COVID-19

[George the original one]

1929: Black Thursday, global economic crash, lots of angry unemployed dumb asses

And yet our markets have not reached that stage. Maybe in July/August during triple witching if we've had enough deaths.

[BMF1102]

Augustus - Quoting a random person on twitter?

Yes Flag theory might be the answer to the situation though.

[classical_Liberal]

Regarding this economic death vs COVID death dichotomy being discussed, I'd like to make an important point:

We, as a society, had implicitly made the decision that life extending measures are worth extreme economic casualties well before COVID. This attitude didn't arise out of a vacuum. Health care resources have been strained for at least a decade with the vast majority of all those resources going into life extension for the very sick and very aged.

This is just a fact. Business, individuals, groups, have been suffering from the rapid expansion of health care costs for quite some time. The prevailing attitude has been healthcare for all, not a redistribution of healthcare resources away from the very sick, or elderly who consume most of these resources. I'm NOT making a moral judgement about whether or not this is correct decision. This is something that needs be done at a societal level. As others have pointed out, sometimes it's a genetic issue, sometimes lifestlye issues, so I think it's a complex ethical question. My point is simply that we had already implicitly decided in favor extending life over economic factors long, long ago. To expect that we would handle this same question any differently than the long term trend in an acute situation is unrealistic.

That being said. The lockdown will save a bunch of lives. I've seen the preparedness of US healthcare, first hand, go from virtually none, to large scale. Whether or not it was worth it will depend on whether you are a small business owner who goes bankrupt, or someone's grandmother who's life is saved by a field hospital administering her infusions of FFP(plasma) from a COVID recovered donor.

tl;dr Whether or not it was worth it is certainly worth a debate. However, to assume we could have acted any differently is foolish based on our societies long term ethical decisions on health care.

[Ego]

However, to assume we could have acted any differently is foolish based on my point above.

Interesting point.

Many of the Western European countries held as examples of the best healthcare in the world do indeed make value judgments and ration certain therapies. They give priority to younger people and withhold particularly expensive treatments for those over a certain age. We in the U.S. do not. Seeing that 5% of the population accounts for more than 50% of all healthcare spending and that much of that occurs in the final months of life, I will go out on a limb and say we should be following Europe's lead in that respect.

Also, I mentioned above that we should always replace the word "Covid" with "influenza" to test the validity of an opinion before presenting it to others. We do not lockdown for influenza so it is not a great mental leap to believe that we should not do so for Covid.

[George the original one]

Edit: do you mean to say you don't think we've crashed the economy yet?

Oh, the economy is hurting, but the markets don't yet reflect the level of global hurt in my opinion.

[Ego]

Not emotional at all. My apologies, I thought you said you were living with your auntie.

You did sneak into the town, right? And you did move in with friends before moving, right?

I was surprised to learn that the city I'm in now is taking a somewhat paranoid approach to the pandemic, in the sense that they are not allowing anybody not already living in the city to enter. They have stopping been cars at the entrances. If the plate is not from the city, people are not allowed in. I barely managed to enter taking a wrong-way entrance this saturday, that was not yet monitored. Had I been stopped, I would probably have to dig my real state title to prove that I "live" here. I am under the impression that the mayour could not be allowed by the constitution to do this kind of thing, but that's what they are doing. And a few other cities in the region are doing the same. In some places, there was even a trench dug in the middle of the dirt road, blocking anyone to enter by car or motorbike.

Just pointing how easy it is to have strong opinions for the lockdown until faced with an uncomfortable aspect of the lockdown. I believe it was @Naval who said that the lockdowns will remain until white collar stay-at-home jobs begin going away. Then we'll open immediately.

[ZAFCorrection]

I find it strange that a legitimate (and obviously academic) point of debate is being characterized as complaining and wishing to go back to 2019. I realize the technocrat perma-lockdown attitude dovetails with ERE values (whoddathunkit?), but it's only an accident and their logic is shitty.

[Peanut]

I'm curious to know if any have read about actual hospital overrun in the U.S., with numbers.

I read an article that in Chicago they planned to open 3k beds in a convention center, but have scaled it back by 2k, and currently there are less than a dozen patients there. I believe the Javits convention center in NYC reached about 12% of capacity. While I understand the analogous logic of epidemiologists saying if you shutdown correctly then people wonder why you did it, I'm unclear if their models for hospitalization were that inaccurate or what.

@ZAFC: Agree 100%. Especially on the accidental nature of the shared interests.

@Augustus: I hear you, man.

[Peanut]

@bigato: Not trying to speak for Ego but I think it's clear he feels for those who are suffering the loss of their livelihood, even while he's doing fine himself. Especially since their continued suffering is avoidable to a significant degree going forward. Perhaps more important even are the impingements on freedom of movement, etc. that are emerging and transforming every week as well.

It's not clear to me why you seem to be so afraid of the virus? Maybe you aren't, it just seems that way from reading your posts.

[Ego]

I'm still curious to understand why the social isolation measures seems to affect you so much. I get how Augustus is being directly affected as a business owner and all, but I still don't get the motivation behind your strong reactions on this.

It is a good questions considering the lockdown has been good for me in many ways. My business is booming. I have used the time to focus on a project I've had on the back burner for a long time. I am up to three sets of 85 squats, three sets of 90/85/80 pushups every morning, lifting weights and running/cycling better than I have in years. Mrs. Ego and I are actually having quite a bit of fun together. The tenant above commented how she can hear us laughing all the time. We haven't had even a hint of an argument since this started (that's unusual for us) and have both commented about how nice it is to have someone we love and respect to spend so much time with. We spend a lot of time outside. We have a great place to live with a lot of interesting young people around us. Personally I have zero to complain about. Like Jacob, my life is very much like it was before.

But it is those young people around me who have focused my attention on the issue. Some of them are getting absolutely crushed because they were working in industries that were closed by the lockdowns. They are good people. Not much different from how I was at their age. Some are pulling from their minuscule retirement accounts to get by and trying to be resourceful. Others are not so lucky or smart.

And then there are the Covid breakups desperately searching for new places to live. Who knows, some may have broken up anyway. But my guess is the spike in divorces will be something talked about in the history books. Mrs. Ego believes that if they can't live together like this then they probably shouldn't be together. I am not so sure. What I do know is that when I interact with someone going through such a traumatic time in their life, I can't help but absorb a small part of it myself.

So, if there is something I am angry about it is that I've been following this closely for months and know that there were people who suggested the rational path. Isolate the elderly and vulnerable. Allow the virus to spread among the young and healthy to get it out of the way. Essentially Sweden. We almost went in that direction but then at the last minute the Boomers used their triple-whammy of fear, guilt and pity to manipulate the system - like they always do - to get their way. If they have to isolate, everyone has to isolate. Except for the people bringing them their good wine and Whole Foods deliveries.

So, here we are.

ETA, I forgot about parents with young children. My little brother has a toddler and an elementary school age kid in a small home. I feel for them as well.

[C40]

I have a weekly video meeting with my immediate family

I've been a bit worried about whether my sister is doing ok financially. She and her partner live in Denver and thus have a pretty hefty mortgage. They have two young children. They both worked but don't make a lot of money. Her partner was out of work pretty quickly one things started. He had a job as a coffee roaster. He got that job by hanging out at a coffee shop one time and casually talking to the owner. He didn't know anything about roasting. The owner just liked him... Today, he told us he got a new job. During all this, lockdowns, extreme unemployment, he got a new job, and will start the work soon.

[Ego]

The CDC Weekly Surveillance Summary from today...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... index.html

For people 65 years and older, current COVID-19 hospitalization rates are similar to those observed during comparable time points* during recent high severity influenza seasons.

For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons.

[C40]

I am up to three sets of 85 squats, three sets of 90/85/80 pushups every morning, lifting weights and running/cycling better than I have in years.

90 pushups in a row in one set? That's impressive.

[Ego]

90 pushups in a row in one set? That's impressive.

I do them fast. And maybe I don't top out completely ... but yeah. Feel the burn.

[C40]

Nice. If I make it back to San Diego again with a bicycle, we should race up that one steep hill. I think you'd beat me now.

[classical_Liberal]

I just got back from a bike ride in the downtown of my small city. ND lifted restaurant and bar closures today. Allowing for half occupancy, but also allowing for street side food and alcohol sales to make up for it.

This is a college town, during a time that college is normally in session, with 70F weather after a long, hard, cold winter. Also an area where adult alcohol consumption and partying is pretty high. Normally, on a nice Spring, Friday night like tonight, the streets would have been packed, street food vendors, street musicians and entertainers, etc. It was a ghost town... Less than 5% normal. Admittedly this is the first day, but If this is any indicator of reopening in other areas, the service/entertainment industry is screwed. I stopped at my favorite "barcade" and bought the whole place a round, there were only 8 people.

[Ego]

@C40 My cycling has improved, but not quite THAT much.

[classical_Liberal]

Also of note on the employment anecdote front. My GF was given the opportunity from an old friend to take a 2 week temp contract in Iowa at a surgery center. It will actually end up paying a bit less than her unemployment due to the travel required. She took it anyway because she felt it was the right thing to do, rather than keeping benefits others need more. There is hope for the world yet.

[7Wannabe5]

@Ego:

So now you feel sorry for the same spoiled, wasteful kidss whose discards gave you profit? I agree that anybody who works in a nonessential industry like entertainment and lives in HCOL urban area like Southern California is relatively screwed economically. The kids in the Midwest are more like “ The affluent bubble dwelling federal politicos are giving me $4800/ month to stay home and keep grandma safe. Well, alrighty, gotta do what I gotta do.”

The protestors that I know of are mostly boomer age people who think they are immune because they have 2 acres in exurban area away from the dirty city people who don’t was their hands. Also, the Millennials in my acquaintance are more much likely to have cracked a science or math book some time since the Carter administration, so less clueless about virology, exponential growth etc. IOW, in my neck of the woods, the people who don’t believe in the virus are also the people who don’t believe in global climate change or evolution.

@ZAFCorrection:

I don’t believe it is at all coincidental that the economic effects of the pandemic are in alignment with the practices of ERE. ERE is meant to prepare humans for best weathering all the likely upcoming 21st century crises due to huge mono crop of Homo sapiens burning through fossil fuel reserves at record pace. Since Millenials aren’t dying at high rates during this pandemic, they could be happy about the forced pause it brings to ecological destruction, because the Boomers aren’t out driving to dinner in their SUVs except for the idiot protester ones who live in my region who will with some degree of statistical likelihood suffer the literally natural consequence (like in a Jack London novel!) of finding themselves burning even more dollars/resources while in prone position wearing nappy with tube down trachea.

[Lemon]

Nice Summary lecture of where we are now by Prof Whitty: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/covid-19