.
- bkor 6y ago
  The lockdown is to lower the curve, not to prevent all risk. Maybe your government said something different. In Netherlands it's about ensuring that the hospitals can still cope. Loads of procedures have been postponed so that they could deal with Corona. The press in Netherlands showed the different ways of communicating a "lockdown". Though the actions were often similar, the way it was worded to the public differed quite a bit across countries. E.g. France talked about "going to war" (or something similar, cannot recall exactly). Spain and Italy both had different ways of announcing the same. Trying to only protect/lock down people in a risk group (70+, plus overweight / lung problems) seems not to have worked. The virus spread already quickly despite a lockdown for all. It'll probably spread more quickly if that wasn't the case.
dustingetz 6y ago
> Coronavirus pandemic will cause global famines of 'biblical proportions,' UN warns ... the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation. > "While dealing with a Covid-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic," David Beasley told the UN's security council. "There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself." source: google "covid19 famine"
makomk 6y ago
If unemployment is better than death, why stop at doing this for Covid-19? For example, the flu kills quite a lot of people each year, and even though Covid-19 is somewhat more deadly that's counterbalanced by the fact that stronger, longer measures are required to stop it. Why not shut down parts of the economy every flu season? (I've generally seen this kind of not one life argument go hand in hand with the idea that Covid-19 cannot be compared to any other cause of death, for obvious reasons.)

Michael_Murray 6y ago

With that mindset, you’ll have a few million dead people (who are not contributing to the economy) by Christmas. Nobody who’s talking “reopening” is thinking about the drain on our society that so many dead will be. This is not a mutually exclusive choice, but “YOLO” isn’t a good risk management theory.

DuskStar 6y ago
> With that mindset, you’ll have a few million dead people (who are not contributing to the economy) by Christmas. Guess what? Those few million? They won't be contributing to the economy either way, even without the coronavirus - because approximately all of them are over 70. This virus takes the old and the sick. So yes, a lot of people talking about reopening have assessed how much economic damage that 500,000-3,000,000 deaths would cause - and it's not much. Arguably, it's negative due to reduced health care costs. There's a lot of reasons to avoid killing off our old and infirm. But economics is generally not one of them.