3 ms·

A breakdown of mortality by age group and prior health conditions shows that not everyone is equally at risk.

ggm 6y ago
Do you have good insight into the effect on the economy of randomly killing a high percentage of type-2 diabetes? I know we like to ideate the poor into this state, but have you considered the effect on the economy, if the supersize-me generation at large in the economy at all levels suddenly took a king-hit?
- logicchains 6y ago
  We can roughly estimate this from the effects of the 1918 flu, which killed way more people, and killed healthy, working age people. The overall effect on GDP was tiny compared to the effect we're seeing from the lockdowns.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Two totally different economies. People will self-lockdown much more extensively today. Economies were much more local 100 years ago. GDP is also a meaningless metric when measured in currency, and is anyway antithesis of lockdown/war times. Sweden didn't lockdown but is still hit hard economically, and is more isolated today than surrounding countries.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  No, but I have insight into a failure to test and trace. It means we get to herd immunity whether you like it or not.
hedora 6y ago
Rule of thumb: Catching COVID doubles your chance of dying this year. This rule lines up with age group and preexisting condition groups surprisingly well. It underestimates the death rate of older people, but is within a factor of two. It drastically over-estimates the death rate for children. Corollary 1: If we do nothing, then hospitals and morgues will have to absorb a year worth of cases in about 2 months. Obviously, that’s a big problem. Corollary 2: COVID will reduce life expectancies by much less than 6 months (actually, less than one month). I suspect we could increase life expectancies in the US by much more than 6 months if we spent $3T on something other than the shutdown.
- nkurz 6y ago
  I think your rule of thumb is correct, but I don't see how this implies your corollaries. I think Corollary 1 assumes 100% infection at T_0, which is clearly not true. It's debatable what the correct curve would look like, but even in the worst do-nothing case I don't think it could possibly be this steep. I don't understand the logic for Corollary 2. Even if we assume Corollary 1 (which I'd argue we shouldn't) why would uniformly doubling the average death rate reduce life expectancy by less than 1 month? I can't say for sure that it wouldn't, but I don't think the math is obvious. Could you flesh this out? Your final sentence seems possible, depending on what "much more" means, but I'd like to see more proof. Adding $3T would be equivalent to doubling current US health care spending.

ggm 6y ago

Do you have good insight into the effect on the economy of randomly killing a high percentage of type-2 diabetes? I know we like to ideate the poor into this state, but have you considered the effect on the economy, if the supersize-me generation at large in the economy at all levels suddenly took a king-hit?

logicchains 6y ago
We can roughly estimate this from the effects of the 1918 flu, which killed way more people, and killed healthy, working age people. The overall effect on GDP was tiny compared to the effect we're seeing from the lockdowns.
- loopz 6y ago
  Two totally different economies. People will self-lockdown much more extensively today. Economies were much more local 100 years ago. GDP is also a meaningless metric when measured in currency, and is anyway antithesis of lockdown/war times. Sweden didn't lockdown but is still hit hard economically, and is more isolated today than surrounding countries.
redis_mlc 6y ago
No, but I have insight into a failure to test and trace. It means we get to herd immunity whether you like it or not.

hedora 6y ago

Rule of thumb: Catching COVID doubles your chance of dying this year. This rule lines up with age group and preexisting condition groups surprisingly well. It underestimates the death rate of older people, but is within a factor of two. It drastically over-estimates the death rate for children. Corollary 1: If we do nothing, then hospitals and morgues will have to absorb a year worth of cases in about 2 months. Obviously, that’s a big problem. Corollary 2: COVID will reduce life expectancies by much less than 6 months (actually, less than one month). I suspect we could increase life expectancies in the US by much more than 6 months if we spent $3T on something other than the shutdown.

nkurz 6y ago
I think your rule of thumb is correct, but I don't see how this implies your corollaries. I think Corollary 1 assumes 100% infection at T_0, which is clearly not true. It's debatable what the correct curve would look like, but even in the worst do-nothing case I don't think it could possibly be this steep. I don't understand the logic for Corollary 2. Even if we assume Corollary 1 (which I'd argue we shouldn't) why would uniformly doubling the average death rate reduce life expectancy by less than 1 month? I can't say for sure that it wouldn't, but I don't think the math is obvious. Could you flesh this out? Your final sentence seems possible, depending on what "much more" means, but I'd like to see more proof. Adding $3T would be equivalent to doubling current US health care spending.