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Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

governor.wa.gov

551–560 of 568 posts

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#551

When talking about economic damage it is also worth thinking about what we are trying to avoid in the US- if SARS-Cov2 gets to 60% of the population, then at a 2% case fatality rate we are looking at 4 million excess deaths. Most importantly, that is a humanitarian tragedy that we must avoid. However, having numbers also let’s us put an economic value out there for what we are trying to save. A 1% reduction in the ca…

Who cares about Case Fatality Rate (the % diagnosed that die), it depends on how many cases are measured. What you need to base yourself on is estimated Infected Fatality Rate (the % infected that die) which is what the CDC states is about 0.1% for the seasonal flu in the US. In Korea the CFR is closing on the IFR as they're testing thousands of asymptomatic people, currently at 0.6% AFAIK. Infected Fatality Rate wil…

When running out of hospital beds the fatality rate increases a lot though.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#553
post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That remains to be seen. The consequences of current actions, while the current impact of the virus itself is basically nil, will be severe, including extra deaths (and lack of births, for that matter - didn't occur to me to count that but looking at demographic articles I realized it's also lives lost in the net), and massive waste of life-years due to economic disruption that will disproportionately affect the deve…

> while the current impact of the virus itself is basically nil You should read about Italy, and how they're running out of hospital beds. Which means usually non life threatening issues are getting much more serious. It's not a boolean choice between "saving lives" and "saving the economy"... If you don't do anything: people get sick, sick people can't work, the economy tanks, hundred thousand people die. If you do…

Most of the cases of the infection are mild. Nothing has happened yet (yes, nothing - the number of deaths currently happening in Italy is still, statistically, a blip), and yet already more people are not working for weeks than what would if everyone got sick at the same time, given the working-age mortality and complications rate. And we haven't even started yet.

It hasn't seemed binary to me before about this weekend, but it's increasingly starting to seem binary as the over-reaction escalates.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#554
post #504
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya know, because we humans can't regenerate organs at the drop of a hat... or at all. So if your lung tissue starts dying, that's it. The best you can hope for is permanent scarring to replace the dead tissue. Scar tissue is a poor replacement for the original by many measures.

>regenerate organs Some organs can and others can grow in size to compensate for reduce efficiency. Plus, there's no real evidence that Covid is causing organ damage. > if your lung tissue starts dying, that's it That's definitely not "it". Your lungs can repair damaged tissue and the system as a whole can adapt to compensate for portions that can't be repaired. And also no real evidence that long term damage is bein…

I don't have any links handy but I've seen reports that in a few cases covid19 has indeed caused permanent lung damage after the infection subsided. Apparently it's rare but possible but don't take my word for it.

I don't think any other organs growing in size are going to compensate for reduced lung function. It's true our bodies adapt to damage but once the tissue is dead it's not coming back.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#555
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is your government's responsibility, local or federal I don't mind. This is why you pay taxes, to provide services to your citizens, one of which is disaster preparedness. I wouldn't be quick to put the burden onto businesses. If such a thing were mandated you would pretty quickly bankrupt a bunch of landlords who were not in the position to take it, and you would shift a bunch of property ownership to the banks,…

I don't disagree with that, to be clear -- my thought is more that everyone is in this together. There's a lot of actions only a government can practically take, and others they would probably do better than private actors even if private actors could also do it. (Health insurance being a prime example.) But none of that precludes a landlord from giving businesses (and, of course, individuals and families) a rent bre…

You're certainly not wrong, and I've seen a number of instances where landlords are being lenient with rent to tenants which is certainly commendable.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate myself for saying this but if one wants a cold calculous thought experiment, what about thinking about the mortality age? mostly older people, not only don't work but are also often a net burden to society.

Its already in the model- 10 quality adjusted years of life. You could reasonable drive that down, but not to less than 3 I'm pretty sure. I don't think it's appropriate to model current output though. This is a social / political question as much as a economic one. I mostly view retirees as "paid up" members of society and, since I'd like my kids and grandkids to think this way when I'm old be not feeble, believe th…

Does the model include costs too - not just earnings potential? like social security?

To be clear I am 100% with your priorities just think it's an interesting - albeit totally inhumane - thought experiment.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#557
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in this case is that the stock market is a highly efficient process, where feedback paths are short, information is shared widely, and there is potential to make a lot of money on other's misjudgements, automatically correcting the price in the process. This means changes in confidence are almost immediately reflected in the price. T-shirts, on the other hand, much more slowly change to match confidenc…

Thinking something is over or under valued is very different from general confidence in the economy. In daily life you're not betting on the economy, you're part of it. You work and spend even if you think the nukes are going to kill everyone. Confidence has a vastly weaker connection to demand for goods.

If people think the dollar is significantly overvalued, they'll switch to gold, bitcoin, rolls of toilet paper, or other forms of ad-hoc currency. That's what happens in countries with 1000% inflation, for example.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

248k out of 50M is still a very impressive sample size; especially compared to most scientific papers coming out these days.

There is a persistent assertion that "everyone" in SK is being tested. It's not true. There is a pretty high chance that a high % of the infected are almost asymptomatic. Fatigue might be the only thing some get. Others nothing. The problem is people asserting without statistical extrapolation a base fatality rate predicated on a division of [+ve tests/deaths]. It is exactly what WHO have done before in other epidemi…

I am curious of those examples. The big outbreaks in the past the WHO has focused on include MERS, Ebola and H1N1. There's a really good Wendover video on the WHO Ebola response and it's pretty impressive.

That said, Ebola got people sick quickly (compared to SARS-cov2) and it started in areas that weren't as globally connected, limiting the spread.

Still, there was a lot of hype of H1N1 that never really panned out. Still this is a totally new virus, from a family of viruses that has historically never been bad (a quarter of colds are caused coronaviruses).

If it's May 1st and there are are at capacity with people being shipped to suburbs and individual 3D printing ventilator parts.

Honestly, I will be surprised either way.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#559
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was obvious I was talking about financial institutions, which are just going to have to eat it for a while, although with interest rates now at 0% that will be more manageable. I can't address every aspect of the economy in a short comment.

I thought it was obvious I was talking about financial institutions It's not obvious at all. The comment you were replying to said "can't pay the booze suppliers" so it's pretty clear they we using the normal business definition of creditor.

As normality is restored, they will have new opportunities during the ensuing large scale financial restructuring.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#560
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And what % of patients infected actually end up in the ICU vs. just have a sniffle and a cough for a few days? This data is easily available: ~20% of people who get the virus are in life-threatening condition. Thats a 1/5 chance. > I'm not saying "do nothing", but I am saying "shut down the world" is too extreme in the opposite direction. Experts disagree with you. Maybe you should ask yourself why? 1. You have a hy…

My point (in the other thread, but this is going the same way) was that yes, if someone says let's have 100 people of all ages play Russian roulette (only the gun has 30-50 capacity, and also loaded guns mostly go to much older people), that is very bad. But if the alternative is, we will instead take those 100 people and make them really miserable, make a few homeless and/or drug addicted, maybe have one commit suic…

You are taking my Russian roulette analogy way too literally. The "bullet" is not literally just dead people, it's also the economic impact of letting this disease run rampant, which you are clearly not accounting for.

We aren't just shutting everything down to save lives, we're shutting everything down because we some reason to believe that if 70% of the population gets this disease in a very short amount of time 20% of them are hospitalized, and at least 2% die (in truth, the CFR would skyrocket if we don't flatten the curve), the societal and economic havoc would be much worst than the one resulting from these government imposed quarantines. At the highest end of the risk spectrum, it could be orders of magnitude worst. Do we know that for sure? No, hence the Russian roulette analogy: some chance of extremely high risk, esp. when it comes to the entire planet: NOT WORTH GAMBLING.

If you think that world leaders are currently sacrificing the economy just to save lives, you are not paying attention to what they have been doing.

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