Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says • Hacker News Board

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#61

Post by jklein11 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #50

swsieber wrote: post #32

At what point does fallout from trying to avoid covid-19 deaths cause more deaths than covid-19. We're talking domestic violence, starvation abroad (due to local hoarding, which has begun), and actual crop failure (due to a shortage of transient labor). There's also suicide, depression, etc. I'm not even saying let up on all the social distancing measures. I think social distancing measures are good, but perhaps over…

It already happened. The West will be litigating unpaid rent, etc. for the next decade since there aren't enough court rooms. What we fundamentally got wrong is that ventilators don't work in 66% - 90% of cases, so "flattening the curve" was largely pointless and distracted leaders from low-tech solutions like quarantine centers and palliative care. We should have learned that in 2002 from SARS-1, but nobody even see…

do you have sources for this

>What we fundamentally got wrong is that ventilators don't work in 66% - 90% of cases

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#62

Post by chroem- » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

alephnan wrote: post #17

baby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The increase we’ve seen in the last two weeks make zero sense to me. It’s almost making me lose trust in the market as I feel like it’s rigged. We’re in a complete state of unknown, nobody knows when this will be over, unemployment raises like crazy, the US now realizes that coronavirus is hitting them the hardest...

It’s rigged insofar that maybe people have insider information we don’t

There's no downside risk. The USG and Fed will do everything in their power to keep us in a continuous state of "numbers go up." Borrowed billions of dollars to buy your own stock, and now you're underwater? Don't worry! We'll bail you out.

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#63

Post by lisper » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #50

swsieber wrote: post #32

At what point does fallout from trying to avoid covid-19 deaths cause more deaths than covid-19. We're talking domestic violence, starvation abroad (due to local hoarding, which has begun), and actual crop failure (due to a shortage of transient labor). There's also suicide, depression, etc. I'm not even saying let up on all the social distancing measures. I think social distancing measures are good, but perhaps over…

It already happened. The West will be litigating unpaid rent, etc. for the next decade since there aren't enough court rooms. What we fundamentally got wrong is that ventilators don't work in 66% - 90% of cases, so "flattening the curve" was largely pointless and distracted leaders from low-tech solutions like quarantine centers and palliative care. We should have learned that in 2002 from SARS-1, but nobody even see…

Quarantine doesn't work unless you know who is potentially contagious. The fact that covid-19 is contagious in asymptomatic people and we don't have good testing makes it impossible to isolate the virus without shutting down the economy.

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#64

Post by three_seagrass » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #43

andbberger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US's response could not be described as anything even approaching competent. This is still just getting started. Let's check back in a few months and see how this comment has aged...

What should the US have done that other countries are doing? We closed travel early, we started closing businesses early, and we hold daily press conferences with multiple medical and financial experts that are directly informing the entire population of what measures they should be taking. edit: it seems like the general response to "what should we have done" is "the federal government should have shut down travel/b…

The federal government should have enacted stay at home measures.

By leaving it up to the states, it's been bungled and the covid outbreak is lasting longer and killing more people. This leads to stay at home needing extensions and a further drain on the economy.

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#65

Post by ajross » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

swsieber wrote: post #32

At what point does fallout from trying to avoid covid-19 deaths cause more deaths than covid-19. We're talking domestic violence, starvation abroad (due to local hoarding, which has begun), and actual crop failure (due to a shortage of transient labor). There's also suicide, depression, etc. I'm not even saying let up on all the social distancing measures. I think social distancing measures are good, but perhaps over…

Your question presumes that if we stop "trying to avoid covid-19 deaths" that we'll experience what we're seeing now.

We won't. US case load stopped growing about 5 days ago because of the mitigation effort. Prior to that, it was doubling every 3-4 days. So just in the immediately verifiable present, there are 2-3 thousand people alive today in the US who wouldn't have been had we not locked down.

That's just today. Let the virus run rampant and you get to the doomsday scenarios that everyone likes to scream about.

The point is that the mitigations are working, and because they are working we have a good measure of how much worse the pandemic could be. And it could be really, really bad.

If you have a better plan, it needs to be proposed and justified. But "let's not do this because of other causes of death" doesn't work, numerically.

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#66

Post by dang » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #21

noway421 wrote: post #6

'Market learned to smooth out crises, because so many happened' is now least true than ever.

Let's check how non-capitalistic countries do after the crisis, for good measure.

Please don't take HN threads further in a generic ideological direction. That leads to the night in which all cows are black and all threads the same.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#67

Post by monocasa » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #43

andbberger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US's response could not be described as anything even approaching competent. This is still just getting started. Let's check back in a few months and see how this comment has aged...

What should the US have done that other countries are doing? We closed travel early, we started closing businesses early, and we hold daily press conferences with multiple medical and financial experts that are directly informing the entire population of what measures they should be taking. edit: it seems like the general response to "what should we have done" is "the federal government should have shut down travel/b…

How about not making the states big against each other for medical supplies?

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#68

Post by aianus » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #46

swsieber wrote: post #32

At what point does fallout from trying to avoid covid-19 deaths cause more deaths than covid-19. We're talking domestic violence, starvation abroad (due to local hoarding, which has begun), and actual crop failure (due to a shortage of transient labor). There's also suicide, depression, etc. I'm not even saying let up on all the social distancing measures. I think social distancing measures are good, but perhaps over…

If you assume a mortality rate of 1% (which is probably in the ballpark) then you can expect 75 million deaths without intervention. So far world-wide we've had about 95,000 deaths. So doing nothing would result in about 700 times as many deaths as have occurred so far. I'd say it's probably to soon to throw in the towel.

IMF says 500 million people worldwide who were out of poverty will or have returned to poverty because of the recession.

IMF poverty line is Edit: it was Oxfam that published the report to inform the IMF and World Bank at their meeting next week

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#69

Post by ardit33 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #38

baby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The increase we’ve seen in the last two weeks make zero sense to me. It’s almost making me lose trust in the market as I feel like it’s rigged. We’re in a complete state of unknown, nobody knows when this will be over, unemployment raises like crazy, the US now realizes that coronavirus is hitting them the hardest...

My wild-ass-guess is that many companies can go into hibernation of some type. Furlough enough staff, take some government aid, stop wearing out tools, stop consuming raw materials. If you're a car manufacturer, for example, sure you have _some_ costs rights now with production lines stopped, but just how much?

There is your answer: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/volkswagen-is-burning-over-%...

VW, is burning 2bill a month in cash, just by sitting idle.... Furloughing can save maybe %20 of the costs.

A lot of the fixed recurring costs (costs and obligations that keep going even if you are not producing anything) make at least 30% of the producing value....

So, just for VW, if it sits idle for 6 months it will cost 12 Billion dollars.....

That's just one example, but there plenty of companies with the same spot. They can absorb few months of this situation, but after that all bets are off.

Re: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

#70

Post by threeseed » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #50

swsieber wrote: post #32

At what point does fallout from trying to avoid covid-19 deaths cause more deaths than covid-19. We're talking domestic violence, starvation abroad (due to local hoarding, which has begun), and actual crop failure (due to a shortage of transient labor). There's also suicide, depression, etc. I'm not even saying let up on all the social distancing measures. I think social distancing measures are good, but perhaps over…

It already happened. The West will be litigating unpaid rent, etc. for the next decade since there aren't enough court rooms. What we fundamentally got wrong is that ventilators don't work in 66% - 90% of cases, so "flattening the curve" was largely pointless and distracted leaders from low-tech solutions like quarantine centers and palliative care. We should have learned that in 2002 from SARS-1, but nobody even see…

Not sure what you're talking about here. In Australia for example we are flattening the curve and the measures are working. And we simply passed laws to protect the interests of landlords and renters so there won't be some explosion in litigation.

And just letting hundreds of thousands of people die alone, on the streets or in the homes and with no proper burial or funeral is not something people will tolerate. It would be like dropping everyone in the middle of a war zone.