Deferring to expertise in an ultra-specialized society means the scope and scale of societal interventions are looked at unidimensionally (I think I just made up a cool new word). Yes, the best way to stop COVID is "X", but that doesn't mean its the right thing to do. I'm not arguing for any specific policy here, it's just the INTJ scientific minds that dominate this board seem to miss this point too often. This is basically the same argument @Brute used to make for climate change policies.
So to the extent pandemic policy is driven by biomed academics, don’t expect it to be very flexible or abstractly reasoned. And my personal observation is that, of the people I’ve seen who have had insightful things to say recently about this pandemic, most are relatively flexible and abstract polymaths and generalists, not lost-in-the-weeds biomed experts.
The other reason to expect a problem with flexibility in responding to this pandemic is: many of the most interesting solutions seem blocked by ethics-driven medical regulations. As communities have strong needs to share ethical norms, and most people aren’t very good at abstraction, ethical norms tend to be expressed relatively concretely. Which makes it hard to change them when circumstances change rapidly. Furthermore we actually tend to punish the exceptional people who reason more abstractly about ethics, as we don’t trust them to have the right feelings.
Now humans do seem to have a special wartime ethics, which is more abstract and flexible. But we are quite reluctant to invoke that without war, even if millions seem likely to die in a pandemic. If billions seemed likely to die, maybe we would. We instead seem inclined to invoke the familiar medical ethics norm of “pay any cost to save lives”, which has pushed us into apparently endless and terribly expensive lockdowns, which may well end up doing more damage than the virus. And which may not actually prevent most from getting infected, leading to a near worst possible outcome. In which we would pay a terrible cost for our med ethics inflexibility.
Well, you and I are speaking with people who have very different outlooks. Fixed costs and zero income can only be endured for so long.
Oh, absolutely agreed and mid-May is going to be the breaking point for some business owners on the margin. Overall, though, non-retirees living on the coast are used to adapting. When it comes to income, the attitude is "make money any way I can". Logging, construction, & fishing are still going on. Grocery stores and gas stations are still open. Automotive and marine repair & supply are still open.
For my neighbor who runs a small business doing housekeeping for vacation homes, business is slow, but she still has business and is letting the employees take the runs while she putters in her garden.
Looking at the guidelines in "Opening Up America Again", technically Florida could enter Phase One next weekend.
Due to partisan doling, they will have been given adequate testing materials for a robust testing program and had two weeks of reduced cases (most states peaked around Mar 7 like Florida). I don't know if their supply of PPE is adequate, but partisan gifting could certainly make it possible.
The reason they probably shouldn't go to Phase One is their daily new cases will likely still be above 100/day.
Edit: note that "Opening Up America Again" does not include "testing for anyone that wants a test". Apparently the administration is quietly acknowledging their testing failures.
On Wednesday, a day before "Opening Up America Again" guidelines were released, the coronavirus task force pointed to 9 states as possible candidates for re-opening, the ones all below 1000 cases.
Already, though, it is 8 states since Nebraska is now over 1000 cases and still climbing. Of those 8 states, Maine is climbing to a second peak, so now we're down to 7. Of those 7, North Dakota is going sideways and the governor is aware they're struggling in a precarious position, so he's in no rush. Which leaves 6 states with a good chance of opening before May Day if they wish: Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, Vermont, and West Virginia.
What's not clear is how much economic benefit there is for them if they open early? After all, why would Hawaii & Alaska lift their 2 week mandatory quarantine for visitors when the rest of the world is infected?
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%
What's not clear is how much economic benefit there is for them if they open early? After all, why would Hawaii & Alaska lift their 2 week mandatory quarantine for visitors when the rest of the world is infected?
Alaska is restarting certain elective surgeries this week. Nearly half of the state's economy is tied to oil/tourism and cruise ships are cancelled through at least July so the economical outlook is already bleak regardless of local openings. Intrastate community travel will probably be lifted but I highly doubt the mandatory quarantine will go away any time soon.
That is also my concern. The thing that is incredible to me is that the "intelligent people" are basically signaling they are happy to let the partial shutdown ride indefinitely. Doing anything else is completely outside the Overton window, which itself is only a month or two old. The fact that the shutdown will likely rival the Great Depression for the biggest economic fuckup doesn't seem to move people too much.
The original story was that the lockdown was in place to prevent the hospitals from getting too overwhelmed during the initial stages. With only a couple exceptions the hospitals never got overwhelmed and the need for the huge numbers of ventilators turns out to be questionable. Based on the initial story, drawdowns should be a major point of discussion, and not just a Trumpist talking point to be swatted away.
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.
People still will act what is in their best interest. Lockdown started from the bottom up in the US, not top down. The day before many states instituted bans on dining in restaurants/bars traffic was down over 70%. In Sweden, which has experienced no lock downs, movie theater revenues are down over 90%. The major movie theater in China had to shut down 500 theaters after reopening after the first week of revenues only amassed $10,000. What kind of an economy is open businesses but no customers?
Aren't the grumblings from the service industry about having to work and not being able to stay home to protect themselves? I don't see how that is connected to opening up the economy. Some sense of equality? If it's in regards to layoffs and contractions, then no one is immune. The white collar layoffs have only just begun recently.
I think we need to start a dialog about generational reparations paid to the young by the old.
Some ideas:
Graduated Social Security means test.
Completely eliminate pension differentials between young and old workers by reverting all pension benefits to those that would have been offered to the last worker hired and using the clawed-back funds to shore up the pension funds.
Eliminate the tax advantaged treatment of primary home sales, graduated by age with a start day one year from passage giving them time to sell their big homes to young people.
What else?
As ZAF is suggesting, they need some skin in this game.
I think we need to start a dialog about generational reparations paid to the young by the old.
Agree and this is long overdue. However, there might be a significant loss of life at the older end of the spectrum. A dark reality of this is that I can see there would be reduced strain on the health system in the future, less pensions and a greater distribution of assets from the older to the younger. So I think that there could be some automatic adjustment.
But if that doesn't happen (and hopefully it doesn't) its quite right that there is more significant economic compromise by younger people to (again) benefit older people and adjustments should be made. More asset testing for govt services etc
To clarify, I am not actually suggesting we do those things. I am suggesting we encourage older folks who have been insulated from most of the economic hardships but have been the beneficiaries of the shutdown to realize that if we don't open soon they may have to pay a price as dear as the one they have demanded from the young.
I'm not sure age is the most predictive variable. I read a lot of trashy online-only media (e.g. Slate), and the vibe I get is a bunch of young, underpaid writers are just as supportive of the current system as your average plutocrat. Probably because they went to the good schools, have the nice resumes and have some expectation of eventually being the next generation's plutocrats, or at least the people who get invited to the plutocrat parties. This seems to be mostly about enacting policies that maintain the status quo for the top 10-15% of the population (supported by their mouthpieces) while throwing scraps to everyone else. I.e. business as usual, corona-style.
Individual responses to CV19 are similar to what happened during the credit crisis in 2008/09. The tide just went out in a big way and those who have been shown to been swimming without pants in this new reality are noticably upset complaining about how it's not fair or lamenting the loss of the good old days. "There was a time when families could go to Disneyland ...". They're looking for fixes to make things the way they used to be. "Make America Back Again" is the slogan.
Conversely, those who saw what's coming and deliberately adapted to the new reality are feeling either vindicated, smug, or blessing their good fortunes. Ditto those who did it accidentally by choosing a WFH career. Living high as WFH technology/implementation ostensibly has moved 3+ years ahead in a just few short weeks. Stocks are "on sale". Commuting is gone. Talks about companies shutting down office space for remote work is seen as a positive rather than a negative. And so on.
It's exactly like the loss of manufacturing or the loss of the 1950s social order. Only a lot faster. Evolution happening before our eyes.
Those who are already well adapted to the new world are in no hurry to change it back; especially not if they're doing better(*) on multiple points. The argument would be that it's the other group who have to change-forward instead of them changing-back.
Therein lies a certain stalemate. Sympathy is definitely not universal in the pandemic lockdown world, but neither was that the case before the lockdown. There was a certain lack of "touch" there too---it was just pointing in the opposite direction.
(*) Prepping is now cool and no one are dismissing it as fearful or alarmism anymore. Introversion has suddenly become a strength instead of "something one needs to work on". "Touching base"-meetings are all but gone. Politics is suddenly reality-based instead of a reality-show. There's no more hugging, yay!
The "economy" is just one pressure point. Those who are not dependent on economic activity---the savers, the self-reliant, the greenies, the retirees, ... and also ERE---are in no hurry to get something back they don't really need that much. Maybe clean air, less traffic accidents, etc. resulting from lockdown economy are preferable to restarting the full economy with all its resulting waste.
Point being, the table was just flipped by nature. However, it is not in everybody's personal interest to go back to the way things were. That's why frustration is not felt equally by all people and that's why some are happy to wait and see. It's exactly the same attitude as the one that prevailed prior to the pandemic---"Lets not concern ourselves too much with such [public health] risks. Lets wait and see if something actually happens"---much to the frustration of those who saw it coming.
The only thing that has changed is that this attitude is now held by a new group of people.
@ZAF, That is true but to get things done takes power. The shutdown happened because the people with power (older) were afraid of corona. They paid for the shutdown using debt that young people will have to repay. What do they care if it goes on for 18 months. They think they can simply borrow more to pay the peons and shore up Wall Street. They need a competing fear that is as visceral as corona. Lose their home. Relinquish a large portion of their pensions. Lose that Social Security check. Help them to reconsider their position.
@Augustus - Yes, we're all dependent on the economy, but some are a lot more dependent on the economy than others both in terms of money, supplies, and businesses as well as income.
This is not an all or nothing proposition for the entire economy although it is for individuals if they work in e.g. the food service industry, e.g. non-essential pink collar job ... or if they get a lot of enjoyment out of eating at restaurants. Some sectors, corporations, individual jobs in the economy are being destroyed because they've gotten a significant reality-check (because reality has changed) but that is not the case for all sectors, corporations, jobs, or employers.
We can split the economy up into four quadrants. Essential vs non-essential and WFH vs non-WFH. The loudest demands for restarting are from the "non-essential non-WFH"-quadrant either because they work there, enjoy those services or products, or have money invested there.
However, it's certainly possible to arrange one's affairs and indeed the entire economy and live in a way so that one mainly depends on essential sectors. It's called non-essential for a reason. It's technically not needed. It's only wanted.
Those who got dinged in 2008 were realtors, speculators, bankers, and home construction companies. People lost their homes and jobs over that and in the aftermath, these industries became less dominant as opposed to the "nice living" they were before. This time it's airplanes, hotels, restaurants, and retailers. People will lose their homes and jobs over that too and in the aftermath, these industries will become less dominant as consumption and production of those goods decline. These are bubbles popping.
When you're lying on the ground with a gunshot wound after some dude shot you over your groceries, you can't wiggle your fingers and chant "ERE...ERE...ERE..." to make it all go away.
They'll think you're saying "ER..ER..ER" so you'll get an ambulance. That's why its better than chanting "JLF...JlF...JLF..."
because people will assume you can perform major surgery on yourself. But it's best to have your groceries delivered if it's possible.
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.
