I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak
It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off, and "normal" will return eventually.
That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die".
Stay safe, stay positive.
> Results
> Overall, during the recent recession, an increase of one percentage point in the standardised unemployment rate has been associated with a statistically significant decrease in the following mortality rates: all-cause-mortality (3.4%), cardiovascular diseases (3.7%), cirrhosis- and chronic liver disease-related mortality (9.2%), motor vehicle accident-related mortality (11.5%), parasitic infection-related mortality (4.1%), but an increase in the suicide rate (34.1%). In general, the effects were more marked in countries with lower levels of social protection, compared to those with higher levels. Conclusions
> An increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Recession has had a beneficial health effect on average across EU countries, except for suicide mortality. Social protection expenditures appear to help countries “smooth” the health response to a recession, limiting health damage but also forgoing potential health gains that could otherwise result.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009174351...
Many animals live longer in captivity than in the wild.
Restricting your caloric intake as much as possible will prolong your lifespan.
There's more to health than just how long you live.
We do not live in a 1930s world of belligerent alliances itching for a chance to bloody someone up.
Wars between the big powers are now economic and political. Nobody wants nuclear annihilation.
> Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites.
(Although, significantly, it does note that suicides increased, and another study found no increase in life expectancy, but no real change outside of suicides and car accidents.[2])
1: https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290 2: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110324202055.h...
I think this is mainly fearmongering by the upper 0.1% seeing that now they might have to bear the "risk" they are always claiming to shoulder when taking in enormous returns on their capital... (e.g. in Germany currently most car-companies (BMW and VW are both largely family-owned) still pay their dividends, while their employees are getting unemployment benefits from the state...).
In the end history tells us, that people generally seem to prefer to stay alive however low the odds are. If this has significantly changed in the last 50 years, maybe we should think about what has changed that – I seriously doubt that a "let's go back to business" is the right approach in that case.
> Did the Great Recession affect mortality rates in the metropolitan United States? Effects on mortality by age, gender and cause of death.
> Our finding that all-cause mortality decreased during the Great Recession is consistent with previous studies.
And yes some specific mortality like cancer did increase because of the broken -- profit based -- health care system. But otherwise, no.
Extreme sports may technically have a long term boost on life expextancy (from fitness) but short term would make a spike in accident deaths. I guess money is sort of the same way - better outcomes from affording healthcare but the temptation to take risks results in more immediate deaths.
I have seen that line too, but I wonder how substantiated this is? Is there any data to support it?
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#R41
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#R65
But if you mean dot-com-crash bad in terms of the economy in general crashing, oh man are you right. This is an economic free-fall for most of America.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-...
Also probably much more transient, no?
Is there a reason to think this trend would continue beyond say... six months? (or whenever quarantine measures are mostly relaxed).
If we relax quarantine measures, the virus just comes back immediately. This is going to stay with us for years.
Where did you get that number? This seems more like propaganda than scientific claim.
"fail fast; fail often" seems ominously dark for the circumstance.
Take 2019 for instance. If that scheme existed then, without any pandemic, it would be a great way to soften the exit and allow folks time to find new jobs.
But the world we're in now, not so much. It's pulling the band-aid off slower, and my take is, waiting for a hail-mary play when someone magically comes up with a solution for this problem.
My interpretation of all of this waves hand around at world leaders is that they genuinely believe science and technology work like magic, and will come up with something, soon.
The company I'm in hasn't fired anyone and is safe.
Some neighboring countries have similar programs.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/australia-unexpect...
To quote, "all jobs are essential services".
What's it actually like there? It sounds like you're under strict lockdown but everyone seems to be saying the government is doing a terrible job (even though the test positive rate is low and the relative number of cases, even the absolute number of cases, is low). Here you say the economy is still humming along but other people say there's queues outside of Centrelink and down the street and around the corner.
Are shops like Bunnings and Big W still open? Bike shops? Hobby stores? Gift shops? These are considered non essential here in Germany some of which has caused me difficulty and some of which have not (somewhere may be non essential this week, but over a long enough period of time, everywhere is essential; we just moved a fortnight before the lockdown and fortunately I bought the things I needed for a new home just before they were shut down as non-essential).
Restaurants I gather are closed to in house meals same as here. But same as here they're open for takeaway.
Factories and such businesses were closed in Italy, but I don't think they were shut down here.
Cinemas I take it are closed. Prisons in Victoria at least do not accept inperson visitors which causes prisoners severe isolation but is obviously better then getting them all infected. I understand prisoners are still working - if they're isolated and healthy I guess there's no reason to stop them from working.
Most retail shops are closed. A lot of restaurants and cafes are closed. All events cancelled. So there's a lot of casuals / partimers who don't have any work anymore.
Bunnings, BigW, Kmart, all supermarkets are open with social distancing and limiting people in the store. Not sure a bout bike stores. Hobbyco in QVB is still open. A lot of stores closed their retail but are still doing online orders.
Basically Australia uses a combination of blacklist and a whitelist system. Some places where people gather like gyms and pubs are forced to close, and restaurants are forced to takeaway-only. You also have a whitelist on reasons to come outside of your home, which still include work.
My company was good - we spend a week preparing and now almost everyone is working from home, which is probably unusual considering we work in embedded systems. I have several boxes of hardware in my room with me now.
Open and doing roaring business from what I can tell. Took my mountain bike to get serviced and my mechanic said he’s far busier than he anticipated and it’d be over a week before he could even get to my bike.
Most of our retail is still open, for example Target, Kmart, most coffee shops are still open doing takeaway and I can still go to JB HiFi, BBC shop, book shop, EB Games etc. So it seems like not a lot has changed regarding my current lifestyle except working from home.
Gyms, Massage, Casinos, Pubs, Clubs etc. that you’d expect to spread the virus really quickly are all closed.
- low density
- government actually listening to scientists and reacting quickly and non-ideologically.
The government responding quickly and non-ideologically is the number one reason why Australia is doing good and the rest of the west is doing so badly. Whether it's the ideology of freedom of travel or the ideology of the economy before health, it has hurt other nations whereas Australia's ideology of pragmatism (and our neverending experience with many other crises and disasters) has helped.
For real? Morrison’s response to this has been lacking in its effectiveness and treacle-like in its speed. Up until a few weeks ago he was saying that people shouldn’t stop going to football games, and up until teachers put their foot down and in spite of health professions advice and common sense he thought keeping schools open indefinitely and as a fine idea.
Leadership in the early days of the crisis made a huge difference. The early days of the crisis now are passed us, so whatever happens next it is about perseverance - a completely different matter and something a country does not excel at if it goes through prime minister faster than a pub goes through sixpacks.
I could make a list, but I won't. Instead I'll focus on the positives and note that the one commendable thing that the federal government has done in this crisis is to reach deep into their mothballed hip-pocket and squeeze out a few billion pineapples.
I fully appreciate how hard that must have been, given their fixation on 'the black'. And all with only half a whinge.
I'd be cautious with this point.
Sydney is more dense than LA, Chicago. It is lower than NYC. But still for an urban area of over 5 million people it's densely populated and has all the ingredients for a bad outbreak. https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/the-truth-about-...
Expect those numbers to change. A lot.
And the list is just startups, too - they're obviously more vulnerable in many ways to financial shocks than large companies, but large corporate layoffs are going to be where the big numbers are.
- A lot if them are not profitable. - They don't know how long this will last. - Many planned on growing into profitability over n months and expected they could raise more money if needed. - Now, there is no growth for many and contractions. - Investment money is drying up - they might not have 2 years at their current burn rate to get to profitable status.
In the end, it can be about survival. Their pre coronavirus burn rates are not sustainable. Of course, for some, it is also a continent way to shed staff who appear to be underperforming, freeze raises, and ask more of their employees.
For many (even unicornish) startups the funding is released in tranches, usually tied to certain performance metrics. With drastically reduced revenue, new customer flow all dried up, and even marketing result graphs simulating nosedives, there aren't that many milestones you could hit.
If [enough] performance milestones are missed, company's next batch of on-paper funding pot may not be released.