4 ms·

While recessions are normal, I don't think this one will be. There are some major changes happening in the world that are permanent. For instance, the Brookings

While recessions are normal, I don't think this one will be. There are some major changes happening in the world that are permanent. For instance, the Brookings Institute estimates that Long Covid has already taken up to 4 million Americans out of the workforce. If we continue at that pace (~2M a year), then by 2025 we'll have 5% of our workforce too disabled to work, and many more workers impacted by reduced functionality, or by caretaking responsibilities. In this sense it will be much different from your average recession. Add to that the other demographic changes as Baby Boomers age out of the workforce, and we're going to have a labor shortage for the next several decades at least. Some people with Long Covid can still work, but their brain fog makes them unable to work in their former capacity. So any job that involves a very high-functioning brain -- from coding to surgery to piloting an aircraft -- may become extremely hard to fill as time goes on.

tmountain 4y ago
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but there are a lot of assumptions baked into your analysis. Particularly, around long covid recovery times and that trend continuing. Also, what percentage of that cohort makes up “skilled labor”? I hate the term, but you get the idea…
- Arete314159 4y ago
  You're right, I'm making a lot of assumptions. OP asked each person for their opinion, not a crystal ball with 100% accuracy, I gave mine. That said, I've been a reluctant member of the disability community for several decades, and I can also state that ME/CFS has a heckuva lot of overlap with Long Covid. The disabled community has called a lot of the things that have happened this entire pandemic, while 'experts' have gotten a lot of things wrong. I'm telling you what all the disabled people, who have been right this entire time, are saying: a lot of businesses are on the verge of collapse, because of long covid and other covid-related reasons (like, getting burned out from getting covid 3 times a year). Go to a subreddit for nurses and see how things really are. Go to a subreddit for teachers. Our hospitals are going to collapse, I predict in a few years, if we don't change course. Our schools are going to buckle under this strain. How functional is an economy with a 36 hour wait to get in the ER and terrible educational options? What happens when all the flight attendants, teachers, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, waiters, cooks, and so on either get too sick or too burnt out and quit en masse? That's why I'm saying it's not just "a recession," it's that plus...a whole lot of other huge economic issues. I understand if you think this makes me sound alarmist. But, FYI, when I lived in NYC and I warned that our laissez faire attitude to the air at Ground Zero was going to give thousands of people cancer, I was also called alarmist. As Sarah Kendzior says, it's a sin to be right too early.
  - t0bia_s 4y ago
    "Go to a subreddit for nurses and see how things really are. Go to a subreddit for teachers." Go out, in real life and you'll see that it is not that bad as media, full of emotions and sensations, told you.
    - Arete314159 4y ago
      FYI, telling a disabled person to get out more is not a great look. That said, the places I do get out to -- medical facilities -- are the places I've been talking about. In the red state I used to live in, I saw tons of unmasked or poorly-masked healthcare workers, many of whom had had covid. In the blue state I now live in, healthcare facilities are understaffed, and it's only getting worse. I repeat: if the question is about how to profit (or at least not lose) in the upcoming economic climate, one way to do that is to understand that healthcare, transit, education, and other in-person workforces will be severely stressed. I don't know how to make money on that, but at least you have the full picture.
      - t0bia_s 4y ago
        Where are you living? Sorry about that, but disabled or not, it doesn't change whats going on in real life. What is wrong with unmasked healthcare workers?
        Arete314159 4y ago
        The latest studies show that being vaccinated only reduces the risk of Long Covid by something like 20%. So while the vaccine is good for reducing acute sequelae -- much less hospitalization -- it's not doing that much for the folks who have a seemingly mild case, feel fine after a couple weeks, go back to work....and then 3 months down the line they start feeling awful. Brain scans of folks with Long Covid are showing brain shrinkage. PET scans are showing many areas of the brain affected. The only prevention for Long Covid is not getting Covid, and that's still mostly achieved the old-fashioned way with a combination of high-quality masks, ventilation, and air fitration. The Texas Infectious Disease clinic has been using elastomeric respirators for years with their TB patients -- that's honestly the standard all healthcare workers should be using right now.
- Arete314159 4y ago
  Thank you for asking a question about Long Covid recovery times. This article goes into more detail than I can in just one post: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/mecfs-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-doctors-long-covid/671518/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/mecfs-chr... But the TL;DR is: - Long Covid is for many sufferers, MECFS plus some extra issues like breathing problems and organ damage - MECFS is one of the most disabling illnesses out there, with some of the least-good treatment options - Some folks with either illness improve with time, but many do not, especially because there really aren't treatments right now except for rest - The level of brain fog is so severe people often become aphasic and disoriented. So it's not only that brain surgeons will have to stop doing surgery. It's that people working at an ice cream shop may not be able to count change. Severity varies by individual of course. And finally, at the beginning of the pandemic we were hearing about the concept of "hybrid immunity" -- that basically, getting covid was good for you, because it made you extra immune to getting it again. As time has gone on though, it appears the opposite is true. Each infection has the potential to age / deplete T cells, making a person less immune not only to another round of Covid, but to a variety of infections. So a lot of mild diseases that maybe before were kept in check and had an R0 of .95 will, with a more immune-compromised populace, turn into having an R0 of 1.15 or something. People in general will be sicker, longer, than before, with a variety of ailments, because Covid is harming their immune systems.
throw0101a 4y ago
> While recessions are normal, I don't think this one will be. So this time it's different? You may be interested in the book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly: > Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6372440-this-time-is-different https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6372440-this-time-is-dif...
- Arete314159 4y ago
  Sometimes things happen that change dynamics for generations or longer. The Black Plague changed worker-employer dynamics because of the shortage of workers. Software has made plenty of professions obsolete. etc. In this particular time, there are in my opinion some extra gnarly risks that most people aren't talking about.

tmountain 4y ago

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but there are a lot of assumptions baked into your analysis. Particularly, around long covid recovery times and that trend continuing. Also, what percentage of that cohort makes up “skilled labor”? I hate the term, but you get the idea…

Arete314159 4y ago
You're right, I'm making a lot of assumptions. OP asked each person for their opinion, not a crystal ball with 100% accuracy, I gave mine. That said, I've been a reluctant member of the disability community for several decades, and I can also state that ME/CFS has a heckuva lot of overlap with Long Covid. The disabled community has called a lot of the things that have happened this entire pandemic, while 'experts' have gotten a lot of things wrong. I'm telling you what all the disabled people, who have been right this entire time, are saying: a lot of businesses are on the verge of collapse, because of long covid and other covid-related reasons (like, getting burned out from getting covid 3 times a year). Go to a subreddit for nurses and see how things really are. Go to a subreddit for teachers. Our hospitals are going to collapse, I predict in a few years, if we don't change course. Our schools are going to buckle under this strain. How functional is an economy with a 36 hour wait to get in the ER and terrible educational options? What happens when all the flight attendants, teachers, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, waiters, cooks, and so on either get too sick or too burnt out and quit en masse? That's why I'm saying it's not just "a recession," it's that plus...a whole lot of other huge economic issues. I understand if you think this makes me sound alarmist. But, FYI, when I lived in NYC and I warned that our laissez faire attitude to the air at Ground Zero was going to give thousands of people cancer, I was also called alarmist. As Sarah Kendzior says, it's a sin to be right too early.
- t0bia_s 4y ago
  "Go to a subreddit for nurses and see how things really are. Go to a subreddit for teachers." Go out, in real life and you'll see that it is not that bad as media, full of emotions and sensations, told you.
  - Arete314159 4y ago
    FYI, telling a disabled person to get out more is not a great look. That said, the places I do get out to -- medical facilities -- are the places I've been talking about. In the red state I used to live in, I saw tons of unmasked or poorly-masked healthcare workers, many of whom had had covid. In the blue state I now live in, healthcare facilities are understaffed, and it's only getting worse. I repeat: if the question is about how to profit (or at least not lose) in the upcoming economic climate, one way to do that is to understand that healthcare, transit, education, and other in-person workforces will be severely stressed. I don't know how to make money on that, but at least you have the full picture.
    - t0bia_s 4y ago
      Where are you living? Sorry about that, but disabled or not, it doesn't change whats going on in real life. What is wrong with unmasked healthcare workers?
      - Arete314159 4y ago
        The latest studies show that being vaccinated only reduces the risk of Long Covid by something like 20%. So while the vaccine is good for reducing acute sequelae -- much less hospitalization -- it's not doing that much for the folks who have a seemingly mild case, feel fine after a couple weeks, go back to work....and then 3 months down the line they start feeling awful. Brain scans of folks with Long Covid are showing brain shrinkage. PET scans are showing many areas of the brain affected. The only prevention for Long Covid is not getting Covid, and that's still mostly achieved the old-fashioned way with a combination of high-quality masks, ventilation, and air fitration. The Texas Infectious Disease clinic has been using elastomeric respirators for years with their TB patients -- that's honestly the standard all healthcare workers should be using right now.
Arete314159 4y ago
Thank you for asking a question about Long Covid recovery times. This article goes into more detail than I can in just one post: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/mecfs-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-doctors-long-covid/671518/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/mecfs-chr... But the TL;DR is: - Long Covid is for many sufferers, MECFS plus some extra issues like breathing problems and organ damage - MECFS is one of the most disabling illnesses out there, with some of the least-good treatment options - Some folks with either illness improve with time, but many do not, especially because there really aren't treatments right now except for rest - The level of brain fog is so severe people often become aphasic and disoriented. So it's not only that brain surgeons will have to stop doing surgery. It's that people working at an ice cream shop may not be able to count change. Severity varies by individual of course. And finally, at the beginning of the pandemic we were hearing about the concept of "hybrid immunity" -- that basically, getting covid was good for you, because it made you extra immune to getting it again. As time has gone on though, it appears the opposite is true. Each infection has the potential to age / deplete T cells, making a person less immune not only to another round of Covid, but to a variety of infections. So a lot of mild diseases that maybe before were kept in check and had an R0 of .95 will, with a more immune-compromised populace, turn into having an R0 of 1.15 or something. People in general will be sicker, longer, than before, with a variety of ailments, because Covid is harming their immune systems.

throw0101a 4y ago

> While recessions are normal, I don't think this one will be. So this time it's different? You may be interested in the book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly: > Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6372440-this-time-is-different https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6372440-this-time-is-dif...

Arete314159 4y ago
Sometimes things happen that change dynamics for generations or longer. The Black Plague changed worker-employer dynamics because of the shortage of workers. Software has made plenty of professions obsolete. etc. In this particular time, there are in my opinion some extra gnarly risks that most people aren't talking about.