Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#91

Post by chewz » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

buzzkillington wrote: post #15

airstrike wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also hearing this morning that we've hit the 10% mark. I also heard the same economist say "The economy is collapsing, and it's a global collapse". I don't even need coffee to be alert the rest of the day...

And all this for a virus that kills around 1% of the people who get it, and the majority of them are retired. Future generations will look at us and wonder how we were this stupid.

There are far more deaths in Italy and France then statistics show...

> On Tuesday night, the health authority in the Grand Est region said two-thirds of its 620 old people’s homes had been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and 570 residents had died.

> Those 570 people are not recorded in France’s official coronavirus death toll, which reached 4,032 on April 1, but so far counts only those who have died in hospital.

> In an Italian retirement home in Mediglia, outside Milan, 52 of the 152 elderly staying there had died from Covid-19 infection by last week.

> In the province of Bergamo, 2,060 deaths were attributed to the virus in March. However L’Eco di Bergamo, a local newspaper, found that a total of 5,400 deaths occurred in the province in March, up from just 900 in the same month in 2019.

https://www.ft.com/content/58ece0fb-d297-495e-8889-da216410f...

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#92

Post by treyfitty » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

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 their daycare workers because the governing body for daycares are pretty strict and getting new employees take a lot of time. On top of that, they have rents due. So, I get it.

But this begs a more fundamental question: When are we going to start pressuring insurance companies and rent-seekers to provide relief? Time and time again, all the bailouts of the past seem to benefit them, but during a time when we need insurance companies to pay out for business interruption instead of claiming "act of God, we exclude pandemics...etc.," we fail to bring them into the conversation.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#93

Post by Retric » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

airstrike wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also hearing this morning that we've hit the 10% mark. I also heard the same economist say "The economy is collapsing, and it's a global collapse". I don't even need coffee to be alert the rest of the day...

Any speculations on how bad is this going to get? Should I stock up on TP, on food, or on vodka and ammo?

While many people will likely get very sick, they only stay that way for ~2-6 weeks. Further, around half of people below 50 will show minimal if any symptoms. So, while most non essential jobs are shut down we are likely to see a surplus of labor in terms of trucking etc.

My guess is plenty of essential jobs will have heavy overtime while many people are unemployed. Simply because the disruptions are going to cascade through individual factories very quickly. The economic impact is largely going to be a question of how much do we shut down to save lives?

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#94

Post by Majromax » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #38

AlexandrB wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check the numbers coming out of Italy. It’s not 1% if the medical system is overwhelmed. Moreover, you do realize that’s 3 million dead in the US alone?

It's also not the reported number in Italy. The sources of error in the data are enough to make the data fairly meaningless. 1. We have no idea how many people were infected 2. We have no idea how many people who have died died from Covid 19 3. The population pyramid in Italy is extremely disparate from the rest of the world. The medical system being overwhelmed is a portion of the contribution, and what it means to…

> Treating any modeling we have of the impact of Covid 19 as reliable is an exercise in insanity.

In detail, yes. In general, you can still make some good back-of-an-envelope calculations.

Conservative estimates are that the coronavirus has a CFR of about 1% given adequate medical care (South Korea's statistics, where testing has been comprehensive enough that we should have identified any wide pool of asymptomatic cases), and another low estimate of its R0 factor is 2. Left unsuppressed, this implies that the disease would spread to infect about half of the population, and it would kill 1% of those infected.

For the United States, that implies that a "flattened curve" -- where mitigation prevents medical resources from being overwhelmed but does not fully suppress the disease's spread -- will kill about 1.6 million people.

Beyond that, we know that the disease requires intensive care at some multiple of the death rate (say 2x) and hospitalization at another multiple (say a further 3x). These estimates are reasonably consistent with New York's numbers (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/new-york-coronavirus...). Testing shortfalls could make these multiples worse, if there are hospitalized or ICU patients positive for the virus but not included in these totals.

Given overwhelmed medical services, we can presume that a large fraction (say half?) of ICU patients would die for want of care, and a smaller but still significant fraction of hospitalized patients would do the same (1/8?).

This implies that an un-flattened curve would have roughly triple the death rate, with the excess caused by inadequate care. With a 3% inadequate-care CFR, if left to run its course the disease would then kill about 4.8 million Americans.

> It's just to say that they are conservative and acting on knowingly incorrect information.

If policymakers are acting on "knowingly incorrect information," it's because their assumptions are too benign rather than too severe. I believe that my estimates above should be uncontroversial, and to the extent they err I've tried to err on the less-deadly, less-contagious side.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#95

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #46

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any speculations on how bad is this going to get? Should I stock up on TP, on food, or on vodka and ammo?

Food, non-perishables, fuel? Yes. Firearms and ammo? To each their own. We did, but we're more rural. Our concern is a supply chain meltdown when you have millions infected and sick. I would rather be prepared and not need something, then need something and not be prepared.

That's a reasonable concern, IMO.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#96

Post by onefuncman » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #57

stupandaus wrote: post #2

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…

Afaik Norway was one of the first countries that made similar numbers public, as about a week ago they had announced that unemployment had risen from app. 2% to 10.4%. The article is here [1]. My ballpark estimate is GDP going down by 20-30% for the next two quarters at least. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/norway-jo...

Austria 8.1% Feb 2020 -> 12.2% Mar 2020

Philippines 4.5% -> 5.3%

Belarus 0.3% -> 0.2% (???)

per https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/unemployment-rate

Israel 18.6% 3/24 to 24.4% today - https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-unemployment-in-israel-up... and https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/The-number-of-unemployed...

I'm not sure why Israel has their numbers available so quickly.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#97

Post by base698 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

treyfitty wrote: post #92

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.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#98

Post by xwdv » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

treyfitty wrote: post #75

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #31

Unemployment benefits have been significantly expanded under the Coronavirus aid bill. The benefit amounts will sound small if you're living in an expensive city like SF or Seattle, but $600/week from the federal government and a similar amount from state unemployment insurance means that unemployment benefits can pay up to an equivalent of $50-60K/year right now. That goes a long way in most parts of the country, es…

While the benefits amount to something small for cities... they've largely been the ones hit the hardest. NYC residents are more or less being ignored in these stimulus packages.

NYC residents don’t need help, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, and if you can’t make it, leave and free up some real estate for those who can.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#99

Post by onepointsixC » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

gph wrote: post #58

onepointsixC wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't unemployment boosted by $600 a week plus state unemployment? Or is my linked NYT article wrong[1]? Because even if it were $600 a week that's the equivalent of $15 an hour. For NY it appears the max state unemployment benefit of $504 per week, for a total max possible of $27.6 an hour, assuming a 40 hour workweek. That's quite substantial, no? Or maybe I'm wrong, and you could enlighten me. [1]: https://www.ny…

No you're right. A lot of people are going to make more on unemployment than they would employed. I'm a junior software engineer and I wouldn't be making that much less on unemployment than I do right now. No one that wasn't already starving should be starving at this point. Except perhaps gig workers.

Well, I suppose I should be happy for others then. But working on my own project with no income kinda makes that sting a tiny bit. So goes the startup hustle I guess.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#100

Post by base698 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

airstrike wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also hearing this morning that we've hit the 10% mark. I also heard the same economist say "The economy is collapsing, and it's a global collapse". I don't even need coffee to be alert the rest of the day...

Any speculations on how bad is this going to get? Should I stock up on TP, on food, or on vodka and ammo?

The time to do that was a month ago.