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Zoom and Gloom

economist.com

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Re: Zoom and Gloom

#41

Post by Spivak »

staplers wrote: post #37
grillvogel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this deadly virus the deadly virus with the extremely high survival rate? >maybe we are going to have to change our definition of normal no we won't. things returned to normal after much more serious pandemics. people are already realizing the risks of this virus were oversold and starting to move on.

> extremely high survival rate COVID-19 is (so far) about 10x-20x deadlier than the common flu which we have vaccines for and approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu which is considered the deadliest in modern history. What is your basis for "extremely high survival rate"?

I guess people see ~2% death rate and assume that's low?

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#42

Post by floren »

staplers wrote: post #37
grillvogel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this deadly virus the deadly virus with the extremely high survival rate? >maybe we are going to have to change our definition of normal no we won't. things returned to normal after much more serious pandemics. people are already realizing the risks of this virus were oversold and starting to move on.

> extremely high survival rate COVID-19 is (so far) about 10x-20x deadlier than the common flu which we have vaccines for and approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu which is considered the deadliest in modern history. What is your basis for "extremely high survival rate"?

> approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu

Approaching half of 17-50 million dead?

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#43

Post by grillvogel »

staplers wrote: post #37
grillvogel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this deadly virus the deadly virus with the extremely high survival rate? >maybe we are going to have to change our definition of normal no we won't. things returned to normal after much more serious pandemics. people are already realizing the risks of this virus were oversold and starting to move on.

> extremely high survival rate COVID-19 is (so far) about 10x-20x deadlier than the common flu which we have vaccines for and approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu which is considered the deadliest in modern history. What is your basis for "extremely high survival rate"?

covid has killed 25 million people?

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#44

Post by grillvogel »

Spivak wrote: post #38
grillvogel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this deadly virus the deadly virus with the extremely high survival rate? >maybe we are going to have to change our definition of normal no we won't. things returned to normal after much more serious pandemics. people are already realizing the risks of this virus were oversold and starting to move on.

I don't think people were ever arguing that the virus is particularly deadly. Like ~2% death rate is really really high for a flu but it's not the black plague or anything. If you're a young-ish healthy adult with a normal immune system then (statistically speaking) quarantine likely didn't benefit you at all. The thing that makes COVID novel is that it's extremely contagious. Your part in quarantining is not spreadi…

our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself, and the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met.

where is your 2% number coming from? CDC estimates the infection fatality ratio as: 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#45

Post by rossdavidh »

Ah, yes, the excellent track-record of predicting the long-term effects of unexpected shocks for which there is little data in recent decades.

I'm sure there are going to be some long-term effects. I don't know what they will be. Neither does the Economist.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#46

Post by howlgarnish »

Spivak wrote: post #38
grillvogel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this deadly virus the deadly virus with the extremely high survival rate? >maybe we are going to have to change our definition of normal no we won't. things returned to normal after much more serious pandemics. people are already realizing the risks of this virus were oversold and starting to move on.

I don't think people were ever arguing that the virus is particularly deadly. Like ~2% death rate is really really high for a flu but it's not the black plague or anything. If you're a young-ish healthy adult with a normal immune system then (statistically speaking) quarantine likely didn't benefit you at all. The thing that makes COVID novel is that it's extremely contagious. Your part in quarantining is not spreadi…

It's not 2%. The WHO currently pegs IFR at 0.5-1%, and that's heavily tilted towards known risk groups, particularly the elderly.

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating...

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#47

Post by vhiremath4 »

Some context: I am the CTO/co-founder of a company which has been remote-first since the beginning (one of our cultural values is "remote first") and has taken on the notoriously difficult hybrid approach of some folks working distributed and some on-site (in San Francisco). We've done this because our video messaging tool actually powers 100's of 1000's of remote teams around the world, and we knew we had to have structure and processes that resembled remote work if we were going to have deep empathy for the power users in our user base.

In practice, this has typically netted out to ~40-60% of our work force being on-site or distributed/remote (e.g. at times 40% on-site/60% remote or 60% on-site and 40% remote).

Some important things we've noticed:

1. Of the people who work on-site, many choose to work from home a couple days every week because of the cut down on commute, because they need to go heads down without any distractions whatsoever, or because they need to take an easier day and mix in errands. All of these points are totally legitimate, and I've found the productivity of our team is actually super high compared to full on-site teams.

2. When we absorbed any portion of our team, our communication processes ended up having to be remote-first, or we would see attrition/morale drop in the remote team members. This seems so obvious in retrospect, but I don't think a lot of the companies who will choose to do hybrid truly realize this.

3. People who have been working remote before the pandemic hit have universally said remote absolutely sucks given the current situation and they can't wait for things to return to normal. The normal they are talking about is still working remote.

I'm not dropping in this comment to beat the drum of "remote solves all problems", but I can confidently say remote is here to stay (or at least some form of it) in most technology companies. In practice, this means those companies will need to set up their processes to be remote-first or they will see attrition of some of their top talent.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#48

Post by Dylan16807 »

grillvogel wrote: post #44
Spivak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people were ever arguing that the virus is particularly deadly. Like ~2% death rate is really really high for a flu but it's not the black plague or anything. If you're a young-ish healthy adult with a normal immune system then (statistically speaking) quarantine likely didn't benefit you at all. The thing that makes COVID novel is that it's extremely contagious. Your part in quarantining is not spreadi…

our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself, and the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met. where is your 2% number coming from? CDC estimates the infection fatality ratio as: 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

> our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself

That can happen from failure or from success. The far more important comparison is response vs. what the virus would have done without that response.

> the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met

Criteria like what? The only one I've seen is trying to get the rate of spread down and we really haven't managed that.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#49

Post by Dylan16807 »

floren wrote: post #42
staplers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely high survival rate COVID-19 is (so far) about 10x-20x deadlier than the common flu which we have vaccines for and approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu which is considered the deadliest in modern history. What is your basis for "extremely high survival rate"?

> approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu Approaching half of 17-50 million dead?

"We" is the United States here, right?

> In the U.S., about 28% of the population of 105 million became infected, and 500,000 to 850,000 died (0.48 to 0.81 percent of the population).[129][130][131]

We're pretty close to half of 500k.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

grillvogel wrote: post #44
Spivak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people were ever arguing that the virus is particularly deadly. Like ~2% death rate is really really high for a flu but it's not the black plague or anything. If you're a young-ish healthy adult with a normal immune system then (statistically speaking) quarantine likely didn't benefit you at all. The thing that makes COVID novel is that it's extremely contagious. Your part in quarantining is not spreadi…

our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself, and the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met. where is your 2% number coming from? CDC estimates the infection fatality ratio as: 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

> our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself,

That’s not a bad thing. A bad thing would be if our response caused more harm that the additional harm the virus would have caused but for the response, but that it caused more than it allowed the virus to cause is not a problem.

> and the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met.

No, they haven't. It's true that both the restrictions in place in some jurisdictions and the criteria for step down have been revised based on better understanding of the virus and associated activity-related risks, but that's not the same thing (and has resulted in loosening of some restrictions directly and easing of some criteria, as well as tightening other a restrictions and criteria.) But they haven't moved in response to meeting preexisting criteria.

You think we should just ignore new information ?

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