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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think so. The world at large will much rather take the death count than five years of mass unemployment, no one getting basic medical services and cancer screenings … and there is the whole part where economic output is sorta needed to pay for things (like rent and food for the 20%+ unemployed).

My own mother still needs urgent dental surgery. It’s going on two months now.

You hear the trite content free version of this tradeoff in people whining “you just want to protect your 401(k)”. Imagine after five years, all 401(k)s are wiped out, most hospitals are bankrupt for lack of running any profitable procedures, and the US is throwing together some emergency single-payer system ... but it is struggling with recruitment because there’s not enough tax revenue to get the budget to pay enough doctors. (You want to sell bonds? Who has money to buy bonds?) How many die in this scenario?

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Here’s the thing, and I suspect I’m not alone in feeling this way:

I really think I would agree with you in normal circumstances. But there is so much political pressure from groups who are downplaying the virus altogether, to just ignore the virus and go back to business as usual, that I suspect a lot of less-than-ethical ulterior motives are at work. So I feel a very real “allergic reaction” to anyone who says we need to just reopen things.

Maybe it’s because politicians in the US have turned the whole question into a wedge issue to oversimplify things and get voters on their sides, I dunno. But the question on when/whether we can return to normal is a very serious one that needs to be something we all understand and agree on, and I’m worried that’ll never happen. Our priorities are simply too far out of alignment.

No, you're not alone in feeling this way. But I would assert that most people who feel this way are currently employed or have significant savings. It's easy to comment on hacker news from your cushy WFH job about "those silly protestors who want to re-open the economy." But there is a reason they are so frustrated. They are people who have been living paycheck-to-paycheck and suddenly find themselves without a job, but with bills still arriving and kids still asking for food on the table. They want the world to be healthy, too. They don't want to endanger you or themselves. But they want to feed their families.

Well said. I think there are valid arguments from both sides. I wish it was not drowned out by the extreme flag flying gun toting, virus is a hoax folks.

I think there is a middle ground. We cannot be on lockdown for a year, lets be realistic. Even if the virus persists, the world or even a single country just could not sustain that. And on the opposite side, we cannot open up too quickly. I know China's data is not accurate but we can at least communicate with people inside of the country and we know life is getting more back to normal there. So we can see that we also have to stay closed enough that the first large wave does not devastate the system.

It is just a shame though that we can not have dialogue about the science and data behind this. And instead it becomes an extreme from both sides.

> They want the world to be healthy, too. They don't want to endanger you or themselves.

From outside the USA watching these protests -- it's possible more weight is being given to certain (less favourable / sensible) aspects of the message they're trying to send, but we're seeing things like 'If you're sick - come along to the protest' and 'We don't want people wearing masks'.

> But they want to feed their families.

That doesn't explain the prevalence of "I WANT A HAIRCUT!" and "I WANT TO GOLF!" signs. The protests seem to mostly be "I want people to work for me", rather than "I want to work".

The people choosing which photos to publish clearly want to discredit the protests. I haven't seen a single photo of a sign making a persuasive point.

If you find some, please share. Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence, sure, but Absence of Evidence is also not Proof of Presence.

Ok, I went looking, instead of merely seeing photos in the media I usually read, and I found several. Here are a couple in one photo [1]:

> Earning a living is essential

> I want my job back

Or [2]:

> Free people make their own risk assessments

Shame we have to look to the Indian press for fair coverage of these protests in the US.

1: https://c.ndtvimg.com/2020-04/b70u23q_us-protest650_625x300_...

2: http://www.dailyaddaa.com/world-news/us-covid-19-live-free-o...

Well, that's some—good find. It's a shame that the person who led the protests in my city was a wealthy real estate mogul.

We don’t need to “just” reopen things as a kneejerk reaction. We will need to reopen things sometime.

But from the earliest lockdowns, all the forecasts have been that about 60% of the world population ultimately gets infected anyway. The lockdowns are about making that happen in a more orderly way, one that doesn’t absolutely crush our hospitals, ICUs, ventilator capacity, and our stocks of PPE. That’s what we’re buying with the lockdowns. That’s where the lives are being saved.

That makes sense, for a while. That doesn’t make sense for five years. The question is where the line goes in between, and I really don’t know exactly where. We may have passed it or it may be months ahead.

Just remember that even if we are right to call for a much longer lockdown, we shouldn’t go all William Bligh about it, condescending to abuse people who are stubborn and wrong for their stupidity on the matter. Such an approach is anti-leadership; it gets you senseless mutinies instead of buy-in.

(See also: Bill de Blasio enjoying the amenities of the Park Slope YMCA mere moments before shutting down all the gyms. Not a great way to build solidarity.)

I agree with you. People are ignoring the very serious consequences of lockdown, and trying to frame it like the only reason you could want to end lockdown is because you're evil and greedy.

You can add to the list that all schools and universities, so no more learning to read or to count for kids, no more graduates.

I would bet you that, at least in the modern day West, taking away schools wouldn't reduce basic literacy and numeracy by even a tenth of a percent.

Don’t be ridiculous. Parents would have to teach their children how to read and write, which I can assure you is skilled work and takes a lot of time and effort. (We may all have to start doing this, but it certainly won’t happen by default.)

Medical schools, too.

That's the authors A5) in the post.

> "In the end, I suspect the only way out of lockdown in anything like the short or medium term is if we can assert something new:

    A5) The social and economic damage caused by lockdown is going to cause more unnecessary deaths than those caused by ending it."

> most hospitals are bankrupt for lack of running any profitable procedures

That's a very American problem due to having private hospitals...

The UK equivalent would be more orderly, but they still need to pay for the NHS with finite supplies of tax dollars and borrowing. They had staffing and recruitment and budget issues before the crisis, and some lockdown approaches might deprive them of seeking any more talent from major sources like India.

You ignored the rest of that point.

What happens to the European hospitals when tax income falls way below what the government needs to operate?

Tax income is already way below spending. Countries are going deeper and deeper in debt every year.

The healthcare budget is a rather small part of the total government budget, a small increase is probably too small to register on the radar. But if it does, one might assume that the government would rather keep healthcare running, especially given the circumstances, and cut money anywhere else.

To make a comparison for US readers. Healthcare in Europe is like freedom of speech in the US. It's deeply ingrained in each citizen and cannot be taken away.

> The healthcare budget is a rather small part of the total government budget, a small increase is probably to small to register on the radar.

According to the commonwealth fund[1], Germany spends over 10% of its GDP on providing health insurance. This insurance is funded by a tax on income.

If GDP contracts, and there are less income earners, this can become a very large part of the budget which would require cutting other programs. Obviously healthcare would be a priority. But in a country where people rely heavily on their government, cutting out social programs will really hurt.

> Tax income is already way below spending. Countries are going deeper and deeper in debt every year.

This is what I am concerned about. Governments fund their debt by selling bonds. In the USA, roughly 70% of the federal debt is in the form of bonds held by the public. If people stop buying bonds (because their returns are awful right now, or because people have much less income to be investing), then the governments of the world cannot continue to operate the way they have been.

[1] https://international.commonwealthfund.org/countries/germany...

It's still a problem, though. "Haha, told you so." is not a solution.

Besides, publicly funded hospitals and healthcare systems in general need money, too. If there's hardly any tax income anymore because there's hardly any taxable income anymore funds for publicly funded hospitals will dry up, too.

In the American case, we might have to end one or two of the many foreign wars that we are waging, but we would get by.

At worst, some countries get communist revolutions forcing distribution of wealth. This is the path of least death.

If you really believe "Communist revolutions" are the path of least death, I have a Great Leap Forward to sell you.

You're thinking of the Bolshevik revolution.

> The world at large will much rather take the death count ...

What part of the world are you in, and what part do you speak for?

I'm struggling to understand this comment. The GP is entirely correct here: any thinking adult knows that 5 years of lockdown would cause human suffering on a scale unheard of in modern history. There is no correct choice here for policy makers, but an extended lockdown will cause death and suffering as well.

'This comment' was asking with what authority fennecfoxen was claiming to know what 'the world at large' would prefer.

There was mention of 401k's (something I believe is peculiar to <5% of the world's population). The claim that emergency surgery was impossible during any kind of lockdown (not true, in my understanding). The claim that hospitals would be bankrupt without profitable procedures (something that simply doesn't make sense outside of the USA).

The GP is entirely speculative, and claims to speak for an audience that doesn't necessarily agree with them.

My question - in response to the claim that the world agrees with them - is what part of the world they are in, and what part do they claim to speak for. I don't understand what there is to understand with this question.

Maybe everyone doesn't have 401k, but pretty much every pension scheme around the world is in some way linked to the performance of the stock and bond markets. Even the ones that aren't rely on people being employed and paying taxes.

This may well be true, but it's only a small part of the equation.

The equation evidently (according to OC):

take the death count ... versus ... mass unemployment, no basic medical services and cancer screenings

Part of the RHS was also most hospitals are bankrupt, and the weird claim that tax revenues are the only way to fund essential services. (I'd suggest cutting costs in other areas - defence, for example - is one way to rediscover funds for essential services.)

Anyway, I expect that where you are right now, what you're seeing going on around (aka the level of incompetence exhibited by your leaders / government) along with the usual way your society and economy work, is going to significantly affect which way you lean on that equation.

Also if you run the stats and conclude you personally are not likely to be part of the death count, but you would be inconvenienced by a cautious approach, you're probably going to lean towards the '[other] people dying ain't so bad' camp.

Will it? How do you know? Have we done that before to have an example?

Unemployment peaked at 23% in the US during the Great Depression, and that's without many types of business being illegal to operate as is currently the status quo for areas under shelter in place orders right now. Its certainly not a perfect comparison, but the effects of mass unemployment are hardly unknowable, and we'd be lucky to see only 23% unemployment if lockdown orders persist for half a decade.

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