71–80 of 89 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any reasonable modelling that puts worst case US recession deaths in the hundreds of thousands? I saw a pretty spun looking number in (I think) The Federalist back in March that claimed a staggering 40k deaths if we didn't open up right away. Needless to say that spin didn't survive reality well, that's not only the median worst case of the viral outbreak it's the status quo.
I would be interested in seeing such model as well Some things to consider is also the type of deaths. Now I haven't calculated myself which decision is the correct one here, but just throwing out some factors that might (or might not) be favourable towards the decision to open markets sooner. If most people who die are elderly and they would die in few years anyway are these deaths comparable to younger people who c…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
(even if you don't agree with that metric, equivalence at some ratio is pretty clear, unless old people are just completely disposable)
At the moment it seems that individual susceptibility is a bigger factor than medical capacity, and we are researching dozens of possible treatments and working towards a vaccine. Makes it even harder to gauge the trade offs, as an effective treatment would pay big dividends when combined with a slowed spread.
I also wonder about attributing poverty deaths to economic shut downs. They are pretty preventable, and more a failure of our broader society than a result of the specific policy. The societal failure when it comes to suicide is less direct, but it's a factor there also.
It's worth noting that reopening early will also cause economic damage, and possibly more that not doing so would. People dying costs money, both in the lost productivity of the dead and reduced productivity among those emotionally affected. More people will die with an early end to lockdown than would if it was maintained for another month or two. I expect lots of grim economics research to come out of this.
Depends. In the conditions where coronavirus killed strictly only the old and weak and it had 2 percent death rate it would on average kill people around 2 years before their actual deaths. Let's just say everyone who would have died at 88 will now die at 86 instead. This means that any costs are just advanced 2 years. But since those 86 year olds do not provide value to the economy at this point, only consume resour…
Michigan has had hundreds of people in their 40's and 50's die (~13% of deaths):
https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_9817...
Just another Pearl Harbor/9-11 for the US. They could have responded early and mitigated this like Australia/NZ/Taiwan but now there is massive community spread there is no right answer. You open things up and more people die. You close them down and people likely die from poverty related things. The only sane solution was to act early and prevent this. Why even have intelligence services, scientific expertise, gover…
Mistakes were made, but it's a lot easier on an island.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reduction in hours is a reason to claim unemployment.
What about reduction in salary for FTEs?
Also quitting due to significant change in work agreement is a valid reason for unemployment benefits.
Every state is probably different.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends. In the conditions where coronavirus killed strictly only the old and weak and it had 2 percent death rate it would on average kill people around 2 years before their actual deaths. Let's just say everyone who would have died at 88 will now die at 86 instead. This means that any costs are just advanced 2 years. But since those 86 year olds do not provide value to the economy at this point, only consume resour…
Average age is much lower than 86. Michigan has had hundreds of people in their 40's and 50's die (~13% of deaths): https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_9817...
If you look here, you can see only 72% who die are above 64
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
Median I would guesstimate based on this data to be around 72 or so.
But the point is how many people are dying who weren't productive members of society and how many years these people would have lived if coronavirus didn't strike them.
For illustration purposes if it always killed those first who were closest to death anyway and death rate was 2% it would mean I guess 74 * 0,02 years lost for median person or 1.5 years.
This number will increase of course because true nature is more random.
And to be completely fair then if in US each year dies a bit less than 1% of people and not all of them at old age. So let's say it's 0.6% dying of old age, then 2% death rate might mean around 3 years lost for median person.
But as I said this are illustrative and non-precise calculations.
If I had to guess I would say it's reasonable to estimate that median person would lose 1 - 7 years of their life due to coronavirus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is: not much more than the cost of "opening up" right now. Because "lockdown" isn't magic the government can control at a whime. People aren't going to engage in a full employment economy if they're justifiably scared of dying. Or, possibly but not probably: the cost of opening up is vastly higher if we end up looking at 2-300k needlessly dead Americans.
But further lockdown can also mean more deaths from low economic activity. How do you know which deaths are worse?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be interested in seeing such model as well Some things to consider is also the type of deaths. Now I haven't calculated myself which decision is the correct one here, but just throwing out some factors that might (or might not) be favourable towards the decision to open markets sooner. If most people who die are elderly and they would die in few years anyway are these deaths comparable to younger people who c…
Sure, they are comparable. Maybe not 1 to 1, but you could make up some metric that evened things out a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year (even if you don't agree with that metric, equivalence at some ratio is pretty clear, unless old people are just completely disposable) At the moment it seems that individual susceptibility is a bigger factor than medical capacity, and we are researching…
But this is always the case. If you can't solve this issue during normal times, how could you solve this issue during crisis? Force part of the society to pay more taxes during this time? There's certainly a lot of people dying all over the world due to poverty - these deaths could be prevented as well. Since there's less production things are probably even more scarce and expensive during crisis - if economy is shut down and people can't be productive.
Regarding ethical/moral dilemmas, to me it seems like the trolley problem is definitely highlighted during this crisis (it to some extent exists also during normal times), but now it's extremely apparent in my opinion.
Especially because also another question is very apparent - how valuable are different human lives?
Loosening economy means less deaths within general population, while it means more deaths specifically for elderly. Loosening isn't binary either so there's a balanced line that you have to draw. So you have to draw that balance between somewhere where you have to weigh economic damage, young productive human lives vs lives that are about to end anyway.
For instance. Would you save 20 people who were expected to live 1 year compared to a person who would go on to live 40 years?
If we considered years and probably higher quality years it would be 40 > 20 however death count would be 1 < 20
Just another Pearl Harbor/9-11 for the US. They could have responded early and mitigated this like Australia/NZ/Taiwan but now there is massive community spread there is no right answer. You open things up and more people die. You close them down and people likely die from poverty related things. The only sane solution was to act early and prevent this. Why even have intelligence services, scientific expertise, gover…
Just another Pearl Harbor/9-11 for the US. They could have responded early and mitigated this like Australia/NZ/Taiwan but now there is massive community spread there is no right answer. You open things up and more people die. You close them down and people likely die from poverty related things. The only sane solution was to act early and prevent this. Why even have intelligence services, scientific expertise, gover…
The right answer is SIP plus invest massively in building out testing and contact tracing capacity so you can reopen while replacing SIP with targeted quarantines of the infected and exposed.
There's no painless answer, and there's no answer as good as a better early response would have been, but there's a pretty clear right answer.