Author suggests self-quarantine for the obese instead of quarantine/lockdown for everyone. The CDC suggests that +42% of the US adult population is obese [0]. Are we really going to isolate or quarantine 4 out of 10 US adults and imagine the economy can get back on track?
Here in Hong Kong, people who were obsessively sterilizing everything and were scared to go outside 2 weeks ago are now taking off their masks and going to the beach.
By the sound of it most people are wearing masks most of the time.
(Boilerplate warning about news reliability in nonfree countries)
Why? So long as you're not close to other people there's no risk in being outside.
I of course actually do go outside, but only to my patio, not to go back to my old gym or coffee shops.
Recreation wise, I've seen lockdowns rolled out in WA. Whatever they didn't close immediately became extremely overcrowded; they even closed city parks for one weekend (2 weeks into stay at home order and with parking lots already closed), because they became insanely crowded, I run in a park nearby (Green Lake) and I've never seen it like that.
Basically, I'm sorry but you are probably privileged, self-righteous or prone to media fear-mongering; I suspect all 3. For the majority of the population, only the 3rd will have some effect, and that less than you'd think.
But you’re missing the point. Sending back my barista to Starbucks isn’t going to help said barista if I am unwilling to go to said coffee shop and spend money. The economy cannot start back up again until people start spending money again; my barista won’t spend money until they’re financially secure, and I won’t spend money on my barista until I feel that doing so won’t endanger my health.
Keep in mind that restaurant bookings were down 50% by mid March according to OpenTable. This is before most states had stay at home orders in place. A non-trivial portion of the economic collapse has been caused by entirely voluntary behavior, which is very hard to reverse.
I do however agree on recreation; governments should find a way to open up public spaces while preserving distance. I personally suspect that opening parks but constraining parking might do the trick, but I’m sure there are some weird caveats to that.
Also, I suspect that the utility of economic activity at this level is kinda like utility of money, i.e. logarithmic - going from 0% to 50% is much more significant, especially for individuals, than going from 50% to 100%.
On the latter, this is only true for individuals. Businesses have more variable expenses. If there isn’t enough economic activity to cover the cost of at least staff and electricity, businesses will rationally decide to lay-off or furlough workers to slow down their burn rate. Thus going from 0 to 50 might make literally no difference, depending on the underlying costs. This is particularly problematic for restaurants, with famously thin margins during the best of times.
What are they going to do about it, conscript people to go work at Smithfield or Tyson until they fall over with coronaplague, too? You can't just issue edicts, you have to suppress transmission.
Of course we can eventually re-open, we have to re-open eventually; we’ll starve if we don’t. But we have to actually make decisions and come up with strategies that’ll make it possible for us to re-open first. If we pretend that we can just reopen the economy without doing that first, people will get sicker and the economy won’t get better.
It's a good start. Also "encourage" is different from "enforce".
They can't compel a vulnerable WFH person to rejoin an open plan sardine office, nor can they fire them for not rejoining without attracting attention for discrimination. I know a tech worker who used to wheel an oxygen tank to the office: I imagine that person is more than a little concerned right now.
It also implies that a partly WFH workforce cannot be sidelined: once one person is remote the whole culture needs to be organized around remote process.
Depends on your labour laws, and facilities more than on the market IMHO.
For what it's worth, this is the same CDC that suggests that the level of obesity that increases COVID risk is BMI 40+ [0], which is more like 6-7% of the US population.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...
Still an enormous number of people but far lower than 40ish percent.
I should have made it clear but I wasn't attempting to construct an exhaustive list of risk factors, but more give an example of what that might look like
If I bought the assumption that getting COVID19 was relatively safe for me, I'd gladly swap jobs to keep someone else safe, especially if it meant moving up in the world. An at-risk individual could do my job, and I'd take their in-person job.
While I think there are better mechanisms, free markets could take care of swapping people around. If you're self-quarantining, and you have a better job than I do, I'll take your job. My job is now vacant for you. That's far from ideal -- you've just taken a pay cut -- but it's far better than mass unemployment.
What we'd need from there would be much cheaper than the successive stimuli (e.g. support for at-risk low-income individuals: like a stimulus check, bigger, but only to people who need it).
Now, to be willing to do this, I'd need to believe COVID19 is relatively safe for me (e.g. <1% odds of death _or significant long-term complications_). That's an assumption I don't buy. By looking at IFR/CFR numbers, we've ignored the much bigger question: how many people end up with permanent lung damage or other organ damage. Until we have a clear answer, I'm in lock-down mode unless I'm forced out.
Note that a company giving a bad reference because you refuse the terms is likely to lose a lawsuit (in the US) since courts will find it reasonable for someone to refuse to come into work given the experts advice at this time. Thus the company will probably just confirm your dates of employment and refuse to say anything more about your performance while working there.
How often do these kinds of lawsuits happen anyway? I'm imagining that engaging in one is also a career-limiting move in itself, but maybe the situation is better?
> Fortunately at will employment works both ways
This pandemic is really turning the world upside down; things that were favoring one group of people suddenly turn around and favor the previously exploited one...
> courts will find it reasonable for someone to refuse to come into work given the experts advice at this time
One of the things I've noticed during this crisis is how big a responsibility rests on the shoulders of government and NGOs alike. I could describe the behavior of most of the market in February and March as a large responsibility deflection game. So many companies knew what should be done, and were ready to do it, but were openly waiting until relevant governments started issuing emergency rulings that gave them no other choice. For instance, late March I was still getting messages from a travel agency that boiled down to, "we understand that you think it's bad out there, and safety of everyone is paramount, but the government's foreign affairs bureau did not issue a ban on travel to Italy, so all is fine and everyone's going to Rome as scheduled". And yes, there was no travel ban issued; it was only "highly discouraged" for ~2 weeks before the country went into lockdown.
If they want to survive, adjust they must.
Whichever model we take (lockdown, soft lockdown, no lockdown, or something else entirely), our goal should be to structure economic supports to allow for that restructuring as quick, painless, and job-loss-free as possible. If we don't do that, things will play out exactly as you describe, with a painful adjustment period. If we do that, they can play out better.
But play out they will. Businesses can't force people to stay. If the cost for me to pick an in-person job over an at-home one is $10,000, I'll quit my remote one as soon as I get a job offer $10,000 above my current salary. Businesses can't force me to stay. And vice-versa the other way. That's a free market. And the increased unemployment benefits right now provide some buffer to make those changes.
Better than everyone pulling their hair out at home. Plus, why not have people choose themselves whether they're healthy enough to take chances and go out to work?
Because people who chose to take that risk will still go back to their homes and infect people who'd rather not, or can't afford to.
Because people go to work sick otherwise they can't put food on the table, especially in a country where not going to work massively means losing your job in a country without a sensible, humane healthcare system.
Three reasons immediately spring to mind:
1. It's a very well established fact that C19 can transmitted by asymptomatic people. "Healthy enough" does not mean "safe"
2. Ignoring that fact, I know can personally name several people who would absolutely go to work sick.
3. I've have several employers who would say "Do totally have a choice...come in or you're fired and I'll find someone else who will do it". This includes a very vivid memory of a manager telling one employee that she doesn't not have a valid excuse to miss her shift while she was still weeping because her grandmother had died.
(3) is still a valid concern. Government policy could help, but it'd be weird (and provoke a major public backlash, no doubt) if us fat people got a stipend for being fat.
People who aren't virus-free shouldn't be in the general public. That's kinda the point.