3 ms·

What continues to shock me about HN is how many people seem to think there's a choice between casualties and economic harm. The consensus among economists is t

by Seibai 6y ago

What continues to shock me about HN is how many people seem to think there's a choice between casualties and economic harm. The consensus among economists is that not having a lockdown would be worse for the economy than having one: http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/ http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-cr... The opportunity to avoid economic damage passed as soon as COVID-19 became pandemic. Ending lockdowns early will make economic harm worse. This exact same debate played out with the 1918 Flu, and regions that took more stringent measures for longer came out better economically: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "What continues to shock me about HN is how many people seem to think there's a choice between casualties and economic harm." That's a misrepresentation. Both sides understand that economic harm is guaranteed. The question is when the economic harm of quarantine-caused business collapses and job losses exceeds the economic harm of casualties. Personally, like most of HN, I'm fine with extending the quarantine but, being HNers, we can afford to weather the storm; the majority are not so fortunate. And even I don't think that the US can afford to have the quarantine last much longer than another month or two. I don't think the 1918 pandemic is necessarily good guidance for that since households were more self-sufficient then.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Personally, like most of HN, I'm fine with extending the quarantine but, being HNers, we can afford to weather the storm; the majority are not so fortunate. Polls show the vast majority of the population supports extending shelter-in-place, and (in polls where it gets broken out) that that support is stronger among the lower economic strata. Opposition, though weak everywhere, is stronger among people who worry about how their investment portfolio is doing. Some examples: https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/press-release/poll-8-in-10-americans-favor-strict-shelter-in-place-orders-to-limit-coronavirus-spread-and-most-say-they-could-continue-to-obey-such-orders-for-another-month-or-longer/ https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/press-release/poll-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/despite-scattered-protests-most-americans-support-shelter-in-place-reuters-ipsos-poll-shows-idUSKCN22336P https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/despite... https://www.chcf.org/blog/covid-19-tracking-poll-75-californians-support-shelter-place-as-long-as-needed/ https://www.chcf.org/blog/covid-19-tracking-poll-75-californ...
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    I don't disagree with any of that and, again personally, I hope the poll numbers stay that favorable. Nothing would delight me more than the public behaving in a sensible fashion. However, I also don't think the economic impact has truly started to bite into enough of the population hard enough yet. It will be interesting to see where those polls sit in a couple of months.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Polls show the vast majority of the population supports extending shelter-in-place, and (in polls where it gets broken out) that that support is stronger among the lower economic strata. Which totally makes sense to me. Those with lower economic status have less power, so if they want to shelter-in-place they have greater need for a government order to provide cover for their decision.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  I'm personally in favour of incremental re-openings in stages because today's tech and ability to co-ordinate gives us real data on their impact. There is a legitimate concern that the longer a hard lockdown/quarantine goes, the more ethically thorny it gets because authorities inadvertently accumulate the responsibility to prioritize the selective distribution of relief under the lockdown. That's when you get the revolts you're seeing in states today by people who are taking family losses and seeing them given to those they perceive as politically privileged groups. True or not, that perception is what drives people into the streets to protest.
- carapace 6y ago
  There are no "both sides" to a virus. > The question is when the economic harm of quarantine-caused business collapses and job losses exceeds the economic harm of casualties. The question is how to mitigate the harms.
- mcguire 6y ago
  "The question is when the economic harm of quarantine-caused business collapses and job losses exceeds the economic harm of casualties." The "casualties" are not the extent of the economic harm. Suppose a relaxing of the "quarantine" is followed by another large wave of cases, leading to panic, social unrest, and an emergency imposition of a more serious quarantine? As for me, I'm one of the at-risk populations; me and my wallet are mostly staying home for the foreseeable future. If that causes any economic harm, I'm sorry. But I would appreciate being able to get groceries (and book shipments) in the duration.
phkahler 6y ago
>> What continues to shock me about HN is how many people seem to think there's a choice between casualties and economic harm. It seems silly to me that people don't think that balance exists. The question isn't weather it exists, it's how do you calculate it. The human side is considered "easy" since they do keep an estimate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life The hard part in this case is projecting anything meaningful in terms of both number of people dead under different scenarios, and the economic losses. Both are super hard to estimate, but to think that kind of balance is somehow "immoral" is kinda short sighted. It's a form of the trolley problem. D-Day was known in advance to be a huge loss of life. People in places of power sometimes have enormous responsibility in no-win situations. We can hope that they have the right motives.
m0llusk 6y ago
That is a bit of an oversimplification. Lockdowns don't go on forever, so what we are considering are the criteria for ending. There are other mitigations already proven and more on the way. Currently distancing, handwashing, masks, testing, and contact tracing have shown significant ability to reduce flare ups. Additionally various drugs targeting either the virus or its interactions with humans are coming available and there is already one vaccine beginning trials. These lockdowns began when initial counts of infected and killed suggested and extremely high rate of infection. Since then we have come to understand that appearance of a high initial rate was in part caused by the virus escaping into the general population earlier than realized. Perhaps most important there is now data from populations not locking down, locking down modestly, locking down strictly, and ending lockdown and there is very little evidence that lockdowns are having a strong effect. It is long understood by virologists and epidemiologists that if an infectious agent spreads to the general population lockdowns cease to have a demonstrable positive effect.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  Source on the virus escaping into the population earlier than thought being a cause of high initial infection rate numbers? If you don't mind. I'm honestly curious
  - m0llusk 6y ago
    That is actually a difficult question to answer properly. At a high level I have been following COVID-19 through many sources, primarily summaries on University of California Television and Ivor Cummins on YouTube and then going from there to reading the most notable studies. It is fairly basic, though. If you look at early data we were going from just a few cases to many quite quickly and it makes sense that extrapolation from the first small numbers ended up being off.

by Seibai 6y ago

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

> "What continues to shock me about HN is how many people seem to think there's a choice between casualties and economic harm." That's a misrepresentation. Both sides understand that economic harm is guaranteed. The question is when the economic harm of quarantine-caused business collapses and job losses exceeds the economic harm of casualties. Personally, like most of HN, I'm fine with extending the quarantine but, being HNers, we can afford to weather the storm; the majority are not so fortunate. And even I don't think that the US can afford to have the quarantine last much longer than another month or two. I don't think the 1918 pandemic is necessarily good guidance for that since households were more self-sufficient then.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Personally, like most of HN, I'm fine with extending the quarantine but, being HNers, we can afford to weather the storm; the majority are not so fortunate. Polls show the vast majority of the population supports extending shelter-in-place, and (in polls where it gets broken out) that that support is stronger among the lower economic strata. Opposition, though weak everywhere, is stronger among people who worry about how their investment portfolio is doing. Some examples: https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/press-release/poll-8-in-10-americans-favor-strict-shelter-in-place-orders-to-limit-coronavirus-spread-and-most-say-they-could-continue-to-obey-such-orders-for-another-month-or-longer/ https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/press-release/poll-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/despite-scattered-protests-most-americans-support-shelter-in-place-reuters-ipsos-poll-shows-idUSKCN22336P https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/despite... https://www.chcf.org/blog/covid-19-tracking-poll-75-californians-support-shelter-place-as-long-as-needed/ https://www.chcf.org/blog/covid-19-tracking-poll-75-californ...
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  I don't disagree with any of that and, again personally, I hope the poll numbers stay that favorable. Nothing would delight me more than the public behaving in a sensible fashion. However, I also don't think the economic impact has truly started to bite into enough of the population hard enough yet. It will be interesting to see where those polls sit in a couple of months.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Polls show the vast majority of the population supports extending shelter-in-place, and (in polls where it gets broken out) that that support is stronger among the lower economic strata. Which totally makes sense to me. Those with lower economic status have less power, so if they want to shelter-in-place they have greater need for a government order to provide cover for their decision.
motohagiography 6y ago
I'm personally in favour of incremental re-openings in stages because today's tech and ability to co-ordinate gives us real data on their impact. There is a legitimate concern that the longer a hard lockdown/quarantine goes, the more ethically thorny it gets because authorities inadvertently accumulate the responsibility to prioritize the selective distribution of relief under the lockdown. That's when you get the revolts you're seeing in states today by people who are taking family losses and seeing them given to those they perceive as politically privileged groups. True or not, that perception is what drives people into the streets to protest.
carapace 6y ago
There are no "both sides" to a virus. > The question is when the economic harm of quarantine-caused business collapses and job losses exceeds the economic harm of casualties. The question is how to mitigate the harms.
mcguire 6y ago
"The question is when the economic harm of quarantine-caused business collapses and job losses exceeds the economic harm of casualties." The "casualties" are not the extent of the economic harm. Suppose a relaxing of the "quarantine" is followed by another large wave of cases, leading to panic, social unrest, and an emergency imposition of a more serious quarantine? As for me, I'm one of the at-risk populations; me and my wallet are mostly staying home for the foreseeable future. If that causes any economic harm, I'm sorry. But I would appreciate being able to get groceries (and book shipments) in the duration.

phkahler 6y ago

>> What continues to shock me about HN is how many people seem to think there's a choice between casualties and economic harm. It seems silly to me that people don't think that balance exists. The question isn't weather it exists, it's how do you calculate it. The human side is considered "easy" since they do keep an estimate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life The hard part in this case is projecting anything meaningful in terms of both number of people dead under different scenarios, and the economic losses. Both are super hard to estimate, but to think that kind of balance is somehow "immoral" is kinda short sighted. It's a form of the trolley problem. D-Day was known in advance to be a huge loss of life. People in places of power sometimes have enormous responsibility in no-win situations. We can hope that they have the right motives.

m0llusk 6y ago

That is a bit of an oversimplification. Lockdowns don't go on forever, so what we are considering are the criteria for ending. There are other mitigations already proven and more on the way. Currently distancing, handwashing, masks, testing, and contact tracing have shown significant ability to reduce flare ups. Additionally various drugs targeting either the virus or its interactions with humans are coming available and there is already one vaccine beginning trials. These lockdowns began when initial counts of infected and killed suggested and extremely high rate of infection. Since then we have come to understand that appearance of a high initial rate was in part caused by the virus escaping into the general population earlier than realized. Perhaps most important there is now data from populations not locking down, locking down modestly, locking down strictly, and ending lockdown and there is very little evidence that lockdowns are having a strong effect. It is long understood by virologists and epidemiologists that if an infectious agent spreads to the general population lockdowns cease to have a demonstrable positive effect.

shadowprofile77 6y ago
Source on the virus escaping into the population earlier than thought being a cause of high initial infection rate numbers? If you don't mind. I'm honestly curious
- m0llusk 6y ago
  That is actually a difficult question to answer properly. At a high level I have been following COVID-19 through many sources, primarily summaries on University of California Television and Ivor Cummins on YouTube and then going from there to reading the most notable studies. It is fairly basic, though. If you look at early data we were going from just a few cases to many quite quickly and it makes sense that extrapolation from the first small numbers ended up being off.