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Turns out lockdowns aren’t free, even if you just don’t compensate businesses.
by tinus_hn 6y ago
Turns out lockdowns aren’t free, even if you just don’t compensate businesses.
- ketzu 6y agoWas "lockdowns are free" a serious position held by a relevant number of people?
- adav 6y agoI've not heard any British politicians say that lockdowns are free but I have heard the Chancellor say that any borrowing at the moment is cheap due to low interest rates.
- Guthur 6y agoNo, but no one could truly quantify the cost. The same was true for Covid at the beginning, no one could quantify how bad it actually would be with wild figures in the 5%+ mortality rate. So we screamed for shutdown. Problem though is that now it's very much clear that Covid was nowhere near that level of mortality, still bad but not the doomsday scenario. Now we we'll have to see what the cost of maintaining the reaction to the initial Covid doomsday estimation; with lockdowns and short term shoring of the economy through fiat currency production.
- mrfusion 6y agoLives over stock market was a big thing on the media.
- tinus_hn 6y agoI’m sure these 13.5 million people in the US, who now can’t afford food anymore, wouldn’t have been such enthusiastic lockdown supporters had they realized they would pay the price themselves.
- itsumoiru 6y agoThe most enthusiastic lockdown supporters are unlikely to be the ones that can't afford food now. Much more likely to be people reading HN or writing for the NYT.
- tinus_hn 6y agoThe mainstream masses were supporters, definitely not limited to niches like you mention.
- __s 6y agoLockdowns aren't free, but neither would ignoring the pandemic be. There's no way to avoid the cost Looking back at the Spanish Flu, https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-pandemic-1918-spanish-flu-economic-impact-mit-study-20200402.html https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covi... showed that lockdowns ended up being cheaper than no lockdowns Unfortunately the ruling class will always find a way to trickle down costs, so it's no surprise that the poorer you are the more impacted you are. With or without lockdown "I am once again asking for your financial support" meme for tax payers bailing out megacorp bonuses yet again
- tinus_hn 6y agoGreat statistics on a disease 5 times as fatal that raged a century ago in a world that no longer exists.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoThe costs of ignoring the pandemic are very country-dependent. In countries whose economies are based on extraction of natural resources, only a fairly small amount of people are needed to run the extraction and export sector. All the other tens of millions of people living in that country have bluntly been called things like "superfluous population" by thinktanks. That small workforce maintaining the economy is little affected by a disease like COVID with its median death age of ~80. Also, it was believed that COVID presented a threat to the broader economy because it could overwhelm the healthcare system, preventing the broader workforce from accessing treatment. However, one approach is to triage COVID victims, denying them hospital beds so that those beds remain available for the broader population. Liability or elected officials’ sensitivity to accusations of "letting grandma die" prevented some countries from implementing this triaging, but other countries could.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoThis article is primarily about inflation in developing nations like Indonesia. The inflation in countries like the United States is much lower (around 3% on food compared to 1.5% overall inflation). Ironically, some of that inflation is due to increased demand for goods providing more demand for shipping services due to lockdown. People had a lot more money to save or spend during lockdown (personal savings rates spiked upward), so shipping prices are inflating due to demand. Food is often shipped, so these inflation costs are partially from shipping costs.