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Comment by enkid | Hacker News Reader

I mean, all you really have to know is that the r0 for asymptomatic patients is > 1 or that symptomatic patients aren't going to be perfect and are going to be going out when they are sick (or most likely a combination of the two). I think we've had enough evidence of that for a while now. The way you write your comment seems rather condescending and anti-lockdown when what we've seen is that "shutdowns" have saved lives.

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The sheer hubris of your post is the problem I'm talking about. Banning cars saves lives. Forcing everyone to wear a helmet when walking saves lives. Banning sugar saves lives. The issue is how many lives and at what cost?

I'll wait to see how many millions end up homeless before I say that the lock downs saved lives anywhere where they were implemented.

This so much. The economy IS lives! People putting food on the table. I feel like it's that train track problem where you have a train barreling at three people and we just pulled the lever and had it kill 40 people instead.

You are far too optimistic with how wrong things can go.

The economy running smoothly is what keeps revolutions and wars from happening. The last time the wheels fell off as badly as they did over the last three months we had WWII happen within a decade. We are lucky that it is a sharp shock and it is probably recoverable, but the longer we keep this up the slower the recovery will be. And given how popular extremist ideas were even before a 25% unemployment wall it is not something I want to play with.

Have had those same exact thoughts that poverty leads to war and other terrible stuff.

The people supporting these extreme coronavirus measures have good intentions but don't seem to understand the law of unintended consequences.

Yeah, it's a mess out there. One thing I've noticed is just how narrow people viewpoints are, if they could just take a step back and look at the whole picture they might start finding some common ground. The government is overstepping its responsibility rig but now, and far too many people are cheering it on, it's dangerous.

Or just help those 40 people with federal funds, which is what every other rich country did, and _which worked_?

The problem isn't the lockdown (the US didn't even have a proper lockdown, compared to European countries), the problem is lack of federal help to compensate the losses.

The US GDP shrinkage in Q2 2020 was three times larger than that of e.g. Germany and France, despite these countries having harder lockdowns. Now those countries are mostly done with Covid, while the US still has over 1000 deaths a day _plus_ the economical costs of Covid.

The US GDP shrinkage in Q2 2020 was smaller than Germany, France and even the average of the entire Eurozone. You've been caught out by the fact that the widely-quoted US quarterly figure is annualized by multiplying the actual change in GDP during that quarter by four, whereas the figures for European countries are how much GDP actually shrunk by in that quarter. (Some widely-trusted organisations which should know better even quoted both figures side-by-side in the same article with no warning explaining they weren't comparable. I'm looking at you, BBC.)

If they were actually comparable rather than the US having less of a decrease in GDP, the US figure would be four times the European one rather than three due to that annualization.

I stand corrected, annualized the quarterly shrinkage of US and Germany are about the same.

This sadly doesn't change the main point, though: Most of the hardships of employees and small businesses are specific results of the lack of proper relief in the US, without the US economy having gained an advantage out of this.

your post has just as much hubris. you seem to be suggesting the no lockdowns would have no impact on the economy. There are plenty of knowledgable people that believe the impact on the economy would be even worse without lockdowns. I'm not saying they are right, just pointing out you seem to be implying there's only 2 possibilities

1. we lockdown and the economy goes to bad which kills people because of lack of income

2. we don't lockdown and the economy magically stays strong.

There's other possibilities.

3. we don't lockdown, the pandemic kills millions, the economy goes down more than if we had locked down.

4. ??

>you seem to be suggesting the no lockdowns would have no impact on the economy.

No. I'm suggesting that acknowledging the cost of lockdowns is something that is not allowed to be discussed in liberal circles.

4: World war 3 caused by the economic collapse and radicalization of the population. You know, like the last time there was mass sustained unemployment.

You are currently discussing the cost of lockdowns in fairly liberal circles.

And getting downvoted to death, so he does have some point...

You're not alone, it's hard to have these conversations mostly because they devolve into libel attacks that people opposed to lockdowns or wearing masks dont care about other people.

When it comes to masks, that very much is the case

For what is worth you are not alone.

I've seen many that weight economic collapse heavily in the equasion.

It's tempting to simplify the mental model in terms of casualities but in reality there's a gradient between alive and dead.

People need to realize the chart is not composed of two vertical bars. It's a bell curve instead and covid might be less influential in that curve than we are led to believe relative to the economy.

No I don't go to protests and ralies, I don't leave home unless strictly necessary since I work remotely. But I still understand not everyone is as fortunate and I accept they might have to just go out and work in order for provide to their families.

The cost of lockdowns are a US-only, entirely political problem. No other industrialised country has a remotely similar degree of unemployment or even homelessness as a result of the lockdowns - because they already had social safety nets and because they had the political will to implement adequate emergency measures to support the population and small businesses. Example: unemployment in heavily hit France in June 2020 is 1% _lower_ than June 2019. https://countryeconomy.com/unemployment/france?sc=LAB-

It's an "entirely political problem" in the sense that European countries have found ways to avoid counting most of the people who aren't working and whose income is coming entirely from the state as being unemployed whereas the US didn't. (Generally some sort of furlough scheme where the state pays their entire wages.) This doesn't fix the problem - a lot of the jobs which still exist on paper are likely phantom jobs that will disappear once companies start having to actually pay employees, people aren't necessarily better off financially (European schemes usually involve a cut to wages, whereas the US unemployment extension managed to pay many people more than when they were employed), it screws over the people who end up actually-officially-unemployed, and it discourages people from moving to new, actually-existing jobs if they appear. It sure does fix the figures though.

They do that for a reason: Businesses stay in business, employees remain in the company, which means customer relations, supplier contacts etc. are kept, company-internal knowledge doesn't get lost etc. - and those employees still have money to spend in the economy. Keep in mind most of these schemes were already in place before Covid, they are not temporary measures and financed as such (e.g. they mostly work insurance-like and were well-financed before the pandemic started), though the money paid out was increased in most cases. The macroeconomic disruption avoided by this is immense.

What this additionally allows for is a) better planning beyond 2020 for companies, and b) much higher willingness in the population to cooperate in the preventive measures like distancing, masks and so on, which helps to explain the stark difference in new cases between both regions.

The difference is that a lockdown can predictably drop r0 below 1 over a relatively finite amount of time. It doesn't need to be ongoing, as in your examples.

Also, the U.S. did not conduct a lockdown. By all means, look to the countries that did, and see how many new homeless that created.

Australia is looking at up to 40% of all households with mortgages to be foreclosed on within the next 3 years:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-04/covid-recession-mortg...

I guess you are referring to the "mortgage stress" number from the article (37.5%). That sounds high, but it was 32.7% already in December 2019[1].

And you are throwing statistics out there without bothering to make an argument. Being in mortgage stress certainly isn't the same as being homeless now or in the future.

https://www.savings.com.au/home-loans/1-1-million-households...

The Australian government does not have the power to bring the dead to life but it does have the power to bail-out home owners, and everyone else badly effected by the economic crisis. Given that the economic problems can be offset with enough economic stimulus, but dead people can not be brought back to life, it seems obvious which course should be taken.

Also, after the first Victorian attempt to control CV19 through lockdown succeeded and lockdown was raised, there was a significant quarantine breach, after which infections ran out of control. This evidence completely invalidates the premise of your first point regarding r0.

Had people actually observed the restrictions, the Victorian economy would be fully open, like New Zealand is now.

>This evidence completely invalidates the premise of your first point regarding r0.

You do realize that it's exactly the opposite right?

If asymptomatic r0 is high a quarantine without a lock down is pointless. If it's low no lock down is required and a quarantine is enough?

We had a lockdown and a quarantine. The quarantine breach occurred after lockdown had reduced transmission. We are now again in stage 4 lockdowns with curfews and quarantine and the numbers are falling again.

But you really don’t seem particularly interested in facts.

Let's assume for now that you are correct, economy-first is best. Then, has the Federal government pursued the optimal course of action to make economy-first practical and successful? If not, then why not? And also, if not, then is it possible that given the lack of a solid comprehensive plan from the Feds, the r-flattening strategy has been left as unfortunately the most reasonable course of action?

On the other hand, if the Federal government has properly laid out the optimal pro economy-first course of action, or close enough to it, then how is it that we are not implementing it, at least in parts of the country? The US has 50 states, many which are dominated by conservatives who like the President, are not broadly in favor of lockdowns. Why haven't those states insisted upon going full steam ahead with economy first, and proving the efficacy of that choice? Why do even conservative, business-friendly, Trump-loyal states keep backtracking and implementing partial lockdowns if they are such a ruinously counterproductive idea?

My own opinion is that the Feds have failed at every level, leaving the states with no choice but to flounder through this pandemic with only bad options. Had we taken comprehensive nationwide steps to stop the spread of the virus, especially at the early stages, shutdowns may have been unnecessary or greatly lessened in severity. And had we taken more wholehearted steps to mitigate the economic effects of the shutdowns, we would be in a much healthier position overall to ride out temporary drops of economic activity without the irreversible effects we are currently facing. But I'm curious as to what you think the best economy- and lifesaving strategy would've been.

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