451–460 of 499 posts
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social distancing is the cancelation of conferences (google canceled theirs), not having sporting events (italy), not sending kids to school, etc, etc.
I see this phrase used to describe maintaining a larger personal space, like one or two meters, which is what I had in mind.
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Aren’t the hospitalization rates something like ~20% according to the main study that came out of China? Also, the cruise ship cases aren’t all resolved outcomes yet. Edit: link to China study summary below, but including it top-level here as well. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720...
>Aren’t the hospitalization rates something like ~20% according to the main study that came out of China? Yes, but the reason why the Diamond Princess is interesting is that we know exactly how many of them got infected. We don't know that about any other population.
Also consider my point that many, many of these cases are unresolved. Whereas the China study, which most health experts are relying on currently as our best guess - not the cruise ship — looks at resolved cases.
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I see this phrase used to describe maintaining a larger personal space, like one or two meters, which is what I had in mind.
Check out the economist cover article for this week. Goes over it in detail.
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Aren’t the hospitalization rates something like ~20% according to the main study that came out of China? Also, the cruise ship cases aren’t all resolved outcomes yet. Edit: link to China study summary below, but including it top-level here as well. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720...
We don't have any idea what the hospitalization rates are. We only know what the hospitalization rates are for people who have a confirmed diagnosis, which skews towards people with severe symptoms. >Also, the cruise ship cases aren’t all resolved outcomes yet. No they aren't, but the vast majority have been symptomatic longer than the average time till hospitalization and the number in critical condition hasn't incr…
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720...
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No, we know quite a bit about it at this point. The incubation period can range from 1-14 days but is 5 days on average[1][2]. The virus spreads through physical contact with commonly touched surfaces and through the air via droplets of saliva or mucus[2]. The deadliness of the disease is also becoming clear as time progresses. The current fatality rate is ~3% (likely overestimated) and most (almost all) deaths are e…
Your links don't say what you think they say. Did you even read them? It's mostly ambiguous language and uncertainty. We think this, it's not certain that. It changes day to day. Case in point the incubation period from your own link. "Most estimates of the incubation period range from 1-14 days, most commonly around five days. These estimates are updated as more information becomes available." How long does it remai…
> Case in point the incubation period from your own link. "Most estimates of the incubation period range from 1-14 days, most commonly around five days. These estimates are updated as more information becomes available."
Yes, it continues to become more accurate. Initial reports thought the incubation period could be up to 20-30 days. Continued study of the virus has refined the numbers and will continue to do so.
> How long does it remain on the surface. "It is not certain how long the virus survices on surfaces."
Interesting that you purposefully leave out the rest of the quote:
"It is not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces, but it seems to behave like other coronaviruses. Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days. This may vary under different conditions (e.g. type of surface, temperature or humidity of the environment).
If you think a surface may be infected, clean it with simple disinfectant to kill the virus and protect yourself and others. Clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose."
> How deadly is the coronavirus? "We don’t yet know."
Again, you leave out the rest of the quote and this one has hard numbers behind it as the infection, recovery, and mortality rates are being tracked internationally.
"As of February 25, 2020, the reported confirmed cases and deaths in China suggest the mortality rate is roughly 3%. It is important to remember that early on in an epidemic there is a “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon where we overestimate more severe cases and mild or asymptomatic cases go unrecognized, so the mortality seems higher than the reality. That may be happening when we speak of up to 3% mortality. By contrast, SARS had a mortality rate of around 10%; the MERS mortality rate is closer to 30% to 40%. There appear to be many more COVID-19 cases confirmed than there were with SARS and MERS."
> Can I catch the virus by eating food prepared by others? "It's not clear if this is possible."
Yet another misleading partial quote.
"It’s not clear if this is possible, but if so it would be more likely to be the exception than the rule. That said, COVID-19 and other coronaviruses have been detected in the stool of certain patients, so we currently cannot rule out the possibility of occasional transmission from infected food handlers. The virus would likely be killed by cooking the food."
None of these are "guesses". They are scientific observations backed by evidence. Stop spreading misinformation. You claimed that we "know next to nothing about this virus" which is simply not true.
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The unstated conclusion of your response seems to be that the absence of basic social service rights has no impact on rate of demographic change in developed countries; however, your comment appears to be focused on current measurements, and not rate of change. Keep in mind that the average American's economic position has been degrading for decades now, while the same cannot be said (to the same extent) for the citi…
Data shows [1] educated, empowered women with access to contraceptives have less children overall, and defer having children until later in life, full stop. I also argue it is a net positive, regardless of the underlying mechanism(s), that the fertility rate is declining across the world considering the unsustainable consumption rate per capita of the first world. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#empower…
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China was handling it after 2 months of spreading ( hurray censorship). This isn't happening anywhere else in the world.
Hard to tell if this is sarcasm, given that researchers just announced that coronavirus has been spreading undetected for 6 weeks in the Seattle area: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-may-have-sprea...
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Which should have happened along time ago in the current economy but haven’t, you can’t cut rates in bad times if you don’t raise them enough in good.
I'm an economic idiot, but the interest rates have started concern me. It's seemed like no one wants to cut them as that might put the brakes on "growth". There are also rumorings of a crash being around the corner. So if a crash does come about, what's the Fed going to do seeing as how rates are already bottomed out?
I assume you meant “raise” instead of “cut” here.
If so, you are correct, and the question about what the fed does when the market corrects/crashes is why a lot of folks are wringing their hands right now.
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Saving doesn't grow the economy, pretty much by definition as was already pointed out. (Real) investment, in the sense of building up new productive capacity, is an important part of growing the economy. However, investment at least by the private sector cannot thrive in a vacuum. It needs a context of either existing or plausible demand. If the demand is missing, you'd be a fool to spend money on increasing producti…
Indeed, real investment requires market interest, something the government is pretty bad at discerning Saving goes hand in hand with investment since by putting money in the bank it can be borrowed by entrepreneurs and they can hopefully do something productive with it. Merely spending it doesn't have that effect.
Spending is crucial because that's what signals where investment is needed / desirable. Furthermore, spending is what gives companies profits that can then be reinvested for sustained development. If there is no spending, then investment is simply pointless.
If investment happens in a vacuum, without regard for where the demand (which is nearly a synonym for spending) is, the investment will likely go to inefficient or useless projects.
Furthermore, the stated causality from saving to investment doesn't exist in our modern financial system. Banks create money out of nothing whenever they find a suitable borrower. Of course, a borrower is more likely to be suitable if they can demonstrate demand for their product - again, the importance of spending.
Sidenote: There is an equality of savings and investment in the national accounts (if you ignore the external sector), but that's just an after-the-fact accounting identity without any causal content. There's good reason to believe that, if anything, the causality goes from investment to savings. Either way, it's not an interesting causality. The real economic decisions, certainly the ones that lead to good allocation of capital, follow where the demand is.
Sidenote #2: Your stab at the government misses the point as well. Nobody is asking for the government to start investing in productive capacity for things that the private sector usually provides.
However, government could ensure that people have more disposable income. This leads to more spending, which encourages (and finances, via reinvested profits!) investment in order to satisfy the added demand. At the same time, it improves the quality of the demand signal, which helps achieve a better overall allocation of capital.
There are other useful things that governments could do, but this is an important and useful thing. The economy generally works well when people can just vote with their wallets. But one precondition is that there is money in those wallets.
This abrupt move by the Fed betrays lack of knowledge of stock market psychology. Looking at how stocks are doing today you would not think that anything of interest has happened (no pun intended). The stock market psychology works on "buy on rumor, sell on news" principle. This is the reason there was a significant rally yesterday, and stocks are in negative territory today. What the Fed should have done is give sig…
> "buy on rumor, sell on news" Let me stop you right there - stock market is a multi-agent system with autonomous algorithms making micro decisions, cap managers doing strategic decisions, and everything in the middle. Add a bit of chaos theory. "Buy on rumor, sell on news" is an extremely simplified and naive rational for explaining how a stock market works. Most theories of how a stock market works have a built-in…