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Comment by smallgovt | Hacker News Reader

“If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest. No American is going to say accelerate the economy at the cost of human life” - Cuomo

Unfortunately, this just isn't true. Is life worth living if you're destitute and living in poverty or emotional turmoil? Won't a strong economy increase the pace at which we develop and produce life saving technologies?

At a certain point of economic ruin, I think many people will choose a strong economy over saving lives. The question is more so what the tipping point is. It seems hard to quantify and compare the total impact a strong economy has versus lives saved, but I think it's definitely worth having the conversation. Ultimately, this is a value judgment so there's no objective answer.

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Actually, this pandemic can go away forever with a month of global lockdown, it's not like from now on people must stay at home forever or they will die. With good coordination, most things should be able to continue as normal. Many countries, rich or poor, have religious holidays that stop the economy for up to a week or two and nothing happens.

Besides, even if somehow the economy crashes it's not the end of the world. It's simply not a big deal as long as the society doesn't crash.

After a month of low economic activity, people will still be engineers or scientists or artists, the infrastructure will still be in place and the output it will quickly pick up.

It doesn't have to have any real costs, except maybe some goods to expire.

>go away forever with a month of global lockdown

Therein lies the problem; people, countries, religions, politicians (dem/rep/liberal/conservative), etc would all have to actually work together. Coordination is what this entire response, globally, is lacking.

"Is life worth living if you're destitute and living in poverty or emotional turmoil?"

It sounds like you're saying you think maybe poor people should just die.

That's not my intention at all. I'm simply pointing out that both quality of life and quantity of life are valuable to most people.

Again, with "quality" versus "quantity" it sounds like you're saying that there could be a lower quantity of people (some people die) in order to increase the quality of life for others.

If you're asking for my personal evaluation, yes, I believe that at a certain point, it's clearly worth trading quality of life for quantity of life. This applies to my own life. For example, I would rather take a 50% chance at survival versus living the rest of my life in abject poverty and emotional turmoil.

I'm going to guess that you're no where near having to actually make that decision for your self, thus you're comfortable making that statement on behalf of others.

I only speak for myself and would feel uncomfortable enforcing my values on others. That's why my comment posed this more as an open question and discussion.

So you'd rather be dead than poor?

If you find yourself taking this thought seriously and you're in the US, you can call 1-800-273-8255. Please take care.

Not the GP, but I'd rather be alive and rich than alive and poor, and I'd rather be alive and poor than dead.

But say I assign utilities like this:

Alive+rich = 5 Alive+poor = 1 Dead = 0

So 50% alive+rich, 50% dead has utility 2.5, while 100% alive+poor has utility 1.

Well that is the opinion of a large part of the us voters, otherwise the US would have affordable healthcare for everyone by now.

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You have a third choice.

3. A social support system that will keep non-essential workers in their homes, and keep them fed, until the emergency ends.

A particular political faction seems to be willing to sacrifice millions on their ideological altar, if it means avoiding option #3.

There's no free win option here. Every choice has its cost.

That social support system has to come from taking a slice out of the economy. And who is going to be paying for that social support system while the economy is shut down? There's no god of socialism who will simply rain infinite amounts of manna upon us in the form of debt just because we will it to happen.

> That social support system has to come from taking a slice out of the economy. And who is going to be paying for that social support system while the economy is shut down? There's no god of socialism who will simply rain infinite amounts of manna upon us in the form of debt just because we will it to happen.

Surely, you're aware that we're currently printing money hand-over-fist, to help corporations make ends meet in the short-term? We've already printed 1.7 trillion dollars, for this purpose, and that was entirely at the discretion of the Fed.

When the dust settles, and QE ends, many of those loans will not be made good on.

If a stroke of a pen by an unelected bureaucrat can parachute 1.7 trillion in corporate bailouts, surely, we can figure out how to make grocery bills for a few months.

Helicopter money is fine if it exists to prop up the market. And if it vanishes ~30 minutes after we put it in, who gives a toss?

Helicopter money is never acceptable if it is sent directly to households to ensure they keep spending. It's far preferable to allow the machine to seize up without oil.

This contradiction is somehow the bedrock of American fiscal policy.

There haven't been any bailouts issued yet. Congress is still in the process of working out what the stimulus bill is going to look like.

You're referring to overnight loans made by the federal reserve to facilitate liquidity in the market. If you're not aware of the significance of the difference, this isn't the appropriate place to go over it.

Regardless, the stimulus package is going to have some form of social support in it. My point is just that it's not going to be a free win, it's more of a least bad option at this point. There's going to be long term economic and social damage from this even with the most generous of social support offerings.

World War 2 killed only 0.3% of Americans. When 3% of Americans die, you will lose your job, there's a very good chance you will lose your home, and good luck having a normal life.

I really don't get what the point of your argument here is. It's such a bad comparison.

The US came out of WW2 with an amazing economy.

Also this isn't a war.

And your augment is openly self defeating, since it takes 5 seconds to find out that 3% of the world population died in WW2, and slightly more than a minute to find out that 12.7% of the Russian population died - only for them to become a world super power immediately after the end of the war.

Are you arguing for bringing the economy back online?

Losing 3% of Americans, spread equally throughout the population, would be bad for the economy. Losing 20% of retirees, though... That would be fantastic for the US economy.

And guess what? Covid-19 kills mostly retirees.

So no, they probably wouldn't be losing their job in that scenario, unless of course their job is to take care of the old in some way.

Yes, and the assets passed down to the next generation would also be spent, thus further improving the economy.

It's a real dilemma, and it's forcing uncomfortable questions about how many dollars a person-year of life is worth.

We can avoid this terrible trade-off by realizing it's a false choice. We don't have to trade lives for GDP. There is a third option.

We could take a lesson from Singapore, Taiwan and Korea.

We could test millions of people, even those with no symptoms. We could aggressively isolate the positives, and allow the negatives to get on with life, with common sense disinfecting, physical distancing and universal mask wearing.

There is a path out of this dilemma, but in the US it's pretty difficult to execute in the absence of national leadership, with every neighborhood, town, city, county and state left on their own to figure this out.

It's too late for extensive testing. The US is analogous to someone who was just exposed to a massively lethal dose of radiation, but still mostly feels fine for now. The damage is already done, and it's going to start showing up regardless of what is done to prevent it.

Covid-19 has already massively spread in the US, and it's just a matter of days before large amounts of the population become symptomatic. It's too late to do anything about what's coming, and what's coming is going to be really bad.

> It's too late to do anything about what's coming

On one side we have health officials saying "for the love of god, keep the barriers up".

On the other, we have politicians saying "we waited as long as we can, send in as many people as we need to sweep up the supercritical plutonium, it 'won\'t make a difference now' if the PPE isn't there".

Who is to say who is right?

In the US a prosperous economy is only good for the rich, minimum wage and workers’ right haven’t really improved over the years while the stock market skyrocketed.

In Europe this might be more true though.

Except it's not the rich who have been impacted by the freeze on the economy.

Oh yes they have been impacted. Look at S&P 500.

It’s just that this time EVERYBODY is being impacted, including the rich. And their incentives are to restart the market as fast as possible. If you look at the Spanish flu of 1918, the economy was barely impacted because a worker’s life didn’t matter as much back then.

Net worth going from 40 million to 1 million is less impact than not having money for groceries next week because your bank account started at $400 before the place you work was shuttered.

You say that but people kill themselves over this kind of loss.

It's amazing to see how, when faced with the dilemma of "Industrial development, at the cost of have millions of people die", so many people want to follow in the footsteps of the USSR.

Continuing with business as usual in an epidemic will condemn millions to an otherwise preventable death. This virus' mortality rate shoots up when health systems are overloaded.

You act like being unable to buy food and pay rent has no human cost.

1. There's a human cost to not industrializing a country, too. The surviving Soviet citizens got to take advantage of things like electricity, running water, universal education, a functioning industrial base. [1] Yet, for some reason, industrializing a country, while causing a famine is condemned as butchery... Yet preserving stock valuations, while causing an epidemic is laudable?

2. Then change the distribution systems. It's an emergency. Treat it like one.

[1] And eventually luxuries like radios and private apartments!

It’s not a binary decision with no alternatives: for example, what most countries in Europe are doing where they give people money for necessities.

To make it even tougher, this isn't a black and white question.

- a poor economy kills people and harms their health https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/faili...

- people dying harms the economy https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/th...

So optimizing for minimizing death wouldn't be a full stop on the economy and optimizing for the economy wouldn't be full freedom of movement.

It's quite complex, and (though certainly neither is an expert) the words of Cuomo and Trump overlap to a considerable degree. Economic damage absolutely will kill people--a lot of people.

Total lockdown probably will save some people, but it's hard to really know at this point. It may turn out that most people are going to get the virus, and that the number who die will actually turn out to be fairly invariant with respect to whatever actions governments take.

Even if we had a truly brilliant scientist who had all of the information that's presently known, I doubt the call would be obvious. Just too many unknowns.

> It may turn out that most people are going to get the virus

China is good (but definitely not conclusive) evidence that a total lockdown can stop the virus.

It appears to be an impressive result, so far. What's less clear is what happens after they release the lockdown, which must inevitably happen.

Flattening the curve to a fair degree was very likely worth doing. But it could happen that like the common cold, this will ultimately pass through the entire population, and there simply might not be much we can do about it.

My guess is that we're still in the first act of this play. It might take a decade or more to gain real insight. Right now we have to guess.

IMO the US president is doing this to test the waters.

I think he wants to ensure he can take responsibility for the market rebound. If and when it happens, people will more likely attribute the rebound to him if he takes decisive action. And, if the market doesn't fully rebound, he wants to have an excuse. In this case, he'll be able to say "I told you we should have restarted the economy sooner".

>Ultimately, this is a value judgment so there's no objective answer.

Ethical Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_dilemma

Heinz Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma

I think it's simpler than that. It's The Button. Would you be willing to push a button and get a million dollars knowing that someone somewhere else will die. A lot of people are willing to push it for a lot less than a million.

> Won't a strong economy increase the pace at which we develop and produce life saving technologies?

And yet, for some reason, having a strong economy in the US didn't make the country better prepared for this crisis.

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