Coronavirus pandemic

[kphoger]

more than one

[kalvado]

more than one

You and someone else?

[wxfree]

Arkansas is going to start opening May 11. Of course, our death rate is still climbing (up to 57 today) , but big restaurants want their sales.   So who ordered the sacrificial lamb?

While I believe we did the right thing by shutting down, and probably saved the economy from a worse collapse, the purpose is to give us time to come up with better solutions, not to stay this way forever.  I am hoping that we can start easing up soon.  But even that may not be enough.  Restaurants are a good example.  They rely on packing people in, and you can't wear a mask while eating.  In Texas, restaurants will be limited to 25% of capacity.  I suspect that's a workable solution from the perspective of public health, but I don't know if it's any better economically.  Will it cost more to reopen than the revenue that can be raised with so few patrons?  Will opening make the owners lose money even faster?

We might have to think about life support for businesses that can't make it in the new normal.  It will be enormously expensive, but it may be less expensive than letting so much of the economy fail.  An obvious start is with tax breaks.  That will blow a hole in state budgets, but that same hole will exist if the businesses go under.  Something I just thought of is, for businesses that can prove the need, keeping workers on unemployment while they work, so that the business might have a chance of paying rent and other expenses.  Mass bankruptcies, reorganizing and writing down debt, might spread out the misery enough that things can stay alive.  Things like this will cost a lot, but the alternative might be even worse.  I'd compare this with the shutdown we have now, it's bad, but it might be the lesser of two evils when all you have are bad options.

[vdeane]

Aren't you sort of proving my point that it's the shutdown that killed the economy?

No.  Did you even read the article I linked to?  Here it is again: https://thebulwark.com/we-cannot-reopen-america/

Do you seriously think people are just going to go back to normal when stay at home orders lift?  Most won't.  Here's another article, specifically addressing that:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/306053/americans-hesitant-return-normal-short-term.aspx

So: if people aren't willing to return to normal and spend money, does it really matter if the economy is "open" again?  And this didn't start with the stay at home orders, either.  The increased demands for groceries as people stopped eating out began two weeks before stay at home orders began here.  Heck, just look at the Utica roadmeet - it was cancelled a whole week before NY's stay at home order was extended to include the date it had been scheduled for.  It wasn't the stay at home order that caused the cancellation - if it was, then it wouldn't have been cancelled until a week later - but the pandemic.

[webny99]

The economy would have endured the pandemic.

LOL.  No it wouldn't have.  Are you really this naive?  Without the government shutdowns, the pandemic would have been worse.  More people would be sick and die, which will would have caused people to stop going out anyway.

I believe that more businesses closed because they were forced to close by the government than would have closed if not forced to.  I believe that fewer people are spending their money at businesses because they're prevented by the government than would be if not prevented.  Are you really that naive, that you believe no businesses would have found a way to make it work?

I am with vdeane and SEWIGuy on this (as I basically already said in Reply# 2360). The recession was absolutely, 100% inevitable, and absolutely, 100% caused by the pandemic. Government action may have "worsened" it in the absolute sense of economic activity, but it would have been an even bigger disaster in terms of the lives lost and the long-term economic impacts, if they took any less action or, worse, no action at all.

Some businesses would have found ways to make it work, but I think it would have actually been much more traumatic, caused much faster spreading of the virus, and sowed much more confusion to have individual businesses figure out what works on their own. Seriously, try to imagine if nothing had been done by the government to curb the spread of the virus. It would be a lot more confusing and a lot scarier than it is now, and the majority of the population would be social distancing and staying home by now anyways. The only difference would be that cases would still be growing, and the economy would still be spiraling into a deeper hole. A shuttered economy at least provides universal clarity about the situation and sets the economic floor, so that at least we know it isn't going to keep getting worse from here.

And for closed businesses, each to their own, but I would much rather be told "you're temporarily closed", than have sales start spiraling downward for months on end, with no end in sight. By the time the closures occurred, the inevitably of the situation should have been obvious. At least this way they're not spending money on payroll and overheads this whole time when it ultimately wasn't going to be sustainable to stay open no matter what.

[US71]

That says something when you care more about a dead economy than dead citizens.

I myself have no intention of going to eat out so I can sacrifice my life for big business.  I intend to wait at least a couple weeks and monitor the situation.  I might carry-out a pizza, but I don't intend to patronize my favorite burger joint or Thai rice cafe until I am conformable going out.

[Max Rockatansky]

Speaking of death...  My uncle went into the ICU two days ago for heart failure and didn't pull through.  I'm to understand that there is no reason to believe what happened is Corona related in any way.  The kicker is that we don't have plans to hold a service due to all the virus stuff and might hold one this summer.  I say "might"  because it really clear when and if the sufficient access to go from California to Ohio without 14 days quarantines will be available.  For what it's worth he had a pretty full life and was well into his 70s...I highly doubt he paid much mind to what is going on currently.  To that end, I would prefer to do some sort of service short term and I think most of my family members would too.  None of that is really possible with the disorganized approach to reopening, social distancing, possible work related consequences, and who knows what else.

[Duke87]

The economy would have endured the pandemic.

LOL.  No it wouldn't have.  Are you really this naive?  Without the government shutdowns, the pandemic would have been worse.  More people would be sick and die, which will would have caused people to stop going out anyway.

I believe that more businesses closed because they were forced to close by the government than would have closed if not forced to.  I believe that fewer people are spending their money at businesses because they're prevented by the government than would be if not prevented.  Are you really that naive, that you believe no businesses would have found a way to make it work?

It's a question of which is really more of a contributory factor. Blaming shutdowns makes it sound like the majority of economic activity which is not currently occurring would be if not for the shutdowns.

It is possible there are some specific areas of the country where this may be true - places that haven't been hit very hard, and where the local culture is more cavalier. But this is not at all the reality on the ground in places that have been hit harder, or where the local culture is more paranoid.

I can certainly tell you that for my sake... I will be staying the fuck away from anything that involves people congregating for a while after things start reopening. I'm not going to trust that it's safe just because the government says so - I will want to see the results empirically show this and will be looking hard for any canaries of a possible resurgence.
And I'm not really interested in purchasing any non-essential items or services right now, because while I am still employed currently I'd be foolish to not be preparing for the possibility that that may change.

[J N Winkler]

FWIW, Q1 GDP estimates have been published and we are down 3%.  Assuming that this is all due to the lockdown and the impacts all fell within the final two weeks of a 12-week reporting period, that suggests economic activity will be down 18% for as long as we stay shut down.  I can see the drop in economic activity being at least that large, if not much larger, if we had done nothing whatsoever to mitigate the spread.

I believe that more businesses closed because they were forced to close by the government than would have closed if not forced to.  I believe that fewer people are spending their money at businesses because they're prevented by the government than would be if not prevented.  Are you really that naive, that you believe no businesses would have found a way to make it work?

I wonder if your perspective in this regard is colored by being out of the country when the first round of voluntary closures occurred.  We have not been to one of our standbys for Friday takeaway for over six weeks, for example, because they decided to close completely the weekend of March 15-16, even though they have always had the freedom to sell food to go, and no restaurants in our county were required to close their dining areas until March 25.

[RobbieL2415]

I hate when people say they're gonna "reopen" the economy.

No.  The economy never closed.  Some sectors have just seen a sharp decline in business. People are simply shifting their investment accounts around to save face.

Stay away from consumer discretionary, energy, utilites and technology.  Move over to blue chips, REITs and pharmaceuticals.

[Duke87]

FWIW, Q1 GDP estimates have been published and we are down 3%.  Assuming that this is all due to the lockdown and the impacts all fell within the final two weeks of a 12-week reporting period, that suggests economic activity will be down 18% for as long as we stay shut down.  I can see the drop in economic activity being at least that large, if not much larger, if we had done nothing whatsoever to mitigate the spread.

Not going to try to argue the counterfactual scenario, though I do want to address "economic activity will be down 18% for as long as we stay shut down" - I do not think this is true, since it falsely presumes the economic impacts of being shut down are linear with time when they most certainly are not. When businesses shut down, they have to draw down cash reserves / take on debt to continue paying their bills. They can only do this for so long before they go under. Likewise, longer shutdowns equal greater losses in tax revenue equal greater impacts to state/county/local budgets equal more need to curtail government services and other spending. A shutdown that lasts twice as long will be more than twice as painful, ultimately.

Beyond this, you have to account for the fact that for some things there is a time delay in impacts being seen. Right now a lot of road construction work, for example, is still happening because it was funded pre-covid and has been deemed essential, but when governments put together their budgets for the next fiscal year, a lot of contractors are going to find themselves hurting for work.

Indeed, expect there to be lasting negative impacts across all sorts of industries as capital budgets both public and private get scaled back, some of which have not been felt yet because while projects already underway will finish, the pain will come from new projects that haven't started yet being delayed or canceled.

[tradephoric]

Only if they believe they can go out without getting sick, and only if the supply chains continue to run.  Part of the supply chain is already in danger in spite of the restrictions keeping the numbers down.  If we had 20 or 50 or 100 times more people sick and dying, how many meat plant workers, crop pickers, truck drivers, warehouse and store workers, and other essential people would be willing and able to go to work and keep things moving?  I would argue that we saved the economy by keeping it running at a low level, whereas even the most basic parts of it could have shut down if we'd done nothing.

There have already been 60k deaths and 20X more would be 1.2 million deaths.  Based on the averages of several antibody studies, the fatality rate of this virus appears to be 0.3%.  At that fatality rate, 400 million people would need to be infected before you see 1.2 million deaths (and the US population is only 329 million).  Keep in mind early on experts were predicting up to 2.2 million deaths.  Seeing that it's unlikely they overestimated the US population by hundreds of millions of people in their models, it appears that they greatly overestimated the death rate.

[jemacedo9]

Only if they believe they can go out without getting sick, and only if the supply chains continue to run.  Part of the supply chain is already in danger in spite of the restrictions keeping the numbers down.  If we had 20 or 50 or 100 times more people sick and dying, how many meat plant workers, crop pickers, truck drivers, warehouse and store workers, and other essential people would be willing and able to go to work and keep things moving?  I would argue that we saved the economy by keeping it running at a low level, whereas even the most basic parts of it could have shut down if we'd done nothing.

There have already been 60k deaths and 20X more would be 1.2 million deaths.  Based on the averages of several antibody studies, the fatality rate of this virus appears to be 0.3%.  At that fatality rate, 400 million people would need to be infected before you see 1.2 million deaths (and the US population is only 329 million).  Keep in mind early on experts were predicting up to 2.2 million deaths.  Seeing that it's unlikely they overestimated the US population by hundreds of millions of people in their models, it appears that they greatly overestimated the death rate.

He said SICK and dying...and willing and ABLE to work.  People who are sick with this can't work either for 2-3 weeks anecdotally.

[kalvado]

Only if they believe they can go out without getting sick, and only if the supply chains continue to run.  Part of the supply chain is already in danger in spite of the restrictions keeping the numbers down.  If we had 20 or 50 or 100 times more people sick and dying, how many meat plant workers, crop pickers, truck drivers, warehouse and store workers, and other essential people would be willing and able to go to work and keep things moving?  I would argue that we saved the economy by keeping it running at a low level, whereas even the most basic parts of it could have shut down if we'd done nothing.

There have already been 60k deaths and 20X more would be 1.2 million deaths.  Based on the averages of several antibody studies, the fatality rate of this virus appears to be 0.3%.  At that fatality rate, 400 million people would need to be infected before you see 1.2 million deaths (and the US population is only 329 million).  Keep in mind early on experts were predicting up to 2.2 million deaths.  Seeing that it's unlikely they overestimated the US population by hundreds of millions of people in their models, it appears that they greatly overestimated the death rate.

0.3% seem to be optimistic, 0.7-0.9 may be more realistic. And I still didn't hear how good those western blots come out anyway

[jemacedo9]

I can certainly tell you that for my sake... I will be staying the fuck away from anything that involves people congregating for a while after things start reopening. I'm not going to trust that it's safe just because the government says so - I will want to see the results empirically show this and will be looking hard for any canaries of a possible resurgence.
And I'm not really interested in purchasing any non-essential items or services right now, because while I am still employed currently I'd be foolish to not be preparing for the possibility that that may change.

THIS. 

Whatever happened to "have a rainy day fund of 6 months of expenses" (both for people and businesses)?  Yes, some people can't do that.  But many could and didn't, either out of ignorance or out of arrogance.  We're only in month two.  And many expenses have been temporarily paused, like mortgages and car payments and credit cards. 

And those who still have jobs, what guarantees them that they will still have theirs three months from now? 

So no matter how much or how fast the economy reopens, I am not resuming normal life.  Because I don't trust the average person to act responsibly.  The spread of this virus requires that everyone cooperates and does their part to limit their potential asymptomatic spread of the virus.  And yes, things are going to have to reopen more than they are now.  But let's not act like fully reopening the economy is just going to solve everything.  It's not. 

[NWI_Irish96]

There is an awful lot of lack of comprehension of how all this works.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

Before restrictions were put into place, this virus had an R(0) [r-naught] of 2.2-2.7 [every infected person infects, on average, 2-3 others], and the number of infections was doubling every 6-7 days.  At that rate, 1000 cases becomes 300,000 in 2 months. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

To achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, we need to reach an infection rate of 70 percents.  With a population of 329 million, an infection rate of 70% is 229.6 million infections.  The death rate with an unchecked spread and hospitals overrun is a guess, but 0.6% would be on the low end of estimates, which translates to 1.38 million deaths.  I want to see anyone try to suggest that keeping the strictest level of lockdown for 3 months is worse than losing 1.38 million Americans.

The goal of the extreme measures being taken is to reduce the R(0) rate below 1.0.  When the R(0) rate falls below 1.0 and stays below 1.0 for long enough, herd immunity is reached long before 70% of the country is affected.  There are a lot of different estimates out there, but we the extreme measures appear to have reduced R(0) to around 0.7.  That's great, but with this virus taking so long to exhibit symptoms, we need to stay there for a few weeks before relaxing restrictions.

To all the people who are quick to point out that the death rate is a lot lower because there are so many more cases than have actually tested positive, that same fact means that there are a whole bunch more people who are positive and don't know it that will start spreading this thing again if we lift restrictions now.

[jemacedo9]

There is an awful lot of lack of comprehension of how all this works.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

Before restrictions were put into place, this virus had an R(0) [r-naught] of 2.2-2.7 [every infected person infects, on average, 2-3 others], and the number of infections was doubling every 6-7 days.  At that rate, 1000 cases becomes 300,000 in 2 months. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

To achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, we need to reach an infection rate of 70 percents.  With a population of 329 million, an infection rate of 70% is 229.6 million infections.  The death rate with an unchecked spread and hospitals overrun is a guess, but 0.6% would be on the low end of estimates, which translates to 1.38 million deaths.  I want to see anyone try to suggest that keeping the strictest level of lockdown for 3 months is worse than losing 1.38 million Americans.

The goal of the extreme measures being taken is to reduce the R(0) rate below 1.0.  When the R(0) rate falls below 1.0 and stays below 1.0 for long enough, herd immunity is reached long before 70% of the country is affected.  There are a lot of different estimates out there, but we the extreme measures appear to have reduced R(0) to around 0.7.  That's great, but with this virus taking so long to exhibit symptoms, we need to stay there for a few weeks before relaxing restrictions.

To all the people who are quick to point out that the death rate is a lot lower because there are so many more cases than have actually tested positive, that same fact means that there are a whole bunch more people who are positive and don't know it that will start spreading this thing again if we lift restrictions now.

It's not comprehension, it's denial.

If it doesn't match my personal narrative, I'll cherry pick facts (and/or opinions disguised as facts) to support my personal narrative.   Be it my perceived rights to my personal freedom, or my economic freedom, or whatever. 

It's the 21st Century Mantra...

[SEWIGuy]

The economy would have endured the pandemic.

LOL.  No it wouldn't have.  Are you really this naive?  Without the government shutdowns, the pandemic would have been worse.  More people would be sick and die, which will would have caused people to stop going out anyway.

I believe that more businesses closed because they were forced to close by the government than would have closed if not forced to.  I believe that fewer people are spending their money at businesses because they're prevented by the government than would be if not prevented.  Are you really that naive, that you believe no businesses would have found a way to make it work?

Right.  But more people would have gotten sick and died.  The pandemic caused the government's response.  The pandemic is what is ultimately to blame. 

And no, I think a lot of businesses would not have made it work.  I was out and about in Wisconsin the weekend before safer at home and there was no social distancing.  No staying at home.  Look at the beaches in Florida and the spring break crowds.

Without an order, it wouldn't have happened.  Don't be naive.

[MikeTheActuary]

Without an order, it wouldn't have happened.

Without the order, the world would still have slowed to a crawl, but the effect wouldn't have been to the same extent (such as it is) as it has been, and perhaps not as long.

My company went to 99.99% work from home before lockdown orders went into effect.  I road-tripped to/from Memphis just before most states started imposing lockdown orders; it was a roadtrip because I, like most other travelers, didn't want to risk airports or airplanes, and you could see changes in consumer behavior driving some business decisions at least as much as the daily changes in local orders.

[kalvado]

Before restrictions were put into place, this virus had an R(0) [r-naught] of 2.2-2.7 [every infected person infects, on average, 2-3 others], and the number of infections was doubling every 6-7 days.  At that rate, 1000 cases becomes 300,000 in 2 months. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

To achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, we need to reach an infection rate of 70 percents.  With a population of 329 million, an infection rate of 70% is 229.6 million infections.  The death rate with an unchecked spread and hospitals overrun is a guess, but 0.6% would be on the low end of estimates, which translates to 1.38 million deaths.  I want to see anyone try to suggest that keeping the strictest level of lockdown for 3 months is worse than losing 1.38 million Americans.

The goal of the extreme measures being taken is to reduce the R(0) rate below 1.0.  When the R(0) rate falls below 1.0 and stays below 1.0 for long enough, herd immunity is reached long before 70% of the country is affected.  There are a lot of different estimates out there, but we the extreme measures appear to have reduced R(0) to around 0.7.  That's great, but with this virus taking so long to exhibit symptoms, we need to stay there for a few weeks before relaxing restrictions.

First, we may need to change the lifestyle to keep R0<1. Masks are an obvious first step.
Second, 1 million lives may after all be... acceptable. Sad, but better than possible alternatives - including, as many people are saying,  damage done by 3 months of shutdown.
There are a lot of options between strict shutdown and "do-nothing", though, and  solution should be be somewhere there

[SEWIGuy]

Without an order, it wouldn't have happened.

Without the order, the world would still have slowed to a crawl, but the effect wouldn't have been to the same extent (such as it is) as it has been, and perhaps not as long.

And a lot of people would get sick and die.

Here is the main problem with this.  A two month *partial* shut down due to a pandemic shouldn't cause so much economic chaos.  The problem is our safety net sucks.  Unemployed not being able to access benefits.  Small businesses being shut out of loan and grant programs. 

Maybe our economy just isn't as good as we thought it was.

[kphoger]

Had to deal with one-way aisles at Safeway.  Was following someone and he got to almost the end of the aisle, and stopped.  He chose that time to check his texts.  He didn't seem to be getting shopping advice, he was just checking his texts.  He could have gone past the end of the aisle and ducked back in to the very end if he needed something there.  That would have been more socially acceptable than blocking the aisle.  I won't be going back there soon.

[tradephoric]

The goal of the extreme measures being taken is to reduce the R(0) rate below 1.0.  When the R(0) rate falls below 1.0 and stays below 1.0 for long enough, herd immunity is reached long before 70% of the country is affected.  There are a lot of different estimates out there, but we the extreme measures appear to have reduced R(0) to around 0.7.  That's great, but with this virus taking so long to exhibit symptoms, we need to stay there for a few weeks before relaxing restrictions.

What does waiting two weeks before relaxing restrictions accomplish?  We have been locked down for a month and we are still seeing about 30k new cases a day and containing the virus seems like a pipe dream.  It's great that the R0 is below 1.0 during the lock down but won't it just spike back up above 1.0 once things reopen?  Ultimately we'll still be in the same boat of either waiting for a vaccine or building up a herd immunity to protect the population... but we'll be months behind the curve of gaining herd immunity while the country was locked down for months.  I don't understand why we won't have to gain 70% herd immunity if we just wait a little longer to reopen.

To all the people who are quick to point out that the death rate is a lot lower because there are so many more cases than have actually tested positive, that same fact means that there are a whole bunch more people who are positive and don't know it that will start spreading this thing again if we lift restrictions now.

The "wort case scenario"  in the Imperial College study estimated 2.2 million US deaths.  The model assumed an R0 of 2.4 and assumed 81% of the US population would be infected over the course of the epidemic.  So the Imperial Study was estimating a fatality rate of 0.82%.  Plug in a death rate of 0.6%, and total deaths drop to 1.6 million deaths.  Assuming 0.3% and it drops to 800k deaths.  H1N1 infected 60 million Americans and caused 12k deaths.  But even if every single American got infected, that would have resulted in 66k deaths.  There reaches a point where if the fatality rate is low enough, we wouldn't go through these extreme mitigation measures.

[hotdogPi]

The goal of the extreme measures being taken is to reduce the R(0) rate below 1.0.  When the R(0) rate falls below 1.0 and stays below 1.0 for long enough, herd immunity is reached long before 70% of the country is affected.  There are a lot of different estimates out there, but we the extreme measures appear to have reduced R(0) to around 0.7.  That's great, but with this virus taking so long to exhibit symptoms, we need to stay there for a few weeks before relaxing restrictions.

What does waiting two weeks before relaxing restrictions accomplish?  We have been locked down for a month and we are still seeing about 30k new cases a day and containing the virus seems like a pipe dream.  It's great that the R0 is below 1.0 during the lock down but won't it just spike back up above 1.0 once things reopen?  Ultimately we'll still be in the same boat of either waiting for a vaccine or building up a herd immunity to protect the population.  I don't understand why we won't have to gain 70% herd immunity if we just wait a little longer to reopen.

To all the people who are quick to point out that the death rate is a lot lower because there are so many more cases than have actually tested positive, that same fact means that there are a whole bunch more people who are positive and don't know it that will start spreading this thing again if we lift restrictions now.

The "wort case scenario"  in the Imperial College study estimated 2.2 million US deaths.  The model assumed an R0 of 2.4 and assumed 81% of the US population would be infected over the course of the epidemic.  So the Imperial Study was estimating a fatality rate of 0.82%.  Plug in a death rate of 0.6%, and total deaths drop to 1.6 million deaths.  Assuming 0.3% and it drops to 800k deaths.  H1N1 infected 60 million Americans and caused 12k deaths.  But even if every single American got infected by it, that would have resulted in about 66k deaths.  There reaches a point where if the fatality rate is low enough, we wouldn't go through these extreme mitigation measures.

If everyone gets it at once, the death rate will increase, as hospitals will be over capacity.

[tradephoric]

^I agree that hospitals being overrun would result in a higher death rate, and the Imperial College study specifically stated that it was not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality.  The best strategy may be reopening the economy with regional shut downs where health systems are getting overwhelmed.  That strategy would get us through this pandemic as quickly as possible while still trying to minimize deaths.