US economy suffers worst quarter since WWII as GDP shrinks 32.9%

Thanks for sharing a potentially embarrassing opinion. What changed in your thoughts between then and now, what convinced you to change? We can still do a couple of month shutdown and stop this thing. But there would be more political resistance than ever, because we are stupid as a collective society in america. I'd like to understand what impacted your thinking, maybe we can replicate that in explaining the situation.

I remember you arguing that case and I appreciate that you have the guts and honesty to change your mind out loud.

I am sorry, but I think you overcorrected. The problem was that we locked down at all. Nearly the same mitigation could have happened with masks, distance and isolation. Yes, testing was a shitshow.

But look at Spain, Australia etc. If you lock down, eventually the virus comes back. Here are literally the only options:

1. Lockdown fully and completely until there is a vaccine that's distributed

2. Lockdown hard until cases in (Region) are zero and then reopen without any outside entry to (Region)

3. Take public health measures like masking, isolation of sick, protection of weak and accept cases and deaths

4. Ignore it, accept lots of death and cases

This virus will continue to spread until there is immunity, either through natural means or vaccine. Lockdowns don't stop the virus unless migration is also stopped. Period. All it takes is one person to fall through the cracks and your 6 months of lockdown are thrown out the window.

There are structural problems that need to be addressed, the fact that hospitals are profit driven and operate near 100% capacity at all times. The fact that our public health departments are political by their leadership. The fact that there is zero trust of anyone anywhere.

But you fix all of those and you still have a virus that will spread until immunizations levels are met.

Finally, the Gulf States are having their _first wave_! They flattened the curve during the NYC outbreak. But people moved, virus spread.

Lockdowns are a terrible, blunt, unsustainable, damaging, dangerous and ineffective in the long run.

* about 9.5%

Right. This mis-statement is endemic in financial journalism.

In ordinary circumstances quoting the change in terms of the annual rate of change is useful - provided it's correctly described as that! - but in the present circumstance it makes no sense. Nobody is expecting a new pandemic every quarter, so that the 9.5% drop this quarter will be followed by another 9.5% drop next quarter, and so on indefinitely...

Great to know you'd only hit 1/3 the level needed to cause the apocalypse.

That’s an odd way of looking at it.

GDP does not require a annual timescale. You are free to use your own. Quarters are also common and the headline makes that clear.

Plus, they can’t report on the annual GDP until the year ends, so even that 8% figure might not be accurate!

No, wait, compared quarter to quarter it really did decrease by 32.9%. The 9.5% is what would be missing if suddenly everything went back to normal. Which it won't.

I wonder if it's just a matter of creative accounting? Whole sectors of the economy such as travel, dining out, entertainment disappeared for a period.

So far.

From an economists point of view, the thing to compare to would be cost per prevented death. I don't have a current estimate for that, but it is presumably much lower.

Funny as I have heard from various places that $10M is what an average life is worth [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/843310123/how-government-agen...

a bad flu year kills 120,000 people so subtract that from the covid death number and recalc

Compare covid weekly deaths per 100,000 capita over time to see the effect of different government responses.