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The plans to reopen the economy are scary

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Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#51

Post by IanDrake »

coliveira wrote: post #36

> Any feasible plan starts with massive testing, completely subsidized by the government. And yet just yesterday the president claimed we don’t need mass testing. This is something I've been saying from day 1: short of universal vaccination, the only way to get back to some form of normalcy is widespread testing of the population. Any government with some sense of reality would spend billions in testing, to avoid los…

Testing when?

When you have symptoms? Too late.

330 million people testing weekly? Not possible.

There is no realistic way to mass test everyone in a meaningful way.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#52

Post by wbl »

eloff wrote: post #42
coliveira wrote: post #36

> Any feasible plan starts with massive testing, completely subsidized by the government. And yet just yesterday the president claimed we don’t need mass testing. This is something I've been saying from day 1: short of universal vaccination, the only way to get back to some form of normalcy is widespread testing of the population. Any government with some sense of reality would spend billions in testing, to avoid los…

If they had just closed their borders earlier could this have all been avoided? Seems like that would have been a lot cheaper. Definitely border restrictions plus testing seems to be effective in keeping it out, see Taiwan. Once you get enough local transmission going then it didn't matter anymore. Every western country reacted too slowly in this regard.

A lot of trade goes over those borders, and it only takes a few cases on the wrong side. Sure if on 1 Jan the RoW had shut borders with china things might have gone ok.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#53

Post by siscia »

wbl wrote: post #46
siscia wrote: post #40

For how much I understand the need to lower the curve and reduce the R0 of the infection, I start to see also another argument. We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders. Again, since the quarantine started in my area I exist twice to buy groceries and that's all. So I understand the need and the importance of it. But should I really throw away on year of my life? Should…

Young people die also when the health system is overloaded.

Still much less than the elders and I am not sure what your comment means.

Again, what I am saying is that the lockdown punish purple differently, the most punished are the least affected by the virus itself

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#54

Post by frockington1 »

basch wrote: post #38

This will be a good chance for state governments to show how well they function and coordinate absent federal guidance. Maybe they will form their own federation to circumvent the current federations ineffectiveness. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/governors... That's at least one emergent non-California nation state coming to be. Maybe we could call it the Great States. Toronto can come too. https…

States shouldn't need federal guidance and should prefer not to receive it. Without federal oversight, states and municipalities can tailor policy to their own area

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#55

Post by superkuh »

siscia wrote: post #40

For how much I understand the need to lower the curve and reduce the R0 of the infection, I start to see also another argument. We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders. Again, since the quarantine started in my area I exist twice to buy groceries and that's all. So I understand the need and the importance of it. But should I really throw away on year of my life? Should…

>We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders.

No, we're pausing the life of everyone to protect everyone. If you overload the hospital systems then everyone dies. If you pause and keep things barely managable then mostly only old people die.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#56

Post by blargmaster33 »

coliveira wrote: post #36

> Any feasible plan starts with massive testing, completely subsidized by the government. And yet just yesterday the president claimed we don’t need mass testing. This is something I've been saying from day 1: short of universal vaccination, the only way to get back to some form of normalcy is widespread testing of the population. Any government with some sense of reality would spend billions in testing, to avoid los…

[dead]

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#57

Post by goostavos »

whatshisface wrote: post #37

He's saying that such-and-such is politically unviable, but that's what we were all saying about business shutdowns, too.

Yeah, turns out my fellow Americans are a lot more bark than bite about certain "inalienable rights" once when they got frightened and had some skin in the game.

Given how happy people are to report their fellow citizens for the infraction of peacefully assembling, I suspect they'll put up with a lot more are long as you tell them it'll keep the virus away.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#58

Post by siscia »

whatshisface wrote: post #49
siscia wrote: post #40

For how much I understand the need to lower the curve and reduce the R0 of the infection, I start to see also another argument. We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders. Again, since the quarantine started in my area I exist twice to buy groceries and that's all. So I understand the need and the importance of it. But should I really throw away on year of my life? Should…

This issue was addressed by the original UK policy that they about-faced on. Why? Because although it does not tend to kill young people, it does tend to put them in the hospital, and we cannot handle that many people in the hospital at once.

Still at much lower rate than the elders.

And what I am saying is that the lockdown punish different class of people very differently. And the most punished are the least affected by the virus itself.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#60

Post by DanielBMarkham »

As somebody who has been tracking and interested in this story since late January, the one thing I can without qualifications is that whatever seems true now will change in a few weeks' time.

In general the outlook has gotten better as the data got better and we were able to compare notes, although there have been some setbacks, too.

I don't think we'll ever, ever get back to "normal" as this is the pandemic we've been reading about and planning for over the last century. Nobody [alive today] has ever lived through something like this and it is bound to have lasting consequences.

But I would be cautious about reading long-term plans. I know everybody wants to know how the story ends, but people who have engaged in long-range planning over the last couple of months have consistently had to re-plan. I would expect that trend to continue. We don't know exactly what small changes might have large consequences. For instance, monitoring temperatures at points of entry and exist for all businesses could have a major effect, or forms of "frontier testing"

No doubt this is a period for the history books. We'll probably have to live through it to finally figure out how it's all going to end.

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