Denmark is taking a drastic step.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/denmark-freezing-its-economy-should-us/608533/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
If the choice in the US is a collapsed economy or a million*** citizens
die, perhaps that drastic step is at least viable. Yes, it would be a
huge amount of deficit spending, but the US seems to have done well over
the decades despite a huge deficit.
***Several million? How many will die if people go back to work? Any
number you see is guesswork. And the healthcare system would overflow
completely.
Terry
On 3/26/2020 6:58 AM, Stephen Daniel wrote:
If we do not stop this virus there are reasonable models for how many will die, albeit with large error bars. Something on the order of 1M people in the US.--
I've seen no models for how many people the economic downturn will kill. And the economic downturn is a reality no matter what we do going forward. The question is not how many people the downturn will harm, but how many fewer we can harm by trying to get the economy restarted now. I'm not aware of any models for that.
This downturn is unusual, in that it is caused by a situation where people how have money do not want to consume. Even if it were allowed, I'm not going to dine in a restaurant or fly in a commercial plane for a long time. If lots of people are dying, I'm even less likely to participate in our consumption driven economy. Conventional wisdom and old economic models of business cycles may well be poor predictors of what happens if we try to restart our economy.
So a statement that we as a whole would be better off by letting the virus run wild and kill a lot of people requires a lot more modeling than I've seen anywhere. Knowing math doesn't make the statement true, it just gives you the skill to understand the complex models required to predict the various outcomes, if and when such models become available.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 6:20 AM David Summers <dvidsum@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:dvidsum@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
OK, well you're upset and not thinking very well. I hope you and
yours get better soon, and wish you the best.
Let's game this out. Currently, poor people are running out of
food. Maybe they can stretch it for a few months. Corona virus
will be here for 18 months even in the case of magic level
vaccines. I'll point out here that we have vaccines for the flu,
and we still lose 100,000 per year to it in the US alone. None of
the poor will survive 18 months without work. You can say we will
just give them free food - OK, now you are enslaving the farmers,
because they have to work for that food and because no one else is
allowed to work, they can't get anything in return. In humans,
this will lead to fewer farmers, etc. We cannot shut society down
for long enough to stop the virus - even after 18 months, the
virus will still be here.
Given that, what should we do? That is the question, and it has
little to do with stock options. Social distancing while still
working is probably the best scenario. Maybe some jobs are now
gone forever - bars, dance clubs, cruise ships, etc. But others
can adapt (much larger spacing in restaurants, more isolation of
older people, etc.)
Don't assume that people that think differently than you are evil.
That will just lead to war, which you won't win. (You think Trump
is bad? Who do you think is elected after the intellectuals keep
the working poor and middle class out of a job for 18 months? That
is exactly how Hitler got elected.)
Thanks!
-David Summers
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 10:42 PM Jake Anderson
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
It's complicated because people don't typically enjoy being
left to die in their fluids over the course of a few weeks to
protect stock options. Despite assurances by those with said
stock options that it's really better for society this way.
I understand maths too, I also understand how at these levels
you can make statistics say pretty much anything you want to
so it's very important to see who is saying them. Further I
know enough about the science of economics to know that it's
half made up and a lot of the rest is guesswork. Not the best
basis for making life and death predictions on IMO.
If you want a purely rational economic argument then nobody
over 60 with a net worth less than the likely cost of
treatment should be treated. When you run out of money you
die. Also insurance should be suspended for people unlikely to
recover to preserve the funds for young healthy people and the
owners of insurance companies.
Why do we even have healthcare for people over 60? Their grand
kids are typically grown enough not to need extended family
daycare. Yet these people consume the majority of healthcare
costs. They are just a burden on the economically viable young
people.
That's not the world I want to live in.
On 26/3/20 6:29 pm, David Summers wrote:
You are under no obligation to spend any money to save my
life. Society is marginally better off if you save my life
spending $100k. Society is worse off if you spend $100m to
save my life.
Why is this complicated? I am not evil because I understand
math. The reality was there before the math, the math merely
describes it. Emotive reasoning does not change reality.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 9:24 PM Jake Anderson
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I guess the equations are different in America than the
rest of the world.
So much freedom.
Should we kill you if I can prove it's good for the
economy too?
On 26/3/20 6:08 pm, David Summers wrote:
Speaking very roughly, for every $1-10 M lost someone
dies. They die because we couldn't get the cancer
treatment, or the process wasn't as safe as it could be,
etc. So by wiping out a trillion dollars, long term you
have kill 100k to 1m people unless we dig ourselves out.
Money is life people. Technology, even medical
technology, doesn't matter without the money to deploy
it. And money is not something that can be arbitrarily
created or stolen. Theft and printing money destroys it,
rather than create it. Basic economics.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 8:58 PM Jake Anderson
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Sorry dad, trumps stockmarket portfolio is going
down so you need to die.
On 26/3/20 4:22 pm, roxanna Mason wrote:
Today one week later:
657 infections, 12 deaths, 43 recovered.
Were's the age vs deaths data? If it's
disproportionately the elderly and health
compromised then maybe its time to get back to work
and let herd immunity do its job.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 3:23 PM Henry Spencer
<hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 10:26 AM ken mason
<laserpro1234@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:laserpro1234@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> Observation: One of the largest population
> country with the lowest infection rate
is India -
> Over a billion people with only 244
infected 5
> deaths 20 received. Why?
India and Pakistan are now both on lockdown,
desperately hoping to flatten
the peak enough that their limited medical
resources can more-or-less
cope. It hasn't been done particularly
skillfully in either country, and
they've got big problems with very large
numbers of poor people who don't
have enough safety margin to handle being out
of work for weeks, but
they're trying.
Henry