Yeah, lets get back to work with reasonable precautions.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 8:11 AM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
It's as modelable as how many will die from the epidemic; it's just that
few, if any, have taken the time to do it. Certainly it's as easy to come
up with an hysterical model for it as many of the epidemic models, with
equally large error bars, given the level of quality inputs for either.
On 3/26/20 4:58 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> 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> 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>
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> 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>
wrote:
On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 10:26 AM ken mason <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