COVID-19

[HalfCent]

Sounds like we're batting around some kind of "Final Solution" to this perplexing problem by pitting different demographics against each other. Reassuring developments from supposedly smart people.

Concerns about safety weren't so loud when children were shot in schools like fish in a barrel.

Now you have a few weeks off and are freaking out? Success is very near, but it requires you to see what will change, not what has been.

[jacob]

@Augustus - Maybe it will turn out that 70% of the workers are not producing 70% of the GDP? I would expect this to be the case because of the Pareto curve. I don't know if the 80/20 still holds, but the worst economic outlooks that I've seen suggests -20% for GDP yoy. If that turns out to be the case, then the problem is not one of the economy destroyed but one of distributing the resources of the production more evenly.

Maybe this will be the beginning of UBI (monthly injections of stimulus checks) and universal health care? Other countries have something like this (no UBI, but generous unemployment benefits) and so far enjoy no talks of rioting, etc.

These long-range forecasts are a bit like the initial forecasts for the spread of the virus in that they do not (because they can't) account for the complex adaptiveness of the economy. Businesses finding new ways to operate. People finding new jobs in more viable industries. A similar Pareto curve seems to exist for essential/non-essential. If 70% have been sent home, we can probably assume a large fraction of them were doing non-essential work.

I just looked at local hiring on craigslist. It's 90% delivery and grocery stocking with the rest being light manufacturing (assembly) and some construction right now. This is clearly fixing bottle-necks for the essential-non-WFH sector of food distribution. We're only one month into this. That's too soon for anyone but the most precocious to have changed their "life" strategy.

[AxelHeyst]

A trend developing in NZ is widely publicised pay cuts. This started with the PM and senior government officials taking a 10% pay cut. Now I have noticed private sector companies announcing such cuts in the media.
I think I am actually more concerned about that than losing my job TBH. In the precious time vs money paradigm. Rather than having to keep working as much for less money I might rather take a mini retirement and focus on my side hustle, other income streams and hobbies. If I got made redundant I have a decent amount of compensation available. And don't really want to work for less. So I think I am asked at some point I will refuse.

I just took a 22% pay cut. Whole company did (500-1000 people), in a tiered way so those who make less got cut ~15%, those with the highest salaries got cut up to ~40%. And I'm working *way* more now, the whole company is in rapid-response emergency mode, trying to figure out how to a) keep the work we do have, and b) re-invent ourselves to provide remunerable value in whatever this world is turning in to. We've already figured out that the landscape we worked in three months ago doesn't exist any more and will not exist ever again. I'm already working on a service where we help commercial landlords retrofit their buildings to be post-COVID appropriate (much more space between people, more fresh air, etc).

I mostly feel a tension between "stay at work and save as much money as possible, because everything might collapse soon" (I'm new to ERE and quite far from FI), and "quit now and start growing food in the dirt, because everything might collapse soon". I'm going to try to optimize between those two but the crystal ball is murky.

[ZAFCorrection]

@Halfcent

The scale of the problem with respect to school shootings is nowhere near that of the virus, the deaths it produces, and the associated shutdowns. School shootings make for splashy news coverage, but they are not even the big problem in gun violence, let alone overall death statistics.

@others

Personally, I am not saying we should or even can get back to normal. My point is that the underlying logic for the shutdown no longer exists in the US, and for some reason it is still considered unconscionable to talk about lifting the [government-imposed] shutdowns to some extent, despite that being an obvious next step. For the other reasons I outlined, it smacks of the conventional approach of protecting the status of the upper classes while allowing them to feel virtuous and sober-minded.

Obviously, we have limited information on which to make decisions, and we cannot predict the future with great accuracy. But we do the best we can. That's what happened when the shutdowns were reasonably imposed. That's what should happen now when it is clear that some of the parameters used in the forcasting were not as dire as they initially appeared. Though, it seems the logic is being retconned so things can continue as they have been.

[HalfCent]

x

[jacob]

My point is that the underlying logic for the shutdown no longer exists in the US, and for some reason it is still considered unconscionable to talk about lifting the [government-imposed] shutdowns to some extent, despite that being an obvious next step.

Until the curve has verifiably peaked(*), the underlying shutdown logic still exists. I think the "unconscionable talk" is more of a backreaction to those who want to open prematurely. Specifically, when Trump is talking about opening in two weeks (for the second time now) when we haven't even established a peak ICU point, it triggers a lot of people into something resembling a ... I don't know ... fear, panic? Something like 3/4 of Americans think the worst is still to come (they may be right, we lack confirmation) and 2/3 worry about opening too soon.

Because of the erratic leadership from the federal level, there are now three state coalitions (east, west, mid) who have agreed to coordinate the reopening. It's not like this isn't being discussed seriously and rationally in high places; just not so much in the highest one. Other governments are handling this more consistently but every country seems to have its own take on what's best. Regardless, some EU countries will start opening next week.

(*) For example, the Thursday ICU count for the US was actually down about a dozen patients yesterday from Wednesday, which looked really promising, except today the US added another 100. There are some indications that we're at the peak but nothing confirmed.

[HalfCent]

x

[CS]

What is happening now cannot be directly compared to a revolution where the elite (educated?) were killed or shunned, and the farmers were forced to try new unproven theories, resulting in massive crop loss, failure and starvation, especially when coupled with unrelenting policies to export food away from a starving population.

Yes, we are dealing with some crop losses, but we haven't gotten rid of all our old knowledge. Things are fixable, still. The capabilities still exist.

[jennypenny]

David Wallace-Wells: We Are Probably Only One-Tenth of the Way Through This Pandemic

"But getting out of the lockdown — and out of your shelter-in-place bunker — is not the beginning of the end of the pandemic. It is only the end of the beginning — the very brief beginning of what seems likely to be an epically long saga of disease, fear, and uncertainty."

"But while we seem to have avoided that tragedy, and that horror, enough to peek forward and see the possibility of life after quarantine, that isn’t the same as saying we are on the other side of this. In all likelihood, we have a very, very long way to go. On April 14, in the journal Science, Harvard researchers suggested the epidemic could last through 2022 — not just into the fall, and the election, but all the way into the midterms."

[steveo73]

Everyone seems to think that the economy and all the stuff we have is a result of magic, and has nothing to do with people leaving their homes and being productive every day

Does anyone really think like this ? I think the default opinion is completely opposite to your assessment. You need to put this in context of being in a pandemic that kills people. Do you think everyone went on with their normal lives when the Black Plague was running through the world ?

Sure this is having a massive economic impact but we've been through this previously. Humans tend to get going again.This will end. All the reaction against lock downs shows me that this is going to end more quickly than what I anticipated. The issue will be do we get more waves of infections and how the virus develops over the next couple of years.

I'm still amazed 6 months of lock downs destroys so many businesses and people. It just shows how crap society is in relation to planning for events like this. If this is over in 6 months to me that is a fantastic outcome.

Things are fixable, still. The capabilities still exist.

Exactly. There is a lot of pessimism out there that I don't think is warranted. There was a great depression last century. We got through that. We've had worse pandemics.

@ jennypenny - when I state that there is a lot of pessimism I also don't understand the we will be good to go in 2 weeks time. It might be that long but I think that is highly optimistic.

[ZAFCorrection]

@Halfcent

I also have to explain to my parents periodically that the number of American deaths due to terrorism in the last 20 years doesn't constitute a national emergency. But people got their pet issues which are impenetrable to stats.

[Jin+Guice]

Big news. Santa Clara County was one of the first outbreaks. Stanford did community wide antibody testing. They found that the number of actual infections was 50 to 85 times original estimates. That means the implied infection fatality rate is less than 0.2%

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20062463v1

Damn! If this is true I think there might be riots! If we trust the death numbers it means that ~35,000/.002= ~17.5 million Americans had the disease as of ~17 days ago. That's around 5% of the population, which is in the believable range.

[Ego]

For every 1 Covid death, 665 people in the U.S. have lost their jobs*.

*Not including freelancers, business owners and those who have not filed for unemployment.

How many years of life did that one person lose as a result of Covid -vs- how many years of life did those 665 people lose as a result of sudden job loss?

[George the original one]

Big news. Santa Clara County was one of the first outbreaks. Stanford did community wide antibody testing. They found that the number of actual infections was 50 to 85 times original estimates. That means the implied infection fatality rate is less than 0.2%

Participants were recruited using Facebook ads targeting a representative sample of the county by demographic and geographic characteristics. We report the prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in a sample of 3,330 people, adjusting for zip code, sex, and race/ethnicity. We also adjust for test performance characteristics using 3 different estimates: (i) the test manufacturer's data, (ii) a sample of 37 positive and 30 negative controls tested at Stanford, and (iii) a combination of both. Results The unadjusted prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County was 1.5% (exact binomial 95CI 1.11-1.97%), and the population-weighted prevalence was 2.81% (95CI 2.24-3.37%). Under the three scenarios for test performance characteristics, the population prevalence of COVID-19 in Santa Clara ranged from 2.49% (95CI 1.80-3.17%) to 4.16% (2.58-5.70%). These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases.

We recruited participants by placing targeted advertisements on Facebook aimed at residents of Santa Clara County. We used Facebook to quickly reach a large number of county residents and because it allows for granular targeting by zip code and sociodemographic characteristics. We used a combination of two targeting strategies: ads aimed at a representative population of the county by zip code, and specially targeted ads to balance our sample for under-represented zip codes. In addition, we capped registrations from overrepresented areas. Individuals who clicked on the advertisement were directed to a survey hosted by the Stanford REDcap platform, which provided information about the study. The survey asked for six data elements: zip code of residence, age, sex, race/ethnicity, underlying comorbidities, and prior clinical symptoms. Over 24 hours, we registered 3,285 adults, and each adult was allowed to bring one child from the same household with them (889 children registered).

So not exactly a random sample, it had the potential for bias because of the recruitment method. They got a representative sample of location, sex, & race, but absolutely no control over whether the participants felt they should participate because they felt they did or did not experience the disease. I certainly would be more inclined to participate if I thought I might have been infected than if I felt I had not been infected.

[George the original one]

This is pretty good evidence of the upper classes being completely out of touch. They seem to think the government can just throw enough money at the poors and make this go away. After that technology will save us by developing a vaccine.

You mean like the more than 18,000 Oregon small businesses securing loans totaling $3.8 billion? https://katu.com/news/local/more-than-1 ... ng-38-bill

[ZAFCorrection]

@gtoo

Since small businesses make up conservatively 60 billion of Oregon's gdp, I don't think 3.8 billion in loans which need to be repaid is going to do much more than slow a pretty big bleed. Maybe if the economy really does restart quickly.

[steveo73]

Yes. The assumption that people are making is that removing 70% of the labor force for a period of 6-12 mos wont cause big problems. That is a BIG, BIG, BIG assumption.

I don't believe that many if any people have this assumption. I mean how long has this lock down being going on for and look at the reactions against it.

The reaction is coming at what appears to be a peak in the virus when a lockdown has been in place for a relatively short time period.

I think this reaction is probably to do with US federal politics. I think your leader is making this into an issue because he wants to get voted back in. In Australia our Prime Minister came out and said he wanted to be careful on the restrictions he put into place because it would go on for at least 6 months. I think 6 months is a really short lock down and I think the economic impacts are significant.

In my favorite example, the chicom famine, all the magic solutions offered above applied. The capacity was still there, the farmers were still there, they didn't lock 70% of the population in their homes. They still killed 15-30 million people by accident. It was an accident. You don't think this might come back 10 years down the line and we all realize oops! It was an accident? People are suffering from normalcy bias. They think it couldn't possibly happen in the modern world.

I don't know this one. It'd be good to see something I could read about it.

Have you checked?

My understanding was when the back death went through Europe it was stopped (not saying much) or minimized (again not saying much) via social distancing and border control. These are far from scientific articles but I think the way you best these viruses is via social distancing and hoping the things die out or become less virulent. People inevitably try and avoid catching these diseases/viruses.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... panish-flu
https://quillette.com/2020/03/28/social ... ack-death/

I think the impact will be significant but I also think best way to minimize the impact is to implement lock downs early and slowly relax restrictions and monitor the situation (via testing) to try and ensure it doesn't get out of hand quickly.

I don't know what is going to happen though. This could go away soon. Western nations could have passed the peak and restrictions could be relaxed over the next couple of months and the virus doesn't flare up again. The impact in that best case scenario would be way less than my assumption a short time ago. Lock downs could also be stopped and we could see wave after waves of infections and deaths and the economic impact would be really extreme despite relaxing lock down restrictions.

I hope the whole situation improves quickly but I have no idea how this is going to develop.

[theanimal]

Balaji Srinivasan wrote a review of his thoughts on the seroprevalence study in Santa Clara.

https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review ... 6382258c25

To summarize, there are three broad reasons why I am skeptical of this study’s claims.

First, the false positive rate may be high enough to generate many of the reported 50 positives out of 3330 samples. Or put another way, we don’t have high confidence in a very low false positive rate, as the 95% confidence interval for the false positive rate is roughly [0%, >1.2%] and the reported positive rate is ~1.5%.

Second, the study may have enriched for COVID-19 cases by (a) serving as a test-of-last-resort for symptomatic or exposed people who couldn’t get tests elsewhere in the Bay Area and/or (b) allowing said people to recruit other COVID-19 cases to the study in private groups. These mechanisms could also account for a significant chunk of the 50 positives in 3330 samples.

Third, in order to produce the visible excess mortality numbers that COVID-19 is already piling up in Europe and NYC, the study would imply that COVID-19 is spreading significantly faster than past pandemics like H1N1, many of which had multiple waves and took more than a year to run their course.

[nomadscientist]

Given the death rate of the black death, it probably just infected almost everyone.

Those remaining had acquired immunity and some may have had some measure of immunity by genetic chance. There are also those who survive largely by accident (the mechanics of herd immunity mean that even a disease 100% of people are susceptible to in principle will not generally infect 100% of people).

Population saturation with infections is an option in the COVID19 case because by historical standards COVID19 isn't very deadly. In previous times we probably wouldn't have noticed the existence of the disease. Particularly bad season for the old and infirm - sad but it happens. This lockdown situation is as much a consequence of society's increased risk aversion and increased technical capacity to avoid risk as the objective severity of the disease. Which is one argument for it continuing or recurring.

It's also likely to happen by default in the US because the US lockdown is pretty weak and ineffective. COVID19 continues to grow exponentially in the US with the lockdown only reducing the daily growth rate from 30% to 5%. In Italy, it's saturating at about 2%. The difference between 30% and 2% exponential growth is less than most people think; it's still exponential. Only in [some] Asian countries has the disease actually been suppressed in the sense of growth becoming sub-exponential.

The lockdown can continue indefinitely (which is not to suggest it's a good idea). Unemployment will not trend at the Day 1 levels unless everyone is still waiting around expecting their old jobs to come back. We can employ any number of people working from home or in socially distanced occupations. Not doing the same things of course.

[Ego]

Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20053058v1

The researchers tracked 318 clusters across China with three or more infections (1245 cases total). NOT ONE cluster occurred outside.