My feeling is that I'd rather be chronically sick in a good economy than in a depression. What happens when medicine becomes unavailable due to supply chains being cut off?
I'd rather a strong, comprehensive public health response than trying to economic recovery ourselves out of this problem. IMHO, the economy is a distraction to numb us from the tsunami of ICU patients and deaths to come.
The economy is not sacred, and is cyclical, and needs a good purge and rebalancing every 8 years or so. Recessions reallocate capital to be used more efficiently. After 2008 they were politicized as something to be avoided at all costs.
What isn't sacred are the people who own all that. They are as disposable as are any other parts of the economic machine. Replacing them is probably a good idea.
I expect the economic impacts to be rough either way. We don’t have a choice for “no economic impact” anymore. Either we do it in a coordinated and somewhat controlled manner now while we still have a handle on cases vs illness, or the impacts hit, roll, and peak along with the cases of illness while well/well-ish people try to improvise individual responses which probably have similar econ impacts but may not be as effective.
Or did we think that thousands on thousands falling ill at once wasn’t going to hurt economically?
To me it seems likely the difference between a recession (guaranteed) and a real, extremely serious depression which will be fully capable of exacting its own toll on lives.
Second, I expect that the illness impacts will hit even broader, both in sheer numbers and crossing demographic expectations, resulting in people directly absent from work and consumption for weeks at a time.
Those are the first order effects. The second order effects on psychology among a large number of folks having loved ones dying and acquaintances suffering are going to produce some behavior changes. Some of them would be similar to those we're seeing with lockdown, but as I said, improvised rather than coordinated, probably combining some degree of the same impacts but with less of the benefits.
The recession might be milder if we trade a higher death toll. Might.
But the financial markets sure didn't think we were going to escape one even before US civil measures started ratcheting up.
[0] https://medium.com/@juliael84791135/this-isnt-a-normal-flu-i...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/505995/adults-with-hyper...
The state with the lowest incidence of hypertension still has roughly 1 in 4 adults with hypertension. West Virginia is at the top with more than 1 in 2 adults. What do you think happens to them when they develop COVID-19? Hypertension is at the top of the list of co-morbidities that worsen outcomes. Medication to treat hypertension is often extremely inexpensive even without insurance ($10-$20/mo at the low end) and thus hypertension is often easy and inexpensive to manage.
How many folks working at pharma companies do you think have hypertension? What happens to the supply chain when people are incapacitated?
Even if a minority of the population will need hospitalization (hell, even if the minority is small enough to avoid overwhelming hospitals)... how many do you think will work through a SARS-CoV-2 infection?
The gravity with which I treat this pandemic is in large part based on government action. China quarantined nearly 100 million people. Iran is building mass graves. The uber-pro-business trump crony that serves as the secretary of the treasure took one look at the GOP plan and essentially said "double it, and make it cash with no means testing."
The folks arguing for immediately disruptive action aren't ignoring the economic consequences, they've decided that the economic consequences of doing nothing will be worse.
Obviously, the illness itself was always going to cause an economic blow by killing and sickening people.
And then there would be damage from behavioral changes. People were pulling kids out of schools, canceling events, and avoiding travel without being ordered to do so.
It doesn't seem like the "good economy" you suggest was ever an option.
It’s a solution ( it wouldn’t work the way you think, but it’s an option), but at least admit it clearly and live with it.
How long can you just shut down industries, keep kids out of school and will it make a significant dent in the total mortality? It could be that a couple of weeks of social distancing will be enough but can it be months and what are the comparable effects.
I know it is more dangerous than the normal flu and I will not downplay that but take Italy (that yes, would be worse of without shutdowns) you have 4k deaths so far; mostly old people while a couple of seasons ago they had 24k deaths attributed to a bad flu season.
The social distancing and shutting down society needs to work reasonably fast otherwise I wonder if it is worth it, at least in countries where you already have widespread disease.
Do you just assume we'll treat chronic health issues as a priority in a depression? I'd like to think we do as well, but the point is that things may well just stop working.