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California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

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Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#71

Post by nostromo »

ben_w wrote: post #65
nostromo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the ~40k US deaths and the $6T spent, we’ve spent $150 million in stimulus per death. Looking at the non-spending costs of lost productivity, opportunity costs, etc., it’s a staggering number.

Surely the important number is per lives saved rather than per lives lost?

Costs always matter. It’s rarely said in polite company but it’s true.

I suppose it’s impossible to know if we’re striking the right balance at the moment, but it’ll be interesting to see the analysis after it’s over.

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#72

Post by arcticbull »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #63
arcticbull wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention that. You have approximately a 1% lifetime risk of dying from a car crash in the US [1], and your risk of dying from a COVID infection is 0.37% per the latest study from Germany (and it overwhelmingly only kills the old and sick). Given you develop immunity after (no evidence you don't yet), that represents a lifetime risk too. Which means, your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident remain…

All of those are great but COVID has done that in weeks. 38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roads. COVID deaths are at 39k and the first COVID-19 death was on Feb. 29. 50 days ago.

I actually dedicated much of my comment to addressing that, specifically pointing out that COVID represents a lifetime risk that's been front-loaded and so it's fair to compare COVID's infection fatality rate to your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident. I also called out explicitly that COVID has been front-loaded.

Also, it's not a fair comparison between the flu and COVID because the flu has that unfortunate feature known as horizontal gene transfer. That's why you can get re-infected by the flu each year, and why in spite of a massive vaccination campaign the flu causes 45,000,000 illnesses each year in the US alone (and 60,000 deaths) -- and 650,000 deaths worldwide.

Each year. And each upcoming year. COVID will, based on what we know so far, happen once.

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#73

Post by cjbprime »

zachkatz wrote: post #46
freeone3000 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of pandemics can smoosh buildings closer.

Many European cities actually have very wide streets—they just choose to cede space for bikes, trams, buses, and wider sidewalks, instead of dedicating 100% of the streets to single-occupancy cars and car storage like we do. An example—Overtoom in Amsterdam: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3620058,4.8722503,3a,75y,96....

The difference in density and sprawl between pre-car and post-car cities is staggering, and is not about the width of streets. You can't get around Los Angeles without driving on freeways.

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#74

Post by gpm »

carbocation wrote: post #25
ttul wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow!

> 0.5% of GDP isn’t nothing! Wow! Are you saying that you disagree that California losing 500% of its GDP seems impossible?

I doubt we are even near 500%, but I'll go ahead and say I think it's possible in the short term for California to be lose 500% of it's GDP. It's possible to borrow against our future, both literally with money, and figuratively by decreasing future productivity.

For instance, we're (probably) negatively impacting kids education, that's going to have a negative impact on the economy for the next 50+ years. If we fuck up the food supply chains too badly (e.g. migrant works, locusts in africa [1], etc) more kids will suffer from malnutrition, which has a long term effect. Increased poverty rates from the shutdown will likely increase crime rates (and have many other ill effects), which will have a long term effect. Putting the economy into a recession will no doubt significantly slow down all sorts of R&D work delaying useful (and even life saving) inventions. And so and and so forth.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/africas-huge-locust-...

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#75

Post by Fjolsvith »

hannob wrote: post #60
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

I've been meaning to ask in /r/theydidthemath if the quarantine is actually reducing violent crime, car accidents, pollution, other infectious diseases, STDs, etc. so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here.

The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements. Because it tells a very interesting story how many lives we're willing to accept to be lost in normal circumstances. Cars, air pollution, avoidable infections, ... - there's a lot of harm society could avoid and doesn't.

> The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements.

I'm still waiting to see what has happened to the number of deaths caused by heart attack, stroke, etc. that aren't COVID related. I'm betting those causes of death have dropped by about the same amount of COVID deaths.

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#76

Post by lisper »

arcticbull wrote: post #68
lisper wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your risk of dying from a COVID infection is 0.37% I'm 55 so I'm pretty sure my risk is higher than that. Also, the covid risk is highly front-loaded. If I'm gong to die from covid, I'm likely to do so now whereas if I'm going to die in a car crash that might happen now or it might happen later. I don't really care about dying per se. Sooner or later it's going to happen. What I care about is dying sooner and more…

Not really actually! In your age category 50-59 your case fatality rate is 1.3% [1] and given the way it affects the older end of the band more significantly than yourself in the middle of the band, it wouldn't be at all unlikely that your case fatality rate is right around 1%. Further, we have been seeing anywhere from 30-80% of cases are asymptomatic or result in mild flulike symptoms and therefore not accounted fo…

I worry about car crashes too! :-)

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#77

Post by WD-42 »

nostromo wrote: post #61
zaroth wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from even the fatalities, the math still is that 50% of LA is presently unemployed. While some articles are somehow gleeful in the face of this calamitous reality, there is no where near a net balance. The Fed has spent at least $2 trillion dollars on this already. Probably closer to $6 trillion by the time we are done. It is an unimaginably large cost to shut things down relative to any possible benefit.

Looking at the ~40k US deaths and the $6T spent, we’ve spent $150 million in stimulus per death. Looking at the non-spending costs of lost productivity, opportunity costs, etc., it’s a staggering number.

Better the dollar number is staggering than the death number. Would you rather it be reversed?

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#78

Post by qplex »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

I've been meaning to ask in /r/theydidthemath if the quarantine is actually reducing violent crime, car accidents, pollution, other infectious diseases, STDs, etc. so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here.

>Just trying to find the silver lining here.

Oh, we could pretty much save the planet and live happily ever after if we could keep it like this.

Only to find some rock barreling down on us some day, but ah... I digress.

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#79

Post by AnotherGoodName »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #75
hannob wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements. Because it tells a very interesting story how many lives we're willing to accept to be lost in normal circumstances. Cars, air pollution, avoidable infections, ... - there's a lot of harm society could avoid and doesn't.

> The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements. I'm still waiting to see what has happened to the number of deaths caused by heart attack, stroke, etc. that aren't COVID related. I'm betting those causes of death have dropped by about the same amount of COVID deaths.

I saw an article that they are up a lot. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/13/deaths-f...

A theory in that article is that it's likely to due to undiagnosed CORVID deaths from effects it can have on the entire respiratory system.

Re: California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining

#80

Post by vvpan »

dehrmann wrote: post #52
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

I've been meaning to ask in /r/theydidthemath if the quarantine is actually reducing violent crime, car accidents, pollution, other infectious diseases, STDs, etc. so that we may come out break even or even ahead compared to covid deaths. Just trying to find the silver lining here.

> reducing violent crime There are fears it will increase domestic abuse.

It seems to be happening. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domesti...
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