481–490 of 563 posts
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The time to do that was a month ago.
You talk as if there are currently shortages of essential supplies. There are not. You could stock up tomorrow if you wanted.
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The US is helping infected people. Infected people are a subset of all people. But, how or why would any infection requirement be necessary or a good idea? 1. The economic toll that is happening is not even remotely limited to those who are infected. 2. We aren't testing everyone and we don't have the resources to do so, so how would you accurately allocate the funds to those who are infected? 3. Those 10 million peo…
If we don't agree that the infected are the primary victims, that might be our primary disagreement, and there isn't much left to say. The economic toll is also important, but people are dying by the thousands. I assume many infected will come out of this with 6 digit hospital bills. We do have the resources to test everyone. Banning most tests is a regulatory decision. If a goal is to stop virus spreading, encouragi…
> If we don't agree that the infected are the primary victims, that might be our primary disagreement, and there isn't much left to say.
Most people who cannot pay their health insurance today are not people who are infected. We have 40 times as many people unemployed as we do infected.
> The economic toll is also important, but people are dying by the thousands.
Health insurance or healthcare bills aren't a factor in the death rates of this virus. People won't even be receiving those bills until the virus has either run its course or have killed the patient.
Those who need inpatient care cannot be turned away by law, regardless of insurance status.
Those who do not need inpatient care are being told to go home, regardless of insurance status.
> We do have the resources to test everyone.
This is factually false, and has been repeatedly confirmed by health officials and test manufacturers.
> Banning most tests is a regulatory decision.
.. and it's a decision which the regulators have already undone.
> If people have to pay thousands out of pocket to be tested, that won't happen.
This is not an issue any longer. The test has been determined by HHS to be an essential health benefit which must be covered under ACA compliant public and private insurance plans. State, local, and federal testing facilities are offering the test for free on a widespread basis to those without insurance as well.
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Do you have any reason to think we're not going to see the situation in NYC play out in numerous other US cities over the coming weeks and months?
Not really. I have been thinking its going to play out like China, Italy, Spain etc where certain regions take disproportionate hits. Texas and California don't seem to have been hit as hard as NY-NJ. So was just wondering if the unemployment filings have jumped equally in all 3.
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In an ideal scenario, we would re-open the ACA enrollment to provide reasonably priced health insurance. Unfortunately, our current administration doesn't want to do that. [1] ==The Trump administration has decided against reopening Obamacare enrollment to uninsured Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, defying calls from health insurers and Democrats to create a special sign-up window amid the health crisis.==…
> In an ideal scenario, we would re-open the ACA enrollment to provide reasonably priced health insurance. To clarify: ACA enrollment is open for anyone who has been laid off. They don't need to wait until the next enrollment period to get health coverage again. Making ACA open enrollment for an extended period of time would create a perverse incentive for people to avoid enrolling until they feel like they need it.…
"Insurers said they had expected Trump to announce a special enrollment period last Friday based on conversations they had with officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs HealthCare.gov enrollment. It wasn’t immediately clear why the Trump administration decided against the special enrollment period. CMS deferred comment to the White House."
==Making ACA open enrollment for an extended period of time would create a perverse incentive for people to avoid enrolling until they feel like they need it. Counterintuitively, this could decrease ACA enrollment rather than increase it. ==
Giving free money to people could create a perverse incentive for people to avoid working, but we just did that. Giving businesses grants for payroll might incentive them not to maintain cash reserves in the future, but we jut did that. I don't see why this would be any different. It's a national emergency, every potential solution should be on the table.
There's a sense that once "lockdown" ends, thing go back to normal. In other words, the "V" shaped recovery is the dominant mental model. Should that not materialize, the disappointment and anger will reach level not seen in most people's lifetimes. One reason the V-scenario might not play out is that the US still doesn't have a handle on the testing problem. Without testing, you have no way to estimate the danger to…
And soon. A great many people have a low tolerance for indefinite lockdowns. The longer we go without any kind of plan, the more likely it becomes that people will begin disregarding it. I already see that the amount of traffic on the roads is increasing over time.
What we need are leaders, and it's glaringly obvious that in most states we don't have that. During peacetime nobody notices, but when the SHTF the leadership vacuum is palpable.
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You talk as if there are currently shortages of essential supplies. There are not. You could stock up tomorrow if you wanted.
I live in a state barely touched by COVID-19. Since Mar 15, I've never seen a roll of TP in any of the stores in town. Not Costco, Sam's Club, Target or the local grocery chain. I feel bad for people who didn't manage to stock up.
All you need to do is wait for the next delivery to show up (which it will). The problem is, people like you will continue to buy up everything as quickly as possible, so after the first couple hundred customers the shelves will be empty again. Until the next delivery. That is the problem, not supply shortages.
Don't feel bad for people who didn't horde resources at everyone else's expense. Help those people by buying what you need plus only a little extra.
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You say that with such conviction when you don't have any better info on what the future holds than anyone else. The unemployment benefits (which for many of the unemployed will actually be higher than their regular pay) last for the next four months. If the quarantine lifts by the end of May and businesses reopen then it will be enough. Obviously that's a big if, but for you to come out here and act like you know so…
We do know that things will get worse as we've seen how things have tracked in China, Iran and Italy. And if this quarantine lasts till May, I foresee many small businesses won't be around by then.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to hit some mid-size businesses as well. A lot of places are getting hit hard right now, and that just flows up the chain. My company hasn't announced any layoffs or cashflow problems, but I can do the math -- most of our customers are relatively small businesses. Pretty quickly their problem becomes our problem.
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…
* https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3922/what-will-be-the-us...
* https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3933/what-will-be-the-us...
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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…
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This kind of info usually circulates in the corporate world for a week before it hits the wider media zeitgeist. My company has been holding weekly analyst briefings on what to expect. Right now, the sources I have say to expect to be WFH and "socially distanced" until July or August at the earliest. Restaurants will probably start slowly opening back up around then, but conferences or sporting events are going to be…
I'm more pessimistic in the short term than this (particularly for the US, which still doesn't have a national lockdown), but more optimistic in the long term. Despite our best efforts, this thing is burning through entire populations, and will do so quickly (within a couple of months globally, except some places in asia who escaped the first wave but are now seeing more). Every active person leaving home is going to…
This virus is not transmitted via magic. Even basic precautions lower the transmission rate considerable. Most places are now taking precautions that are far beyond basic.