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

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

#151

Post by Vaslo » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

secondo wrote: post #133

mrfusion wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you’re presenting a False dilemma. Doing nothing isn’t the only alternative. Sweden is one example of a different approach.

Good luck. Sweden is a country which in large has an overwhelming trust in it's government and its intents. There is no part or cultural aspect of Sweden, which inherently believes it needs to arm itself to protect itself from its own government, and even less so as part of its constitution (grundlag)[1]. When told to behave in a certain way, Swedes will follow suit. Separately Sweden is also a country with an extens…

What is the “certain way” I’m supposed to behave? Sorry, I’ll listen to the governments perspective and weigh it like everything else. I don’t have a gun to defend against the government - I have it in case an individual who thinks they are entitled to my money and my resources get carried away and take it a step too far and try and take it by force.

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

#152

Post by ddingus » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #104

pmoriarty wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." It's far from pointless. Flattening the curve means a lot fewer people get sick all at once. That buys time for treatments and vaccines to be developed. It's also not nearly as overwhelming to…

Flattening the curve is justified to not overwhelm medical facilities, but the new coronavirus is so infectious I doubt we'll develop a vaccine before we achieve herd immunity. A lockdown until we develop a vaccine is economically impossible, as it's estimated to take at least a year. A vaccine will be useful for next year's coronavirus. Thankfully the actual death rate is lower than what the models projected. Antibo…

It is entirely possible. Econo locally, we will be revisiting how we handle risks and what acceptable margins are.

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

#153

Post by nradov » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #149

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…

> starvation abroad (due to local hoarding, which has begun) Is there any evidence that this could happen? I live in a small Northern European country and there have been absolutely no shortages of TP or food items here. Even at peak toilet paper demand, when I went to the supermarket one brand was sold out, but there were plenty of other brands available - the same happens if they have a promotion, so maybe it was j…

Any evidence? People were already starving in poor countries. Imposing lockdown measures makes the hunger situation worse. If you don't have food today then dying of an infection next week is the least of your concerns.

https://www.concernusa.org/story/worlds-ten-hungriest-countr...

Industrialized countries will have sufficient food for a while, but if major sectors of the economy are shut down for months then supply chains will break down and we'll start to see empty grocery shelves.

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

#154

Post by pengaru » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:09 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #86

lisper wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, because it's unlikely that 100% of the population will get infected. What disease has ever infected 100% of the population? None. Diseases hit an inflection point in spread, before they fall off. At any rate, how many people died in the wake of the Great Depression? World War 2 was indirectly caused by it. We lost 85 million people when the population was only 2 billion. And that's not even counting the people th…

> What disease has ever infected 100% of the population?

Most people are infected with some form of Herpes virus AIUI, from Chickenpox to Cold Sores, it's very common.

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

#155

Post by nradov » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

jklein11 wrote: post #61

redis_mlc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure here's the source. The 66% - 90% death rate on ventilators appears to be accurate but there's a lot of variance in the data and no rigorous studies yet.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Some-doctors-mov...

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

#156

Post by ajross » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #94

lisper wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems you’re presenting a False dilemma. Doing nothing isn’t the only alternative. Sweden is one example of a different approach.

Sweden has by far the worst outbreak in northern Europe, despite a later start than its neighbors. It's also has not apparently peaked yet, where the outbreaks in the rest of Europe have been flat for over a week now (and Italy has started shrinking). At the end of this, it's not at all clear that Sweden will have accomplished much of anything.

The visualization at https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ is IMHO the clearest to explore this stuff. It's based on the Johns Hopkins data set, which is relatively well curated.

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

#157

Post by jandrewrogers » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

three_seagrass wrote: post #64

blhack wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Federal government does not have the authority, it is expressly prohibited. What you think “should” have happened is literally impossible without dissolution of the US government. This is not remotely controversial, the Supreme Court has visited this many times. States are sovereign and autonomous entities for this purpose, same as for most things.

A surprisingly small number of Americans have any understanding of the structure of our government, a glaring failure of our education systems. It is no wonder that foreigners have so many misconceptions about the nature of US government given how few Americans understand it.

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

#158

Post by pengaru » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:17 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…

> What we fundamentally got wrong is that ventilators don't work in 66% - 90% of cases, so "flattening the curve" was largely pointless.

Use of ventilators coincides with severe cases, and up until this point we haven't learned enough about curing those infected with this virus to recover all such cases.

Why are you assuming the ventilator recovery rate is static?

We should assume that by "flattening the curve", we've bought valuable time to learn more about this virus, getting closer to better methods of recovery.

Ventilators will always play a role in keeping patients alive who've deteriorated to the point of requiring them.

I don't think anyone had the impression that ventilators cured anything, which your phrasing of "ventilators don't work" seems to imply.

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

#159

Post by nradov » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #60

Ididntdothis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure a lot of politicians are struggling with this decision right now.

Not really. Consensus from almost all countries is that you need to quarantine and shut down the economy in order to beat this. Those that believed that they could get around this with herd immunity are either paying a huge price (UK) or about to (Sweden). And those politicians that took hard measures actually have been rewarded (Australia) and those that didn't punished (UK, US).

We'll find out in a few weeks whether the herd immunity approach is effective by looking at what happens in the poorest countries. Some of them have minimal ability to lock down the economy or quarantine people due to lack of resources, dysfunctional healthcare systems, limited food reserves, and weak governments. So the virus is going to run its course regardless of what anyone wants. It's a tragic situation but there doesn't appear to be any alternative.

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

#160

Post by Exmoor » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

option wrote: post #121

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…

I think we should also view lockdown costs in life time lost. Hundreds of millions of people now lost a month or more of their lives

I did the math on this a few weeks ago because I was curious. My math was this: (Population x A) / (LifeExpectancyInYears x 365.25)

A is an unknown variable that equals the what amount of a day people consider as "lost" as a result of mandated lockdown. IE, if everyone considers each day they spend not able to go about their business as a day of their life completely lost than A would equal 1. I suppose some people could consider the cost of a day lost to mandated quarantine as greater than 1.

Anyway, by my calculations based on a US life expectancy of 77.5yrs (28,287.5 days) and a US population of 330 million then that puts the lifetimes lost per day at 11,666. Note, that's lifetimes lost. IE, as if 11,666 babies were born each day, but instead of living the their full life expectancy they all immediately died.

edit: Markdown ate my asterisk symbol and \ doesn't work as an escape character apparently? Changed asterisks to x and the x variable to A.