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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

The government is in a real conundrum when it comes to relaxing the lockdown.

There are a few things we do know:

- It's impossible to keep the lockdown in place for long enough to completely eliminate the virus. Why? Because there are still essential workers out there, giving it to each other and their families.

- Because we can't eliminate the virus, the main goal to limit spread so that our existing medical resources can handle it.

- End the lockdown too early, and like a wildfire, it will spark up again in a few weeks and we're back at square one (or close to it).

- Keep the lockdown too long and the impact to the economy will only get worse, requiring massive gov't bailouts/support. The longer we're locked down, the longer it's going to take for the economy to recover.

What seems to make sense to me is, keep the lockdown in place long enough to get in front of it. Basically, enough testing so that new cases can be immediately identified and quarantined. That alone will have a big impact.

Then start to identify other essential services and slowly relax restrictions while at the same time keeping up the early identification and isolation of new cases. If things flare up, stop and get in front of it. Then continue to relax the lockdown.

The only way I can see a rapid end to the lockdown is if we either get a vaccine approved (and mass vaccination occurs) or a very effective treatment is found that takes the pressure off of medical resources.

View on HN

> The longer we're locked down, the longer it's going to take for the economy to recover.

The economy would take a serious hit if suddenly millions of people overwhelm the medical system, people collapse in the streets and bodies pile up in and outside of morgues.

There's a weird false dichotomy I keep encountering where people insinuate that we either quarantine and hurt the economy, or we don't quarantine because of the damage it would do to the economy. The economy is going to take a hit no matter what.

Sure, but the longer the lockdown, the worse it is for the economy. And it's economy that pays for healthcare, food, housing, etc.

It's not an ideal situation when we eradicate the virus but have millions of people jobless and homeless in the US.

I'm not sure I understand the "bad for the economy" side of things. Who will suffer if we shut down unessential businesses and just mail people checks? We'll still be able to eat, we'll still have roofs over our heads, etc. The only ones who will really see their lives change significantly are the ultra-rich, who need us riding around in Ubers, renting Airbnbs, and buying plane tickets so they can fund their wealthy lifestyles. Who gives a shit about them? The average American is affected less by a quarantine than an unchecked pandemic. The only reason this is even a discussion is because our political system has been completely bought out to serve only the wealthy.

> Who will suffer if we shut down unessential businesses and just mail people checks? We'll still be able to eat, we'll still have roofs over our heads, etc. The only ones who will really see their lives change significantly are the ultra-rich, who need us riding around in Ubers, renting Airbnbs, and buying plane tickets so they can fund their wealthy lifestyles.

Why do you think this to be the case? The ultra-rich don't need you around to do whatever they want. They have their islands and personal staff to attend to them.

When the government bails you out and gives you money, you slowly by slowly become unable to eat, unable to have roofs over your head. Food does not magically appear in a grocery store. Food has a global supply chain that requires your currency to have value. When the government prints money, it makes it harder for it to borrow money in the future. Eventually, your dollar buys less on the global markets, meaning farmers cannot acquire fertilizer and other needed things to grow your crops. We won't be able to hire labor to pick the crops. People will lose their jobs as exports dry up and American dollars buy less and less foreign currency. Eventually, farmers raise their prices to combat all these forces, and the government must print more money. This is just food on the table. Construction materials and workers to put a roof on your head require an even larger, international supply chain. In order to combat this, the government reduces welfare programs and increases taxes. Business and 'the rich' leave for greener pastures. Frankly, inflation kills, and I don't understand why everyone is so dismissive of this.

I'm not even touching inflation's effects on doctors ability to do medicine.

>Food has a global supply chain that requires your currency to have value.

Not true for all food.

> When the government prints money, it makes it harder for it to borrow money in the future.

What causes it to be harder to borrow is the faith of people willing to hold government debt. The American government has never reneged on its debt. "Printing money" has very little to do with the government's ability to borrow.

>Eventually, your dollar buys less on the global markets, meaning farmers cannot acquire fertilizer and other needed things to grow your crops.

We produce these things locally. Every nation-state with a half-decent national security apparatus does.

>People will lose their jobs as exports dry up and American dollars buy less and less foreign currency.

This is one of the most glaring cognitive dissonances in this thought process. Currency is relative. When the American dollar is strong, it means foreign currency buys fewer tangible American goods, and we actually export less. When the American dollar is weak, foreign currency goes farther and we export more.

>When the government bails you out and gives you money, you slowly by slowly become unable to eat, unable to have roofs over your head.

As Alan Greenspan put it when Paul Ryan brought this fanciful line of thinking up in Congress: inflation happens when there are too many dollars chasing too few goods. There are two sides to this equation. Given the difficulty the Fed has had meeting inflation targets, it is far more likely we are constrained by the allocation of dollars either because we are not able to get them where they need to be in the economy, or because there's just too little circulating.

America needs phosphate and imports it currently. We cannot produce enough locally. This is needed to produce enough food. I'm not sure how you get around this in your magical world.

> What causes it to be harder to borrow is the faith of people willing to hold government debt. The American government has never reneged on its debt. "Printing money" has very little to do with the government's ability to borrow.

Yeah, making up money and having people sit at home (thus not paying taxes) is really going to inspire people to hold American debt!

>America needs phosphate and imports it currently.

Sure, right now the economics work out that it's cheaper to import phosphate then produce it locally.

>We cannot produce enough locally.

We might not produce enough locally to meet the current demand right now, but that doesn't mean we can't. It about whether capital is currently allocated toward the production of phosphate. It doesn't need to be because we can import it. If we couldn't produce it under any circumstance that would be a massive national security flaw. :)

> Yeah, making up money and having people sit at home (thus not paying taxes) is really going to inspire people to hold American debt!

Having as many people as we can bear sit at home is the best course of action at the very present moment to avoid spreading this virus. The people sitting at home need to be able to buy what they need and pay the essential workers producing and transporting what they need to them. The alternative is worse: you spread virus and can't pay working people.

People will hold American debt if the American government can assure debt holders that its people and institutions can survive a pandemic.

>... is really going to inspire people to hold American debt!

In the end we agree, it really is about faith :)

> If we couldn't produce it under any circumstance that would be a massive national security flaw. :)

Yeah, it's so much a national security flaw that American law gives American citizens the right to claim islands as parts of the United States in order to secure access to a very difficult to acquire resource.

> Having as many people as we can bear sit at home is the best course of action at the very present moment to avoid spreading this virus.

This is not up for debate, and I never disagreed with it.

> The people sitting at home need to be able to buy what they need and pay the essential workers producing and transporting what they need to them.

Certainly. I wasn't disagreeing with you that people will need compensation for lost income.

However, what we were discussing was this:

The ultra-rich are not going to suffer. They have their own personal capital they will use for their enjoyment. The people who will suffer are the American tax payer (regardless of income) who now has a larger debt burden. At some point, the American tax burden will overshadow the service we pay on debts. Then all faith will be lossed. It may not happen after this bill. It may not happen after 100 of these bills, but it will happen eventually, and it'll not harm the rich, I'll tell you that.

>it'll not harm the rich, I'll tell you that.

Inflation, once it is an actual problem, can be taxed away and we can structure that tax progressively. The rich will pay their fair share.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/16/18251646/modern...

They'll just leave the United States, then?

Why is it 'fair'? They made their money by giving people things they wanted in exchange for money the people were happy to give them. How is taking it back fair?

> They'll just leave the United States, then?

American citizen expatriates pay tax.

>How is taking it back fair?

We live in a society. :)

> They'll just leave the United States, then?

Good, they're leeches on society and add nothing of value. If they added value, they wouldn't pay their workers the bare minimum and list them as contractors so they don't get health insurance. Let's encourage more compassionate corporations to expand their operations, and force greedy corporations out. I think we'll all be better off for it.

> They have their own personal capital they will use for their enjoyment.

Where did they get this capital? I say we take it back from them and use it to buy food. Not that there's a shortage of food. I guess I should say we should take it from them and hand it to Americans so they are allowed to access the food which we have already produced. It's a sad state of things when Americans go hungry solely due to billionaires hoarding wealth on private islands. The food is there, the people who need it are there, but our "economic system" says they're not allowed to access it until a billionaire decides they're good enough to be employed to make them richer.

> Where did they get this capital?

I would assume people gave it to them in exchange for goods that those same people were unwilling to produce?

> It's a sad state of things when Americans go hungry solely due to billionaires hoarding wealth on private islands.

No one is going hungry. People have paid unemployment insurance and will be getting a stimulus check anyway.

> ut our "economic system" says they're not allowed to access it until a billionaire decides they're good enough to be employed to make them richer.

You don't need a billionaire to employ you. Just make something your neighbor wants and charge them for it. I made a small fortune selling tomato starts to my neighbors. Which billionaire employed me? Maybe people should start asking what they can do for others instead of waiting for someone to spell it out for them.

> those same people were unwilling to produce?

Because people just have the option to produce food for themselves right?

> No one is going hungry.

This is just plain false. Many children who relied on school lunches are going hungry as we speak.

> Just make something your neighbor wants and charge them for it.

My neighbor is just as poor as me. We can only afford rent, food, and healthcare (healthcare is a luxury). What are my options now? I have to work as an Uber driver because it's hard to find work around here.

> I made a small fortune selling tomato starts to my neighbors.

That's great, if you live in a rich neighborhood. Unfortunately when I go door to door in wealthy neighborhoods the cops pick me up.

> Because people just have the option to produce food for themselves right?

Are you really arguing that farmers shouldn't charge for the food they grow?

> This is just plain false. Many children who relied on school lunches are going hungry as we speak.

Haven't most states provided a substitute program? Mine certainly has. I'm curious to know which jurisdiction is not.

> My neighbor is just as poor as me. We can only afford rent, food, and healthcare (healthcare is a luxury). What are my options now? I have to work as an Uber driver because it's hard to find work around here.

Then sell to someone with money? I do agree that we systematically prevent poor neighborhoods from access to capital markets, but that is due to burdensome regulation, not greed. I would assume if your hours have been reduced, you should be getting the unemployment insurance you paid for, if not, that's a different story.

> That's great, if you live in a rich neighborhood. Unfortunately when I go door to door in wealthy neighborhoods the cops pick me up.

No. On craigslist. You clearly have internet access and time to post. It's free and people just meet me in parking lots. Paid a few dollars for the seeds, and grew them for two months in my house. People pay ridiculous amounts for heirloom varieties. Seeds are often free if you have a local seed library.

> Are you really arguing that farmers shouldn't charge for the food they grow?

No, I'm saying we shouldn't bail out big corps and banks. We should mail checks to Americans who need to eat instead of relying on big corps to pay them to do so. History has shown time and time again that instead of paying their labourers fairly, big corps will hoard wealth to enrich their VCs and pay out bonuses to execs. Let's go straight to the root of the problem instead of bowing down to our corporate overlords.

> Then sell to someone with money?

Unfortunately I don't have time for this. My family is going to go hungry next week, so I don't have time to build up a new business and flounder for a while.

> I do agree that we systematically prevent poor neighborhoods from access to capital markets, but that is due to burdensome regulation, not greed.

This is where we disagree. It's 100% absolutely due to greed.

> you should be getting the unemployment insurance you paid for

I live paycheck to paycheck, we had to skip 2 meals last week. I can't afford unemployment insurance.

> Paid a few dollars for the seeds, and grew them for two months in my house.

Again, I don't have time to wait for seeds to grow. I don't know how I'm going to feed my children next week, let alone in two months.

Now obviously I'm not the person who is having these problems, I'm just talking like one to show you the flaws in your argument. You're looking at this from the perspective of someone who has an emergency savings fund, and an education, but the stark reality is that 50% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and have no ability to start a business like you're saying. You have to be in a position of extreme privilege to talk this way.

Every American deserves a roof over their head and a hot meal. For some reason we've set up a system where people like Adam von Neumann and the Waltons get to decide which Americans deserve to eat, and which deserve to go hungry. You're saying that's not because of greed? We have the ability to feed every American in this country, but we artificially gate food and housing behind "jobs," then ensure that those big corps get huge bailouts under the guise of protecting workers.

If we want to protect workers, we can just mail them checks. No need to go through big corps, except for corrupt reasons like enriching VCs, lobbyists, and execs.

This is entirely incorrect

The ultra-rich will have a variable level of "decreased performance in their portfolio". They're still rich, especially if not over-levered. They are also well positioned to take advantage of any hyper-inflation event.

The average american, with the loss of their primary income and no real UBI is going to feel it the most.

For the USD to hyperinflate, we would have to print quadrillions and quintillions of dollars.

Hyperinflation is about as real a threat as Bigfoot, or little green men from mars.

> The only ones who will really see their lives change significantly are the ultra-rich, who need us riding around in Ubers, renting Airbnbs, and buying plane tickets so they can fund their wealthy lifestyles.

[citation needed]

The wealthy's assets require hired labor to keep and increase their value. Their wealth is derived from those assets.

There's lots of hired labor around the world, no one needs to live in the united states. That is not actually a requirement to be rich.

In a world where people's identities have become hopelessly conflated with their occupation, preventing them from working for a prolonged period would seem like a pretty major change to their lives. I'm talking about working-class folks here, not the ultra-rich.

Life isn't just about having money to buy food.

Also, there are other solutions like serological testing, aggressively developing ways to manage the illness, testing vaccines, etc. It's not just quarantines, folks

It's almost as if the US government does not have a coherent plan. /s

The FDA has started vaccine tests?

14-month trials.

> Also, there are other solutions like serological testing, aggressively developing ways to manage the illness, testing vaccines, etc. It's not just quarantines, folks

Unless we want to completely overwhelm the medical system within the next couple of weeks and potentially have over a million people drop dead from infection or lack of adequate healthcare, quarantine is the one tool we have at our disposal right now to manage this pandemic.

Is the UK really going to have serological testing up and running that quickly?

There are people arguing that it would be better to stop the quarantine now and get it over as quick as possible. Everybody over retirement age would be refused treatment to reduce the long term burden on the social security system.

Fortunately there isn't much serious discussion of this approach outside of certain think tanks because the optics are bad even for true died in the wool libertarians.

You'll even see arguments like "more people will die of the quarantine because they have no job if we keep the economy stopped for much longer".

IMHO this kind of one sided thinking comes from only considering the markets when making a decision. The markets don't care if you live or die, only that money is being made and spent.

> You'll even see arguments like "more people will die of the quarantine because they have no job if we keep the economy stopped for much longer".

There are a few of these arguments in this thread, even.

A plan to refuse treatment to everyone over retirement age has a lot of problems but one of them is that there are a fair number of really tough, armed, and knowledgeable old people out there. I doubt they’d just surrender without a fight.

> A plan to refuse treatment to everyone over retirement age has a lot of problems but one of them is that there are a fair number of really tough, armed, and knowledgeable old people out there.

Are they armed with a vaccine ? Otherwise how would being armed help?

If you sentence everyone over a certain age to death, some of them are likely to decide they have nothing to lose.

They may not be able to compel anyone to treat them, but they can take a few doctors with them out of spite to make sure the rest of us are as screwed as they are.

Oh man. You’re telling everyone over 65, “go fuck yourself, you paid taxes and worked hard to build this country, we don’t care, let this virus kill you”. Some may agree to it, but I’m pretty sure this will cause a lot of havoc on the streets. People killing until they get treated.

Also this virus is a bell curve not a cutoff threshold. It has killed many young people. If you let it run wild , it can even come for you.

The common flu has been us for decades. What if COVID-19 became like the flu. A seasonal thing that evolves a bit every year. Soon there is a time bomb strain that kills 10% of the population but only kicks in after a month.

Something like that could wipe off a billion people from the planet. The only planet we know that can sustain intelligent life.

forget the economy. Imagine the practical consequences of letting the virus run wild in the population. The deaths are not an abstract number. It would mean northern Italy in every city. Doctors overwhelmed, patients suffocating on hospital floors. So many corpses you actually have to transport them away on army trucks. That's where Lombardy is right now.

It's a joke to even think society and the economy would go on as normal even if you would ignore the health impact, it would destroy the reputation and fabric of pretty much any modern state.

New York hospitals have already had to bring in refrigerated trailers to store the bodies.

Every single news outlet is showing _the same_ hospital, and the same empty trailer. Notice also what an eye trained for bullshit sees in the video: rows of ventilators that aren't even plugged in, "easy" patients with oxygen cannulas and face masks ("hard" ones would be intubated, sedated, lying prone, and they would be immobilized), empty beds here and there. All the while the narrative is "we're piling up the bodies over here". 13 deaths for a large hospital _do not_ require a mobile crematorium or a trailer refrigerator. At best, you're seeing selection bias. At worst, you're being deliberately lied to, to drive clicks

At double worst, you're being deliberately lied to because the media believe, truly and honestly, that it's their job to manipulate you into believing socially useful things.

Yeah I'm sure they consider blind, raging panic they're trying their hardest to stoke to be "socially useful" somehow.

Well, that part I think they've actually made pretty explicit. The general public isn't taking coronavirus seriously enough (which I agree is true!), so it's their job to try and make the public more scared. Which is really obnoxious to those of us who live in a county that takes it as seriously as possible, let me tell you.

If they want to be "responsible" they need to be preparing the public to 50-60K dead for the year, which would be a normal haul of a heavy flu season. With extraordinary measures already in place (and with selective lifting of the measures in locales where infection is moderate), it seems to me that's where we'll end up. IOW, people who would die of the flu complications, will die of COVID19 and lower respiratory problems instead. Trouble is, nobody pays any attention to how many people die of flu complications per year. That number for lower respiratory diseases, for instance, is 160K per year in the US, without any virus (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929#chronic-low...). So it is possible that _fewer_ people will die of lower respiratory stuff because all the stops are being pulled when caring for them.

As to making people take it seriously, I don't think that's their primary motivation at all. As of yesterday, Cuomo himself admitted that there is a lot of unused ventilator capacity in NY. Meanwhile the press is reporting that they're running out of beds and ventilators, possibly causing people to freak out and leave NY, dragging disease to where it has not yet proliferated. This is extremely irresponsible.

On one hand, it's a harder problem than you're giving it credit for. We're likely to end up with a death toll of a heavy flu season or a bit above, but that's because the country's taking it seriously, building out the required healthcare capacity and taking extreme mitigation measures to make sure there's time to do it. New York has unused ventilator capacity now, and will likely be able to source enough ventilators to keep up even with their peak, but that's only helpful because they've worked at breakneck pace to remove every other obstacle to scaling up the healthcare system.

On the other hand, your last point does reflect a real problem with the media's strategy here. Gross manipulation doesn't allow the media to effectively communicate the subtle distinction between "this is an emergency, we must act urgently or New Yorkers will think they've been hit with the plague" and "our emergency response measures are largely expected to work, it will be tragic but not the end of New York".

I’m getting the sense it’s what HN and perhaps more mainstream groups think too — that people are too weak to defend themselves against intellectual manipulation, and that democracy needs a special helping hand from the intellectual class.

The strong sense of the critique isn't quite fair. It wouldn't be right to call every political activist an elitist, even though they often think people are being intellectually manipulated and always think that democracy needs their special helping hand.

A claimed picture of the bodies inside one of these trailers: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/miriamelder/coronavirus...

The guy who predicted millions of deaths in the US is walking back his study as we speak: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i.... Dr Birx mentioned the study in today's presser and said the task force is working on the mass serological test to determine the rate of latent, asymptomatic infection. There won't be "millions of deaths", no matter how much CNN would like you to believe otherwise. There will, however, be a few tens of thousands of deaths, and the public needs to be prepared for that. And it's currently not prepared at all.

There is no "the guy", there are only people who understand statistics. If this coronavirus has a similar disease burden as the flu, more than a million people will die, even if we assume that everyone that needs care gets adequate care. Should the healthcare system become overwhelmed, people that need care won't get it, and even more people will die. Should this coronavirus have a higher disease burden than the flu, which the data shows is very possible, even more people will die.

I have never watched CNN in my life.

Read the article.

I did. I am in the US. You should read the tweets from "the guy"[1] that clarifies his statements, and how they're being misinterpreted[2] by people like yourself:

> I think it would be helpful if I cleared up some confusion that has emerged in recent days. Some have interpreted my evidence to a UK parliamentary committee as indicating we have substantially revised our assessments of the potential mortality impact of COVID-19.

> This is not the case. Indeed, if anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought. Our lethality estimates remain unchanged.

> My evidence to Parliament referred to the deaths we assess might occur in the UK in the presence of the very intensive social distancing and other public health interventions now in place.

> Without those controls, our assessment remains that the UK would see the scale of deaths reported in our study (namely, up to approximately 500 thousand).

[1] https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928

[2] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-pandemic-n...

It's not "misinterpreted". No self respecting academic will willingly admit to a blunder of this magnitude, so he's just walking it back one bit at a time as the number of the ground go more and more out of alignment with their modeling.

You should also mention the Oxford study also mentioned in the article if you want to maintain some semblance of unbiased opinion: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Mod...

That study suggests that _because_ the virus is more transmissible, and because most people do not have symptoms, a ton of people had it already without paying much attention. Think about it. If it's so transmissible as the "walked back" estimate suggests, wouldn't the UK, which implemented isolation measures only very recently, and which pretty much _lives_ in the pubs, be very, very fucked right now? And it's not fucked. 162 cases per million, only 163 people in critical condition, 9 deaths per million (flu, for instance, claims 142 people per million in the US), although I'm sure the numbers will go up significantly before they are out of the woods.

Moreover, after restrictions were partially lifted in China and Korea and people were put back to work the epidemic did not restart there. This does not line up at all with the initial "we're all gonna die" rhetoric.

It's possible for you both to be right.

The Professor is correct that his study essentially recommended (and caused) the nationwide house arrest now implemented, and that this is why he's now estimating far fewer deaths.

At the same time I wouldn't pick that study as a hill to die on. It has flaws that are severe and obvious to any layman and probably more that aren't, e.g.

• The assumption of mass deaths was based on constant NHS capacity for a year. That assumption is obviously false, the NHS managed to double ICU capacity within a week or so just by converting wards and now they're building emergency hospitals, China style.

• They used hospitalisation and fatality rates calculated from Italy, although the problems with biased sampling there are well discussed.

• They applied no discount rate learned from prior SARS outbreaks, where the final CFR turned out to be far lower than initial estimates, even though it's clear that the same will happen this time.

• When people asked for their source code the good professor announced it was of such low quality he couldn't release it until Microsoft had rewritten it for him.

• It mixes up excess mortality with incidental mortality. The UK has the same problem as Italy, where deaths that involve COVID-19 are being reported and counted as caused by it (because it's on the 'notifiable diseases' list). A shift in distributions is being reported as deaths that would never have happened otherwise, which isn't the case. And the ICL team know this because the professor blithely stated that of the 20,000 predicted deaths, probably 2/3rds would have happened anyway. Why was this rate not applied in the study given that excess mortality is obviously what people care about?

Right now it's really hard to feel confidence in any epidemiological output. This field feels more like psychology or economics than physics or microbiology.

An article doesn't really mean much in the age of missinformation. You can find articles for whatever opinion you wish to confirm.

330 Mio US citizens

x 70% of them getting infected until herd immunity

x 1% mortality

= 2.31 Mio deaths in the USA

---

if the virus spreads uninhibited the mortality will be way higher.

He's not "walking it back."

https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928

What was the hit to the economy from Spanish Flu, that also mostly killed the young? What is the specific serious hit to the real economy that you expect, other that short-term, from "bodies piling up"?

Sure, I agree it's terrible, but the claim about the economy is what's weird.

The US is currently experiencing the root of the wave, the face of it is yet to come, then comes the crest. Only then can you start to see what comes after it... the US and almost everyone else is a looooong stretch (exponentially speaking) away from getting in front of anything here.

Your administration speaking of "open churches for Easter" is entirely and utterly delusional.

This article has a nice solution: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/coronavirus-depre... . Take some of the trillions of dollars that will be spent on bailout, and spend it on building a never-before-seen amount of protective equipment. Once we have enough for everybody to wear a new heavy-duty protective suit every day, people could go back to work. It might be expensive, but still way cheaper than shutting the economy down an extra month or two.

There is one wrinkle to that idea - compliance.

Even if we did give everyone protective suits, I can guaranteed a not insignificant percentage of the country wouldn't play along.

My family and I went on a walk and everyone was social distancing, then some guy jogged right past us like he didn’t care at all. Pretty annoying.

If only you were in China and could report on him for bad behavior...

The nice thing is, assuming the suits work correctly, it doesn't matter if other people comply. As long as you wear a suit, you'll be safe.

We’re back to the core problem of this virus: it’s not that you have a very high chance of dying from it, it’s that our system isn’t scoped to handle the high hospitalization rates.

I can wear a suit, but I’m still impacted if our hospitals are overwhelmed and FEMA runs out of ice trucks for the bodies.

PPE isn't perfect or a magical panacea. Ask Craig Spencer, the NY ER doc who worked with Ebola in Africa, how he got it despite being careful.

>PPE isn't perfect or a magical panacea.

Maybe if we invested a trillion dollars (which is an absurd amount of money) into developing and improving it, it would be.

The lag time between that much money turning into a country-size amount of equipment that can be used by ordinary people without error might well be longer than the quarantine period.

I've seen some manufacturing miracles, but that's a really tall order.

> that can be used by ordinary people without error

Social media has been great for airline oxygen mask designers as it has shown the failure rates of real world emergencies. I imagine that even with highly trained people like medical staff, the problems of proper PPE usage are just so much worse. People have a really hard time understanding things clearly.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/passengers-fail-to-wear-oxyg...

Personally, I'm not going to eat at a restaurant if I have to do it in a protective suit. It's more pleasant at that point to just stay home.

On the 'essential workers' bit:

Worth being clear that it is not necessary to completely eliminate every case of the virus.

If the natural r0 is 3, and you eliminate roughly 3/4 of each person's contacts, we've won.

You can break these links by things like social distancing, wearing PPE, better hygiene, better contact tracing and isolation, immunity, or closing some portions of the economy.

In theory, I'd be surprised if the essential workers cant work while keeping r0 low enough for it to die out.

It's not clear how hard it is to get this r0 sufficiently down. Different countries are experimenting with different strategies.

> Keep the lockdown too long and the impact to the economy will only get worse, requiring massive gov't bailouts/support. The longer we're locked down, the longer it's going to take for the economy to recover.

It's bad for the economy if a million more people than necessary die because our healthcare system was overwhelmed.

Yes, the economy is going to suffer no matter what we do. But ending the lockdown too early will make the situation worse, not better.

it would...only... be about one million

It's bad either way - keeping the lockdown in place for too long or relaxing it too early.

The goal is to find the right balance - the least worst option.

Sure, okay, but I think it's pretty darn clear that we're far away from needing to consider that.

When the number of new cases starts going down we can begin having this conversation.

Why would we wait to begin having the conversation?

Because if you start talking about it too early then people will change their behaviour too early.

Because we don't have enough information yet. We still don't really know how deadly this virus is, or how it spreads or mutates.

More importantly than anything else: it is profoundly unethical.

Are people really okay with abandoning millions of our most vulnerable people to death, abandoning millions more to complications from this illness, just to save some abstract notion of "the economy"?

I flatly reject that reality, and everyone should too.

Not only do the vulnerable members of our society deserve to be treated humanely, so do our nurses and other medical workers, these genuine heroes, who are subjecting themselves to this illness to reduce other people's suffering.

And yes, the economy will suffer no matter what we do, like you mention. But even if it didn't, it is still profoundly unethical. Arguably on the level of genocide.

This recent month is like a nightmare where you realize just how bad it is, but slowly. So many people would actually throw (someone else's) grandpa under a bus for a profit; it's just that they haven't had a chance yet to do it. And now we have it.

This begs an interesting question, the paradox of tolerance on steroids: is it ethical to murder people that put profits over the lives of their neighbors?

I find there is an uncomfortable blurry line in the sand here where it is somehow OK to let the flu kill tens of thousands without us batting an eyelash, but not OK for this illness to kill a million. At the end of the day the decision is pragmatic and based on money, similar to allowing motor vehicles on public roads (to the point where they are de facto required).

There is nothing to say we were right to let the flu do that, and I would argue that we should reassess our moral compass in the face of all suffering and death as a society. This event should be a wake up call. We should invest much more resources and mindshare into alleviating suffering and stop accepting that these deaths are "inevitable".

Agreed, and I am hoping one outcome of this disaster will be that a lot more resources will be devoted to prevention/treatment of such illnesses we've come to accept as common. Flu for sure, maybe even the common cold.

Comparing this to the flu is a non-starter for participating an an intelligent discussion about this.

This virus is currently killing people 30 times faster than the flu. ~0.01% of the population dies from the flu each year.

0.12% of the population of Italy died over the past two weeks from COVID-19, and the rate of deaths has still not peaked - despite a complete lockdown. Had there not been a lockdown, the death rate would have continued doubling every 3 days.

You're drawing a false equivalence.

> 0.12% of the population of Italy died over the past two weeks from COVID-19

I think you mixed up numbers, this looks too large by one order of magnitude. Maybe you used the numer of cases instead of deaths or something.

Sorry, I missed a zero. It's 0.012% - but over two weeks, instead of over a year. So, the 30x number is correct... But not the 0.12% one.

I understand how much bigger the mortality is for this virus, and I understand why we are reacting this way. But how do you argue that deaths from one virus are not equivalent to the other? If it's just numbers, can you specify the number that is OK to let die instead of locking down?

If the death rate were within 5x of the flu, and if the death rate did not increase dramatically when our medical system is overloaded, a hard lockdown would probably be a mistake.

It's not 5x, and it does increase dramatically, though.

I reject your "this offends my sense of ethics and thus it cannot be most pragmatic or humane" line of reasoning. Will you at least acknowledge there exists a relationship between a trashed economy and an increase in human suffering (not least of all suicides)?

I agree with you! But "it's worth more people dying to save the economy" is a real view that people have, so let's explore it. And when you do, you realize it's not a real choice anyway—economies throughout history suffer massively when large portions of the population suddenly die, for relatively obvious reasons.

Broadly speaking, it's likely that people who disagree with you have seen the same arguments you have and come to a different conclusion. So, try shifting your perspective.

S Korea was able to sort this by stellar tracking of individuals social graph when they got sick while lifting lockdowns. Something hardly anyone is talking about now.

Because of states rights as well as legal rights afforded to every US citizen, a lot of the same options / technologies aren't available by design. You also have to deal with two distinctly different cultures with drastically different outcomes of citizens actions.

We can look to them for inspiration, but to expect the same actions / outcomes isn't prudent and pulls away from the focus of figuring out what we can do here in a realistic manner.

That's not quite true. Asian countries have used mobile phone data in some cases but so have western countries.

South Korea got somewhat lucky (so far) due to the weird way it got into the country, via a cult that was already in effect socially distancing themselves and that was filled with young people. But now their cases seem to be growing again.

Also what do you think happens to mobile phone tracking the moment someone walks into a subway system? Orwellian surveillance isn't a magical panacea.

The hammer and the dance article covers in depth what you described. We need near very high test availability, and intense tracking of cases. The lockdown just buys time.

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...

>"Basically, enough testing so that new cases can be immediately identified and quarantined."

Currently since everyone is suffering there is pressure on the government to provide aid and for employers to be flexible. I'd be concerned that support wouldn't be extended to people who do need to be quarantined after society as a whole has returned to work.

>What seems to make sense to me is, keep the lockdown in place long enough to get in front of it. Basically, enough testing so that new cases can be immediately identified and quarantined. That alone will have a big impact.

This does make sense. It is crazy those who think we're "over it" and need to get the "economy going again", despite our inability to even correctly measure the spread yet.

It smells again like the people who were thinking "it's a China problem", and then "it's a European problem", as if it'd never be a US problem. Now it is a US problem, and those same people are now saying "well the problem is practically over, let's stop the quarantines..." The time for chronically underestimating the impact is over.

> the impact to the economy will only get worse

To be fair, most of the economic sectors affected by this are silly frivolities, e.g. travel, tourism, fine dining, vacationing, nightclubbing, cruises, sportsball, etc.

The actual, value-generating, real economy will continue on as before, and may possibly even benefit from it as our attentions are shifted away from garbage pursuits that don't advance society at all.

I’ve heard a concept from a virologist. He called it smart distancing. a) Everybody wears a mask b) people keep at least 2m distance, always c) wash your hands regularly d) keep the elderly extra protected

He said with these measures we could reopen slowly again after Easter. It requires discipline though and makes things a packed subway impossible. Which is ok in summer

>"Basically, enough testing so that new cases can be immediately identified and quarantined."

Does anyone have a reliable source for the current state of testing? Is this still possible with current rate of infection and the speed at which testing is being ramped up?

The world is changing. There is no going back. Some governments are better able to adapt than others. It’s going to be hard here in the US.

We watched communism fail on TV 30 years ago from a government that essentially socially and economically suffocated its people. Now we are watching capitalism fail because of unchecked social freedom and an economy that can only function on infinite growth.

We are in the thick of it now. As the President said, “Our country wasn’t built to shut down.” He’s absolutely right, and that may end up being a defining quote in the history books.

This is hysteria. I don’t have any sources but that’s apparently the name of the game in this thread, so here we are.

Times are tough. It will get worse before it gets better. But it will get better.

Pin this post and watch the situation unfold. If we really see the fall of capitalism, I will personally come visit you wherever you are, and we can ritually burn a portrait of Keynes together. To keep warm.

I have no doubt things will get better. But it’s not just going to go back to the way things were.

You aren’t going to see the fall of capitalism, but the kind of late stage, cut throat, everyone for themselves capitalism is falling apart. Before it’s even really begun we are already calling for a return to work because that’s all we know.

In the first comment you said that capitalism was going to fail and likened that failure to the one of the Soviet system.

Maybe that comment was a bit hyperbolic?

No, I think that’s pretty apt. I’m specifically talking about the US. Capitalism won’t fall, but the kind of capitalism we have in the US is literally falling apart at the seams.

We know what the solution is to the problem, but it is not compatible with our system. We are fighting it every step of the way. So either the system changes or a lot of people die… which will force even more accelerated change.

>"We know what the solution is to the problem, but it is not compatible with our system."

Could you elaborate on what that solution is? What comes after this "late stage" capitalism exactly? It's not clear to me.

The solution is to test people rigorously and restrict and track their movement. We know this.

What comes after? I’m not sure. Guess we’ll find out.

It's going to be a return to rampant crime, drug addiction, poverty, etc.

There will be significantly more deaths from the cure.

People have short memories. If hoping for change is optimism, then you're too optimistic.

But it’s not just going to go back to the way things were.

People said the exact same thing in 2008. And it turned out things did go back to the way things were.

If capitalism doesn’t fall during this can I pay you to burn the portrait anyway?

I respectfully disagree. Things get better or worse based on our decision-making skills and the physical state of the world, not because we "deserve" to get better or because it "naturally" happens. We have to put in the effort and hard work in order to attain greatness, it doesn't just come.

For example, I made two Hacker News posts about the coronavirus before all this happened, and both times people rose to dismiss my concerns:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22111815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453381

Now JHU CSSE is reporting 23,970 deaths and a continued exponential rise in confirmed cases with no peaking in sight. We're quarantining themselves on a state-by-state basis, NY w/ Cuomo is locking down hard while New Orleans was partying @ Mardi Gras. No restrictions on domestic interstate travel. No federal roadmap for the next three to six months. No communications with even our closest allies on travel bans.

Just as surely as the sun rises, black swans can and do happen, and sometimes empires and peoples don't get up. Not ever. Carthage, Babylon, Jericho, Palmyra, Teotihuacan, and a hundred other once-great cities said we will overcome and persevere, and now they're dead and dead forever.

We have absolutely got to stop thinking we're exceptional and we're different. We're where we are now because a lot of good men and women worked tirelessly to get us here, sometimes kicking and screaming. We'll get out of it if and only if we listen to those same men and women working tirelessly on our behalf.

Otherwise we will join the dead in the scrap heap of history. Don't ever, ever assume it can't happen to you.

several of those examples about once great entities (?) were destroyed in part if not wholly by foreign armies - so i'm not sure that rhetoric is (or at least those examples are) really appropriate here.

Death is always an uncomfortable discussion topic, but I'd say it's one of our best teachers.

To bring up one of my examples, Palmyra was once a wealthy Roman provincial capital in Asia Minor, separated from the Roman Empire by declaring the Palmyrene Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century, and henceforth destroyed by Aurelian.

You can argue the Roman army would be a foreign army composed partly of barbarians unfamiliar to a longstanding part of the Roman Empire, and you can also argue it's a domestic army putting down an insurrection.

Now take this news:

https://www.newsweek.com/massachusetts-governor-says-hes-bei...

President Trump is outbidding state governors for medical equipment during this crisis, while telling them to purchase their own directly from the supplier. States don't issue currency and can't run a deficit, and federal treasuries are much more plentiful than state treasuries because of a greater lever to tax, so President Trump gets the medical supplies. President Trump can increase the amount of production by invoking the Defense Production Act, but has not yet done so; as far as I know private companies are increasing production due to increased demand (which has to be proven after people die and start panicking) and not out of a proactive government grant.

Massachusetts is a state that votes mostly Democratic at the federal level. California and Washington state are mostly Democratic at the federal level too.

Now, for the million-dollar question: given the federal government's response, would you say this behavior is indicative of a federal government that treats these states as domestic, or foreign, entities?

I've read through maybe a third of the Federalist Papers, and the first ten or fifteen letters hammer home the importance of union in the face of enemies foreign and domestic. Tear away that fabric, and you have the Greek city-states or the Balkans on a continental scale.

We’re going through all these lockdowns to help prevent vulnerable groups from dying needless deaths. This is important to be sure, but it’s a far cry from societal collapse. I care about people staying home as much as the next guy but I’m so tired of the hysteria. We’re protecting the elderly here, let’s keep some perspective. I’m not “just saying it will be alright”, I’m saying this specifically will be alright.

Comparisons with bygone empires are far more apt in almost any other conversation : MAD, global warming, hell even cyber warfare.

We aren’t just protecting the elderly. 20% of people need hospitalization. There aren’t enough beds or ventilators. Maybe in a week there will be. Maybe there won’t. That’s a big gamble.

A few days ago I would have said you're right. But this virus changes day by day, and there are reports younger people are requiring ICU / ventilation in New York City. 29% of those hospitalized are between 20-44 y/o:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-updates-young-peopl...

The problem with exponential growth is a small change in the growth factor means a great deal. Spanish Flu reportedly caused people to think civilization itself will come to an end, not just because of the death rates but because people refused to take care of the sick / do essential jobs: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-1...

Spanish Flu was "just a flu" @ 3-4% mortality. Right now COVID-19 is around 1% mortality, but IIRC I've heard from Bill Gate's virtual TED discussion reopening the country by Easter will result in that 3-4% mortality.

Again, I'm not trying to be pessimistic or contrarian. I really wish I believed in your optimism for this point, but the dots don't seem to connect for me.

> Now we are watching capitalism fail because of unchecked social freedom and an economy that can only function on infinite growth.

We’re watching the rest of the free world persevere through yet another catastrophe of authoritarian communism.

It may have escaped because of an authoritarian reaction at the beginning, but I'm not too impressed with how we in the free world have handled our end.

I don't understand how someone arrives at this position without starting off with an axe to grind and looking for facts that fit.

Do you think that a liberal capitalist country would have managed to contain this? How, in that case, do you explain the utter failure of most liberal capitalist countries to actually contain it?

Do you think that if China had their act together they would have been able to squash it in the crib and prevent it spreading anywhere else? How do you reconcile that with the fact that Seattle imported its first case on January 15, on a flight from Wuhan, and that this person must have been infected days before that? Japan got it on January 3. The first case in Thailand was hospitalised on January 8.

Do you think that Wuhan should have been sealed off that early? Do you think that the failure to do that is a failure of authoritarian communism to which liberal capitalism is immune? Evidence from the "free world's" response to this suggests otherwise, and that they are even more hesitant than China to put significant containment measures in place.

You may respond that China suppressed information about the outbreak, and it appears that they did. What difference did it make in the end though? The cat was already out of the bag.

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