5 ms·

The title is just doublespeak. The article ends with the line: "At 12 weeks, he says, the benefits from a shutdown exceed the costs." The economy is a human in

The title is just doublespeak. The article ends with the line: "At 12 weeks, he says, the benefits from a shutdown exceed the costs." The economy is a human invention, there is nothing natural about it. You can't go on the safari and find a wild S&P500. These consistent demands in the media for a blood sacrifice is outrageous and dehumanizing to the people that have to suffer the consequences.

dkdk8283 6y ago
We will see a second wave of devastation in 6 months when foreclosures hit. We are fucked even if there isn’t a second infection uptick. The handling of this situation is a perfect demonstration of how the current political system fails us. Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument. The other half wants it to end so they can pay their bills. People are going to die. It can’t be helped.
- ekidd 6y ago
  > Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument. I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed. There are several states that are aiming for something like the South Korean solution: stay-at-home until the level of cases drops low enough that we can test mild symptoms, track contacts, and safely treat everyone who falls ill. This is literally the official proposal in my state, and we're relaxing the stay-at-home order now that the conditions are met. I won't pretend that this proposal will be easy to execute. IIRC, Seoul just re-closed all its bars after an infected partier visited four bars that hadn't been following the social distancing rules. As someone in my 40s, my risk of death is fairly low. But a substantial portion of hospitalized cases are younger people, and something like 30% of severe hospitalized cases are showing some loss of lung capacity, loss of kidney function, or micro-clotting with risk of stroke. I earn a living with my brain; stokes scare me. So you can reopen the economy all you want, but I'm not setting foot in a restaurant, movie theater, airplane or barbershop until I'm vaccinated (or recovered). Whenever possible, I'll be buying from merchants who offer curbside pickup or delivery. And I've been trying to support local merchants as much possible, including takeout from several local restaurants.
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    Great, you have the money to do it. Avoid risk. Humans have had a long successful streak without major devastation. That’s now changed. Being strong does matter. Being afraid in your palace doesn’t. Funny how history repeats itself.
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    > I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed. Eh, well, I personally would like the lock down to finally actually happen. Everyone prepare or get help to prepare and then actually have a lock down for 2-3 weeks and beat this virus. Instead we have this 1 friend meeting allowance and some non-essential businesses opening up or people acting incredibly selfish/stupid and doing parties, because they suffer oh so much from isolation. These are things, that drag a semi-lockdown waaay out and make it actually bad for businesses. It would be half as bad, if not less, if people had discipline and we had acted with strong lock down initially or at any point since then. I personally have not met with a single friend or person outside this household since the start of semi lock down here, with the exception of buying food, and do not plan to do so. I do not want to be the one responsible for bringing the virus into this household or giving it to anyone else. It might be easy for me as introverted or computer guy, but so what? Of course it will be harder for some other people! There are always differences. It's not like people could not survive 2-3 weeks actual lock down at home, when prepared properly and delivered food in emergency. We could have a state organized food delivery service for emergency cases, where people did not prepare sufficiently. We could also have avoided people buying too much of certain goods by simply starting out with lock down + purchase per person limitations at the same time. Another idea: Have a state supported fund for everyone who cannot work during lock down. Make it easy for the working from home population to support everyone else. Do not rely on private people organizing this themselves! I have yet to see the news announcement of there being some official place, organized by government, where I could donate part of my wage, so that people wgo cannot work currently due to the virus get some income. I have seen (and donated to) some private campaigns for gastronomy and similar, but not simply anything for trying to share wages. The point is, that we need to get back to a point, where tracing all the infections is possible again, fast. Only then we should loosen restrictions. We could be there already, with a little discipline and more government support for helping people instead of relying on private actions. ("Here" is Germany in this case.)
buzzkillington 6y ago
>The economy is a human invention, there is nothing natural about it. So is agriculture. And we are currently looking at 30 million deaths due to famine this year with what has been done so far. If we continue the lockdowns it will be a lot more. So the question is: are 3 million whites in their 70s worth 30 million people of color who are mostly children? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8300297/The-world-faces-mega-famines-impact-biblical-proportions-coronaviruS.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8300297/The-world-f...
- cma 6y ago
  > Even before the pandemic hit, parts of East Africa and South Asia were already facing severe food shortages caused by drought and the worst locust infestations for decades. Sounds like it isn't all caused by the pandemic. With the US essentially joining OPEC, maybe we could divert ethanol destined corn to famine relief.
- bad_user 6y ago
  The notion that only old people are affected is wrong. And hospitalization rate doesn't differ much between age groups, only fatality rate. And if the healthcare system breaks down due to number of cases, you start seeing a lot of young people dying too. So you'll get a significant percent of the workforce incapacitated, either because they get sick and need hospitalization, or because their parents or grandparents die. During such a pandemic the economy suffers anyway, because appetite for risk or for buying useless shit people don't need goes down. N.B. people often point at Sweden these days, as being in a not that bad situation, however note that the Swedes are very disciplined and many of them have isolated themselves voluntarily. Given their culture, their slightly optimistic scenario can't be easily replicated and the jury is still out anyway. And the comparison you're making is inhumane and possibly a false choice. We should strive to save both the "whites in their 70s" and the poor people of Africa.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > The notion that only old people are affected is wrong. Let's not read too much into a sentence that's not super nuanced. It's not only old people, but it's mostly old people and people with severe comorbidities. > And the comparison you're making is inhumane and possibly a false choice. We should strive to save both the "whites in their 70s" and the poor people of Africa. Yes, ideally we'll always save everyone. Unfortunately, the world is rarely ideal, so we often have to make choices. If two people need a lung transplant and we only have one, what do we do? There's one 80yo smoker and one otherwise healthy 20yo. Do we flip a coin?
bad_user 6y ago
While I'm a proponent of restrictions, your argument doesn't make much sense. It's irrelevant if the economy is human-made or a natural phenomenon, because it is nevertheless what keeps us fed and with a roof over our heads. There are indications that this depression is as bad as the Great Depression and might be even worse. It is true that there is no food shortage right now, but we might have one, at least from where I'm from, esp due to drought, which affected crops all over Europe. And guess what, during the Great Depression people starved to death. So if the restrictions continue, I sure hope there's a better plan in place other than taxing the living shit out of the middle class that still have jobs and pay their taxes. Because we all know that the money required to keep the unemployed from starving will not come from the rich.
- orbifold 6y ago
  Well you also can’t eat money. So at a certain point there just will not be any stuff to buy if the shutdown continues and people just get checks in the mail. That is magical thinking.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - culturestate 6y ago
    There is a reachable middle ground between "everyone stays home all the time" and "everyone goes back to work, consequences be damned." It requires close coordination between governments, widely available testing with quick turnarounds, and a mutual understanding that this is a serious situation and we all need to contribute by doing things like wearing a mask, being mindful of personal hygiene, and accommodating those who need space. The real unknown is whether we have the political and social will to get there.
- the-dude 6y ago
  What has a drought to do with the current COVID induced crisis?
- Barrin92 6y ago
deathgrips 6y ago
Are the human requirements for water, food, and shelter also a "human invention"? These needs are only fulfilled by a functioning economy.
- vkou 6y ago
  They can also be fulfilled by a half-functioning economy. There's no shortage of any of those things in the Western world.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > There's no shortage of any of those things in the Western world. Yet. And let's not talk about more advanced things that are also needed. Like medicine, transportation, power etc pp. "Hey, don't worry about the economy, we can always go back to how life was 300 years ago, we can easily do that with a fraction of the people". Ok, cool, but do you really want to live like that? Are you sure that everybody else wants to?
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    Are you sure about that? Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. These shortages can cascade throughout supply chains. The big one that no one seriously considers is people running out of money, and then their governments running out of money. It's hard to tax people who can't work.
    - vkou 6y ago
      > Are you sure about that? Yes, because plenty of economies that modern westerners would describe as grossly inefficient and half-functional, at best, have managed to provide all of those things over the past century. > Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. This is false. Consider reading the lists of essential businesses enumerated in the shutdown orders. Businesses that produce goods consumed by essential businesses are essential. > and then their governments running out of money. This is also false. Sovereigns that control their currencies cannot run out of money. Especially in a recession, when they have a lot more headroom to inflate[1] by borrowing printed money. A government is not a household, and its budget is not balanced like one. [1] During a recession, wealth is destroyed, and the money supply deflates. Deflation is bad. Deflation is incredibly bad. You can combat deflation by having your central bank cause inflation, by printing money, and lending it out - to the government.
didibus 6y ago
It does seem like we are in a strange situation where we can produce all essentials for everyone, and in fact, we can do so so efficiently that we don't need everyone in order to do so. Imagine a scenario where 5 people can provide for 10. It seems we are in such a scenario. But it used to be that the 5 essential workers would take the surplus of their production and give it to the other 5 non-essential workers in exchange for non-essential things like serving them a beer. Now that those activities are risky to the 5 who can provide, they don't want to catch Covid. As well as currently restricted by the governments themselves. The 5 who produce the essential in enough quantity for all 10 have no incentive to give their surplus away to the other 5. So logically, if it is true that we produce a surplus from people still employed which could cover all people no longer employed, then it seems all we need is to figure out how to self-organize in a new way, so the surplus are still being distributed to those who are not currently producing. And to find a way which does so while still allowing for social distancing and lockdowns and all that. This is the ideal, but I really doubt we will figure a way. Thus, the best way we know for now is the traditional economy, which requires people to continue to wilfully spend money on non-essentials. So somehow, we need to strike a balance between Covid protection and motivating and still enabling people to spend on non-essentials.
- js8 6y ago
  > The 5 who produce the essential in enough quantity for all 10 have no incentive to give their surplus away to the other 5. Maybe then, the other 5 should stop sitting on their asses and start contributing towards that "essential surplus". For example, they could divide the shifts in half and decrease the chances of getting COVID19 for everybody.
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    I imagine, that working in shifts actually increases chance of infection, because of aerosols and surface contamination. However, you are right, that it would be fairer to do that.
    - Izkata 6y ago
Gibbon1 6y ago
What's also telling is all these 'calculations' deny the public any agency. As if they aren't going to try and protect themselves unless the government forces them to. To believe that is insane. As a member of the public and old enough to have a good sense of mortality, I don't care what happens to anyone's paper wealth if it means I don't die of this. I'm not going to a movie, or a bar, or a concert. Not happening.

dkdk8283 6y ago

We will see a second wave of devastation in 6 months when foreclosures hit. We are fucked even if there isn’t a second infection uptick. The handling of this situation is a perfect demonstration of how the current political system fails us. Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument. The other half wants it to end so they can pay their bills. People are going to die. It can’t be helped.

ekidd 6y ago
> Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument. I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed. There are several states that are aiming for something like the South Korean solution: stay-at-home until the level of cases drops low enough that we can test mild symptoms, track contacts, and safely treat everyone who falls ill. This is literally the official proposal in my state, and we're relaxing the stay-at-home order now that the conditions are met. I won't pretend that this proposal will be easy to execute. IIRC, Seoul just re-closed all its bars after an infected partier visited four bars that hadn't been following the social distancing rules. As someone in my 40s, my risk of death is fairly low. But a substantial portion of hospitalized cases are younger people, and something like 30% of severe hospitalized cases are showing some loss of lung capacity, loss of kidney function, or micro-clotting with risk of stroke. I earn a living with my brain; stokes scare me. So you can reopen the economy all you want, but I'm not setting foot in a restaurant, movie theater, airplane or barbershop until I'm vaccinated (or recovered). Whenever possible, I'll be buying from merchants who offer curbside pickup or delivery. And I've been trying to support local merchants as much possible, including takeout from several local restaurants.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Great, you have the money to do it. Avoid risk. Humans have had a long successful streak without major devastation. That’s now changed. Being strong does matter. Being afraid in your palace doesn’t. Funny how history repeats itself.
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  > I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed. Eh, well, I personally would like the lock down to finally actually happen. Everyone prepare or get help to prepare and then actually have a lock down for 2-3 weeks and beat this virus. Instead we have this 1 friend meeting allowance and some non-essential businesses opening up or people acting incredibly selfish/stupid and doing parties, because they suffer oh so much from isolation. These are things, that drag a semi-lockdown waaay out and make it actually bad for businesses. It would be half as bad, if not less, if people had discipline and we had acted with strong lock down initially or at any point since then. I personally have not met with a single friend or person outside this household since the start of semi lock down here, with the exception of buying food, and do not plan to do so. I do not want to be the one responsible for bringing the virus into this household or giving it to anyone else. It might be easy for me as introverted or computer guy, but so what? Of course it will be harder for some other people! There are always differences. It's not like people could not survive 2-3 weeks actual lock down at home, when prepared properly and delivered food in emergency. We could have a state organized food delivery service for emergency cases, where people did not prepare sufficiently. We could also have avoided people buying too much of certain goods by simply starting out with lock down + purchase per person limitations at the same time. Another idea: Have a state supported fund for everyone who cannot work during lock down. Make it easy for the working from home population to support everyone else. Do not rely on private people organizing this themselves! I have yet to see the news announcement of there being some official place, organized by government, where I could donate part of my wage, so that people wgo cannot work currently due to the virus get some income. I have seen (and donated to) some private campaigns for gastronomy and similar, but not simply anything for trying to share wages. The point is, that we need to get back to a point, where tracing all the infections is possible again, fast. Only then we should loosen restrictions. We could be there already, with a little discipline and more government support for helping people instead of relying on private actions. ("Here" is Germany in this case.)

buzzkillington 6y ago

>The economy is a human invention, there is nothing natural about it. So is agriculture. And we are currently looking at 30 million deaths due to famine this year with what has been done so far. If we continue the lockdowns it will be a lot more. So the question is: are 3 million whites in their 70s worth 30 million people of color who are mostly children? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8300297/The-world-faces-mega-famines-impact-biblical-proportions-coronaviruS.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8300297/The-world-f...

cma 6y ago
> Even before the pandemic hit, parts of East Africa and South Asia were already facing severe food shortages caused by drought and the worst locust infestations for decades. Sounds like it isn't all caused by the pandemic. With the US essentially joining OPEC, maybe we could divert ethanol destined corn to famine relief.
bad_user 6y ago
The notion that only old people are affected is wrong. And hospitalization rate doesn't differ much between age groups, only fatality rate. And if the healthcare system breaks down due to number of cases, you start seeing a lot of young people dying too. So you'll get a significant percent of the workforce incapacitated, either because they get sick and need hospitalization, or because their parents or grandparents die. During such a pandemic the economy suffers anyway, because appetite for risk or for buying useless shit people don't need goes down. N.B. people often point at Sweden these days, as being in a not that bad situation, however note that the Swedes are very disciplined and many of them have isolated themselves voluntarily. Given their culture, their slightly optimistic scenario can't be easily replicated and the jury is still out anyway. And the comparison you're making is inhumane and possibly a false choice. We should strive to save both the "whites in their 70s" and the poor people of Africa.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > The notion that only old people are affected is wrong. Let's not read too much into a sentence that's not super nuanced. It's not only old people, but it's mostly old people and people with severe comorbidities. > And the comparison you're making is inhumane and possibly a false choice. We should strive to save both the "whites in their 70s" and the poor people of Africa. Yes, ideally we'll always save everyone. Unfortunately, the world is rarely ideal, so we often have to make choices. If two people need a lung transplant and we only have one, what do we do? There's one 80yo smoker and one otherwise healthy 20yo. Do we flip a coin?

bad_user 6y ago

While I'm a proponent of restrictions, your argument doesn't make much sense. It's irrelevant if the economy is human-made or a natural phenomenon, because it is nevertheless what keeps us fed and with a roof over our heads. There are indications that this depression is as bad as the Great Depression and might be even worse. It is true that there is no food shortage right now, but we might have one, at least from where I'm from, esp due to drought, which affected crops all over Europe. And guess what, during the Great Depression people starved to death. So if the restrictions continue, I sure hope there's a better plan in place other than taxing the living shit out of the middle class that still have jobs and pay their taxes. Because we all know that the money required to keep the unemployed from starving will not come from the rich.

orbifold 6y ago
Well you also can’t eat money. So at a certain point there just will not be any stuff to buy if the shutdown continues and people just get checks in the mail. That is magical thinking.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- culturestate 6y ago
  There is a reachable middle ground between "everyone stays home all the time" and "everyone goes back to work, consequences be damned." It requires close coordination between governments, widely available testing with quick turnarounds, and a mutual understanding that this is a serious situation and we all need to contribute by doing things like wearing a mask, being mindful of personal hygiene, and accommodating those who need space. The real unknown is whether we have the political and social will to get there.
the-dude 6y ago
What has a drought to do with the current COVID induced crisis?
Barrin92 6y ago

deathgrips 6y ago

Are the human requirements for water, food, and shelter also a "human invention"? These needs are only fulfilled by a functioning economy.

vkou 6y ago
They can also be fulfilled by a half-functioning economy. There's no shortage of any of those things in the Western world.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > There's no shortage of any of those things in the Western world. Yet. And let's not talk about more advanced things that are also needed. Like medicine, transportation, power etc pp. "Hey, don't worry about the economy, we can always go back to how life was 300 years ago, we can easily do that with a fraction of the people". Ok, cool, but do you really want to live like that? Are you sure that everybody else wants to?
- deathgrips 6y ago
  Are you sure about that? Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. These shortages can cascade throughout supply chains. The big one that no one seriously considers is people running out of money, and then their governments running out of money. It's hard to tax people who can't work.
  - vkou 6y ago
    > Are you sure about that? Yes, because plenty of economies that modern westerners would describe as grossly inefficient and half-functional, at best, have managed to provide all of those things over the past century. > Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. This is false. Consider reading the lists of essential businesses enumerated in the shutdown orders. Businesses that produce goods consumed by essential businesses are essential. > and then their governments running out of money. This is also false. Sovereigns that control their currencies cannot run out of money. Especially in a recession, when they have a lot more headroom to inflate[1] by borrowing printed money. A government is not a household, and its budget is not balanced like one. [1] During a recession, wealth is destroyed, and the money supply deflates. Deflation is bad. Deflation is incredibly bad. You can combat deflation by having your central bank cause inflation, by printing money, and lending it out - to the government.

didibus 6y ago

It does seem like we are in a strange situation where we can produce all essentials for everyone, and in fact, we can do so so efficiently that we don't need everyone in order to do so. Imagine a scenario where 5 people can provide for 10. It seems we are in such a scenario. But it used to be that the 5 essential workers would take the surplus of their production and give it to the other 5 non-essential workers in exchange for non-essential things like serving them a beer. Now that those activities are risky to the 5 who can provide, they don't want to catch Covid. As well as currently restricted by the governments themselves. The 5 who produce the essential in enough quantity for all 10 have no incentive to give their surplus away to the other 5. So logically, if it is true that we produce a surplus from people still employed which could cover all people no longer employed, then it seems all we need is to figure out how to self-organize in a new way, so the surplus are still being distributed to those who are not currently producing. And to find a way which does so while still allowing for social distancing and lockdowns and all that. This is the ideal, but I really doubt we will figure a way. Thus, the best way we know for now is the traditional economy, which requires people to continue to wilfully spend money on non-essentials. So somehow, we need to strike a balance between Covid protection and motivating and still enabling people to spend on non-essentials.

js8 6y ago
> The 5 who produce the essential in enough quantity for all 10 have no incentive to give their surplus away to the other 5. Maybe then, the other 5 should stop sitting on their asses and start contributing towards that "essential surplus". For example, they could divide the shifts in half and decrease the chances of getting COVID19 for everybody.
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  I imagine, that working in shifts actually increases chance of infection, because of aerosols and surface contamination. However, you are right, that it would be fairer to do that.
  - Izkata 6y ago

Gibbon1 6y ago

What's also telling is all these 'calculations' deny the public any agency. As if they aren't going to try and protect themselves unless the government forces them to. To believe that is insane. As a member of the public and old enough to have a good sense of mortality, I don't care what happens to anyone's paper wealth if it means I don't die of this. I'm not going to a movie, or a bar, or a concert. Not happening.