Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides] • Hacker News Board

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#211

Post by orasis » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:48 AM UTC

amluto wrote: post #192

senordevnyc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can be contagious before symptoms. And that’s also a very different strategy than testing everyone before they go into work each day. You’ll miss the vast majority of people if you just test people with symptoms.

Stopping every transmission isn’t necessary. We just need some way to drive R China’s approach (lots of temperature taking, testing everyone with a fever) might not eradicate the disease here, but it could keep it manageable until a vaccine is deployed.

Yes, you are the voice of reason! R of .9 is just fine. Pushing R to 0 is unnecessarily costly.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#212

Post by Rapzid » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:48 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #194

marta_morena_23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" then it’s likely that your business was running on a knifes edge and /any/ shock would have killed it." Welcome to... life? This is how America or even the world works. Most people live on knife's edge. One missed paycheck? Homelessness just got its greasy hands on you. Two missed paychecks? Go pack what you have left... Most business are not any different, especially those run by regular people. In my family we ha…

>They are destroying the middle class for some "theoretical" projection that might not even play out the way they think. What is guaranteed though is that businesses will die in troves and the economy and middle class with it. Look at the age of the people making the decisions. If you were 60+, unhealthy, and had the option of minimising your own risk of catching the disease by stopping the economy, you sure you woul…

The greatest outcome differentiator we have control over right now is whether or not a person can get adequate care or not. It seems like that can make a difference in the realm of points; big boy points.

Our top political leadership would not be left wanting for medical care if they needed it. Pelosi and McConnell are both in for keeping congress together in DC vs running and hiding at home. "Going down with the ship" so to speak.

Top marks for your cynicism. Low marks for the focus of it.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#213

Post by OGWhales » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:48 AM UTC

twmahna wrote: post #119

codingslave wrote: post #7

The stock market is largely collapsing because: 1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market. 2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit market…

1) Pretty sure you're misinformed on this point. The hedge fund sector that has gotten attention and partial blame for this meltdown is the risk-parity segment of hedge funds. These funds target a specific range of volatility, so when the market becomes wildly volatile they are forced to reduce their overall holdings. The entire risk-parity segment of the market is at most $400bn and they are levered 2-3x on average.…

As for your last point, there appears to be a black swan event quite regularly. It seems logical to prepare for this. Secondly, stock buy backs are often performed at horrible times simply because CEOs want to boost their own salary. This has repeatedly bitten them in the ass. This is what happens when short term gains are prioritized over long term strategy.

So my question is, when do we learn?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#214

Post by nostromo » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #157

testfoobar wrote: post #38

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

China's Red Cross supposedly advised Italy yesterday that 'total economic shutdown'[1] is the only way to contain the COVID-19 situation in the country now. It all comes to what part of the curve the country is now, the choice being total lockdown incl. economic shutdown vs aggressive testing. Considering US lapsed on aggressive measures in the beginning and that proper test kits are just being flown in from Italy[2]…

> total economic shutdown seems to be the only option left

That's quite the overreaction.

Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man).

99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...

To put it another way: most of the folks dying from COVID-19 were already dying. This disease is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Should we just give up on them? No! But instead of quarantining everyone, and sending us back to the stone age, we should work to quarantine these folks while the rest of us return to normalcy and build up our antibodies and herd immunity.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#215

Post by codingslave » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #50

codingslave wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are completely underestimating how much leverage and pumping there was on those companies, and how thats effecting us now. Companies dropping 75% because they might lose 3 months of revenue is not an expected outcome.

It really doesn't matter. If 20% of the economy is zeroed out because it's not safe under current conditions, the stock market will crash. Nothing you could have done beforehand, and no hobby-horse you've ridden for no matter how long, can fix that.

Nope. It does matter. The credit markets which deal with corporate debt could fail as a result. This will drag down the rest of the economy. The main issue is most people dont understand the contagion and risks taken on by the practices I laid out in my main post.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#216

Post by captain_crabs » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:50 AM UTC

captain_crabs wrote: post #177

unexaminedlife wrote: post #99

It's articles like this that really make me facepalm, shake my head and say "this isn't about whether America could survive this". America is the last of our concern. Almost ALL of the other countries on planet Earth have orders of magnitude LESS resources (in every sense of the word) than we do. Think about how likely those countries aren't going to fall into chaos. Their governments aren't equipped to deal with thi…

Part of the benefit of living in America is the fact America will put it's citizens first, no? I fail to see how putting the rest of the world before our own countrymen could at all work. To many, that would be viewed as betraying countrymen if we didn't handle it here first. I'd even posit that an America that's contained and controlled COVID-19 is better for the world than one that's not. I'm _not_ saying we should…

I'll drop into this more, because we might not be connecting on what layers we're talking about. I'm talking about immediate medical survival. If by "resources" you're talking about financial/economic support, then I could very much agree with an "everyone right away" approach.

I see the immediate health layer as subject to physical limitation, the economic layer subject to informational limitation. If by resources you mean money, then yes, I very much agree.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#217

Post by yibg » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

whb07 wrote: post #153

alistproducer2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1-3% is an average among all age groups. You clearly have not looked at the data. For example, in Italy the CFR is somewhere around 14% for elderly. Everyone else is lower such that the nominal death rate, being an average among all groups,.has been consistently running around 8%. Obviously when this matures that rate will go lower because the denominator will grow but the denominator that people care about is th…

Holy cow. Notice how everyone literally says “there’s not enough testing” but yet you’re able to rationalize the CFR as valid. What you see going to the hospital and getting tested CLEARLY is the most critical number of cases. It’s possible that for every person tested, there are 100 or more that are asymptomatic. Run some numbers on this “highly contagious” disease. Another point why we are in a fear bubble is that…

There can be a wide range of assumption. Anywhere from "all the people we know about are all that are infected" to "everyone else in the world is already infected".

Regardless, the death tolls kind of speak for themselves. What's more, the increase in death toll too. In Italy alone there are over 4000 dead, with a few hundred more a day now. Italy has a population of 60 million. Extrapolating even the current death count in Italy to the rest of the world, and that's 400k deaths. All indications are that it'll be higher than that uncontrolled.

Maybe people are overreacting. But in this case isn't it better to error on the side of caution? Otherwise by the time we realize we're wrong and millions are dying, what do we do then?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#218

Post by toast0 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #144

toast0 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the options are have a lockdown vs have a functioning economy and a bunch of sick people. Once hospitals start overflowing with this, you're not going to have a functioning economy anyway. If hospitals can get the supplies they need, and testing and health department capacity is there to do contact tracing, the lockdowns can loosen, and our economy can start back up. Bonus points if the warmer weather i…

>Once hospitals start overflowing with this, you're not going to have a functioning economy anyway. Is this true though? I'm not trying to be insensitive, but according to reports, ~15% of the infected need hospitalization, and the distribution of those people are mostly over 60[0]. Is having these people hospitalized on a large scale more detrimental to the economy than shutting everything down? Serious question. 0.…

Ok, so hospitals are going to be a mess, which causes all sorts of extra problems (routine issues become really bad, etc).

But also, if there's enough people sick enough to overwhelm the hospitals, your average workplace is going to have a bunch of people out sick, and that's going to be an issue. Plus, like everybody who is well is going to be out for the funerals of the old people.

Part of the reason my kid's school shut down before they were compelled to was that they were having trouble with staffing, because staff were sick or in the vulnerable groups. No school means less workers for other jobs too.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#219

Post by m_ke » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #149

m_ke wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

42% of Americans are obese, this will hit us a lot harder than Europe.

It's not like obesity isn't a problem in Europe, too. 25% is lower than 42%, sure, but it's still a lot.

We have way more morbidly obese people though http://ncdrisc.org/morbid-obesity-population-bubble.html

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#220

Post by nostromo » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

positr0n wrote: post #202

zaroth wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea isn’t testing everyone, every day. Neither is China. So there’s a middle ground here somewhere.

Neither country took the middle ground compared to where the US was when we finally started reacting. South Korea has been aggressively testing, contact chasing, and quarantining from day 1. Look at their number of tests per capita compared to ours. China did indeed shut down the entire economy for months for provinces containing 900M people iirc. In barely hit provinces they have teams of thousands of people doing a…

South Korea has tested 0.5% of their population by some accounts.

I mean, yes, that's great, but it's not as widespread as people are implying.