471–480 of 563 posts
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> around half of people below 50 will show minimal if any symptoms. I have a middle finger for you for how cold hearted you sound. As though “it’s no big deal”. My wife went through this (previously healthy 34 year old) and it was terrible. The docs just said: “there’s nothing more we can do”
How is your wife now? Sorry if that’s too personal.
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Playing devil's advocate for a moment, 1% would be approximately the same number of deaths we get in a typical year. Slightly more, yes, but some number of the COVID deaths are probably people that had a high likelihood of dying this year anyway, so it seems like an okay estimate. In that case we are doubling our deaths for a year. Very significant, but in the grand scheme of things it poses no real danger to the spe…
I'm in the fashion industry right now, I get the layoff worries. But, okay, worst case, I get laid off and then I get a less cushy job in an industry that's less affected. Maybe I draw down my savings for a couple of months before I find one. It's not the end of the world. That's a major benefit of having a skillset as portable as ours. I'd definitely rather risk that than risk a couple million people dying over the…
On the economy? Very little. Most of the people dying are not in the job market any more nor are they big consumers. It might even reduce the load slightly on Social Security and Medicare.
No, the risk of letting a couple million extra people die this year is a social/moral one, not an economic one IMO.
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This is just a personal opinion, but I think ~15% unemployment peak is far too optimistic. I believe that 50-75% of restaurants will never reopen. 20-35% of small to mid-size hotels, venues, spas will declare bankruptcy within this year. Both employ a lot of people. So I'm afraid the number is going to much higher, maybe even double.
After this is over (whenever that is) we expect people to resume eating out and traveling. I agree that it's likely that 50% of restaurants and 25% of hotels/spas would become bankrupt and shut down, but that does not mean a 50% / 25% reduction of employment; I would expect most of the bankrupt restaurants and hotels/spas to be immediately replaced with new ones, employing much of the same people and renting much of…
The speed of recovery will depend on how much liquidity will be available in the market. And I believe it’s going to be quite low.
You see, all of these business depend on discretionary income and after the shock to the people they will sit on any penny or they will not have it themselves.
I believe we will eventually get out of this but my timeline is 3-5 years. If people are unemployed for more than few months their prospects drop rapidly. People with no options produce ruthless competition that pushes salaries down producing wider inequality and limits the discretionary funds needed to spend in those establishments in the first place producing quite a vicious circle.
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What do you feel is stupid about the response to this? 1% is a lot of people. The whole point of social distancing and staying at home is to not overwhelm the healthcare system and to give more time to develop proper care procedures.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, 1% would be approximately the same number of deaths we get in a typical year. Slightly more, yes, but some number of the COVID deaths are probably people that had a high likelihood of dying this year anyway, so it seems like an okay estimate. In that case we are doubling our deaths for a year. Very significant, but in the grand scheme of things it poses no real danger to the spe…
Everyone seems to get tied up in the % of fatalities. Debating those numbers are a waste of energy, everyone is just cherry-picking numbers that support their own arguments. But we know for a fact that without containment measures (and even with them), this virus can result in the health care system getting overwhelmed and possibly collapsing.
This has a number of impacts, 1) Health care workers will die at a much higher rate than normal. This will have lasting impacts. 2) Anyone who needs health care for any reason will be in trouble (cancer patients, diabetes patients, pregnant women, accidents, etc...). I read somewhere that ~30% of home births require emergency hospitalization. How would our economy do if ~30% of pregnant mothers died during child birth? 3). Even without government mandated shut-downs, people will reduce economic activity to avoid the risk of getting COVID or getting into an accident that would require a hospital visit. Many companies were cancelling events and implementing WFH policies before local governments required it.
This isn't really an either/or option. The economy is going to take a massive hit regardless of the actions we take. But by implementing shut-downs we can save lives and also potentially get back to normal business faster than we would otherwise.
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I know it's really not PC to talk about this (how dare you value money over human lives!?), but at what point does the economic damage this causes become too much? 15% joblessness would be ~50M americans. If just 0.1% of them commit suicide as a result of losing their jobs or businesses, that would be 50,000 dead. Maybe there's some kind of intermediate between forcing everyone to stay home and not having any mitigat…
Hard to say. At start of year, situation normal, the economy we had was unsustainable. We were collectively waging war on our environment and winning. Folks mostly had jobs, which was good, but income inequality was nuts and lots of jobs didn't pay a living wage. Housing costs, healthcare and college were out of control. In short, the world could really use a correction. The pollution reduction from this shutdown has…
That’s unfortunately my reading. There are stores boarding their storefronts in LA [0]. Very very premature but gives you a glimpse into the believes of some.
I’m sure at the end we will come out of it in better place that we entered it, but I’m dreading the path we have to take to get there.
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/tmz/status/1244412908273991680 (I know, I know, it’s TMZ)
Building on my analysis from last week: 1. This week's 6.6M new jobless claims represents ~4% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 2. This is incremental to the 3.3M new jobless claims filed week ending 3/21, totaling ~10M total jobless claims in the past 2 weeks. 3. The US unemployment rate was ~3.5% as of EOM February [1], so cumulatively that means we've hit ~10% unemployment as of EOW 3/28 (~10M incremental j…
If the unemployment rate continues to rise at this pace (about 7% every two weeks), it will match the peak during the Great Depression (25%) around the end of April. That's 40 million people who will have no income and likely no health care in the middle of a pandemic. Not sure how to process this information honestly.
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> Our concern is a supply chain meltdown when you have millions infected and sick. This is an absurdist prediction - we are looking at maximum 2 million 75+ year olds dying with some much smaller number of people of different ages. This is the group least likely to be involved in the day-to-day functioning of our supply chains. Honestly, where are people coming up with these doomsday predictions?
You're not accounting for complications from the 10% or so that require medical intervention, who are largely working age.
Building on my analysis from last week: 1. This week's 6.6M new jobless claims represents ~4% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 2. This is incremental to the 3.3M new jobless claims filed week ending 3/21, totaling ~10M total jobless claims in the past 2 weeks. 3. The US unemployment rate was ~3.5% as of EOM February [1], so cumulatively that means we've hit ~10% unemployment as of EOW 3/28 (~10M incremental j…
If the unemployment rate continues to rise at this pace (about 7% every two weeks), it will match the peak during the Great Depression (25%) around the end of April. That's 40 million people who will have no income and likely no health care in the middle of a pandemic. Not sure how to process this information honestly.
if the government were to help regular people that would be say $1T/40M = $25K - one can survive a month or two on that (and those money would have naturally trickled promptly up thus also supporting the top of the economy - corporations, banks, etc. - instead of being directly accumulated there like in the current trickle down approach). My understanding that is what they ultimately did in Great Depression - by way of public works and rudimentary safety net - though the things had to get really bad before they did it, and one can only wonder how much things have to get bad this time.
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"The economic impact is largely going to be a question of how much do we shut down to save lives?" i think about that a lot. I have so much respect for the task force setup to work on this, but man, i'm glad i'm not on it.
That thinking negates the economic impact that a bunch of people dying is going to have on the economy. There are really two options here. 1) A huge impact on the economy and fewer people die. 2) A huge impact on the economy and lots of people die. Nobody has the capability to predict the real outcome of one scenario over the other from an economic perspective. If the US does everything perfectly, we'll probably lose…
For those living in cities that are locked down, what do yall do about daycare? In NYC, my daycare isn't reimbursing fees, so we're continuing to be charged with a promise of "if insurance pays out, we'll pass it down." With 2 kids, that’s $5,000. Assuming they’re closed for 3 months total, that’s $15,000 down the drain. Now, I get that they're a small business, but their problem is that they can't exactly layoff the…
At my company the kids have become an addition to our meetings. Babies on laps and toddlers drawing on the whiteboard in the background. It's definitely making changes to productivity and I feel for the new parents.
This too shall pass, and they probably won't be too much worse for wear as a result. I tend to think primary school is 80% day care anyway :)