4 ms·

> New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Germany have done it without herd immunity or a vaccine with a variety of strategies. We should follow their ex

> New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Germany have done it without herd immunity or a vaccine with a variety of strategies. We should follow their examples and stop using various forms of “American Exceptionalism” as an excuse to not learn from them. Two of those are islands, one might as well be and the other two are Vietnam and Germany. Vietnam is very interesting. There is a strong chance of Vietnam being a prime area to study the cross-reactive T-cells due to the previous experience with SARS. Furthermore, besides dickhead in chief, I don't believe most people made any sort of exceptionalism claim. The USA is a massive nation experiencing several outbreaks at once. The EU just happened to all have their outbreaks around the same time. We can't compare _just_ the results of each nation and rank the response. We need to look at demographics, density, cultural aspects, interconnectedness etc. >Print the money. It’s short term and there’s already massive demand and supply shocks that will only get worse if the pandemic isn’t curved. No. This has never been, and never will be, a sound economic strategy in anything but the most extreme of examples. Also, the pandemic _is_ flattened. Remember we were supposed to have millions dead by now had we done nothing. We did flatten it (too much, probably) and now it is curving up, but still not at the rate that was first feared. But this gets in to a different debate. I have made this point elsewhere in my comment history if you are interested in my opinion. > believe Canada and some countries in Europe are doing this through an employer-based grants, where the government subsidizes wages to keep them on the payroll. Whether this is ultimately desirable is up for debate, but the companies are going to be screwed with in terms of productivity (and everything else) if this ravages the US labor force. How to do it equitably? Just let the parents/caregivers decide for themselves. Most relationships are not like that. This would almost universally fall upon women to put their careers on hold. This has been researched and reported widely. We did a similar thing with PPP and it saved many jobs. It was a terrible implementation and corrupt as fuck. But it did save many jobs. But again, someone has to pay the piper and don't keep swooning over the nonsense that is Modern Monetary Theory.

snowwrestler 6y ago
National deficit spending is the appropriate and correct tool to finance national emergencies. This is not "Modern Monetary Theory," it is basic government finance. We financed every war in the 20th century this way, as well as the responses to major financial shocks.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  The parent said "print the money" which very much is MMT. Bonds/other debts are a different discussion and we very much are deficit spending right now to combat this.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    If you understand how deficit spending works to counter emergencies, then why did you even ask your question #2 above? It seems like you are moving goalposts.
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      Because UBI is fundamentally different than most deficit spending. It actively injects cash into circulation as opposed to kick-starting economic activity which leads to increased spending/circulation. UBI has not ever been tested at a large scale, and we have no reason to believe it will work. The last thing we need in this fragile economy is inflation. And UBI without increasing revenue will cause inflation, no way around that.
claudeganon 6y ago
I don’t know how to respond to this because a lot of it is simply counter factual. We haven’t flattened the curve, we have several uncontrolled outbreaks raging in the US, no reasonable forecasters were predicting millions dead by this time, instead of speculating about special Vietnamese immune characteristics, we can just do what they did with mask wearing, lockdowns, contract tracing, etc and see if it works. I see also no consideration of Germany. Ideological opposition to MMT is fine, I guess, but that’s not really a rebuttal or explanation of how allowing the disease to ravage the labor force won’t be worse, let alone in anyway moral, given its disproportionate impact on the poor and minorities. There are always tough choices with caring for kids, but even paying a caregiver to stay home would be more equitable than the status quo (where this already happens as largely uncompensated labor).
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  It isn't counter factual. We flattened the curve! Why did we not have outbreaks in Florida three months ago? Because we had flattened the curve! The naughty truth that the brigade of curve flatteners failed to mention early on is that as soon as mitigation strategies are let up, the cases would skyrocket. This is exactly what is happening. Flatten the curve is, was and will continue to be a pipe dream. The virus will win. It will infect _n_ people until it reaches _x_ saturation and burn out. Or we get a vaccine and distribute it to artificially help it reach _x_ faster. That is the only way out of this. What did you expect when a population with little prior exposure locked down for three months and then unlocked? They would be protected by their good intentions? You are making an assumption that this would ravage the labor force. Not to be glib, but unless your country has a labor force primarily comprised of 75+ year old workers, no labor force is getting ravaged by this disease. Yes, people will get sick. Some will die. Some will die from loneliness. In the time it took me to write this, hundreds of children died of preventable disease the world over. Some died of starvation. Some of lack of access to clean water. A woman was just murdered and another killed her lover, probably, somewhere. We can't ever have zero risk and to advertise otherwise is irresponsible at best. Also please note, the poor and minority people that you are claiming to protect through blunt force lockdowns are actually the ones still working. Still butchering your meat, picking your fruits, delivering your Amazon order and washing your apartment complex. And the poor who aren't lucky enough to still be in work and in debt, falling further behind and face the least amount of economic security in 100 years. Let people decide what is best for them, you have no moral authority to claim righteousness in your cause and disparage mine. Please, don't accuse me being counter-factual unless you want to counter my facts. Yes, I left Germany out. Germany is interesting. There are some theories around about that, but I am not well versed enough on them to comment, so I didn't include it. Well caught. I apologize for not blindly speculating and instead passing it over. Finally, we were already told that mitigation saved two million lives: https://www.cato.org/blog/did-mitigation-save-two-million-lives https://www.cato.org/blog/did-mitigation-save-two-million-li... so the corollary is that had we not mitigated, two million would be dead. And the Imperial College model really did estimate that much. Though they didn't give such a precise timeline: https://www.cato.org/blog/how-one-model-simulated-22-million-us-deaths-covid-19 https://www.cato.org/blog/how-one-model-simulated-22-million... And lets not forget the folks at the UW: A different, data-driven model from researchers at the University of Washington predicts “about 1 million cases in the U.S. by the end of the epidemic, around the first week in June, with new cases peaking in mid-April,” said UW applied mathematician Ka-Kit Tung, who led the work. “By the first week of June, we project that the number of new cases will be close to zero if current social distancing policies are maintained.” That model predicted two weeks ago that the number of new daily cases would peak around now, as seems to be the case. (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-shouldnt-guide-policies-critics-say/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-mod...). Again in that model, nobody ever talked about what comes next. I will tell you. More cases. Or immunity. One of those two.

snowwrestler 6y ago

National deficit spending is the appropriate and correct tool to finance national emergencies. This is not "Modern Monetary Theory," it is basic government finance. We financed every war in the 20th century this way, as well as the responses to major financial shocks.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
The parent said "print the money" which very much is MMT. Bonds/other debts are a different discussion and we very much are deficit spending right now to combat this.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  If you understand how deficit spending works to counter emergencies, then why did you even ask your question #2 above? It seems like you are moving goalposts.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    Because UBI is fundamentally different than most deficit spending. It actively injects cash into circulation as opposed to kick-starting economic activity which leads to increased spending/circulation. UBI has not ever been tested at a large scale, and we have no reason to believe it will work. The last thing we need in this fragile economy is inflation. And UBI without increasing revenue will cause inflation, no way around that.

claudeganon 6y ago

I don’t know how to respond to this because a lot of it is simply counter factual. We haven’t flattened the curve, we have several uncontrolled outbreaks raging in the US, no reasonable forecasters were predicting millions dead by this time, instead of speculating about special Vietnamese immune characteristics, we can just do what they did with mask wearing, lockdowns, contract tracing, etc and see if it works. I see also no consideration of Germany. Ideological opposition to MMT is fine, I guess, but that’s not really a rebuttal or explanation of how allowing the disease to ravage the labor force won’t be worse, let alone in anyway moral, given its disproportionate impact on the poor and minorities. There are always tough choices with caring for kids, but even paying a caregiver to stay home would be more equitable than the status quo (where this already happens as largely uncompensated labor).

salmon30salmon 6y ago
It isn't counter factual. We flattened the curve! Why did we not have outbreaks in Florida three months ago? Because we had flattened the curve! The naughty truth that the brigade of curve flatteners failed to mention early on is that as soon as mitigation strategies are let up, the cases would skyrocket. This is exactly what is happening. Flatten the curve is, was and will continue to be a pipe dream. The virus will win. It will infect _n_ people until it reaches _x_ saturation and burn out. Or we get a vaccine and distribute it to artificially help it reach _x_ faster. That is the only way out of this. What did you expect when a population with little prior exposure locked down for three months and then unlocked? They would be protected by their good intentions? You are making an assumption that this would ravage the labor force. Not to be glib, but unless your country has a labor force primarily comprised of 75+ year old workers, no labor force is getting ravaged by this disease. Yes, people will get sick. Some will die. Some will die from loneliness. In the time it took me to write this, hundreds of children died of preventable disease the world over. Some died of starvation. Some of lack of access to clean water. A woman was just murdered and another killed her lover, probably, somewhere. We can't ever have zero risk and to advertise otherwise is irresponsible at best. Also please note, the poor and minority people that you are claiming to protect through blunt force lockdowns are actually the ones still working. Still butchering your meat, picking your fruits, delivering your Amazon order and washing your apartment complex. And the poor who aren't lucky enough to still be in work and in debt, falling further behind and face the least amount of economic security in 100 years. Let people decide what is best for them, you have no moral authority to claim righteousness in your cause and disparage mine. Please, don't accuse me being counter-factual unless you want to counter my facts. Yes, I left Germany out. Germany is interesting. There are some theories around about that, but I am not well versed enough on them to comment, so I didn't include it. Well caught. I apologize for not blindly speculating and instead passing it over. Finally, we were already told that mitigation saved two million lives: https://www.cato.org/blog/did-mitigation-save-two-million-lives https://www.cato.org/blog/did-mitigation-save-two-million-li... so the corollary is that had we not mitigated, two million would be dead. And the Imperial College model really did estimate that much. Though they didn't give such a precise timeline: https://www.cato.org/blog/how-one-model-simulated-22-million-us-deaths-covid-19 https://www.cato.org/blog/how-one-model-simulated-22-million... And lets not forget the folks at the UW: A different, data-driven model from researchers at the University of Washington predicts “about 1 million cases in the U.S. by the end of the epidemic, around the first week in June, with new cases peaking in mid-April,” said UW applied mathematician Ka-Kit Tung, who led the work. “By the first week of June, we project that the number of new cases will be close to zero if current social distancing policies are maintained.” That model predicted two weeks ago that the number of new daily cases would peak around now, as seems to be the case. (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-shouldnt-guide-policies-critics-say/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-mod...). Again in that model, nobody ever talked about what comes next. I will tell you. More cases. Or immunity. One of those two.