With an extra $600 per week for four months on top of regular unemployment compensation, what is the incentive to go back to work for people who make around $15/hour?
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Gundy again called out
- Thread starter Bleed Red
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"Social distancing and shelter in place are designed to drag it out longer." check out the definition of mitigate. it says nothing about dragging it out = the action of reducing the severity , seriousness, or painfulness of something. while I do agree that this mitigating practice does take a little time; thus your comment. But what they are doing (mitigating= social distancing) is NOT designing to drag this out.
the same amount of people are going to be exposed This comment is unprovable
Pretty discouraging when it is now being said by front line doctors that intubation and ventilators are being overused and causing more harm than the virus in many cases I would like to read the story you found that in. I had not heard that
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This is the exact conversation my wife and I where having when all this began. Its a rationalization of the situation but its also a fact (if your figures are correct - didn't fact check you on that) but your rationale is solid.
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I guess my understanding of the social distancing was to flatten the curve and keep us from having a sharp spike. So that hospitals don't become overwhelmed with cases. In all the statistic classes I took and all the psych classes I took that would mean we are stretching it out over a longer period of time across the x axis. Instead of having a high peak of incidence on the y axis. It has been a long time since I did much graphical analysis but that is a pretty simple graph to read.
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Exactly. I’m not a scientist but my understanding is it was supposedly to make the normal tall bell curve into a short stubby bell curve lol Thus LESS deaths overall. The good thing about statistics and mathematics...... its based on recorded facts. The problem with the media (and others) is they collect ”facts” to further their point of view. (whatever that may be ) and leave out other “ facts” that don’t further their point of view.
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Its been a while since my last statistics class, so I may be off base on this. With a normal bell shaped curve, if you flatten the curve aren't the areas under the curve the same in both cases? In the Corona case I'm not sure whether the two curves are meant to have the same area under the curve. Obviously, a flatter curve would help the hospitals by spreading the patients over a longer period of time than, presumable, the same number of patients over a shorter period of time. But, my question is: does flattening the curve actually increase the area under the curve (increase the number of persons) because there is additional time for personal interactions which will result in more cases?
In short, the total people affected (under the curve) will be the same. Lowering the peak and extending the duration doesn't change the number who will most likely acquire the disease. However, it also gives more time for treatments and vaccines to be developed and tested.
Doctors fighting coronavirus face a ventilator Catch-22
As critically ill patients struggle to breathe, healthcare workers have deployed invasive ventilators that take on the job for them—and help protect those around them from infection. Critically ill Covid-19 patients usually display symptoms of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)—they...
Wow man you do some deep reading .... are you a health professional? THIS is not just casual reading. I certainly appreciate you passing this on And it supports your statement completely. Thank you. Some good info there. It just goes to show you what these health care providers have to deal with on a daily basis. A lot to learn.Doctors fighting coronavirus face a ventilator Catch-22
As critically ill patients struggle to breathe, healthcare workers have deployed invasive ventilators that take on the job for them—and help protect those around them from infection. Critically ill Covid-19 patients usually display symptoms of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)—they...www.yahoo.com
What you're implying is basically a straw-man argument that there would be anyone out there, anywhere who is advocating for doing nothing at all, carrying on with Mardi Gras parades, Rave parties, etc. Nobody is advocating for that. Obviously there is a correlation between people dying and economic output, but, again, nobody is arguing that there isn't.
Straw-man argument
Part Proving a Negative and part Straw-man argument. If we shelter in place, and things turn out great: "See, isn't it great that we took such drastic measures?" Meanwhile, if the totals for the dead and gravely ill are still severe: "See, imagine how bad it would have been if we hadn't taken such drastic measures!" Then compared, again, to doing nothing.
Do you understand the economic ramifications of what you are saying? If we keep a significant portion of our economy shut down or at least hobbled until 2021, there will not be "a normal" for us to come back to.
Do you understand that the "MIT" professor--I put quotes around "MIT" because it's solely the credential that carries the weight here--is comparing apples to oranges? This is just an MIT credential and a Federal Reserve credential attached to the same Straw-Man: NOBODY is advocating for large victory parades, but what they did in 1918-19 that was more effective is NOT what we're doing now: St. Louis didn't shut down for a year; St. Louis didn't send out police to arrest people for going to work. Beyond that obvious and significant difference, we don't have the same economy as then. Our rates of urban to rural development are nowhere near comparable. It's comparing trucks and cars to horses, buggies, and plows. In many ways the America of 1918 was much better situated for sheltering in place than we are today as it was a much more agrarian society, and even the urban areas had developed wartime habits of growing their own food to a much greater degree than before with Victory Gardens. It's not even remotely like that today.
Even other articles and data that would seem to be buttressing this point are still often just refuting the same Straw-Man argument that nobody is making--"Do nothing ... and hope for the best"--such as this quotation from this Atlantic article:
Call it the gospel of growth: the notion that Americans cannot afford to save tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of lives, if it means sacrificing a quarter or two of gross domestic product.
While this might sound like an economic argument, it enjoys little support among economists. In a recent University of Chicago survey of dozens of prominent economists, almost all of them agreed with the idea that the economy would suffer if the U.S. abandoned “severe lockdowns” while the infection risk remained high.
It sounds the same as the article you cited, right? Notice these words though: "almost all of them agreed with the idea that the economy would suffer if the U.S. abandoned 'severe lockdowns' while the infection risk remained high." What's really important in that statement is how you define your terms, and what you view as the alternative choice or choices. What are "severe lockdowns?" When we say "the infection risk remained high," what level are we discussing, and what level of hospitalization and death needs to correlate with that infection rate? Also, the first part--"sacrificing a quarter or two of gross domestic product"--would literally be catastrophic. There are only 4 quarters in a year. Sacrificing 2 quarters equals giving up half of all the goods and services that are produced within a year. Understand that neither consumption nor production of goods and services are equally distributed, so cutting half the GDP would possibly/probably equate with destroying the livelihoods of more than half of the population. You don't think that there would be health issues, political crises, and/or community safety issues connected to that type of disruption? It's not something to just gloss over. The Great Depression is believed to have reached as bad as 25% at its worst, and that's the worst that America has ever known. Our ancestors who lived through the worst of it were permanently scarred. Governments all over the world were thrown down, and radical regimes stepped into their place as drastic times led to drastic measures. We can't be glib while throwing out stats like these.
Let me ask a better economic question in a different way: "How long can the U.S. afford to operate with 'severe lockdowns'--meaning all but essential businesses are shut down--before the economic strain will reach catastrophic levels?" If there is an economist alive who says that the answer is "indefinitely," he's a shill for somebody, and will be given no credibility as an objective economist. The questions that ARE highly debatable are how long before the pain is "too great," and what do we define as "too great." There absolutely is a point at which "the treatment" is worse than "the cure" in both economic terms and in human lives, but the multi-trillion dollar question is "Where is that point?" I don't know, and I can't say with any credibility, but I'd bet my home, my income, the health and well-being of my family, and the future livelihood of my community that it's "sometime before 2021."
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It's hard to generalize from one pandemic to another, but during the Spanish flu pandemic, cities that instituted lockdowns appear to have had lower total mortality rates:
www.economist.com
Cities that acted earlier and more aggressively did not suffer greater economic damage, and may have done better economically:
Edit: I see a link to a report of the latter study was already given. Guess I should read all the posts before posting.
Lessons from the Spanish flu: Early restrictions lowered disease, mortality rates
A review of published data and analysis on the Spanish flu, found that cities that adopted early and broad isolation and prevention measures had disease and mortality rates that were 30% to 50% lower than other cities.
www.sciencedaily.com
Lessons from the Spanish flu: social distancing can be good for the economy
Data from the 1918 pandemic in America suggest that places with the tightest restrictions fared best
Cities that acted earlier and more aggressively did not suffer greater economic damage, and may have done better economically:
Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu
We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on mortality and economic activity across U.S. cities during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. The combinati
papers.ssrn.com
Edit: I see a link to a report of the latter study was already given. Guess I should read all the posts before posting.
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History can provide some guidance, but the world is different now, as is the disease and our medical tools. I wouldn't even try to guess when it will be appropriate to relax restrictions. I'm not sure anyone really knows.
One thing to add. I think university presidents are going to be really conservative about letting students back on to campus. Few will want to risk the PR nightmare of having students die because they were antsy about starting back up. Universities were early movers on shutting down activity, and my guess is that universities will lag behind businesses in resuming activity.
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I think you're correct. The NU system decided last week to continue remote instruction of all coursework through the summer sessions. Also, this week they issued the order that all buildings are closed to non-essential personnel. It begins tomorrow and they will reevaluate in 2 weeks. I can't even access the building where my office is located. I'm not complaining, just noting how shut down the university is right now.
