It'll get far worse than that, with the Western Pact of States looking to have 80% of the lockdown through at least June, with no concrete plans or metrics to open up beyond that.
A "concrete plan" in this situation would include milestones (based on infection rates and the like) for easing restrictions and for re-imposing them if things regress, rather than specific dates, which can't really be forecast.
“Opinion polls have generally shown a bipartisan majority of Americans want to remain at home to protect themselves from the coronavirus, despite the impact to the economy.”
I’ll trust public opinion with my next health decision, it’s always spot on.
Reopening or not is a simple balance between "risk of avoidable deaths" vs. "risk of economic damage". Different people put a different value on each one of those, which makes it a political decision.
(For those who need an explanation - over the last two months, the data compiled in this chart shows that for people under 54, they are vanishingly unlikely to die from COVID. It shows that there is no rational reason that people under 54 should be locked down.
The flu killed 5x more people under 24 in the last two months than COVID did)
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see in Table 2. I see more dead than Influenza. And that's despite most everything being closed. We don't close the country for influenza. So clearly this thing is way worse.
Thanks for not even trying. What you should see if you open your eyes and your mind is that anyone under 54 is many times more likely to die from something else other than COVID.
Surely even someone such as yourself could imagine a scenario where not EVERYONE needs to be locked down? Perhaps just those in the higher risk brackets?
The faster the young and less vulnerable get the disease and get over it, the faster the older folks can be let out. It's really not complicated.
This disease is too contagious to contain. The only way forward is through. Lockdowns merely delay the inevitable. Yes, some people will die. We can't stay home forever. It's not just the US that wants out, but you go on thinking like you do and enjoy your privileged bubble.
There is no evidence that getting the disease prevents you from getting it again. Furthermore there are currently four known strains, so you’d have to get it four times if you even can get immunity.
>There is no evidence that getting the disease prevents you from getting it again
It's normal for exposure to a coronavirus to confer a couple years of immunity.
I've read that it would be typical for something like this to become endemic, decreasing in severity, possibly circulating as another one of several coronaviruses that already make up 15% of common colds.
>Why are we the only country that is begging to reopen?
Because as time goes on we learn that the virus is not as bad as first feared. And more people are being negatively impacted by the varied costs of the lockdown.
Do you think that a continued lockdown will have a significant effect on the final death rate from this disease? As long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed, what will be the difference in the end?
>What you should see if you open your eyes and your mind is that anyone under 54 is many times more likely to die from something else other than COVID.
Table 2 is total deaths not the death rate. Pneumonia has killed more young people than corona because more people have gotten pneumonia than corona (so far).
First of all, these are the deaths for other causes since early February, while the covid deaths are heavily back-loaded over the past three weeks. Second, these are the deaths WITH a nationwide shelter-in-place, if we had not done that, the deaths would be much higher. Third, the death rate for your average 30-year-old in the average week is pretty darned low, so this will indeed add to it. Fourth, what do you propose to do to keep Americans over 60 from dying when they catch covid from their live-in family members, their caregivers, or the clerk at the bank?
Funny. I didn't hear much talk about civil liberties about RealID, buffing up social security number checks, accidentally detaining US citizens in the border concentration camps, US citizens being denied their right to vote, etc.
Politics isn't religion. Some of us will fight you when you trot out your particular bigoted prejudices.
Try some different Cambridge Analytica AI word salad. This batch isn't working.
(Hrm. I seem to be particularly grouchy today ...)
I look at table 2 and see almost 30k people that died DESPITE a nationwide lockdown. Given what we know about the virus, that number would've hit 2M-4M had we not had the lockdown. What am I missing?
I think the idea is that as more data comes in it looks like this virus is not as bad as was first feared. There is no current data supporting a U.S. death toll of 2-4 million.
And a lockdown at this point doesn't save any lives, it only postpones the inevitable spread of the virus. It is not reasonable to stay in lockdown for a couple years until there is a vaccine, not for a virus that kills only 1 of 500 people.
yes, additionally, it is probably better to face the tide of covid cases during the warm weather rather than waiting for cold weather to compound its severity
Real-world hospitals in the US in areas that were hit hard by COVID-19 were/are overwhelmed by it. And even areas that aren't that hard hit can't provide enough tests to know who is actually infected.
Im not saying COVID isn't a big deal. I'm saying the response was an overreaction. We need perspective on the actual severity. If the serological studies coming out are accurate, the total number of deaths is likely ~250k max. That's an alzheimers + suicides. National policy needs to be driven by statistics not emotion.
>> If the serological studies coming out are accurate
That's a BIG optimistic assumption to make. And every optimistic assumption that's been made relative to COVID has only fucked us over further. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy into that yet, cuz if it's off and the CFR is tipped the other way, we could be talking up to 30M deaths, not just 250k...
The problem is that the majority of states reopening were on course to exhaust their unemployment budgets.
Consequently, this looks like a bunch of Republican governors trying to deny people unemployment benefits rather than a positive move to get back to normal.
I'm not saying health officials are wrong, but they're rightfully focused primarily on health implications. Politicians should be responsible for determining policy -- balancing economic, legal, and health considerations after listening to experts.
I don't see how this is relevant to my comment at all. And politicians are free to and often should disagree with their constituents. We have a representative democracy and you're free to not vote for them the next election but they don't have to follow every poll for every decision.
From Texas: "To be eligible for benefits based on your job separation, you must be either unemployed or working reduced hours through no fault of your own. Examples include layoff, reduction in hours or wages not related to misconduct, being fired for reasons other than misconduct, or quitting with good cause related to work."
Also quitting due to significant change in work agreement is a valid reason for unemployment benefits.
We have to find a way to get to a new normal, where we can go about our daily lives with some reasonable level of safety measures. It’s simply not sustainable to maintain a shut down long term.
Isn't what this article is about? "Some" states are "opening up", so I guess we'll get data soon as to how much economic benefit they got vs. how many lives were lost.
This doesn't sound, to me, like a very ethical experiment given that the cost of waiting it out for another two-ish months is comparatively easily calculated and not terribly "doomsday" in scope. Whereas a return to the days of late March where the death count was doubling twice a week very much... is.
Now... in practice? The "lockdown" won't really be released like that in these states, because people aren't going to be willing to travel or dine even if it's "legal". So these states will probably see a moderately worst outbreak and see moderately better results, and we'll all get to continue these arguments forever.
Probably. Or it could be a total disaster. I wouldn't bet on that result, exactly, but I wouldn't be shocked if it happened either.
For evidence: consider pork production. That is an "essential" industry. It's never been "locked down". Yet per the news today I see that 25% of the industry is effectively shut down by viral outbreaks anyway. That's what we should expect if we insist people go to work -- unexpected, uncontrolled outbreaks in locations and businesses and industries. We're not going to get to anything resembling a normal economy.
The point is: not much more than the cost of "opening up" right now. Because "lockdown" isn't magic the government can control at a whime. People aren't going to engage in a full employment economy if they're justifiably scared of dying.
Or, possibly but not probably: the cost of opening up is vastly higher if we end up looking at 2-300k needlessly dead Americans.
We don’t know much, and we won’t know much for a long time yet. One thing we have a reasonable handle on is how many people went in to a hospital in the last week. We know less well how many people died last week. Anything beyond that is somewhere between speculation and an educated guess. That means our policy is always going to be some amount of trial and error. Trial and error that will cost billions and the lives of thousands, but we have no other choice.
Is there any reasonable modelling that puts worst case US recession deaths in the hundreds of thousands? I saw a pretty spun looking number in (I think) The Federalist back in March that claimed a staggering 40k deaths if we didn't open up right away. Needless to say that spin didn't survive reality well, that's not only the median worst case of the viral outbreak it's the status quo.
I would be interested in seeing such model as well
Some things to consider is also the type of deaths. Now I haven't calculated myself which decision is the correct one here, but just throwing out some factors that might (or might not) be favourable towards the decision to open markets sooner.
If most people who die are elderly and they would die in few years anyway are these deaths comparable to younger people who commit suicides or die from poverty due to recession - who otherwise might be productive members of society for the following 30 years?
If 75%+ of people who die are non-working elderly and maybe 80-90% of those would have died in the following 0-8 years would that mean 0-8 years of saved resources/care/medicine costs meaning economy would be better off and in the following 0-8 years we can expect proportionally fewer deaths?
Probably more factors here, but I would like to go to the next point now...
The steps on how to decide should be:
1. Predict deaths (and what kind of deaths) for each following week/month due to economic recession, plus any other damages. Lost technological advancements etc which can indirectly also mean more deaths. Consider all the things that can indirectly cause deaths.
There's also decrease in some type of deaths like traffic accidents during quarantine. Should we consider these?
I tried to Google for how many deaths 2008 caused - first thing I found was 260,000 extra cancer deaths, but I have no idea about validity: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-do...
This is 2.5x more than current deaths from coronavirus and probably within more productive demographic. Just citing that to suggest there's some possibility that recession could cause more deaths.
2. Consider the pace on how fast can hospitals increase their capability to handle steeper curve.
3. Predict how fast Corona would spread after opening. How would hospitals fare? Would this mean more deaths overall from Corona or same amount as if we had keeping a flatter curve. I think the only real way to know this is to start touching the waters, so in this case it seems like reasonable to try with few places first and get measurements from there to see if it's worth it.
(even if you don't agree with that metric, equivalence at some ratio is pretty clear, unless old people are just completely disposable)
At the moment it seems that individual susceptibility is a bigger factor than medical capacity, and we are researching dozens of possible treatments and working towards a vaccine. Makes it even harder to gauge the trade offs, as an effective treatment would pay big dividends when combined with a slowed spread.
I also wonder about attributing poverty deaths to economic shut downs. They are pretty preventable, and more a failure of our broader society than a result of the specific policy. The societal failure when it comes to suicide is less direct, but it's a factor there also.
> I also wonder about attributing poverty deaths to economic shut downs.
But this is always the case. If you can't solve this issue during normal times, how could you solve this issue during crisis? Force part of the society to pay more taxes during this time? There's certainly a lot of people dying all over the world due to poverty - these deaths could be prevented as well. Since there's less production things are probably even more scarce and expensive during crisis - if economy is shut down and people can't be productive.
Regarding ethical/moral dilemmas, to me it seems like the trolley problem is definitely highlighted during this crisis (it to some extent exists also during normal times), but now it's extremely apparent in my opinion.
Especially because also another question is very apparent - how valuable are different human lives?
Loosening economy means less deaths within general population, while it means more deaths specifically for elderly. Loosening isn't binary either so there's a balanced line that you have to draw. So you have to draw that balance between somewhere where you have to weigh economic damage, young productive human lives vs lives that are about to end anyway.
For instance. Would you save 20 people who were expected to live 1 year compared to a person who would go on to live 40 years?
If we considered years and probably higher quality years it would be 40 > 20 however death count would be 1 < 20
It's worth noting that reopening early will also cause economic damage, and possibly more that not doing so would.
People dying costs money, both in the lost productivity of the dead and reduced productivity among those emotionally affected. More people will die with an early end to lockdown than would if it was maintained for another month or two.
I expect lots of grim economics research to come out of this.
Where I am in Colorado the decision to re-open is being made at the county and city level based on local information
Rural areas that are less impacted may reopen with little risk. More urban areas need to be more careful.
I don't think it's necessary to spread fear about reopening. Hopefully your local authority is well-informed enough to make good decisions regarding reopening.
I live in a rural region of ~300,000 people with less than 100 reported cases. 2000 negative tests.
The last I heard one of the county public health officials say anything, it was that they don't have enough testing to know what is going on in the community.
Eh, we'll see. I happen to think the economic consequences are far worse than the health ones. Time will tell which of us is right. I bet if you were a small business owner who was going to fold your life's work because of the lockdown, instead of a privileged tech worker, you wouldn't be singing the same tune.
you underestimate the boom that vacuums can create. It can give new companies, entrepreneurs, or employees the opportunity to fill the void, often more creatively than before.
Depends. In the conditions where coronavirus killed strictly only the old and weak and it had 2 percent death rate it would on average kill people around 2 years before their actual deaths. Let's just say everyone who would have died at 88 will now die at 86 instead.
This means that any costs are just advanced 2 years.
But since those 86 year olds do not provide value to the economy at this point, only consume resources, it will probably offset that by some margin. 2 years worth of resources and care.
Very simplistic way to look at this, but it could also make sense even if not only the elderies die.
There is a possibility it is a net positive for the economy.
Median I would guesstimate based on this data to be around 72 or so.
But the point is how many people are dying who weren't productive members of society and how many years these people would have lived if coronavirus didn't strike them.
For illustration purposes if it always killed those first who were closest to death anyway and death rate was 2% it would mean I guess 74 * 0,02 years lost for median person or 1.5 years.
This number will increase of course because true nature is more random.
And to be completely fair then if in US each year dies a bit less than 1% of people and not all of them at old age. So let's say it's 0.6% dying of old age, then 2% death rate might mean around 3 years lost for median person.
But as I said this are illustrative and non-precise calculations.
If I had to guess I would say it's reasonable to estimate that median person would lose 1 - 7 years of their life due to coronavirus.
I believe with some precautions (masks specifically and distancing and prohibit mass gathering for a bit) most places could open right now and the amount of additional hospitalizations and deaths would likely be economically inconsequential. People in general are going to be careful for a while.
Yes, opening would likely lead to more deaths, that is true, and perhaps we should not open for a bit for safety, but the key concept here is "economically inconsequential".
Testing first, scientific analysis next, and opening last.
Or people can go to an Oklahoma restaurant packed shoulder-to-shoulder without masks with their governor and expedite the restart the pandemic curve to end up with 100k more deaths.
What specific scientific analyses would you like to see performed? Some testing has already happened; maybe the answers you're looking for are available there.
"Royal Rose, 39, owner of a tattoo studio in Greeley, Colorado, told Reuters.
Rose said she was reopening her shop after closing a month ago, not because she wants to but because bills are piling up and she feels she has no choice."
I don't think people will be rushing out to get tattoos...
Seems that both sides, lock-down-until-proven-safe and stop-all-restrictions-yesterday, at least in the US are more focused on spin than facts.
What we need is an open and honest discussion, where conflicting opinions are not ridiculed or shut down but vigorously debated. This would put a premium on clear logic substantiated by numbers and estimates on error bounds. And explanations that an average engineer can follow; not super-complicated things that require a supercomputer to run and a bunch of PhDs to interpret.
In the end it comes down to figuring out what additional risks we, as a society, are willing to accept to stave off specific erosions of personal freedoms and economic impacts. If we do not learn to make this choice consciously it will be made for us by whoever is loudest today (and swapped by whoever is loudest tomorrow).
I am not even talking about nuance, just some basic engineering clarity; and just between friends, no politicians nearby. I have seen a couple of times that the topic got discussed between otherwise calm, smart people. Both times it very quickly got into name calling, no technical arguments involved.
Engineering clarity and politics apparently don't mix. Not a good state to be in. How did democracy ever become "the loudest bullshitter calls the shots"? How sustainable is this?
Just another Pearl Harbor/9-11 for the US. They could have responded early and mitigated this like Australia/NZ/Taiwan but now there is massive community spread there is no right answer. You open things up and more people die. You close them down and people likely die from poverty related things. The only sane solution was to act early and prevent this.
Why even have intelligence services, scientific expertise, governments, infectious disease agencies and emergency plans if they are all ignored until it is too late. I don't understand how so many countries messed this up.
The weirdest part is that it all happened in slow motion. First China, then Iran, then Italy... No secret intelligence needed. But every single time other countries thought it wouldn't happen to them.
> but now there is massive community spread there is no right answer.
The right answer is SIP plus invest massively in building out testing and contact tracing capacity so you can reopen while replacing SIP with targeted quarantines of the infected and exposed.
There's no painless answer, and there's no answer as good as a better early response would have been, but there's a pretty clear right answer.
Not a specific commentary on the US reaction (or any particular country) but some of it comes down to complacency. Zika, Ebola, SARS, MERS and various other outbreaks occured and were contained which lead to a general feeling that (especially in the early days) this would be another 'Non-Event'. It reminds me of a post a few months back asking if Y2K was actually a problem. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22556156
Moreover, some of the places with the best reactions (eg Taiwan) were hard hit by previous epidemics and already had practice with responding to an epidemic.
The opening up is not intended to alleviate poverty, in fact it's the opposite. Currently workers can get ~$3000/month if they are unemployed without fault. If they are unemployed because they refuse to put their lives at risk, they get $0.
A large portion of the U.S. today harbors active disdain and distrust towards anyone claiming to know more than them on any subject. And those people have voted one of their own into the highest office in the land.
It's really not hard to understand why this played out the way it did.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadFor example, here's Nashville's phased-reopening plan: https://www.asafenashville.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Ro... ... It's based around phased reopenings of businesses as specific periods of time elapse with an improvement in metrics.
I’ll trust public opinion with my next health decision, it’s always spot on.
People don’t want to get sick especially given the enormous costs of hospitalization in the US.
Table 2 is all a rational person should need to see to realize the quarantine is the work of fear-mongering by politicians and the media:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
(For those who need an explanation - over the last two months, the data compiled in this chart shows that for people under 54, they are vanishingly unlikely to die from COVID. It shows that there is no rational reason that people under 54 should be locked down.
The flu killed 5x more people under 24 in the last two months than COVID did)
Surely even someone such as yourself could imagine a scenario where not EVERYONE needs to be locked down? Perhaps just those in the higher risk brackets?
If the 22 year old check stand worker at the market goes to a bar and gets COVID-19 and then spreads it to the elderly patron they serve, that's bad.
How can you protect against that?
Also, they are now finding that COVID-19 causes strokes in young people. Those deaths were not counted as COVID related.
We just have no idea how this virus works or what it does to the human body.
Every health official says "stay home". I tend to agree with them.
The solution is not to "open the economy", it's for the government to step in and help people.
Why are we the only country that is begging to reopen? Perhaps it's our social safety net that needs reevaluation, not our lockdown.
This disease is too contagious to contain. The only way forward is through. Lockdowns merely delay the inevitable. Yes, some people will die. We can't stay home forever. It's not just the US that wants out, but you go on thinking like you do and enjoy your privileged bubble.
It's normal for exposure to a coronavirus to confer a couple years of immunity.
I've read that it would be typical for something like this to become endemic, decreasing in severity, possibly circulating as another one of several coronaviruses that already make up 15% of common colds.
Because as time goes on we learn that the virus is not as bad as first feared. And more people are being negatively impacted by the varied costs of the lockdown.
Do you think that a continued lockdown will have a significant effect on the final death rate from this disease? As long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed, what will be the difference in the end?
Table 2 is total deaths not the death rate. Pneumonia has killed more young people than corona because more people have gotten pneumonia than corona (so far).
Also, you can calculate the death rate per million from the available chart data. This stuff really isn't that complicated...
Politics isn't religion. Some of us will fight you when you trot out your particular bigoted prejudices.
Try some different Cambridge Analytica AI word salad. This batch isn't working.
(Hrm. I seem to be particularly grouchy today ...)
I look at table 2 and see almost 30k people that died DESPITE a nationwide lockdown. Given what we know about the virus, that number would've hit 2M-4M had we not had the lockdown. What am I missing?
And a lockdown at this point doesn't save any lives, it only postpones the inevitable spread of the virus. It is not reasonable to stay in lockdown for a couple years until there is a vaccine, not for a virus that kills only 1 of 500 people.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Im not saying COVID isn't a big deal. I'm saying the response was an overreaction. We need perspective on the actual severity. If the serological studies coming out are accurate, the total number of deaths is likely ~250k max. That's an alzheimers + suicides. National policy needs to be driven by statistics not emotion.
That's a BIG optimistic assumption to make. And every optimistic assumption that's been made relative to COVID has only fucked us over further. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy into that yet, cuz if it's off and the CFR is tipped the other way, we could be talking up to 30M deaths, not just 250k...
Consequently, this looks like a bunch of Republican governors trying to deny people unemployment benefits rather than a positive move to get back to normal.
Health officials have been saying to stay home all along. It's politicians that are saying it's ok not to.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather take advice from health officials instead of politicians.
More zero-hour contracts? You betcha.
Also quitting due to significant change in work agreement is a valid reason for unemployment benefits.
Every state is probably different.
This doesn't sound, to me, like a very ethical experiment given that the cost of waiting it out for another two-ish months is comparatively easily calculated and not terribly "doomsday" in scope. Whereas a return to the days of late March where the death count was doubling twice a week very much... is.
Now... in practice? The "lockdown" won't really be released like that in these states, because people aren't going to be willing to travel or dine even if it's "legal". So these states will probably see a moderately worst outbreak and see moderately better results, and we'll all get to continue these arguments forever.
Probably. Or it could be a total disaster. I wouldn't bet on that result, exactly, but I wouldn't be shocked if it happened either.
For evidence: consider pork production. That is an "essential" industry. It's never been "locked down". Yet per the news today I see that 25% of the industry is effectively shut down by viral outbreaks anyway. That's what we should expect if we insist people go to work -- unexpected, uncontrolled outbreaks in locations and businesses and industries. We're not going to get to anything resembling a normal economy.
Or, possibly but not probably: the cost of opening up is vastly higher if we end up looking at 2-300k needlessly dead Americans.
Some things to consider is also the type of deaths. Now I haven't calculated myself which decision is the correct one here, but just throwing out some factors that might (or might not) be favourable towards the decision to open markets sooner.
If most people who die are elderly and they would die in few years anyway are these deaths comparable to younger people who commit suicides or die from poverty due to recession - who otherwise might be productive members of society for the following 30 years?
If 75%+ of people who die are non-working elderly and maybe 80-90% of those would have died in the following 0-8 years would that mean 0-8 years of saved resources/care/medicine costs meaning economy would be better off and in the following 0-8 years we can expect proportionally fewer deaths?
Probably more factors here, but I would like to go to the next point now...
The steps on how to decide should be:
1. Predict deaths (and what kind of deaths) for each following week/month due to economic recession, plus any other damages. Lost technological advancements etc which can indirectly also mean more deaths. Consider all the things that can indirectly cause deaths. There's also decrease in some type of deaths like traffic accidents during quarantine. Should we consider these?
I tried to Google for how many deaths 2008 caused - first thing I found was 260,000 extra cancer deaths, but I have no idea about validity: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-do... This is 2.5x more than current deaths from coronavirus and probably within more productive demographic. Just citing that to suggest there's some possibility that recession could cause more deaths.
2. Consider the pace on how fast can hospitals increase their capability to handle steeper curve.
3. Predict how fast Corona would spread after opening. How would hospitals fare? Would this mean more deaths overall from Corona or same amount as if we had keeping a flatter curve. I think the only real way to know this is to start touching the waters, so in this case it seems like reasonable to try with few places first and get measurements from there to see if it's worth it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
(even if you don't agree with that metric, equivalence at some ratio is pretty clear, unless old people are just completely disposable)
At the moment it seems that individual susceptibility is a bigger factor than medical capacity, and we are researching dozens of possible treatments and working towards a vaccine. Makes it even harder to gauge the trade offs, as an effective treatment would pay big dividends when combined with a slowed spread.
I also wonder about attributing poverty deaths to economic shut downs. They are pretty preventable, and more a failure of our broader society than a result of the specific policy. The societal failure when it comes to suicide is less direct, but it's a factor there also.
But this is always the case. If you can't solve this issue during normal times, how could you solve this issue during crisis? Force part of the society to pay more taxes during this time? There's certainly a lot of people dying all over the world due to poverty - these deaths could be prevented as well. Since there's less production things are probably even more scarce and expensive during crisis - if economy is shut down and people can't be productive.
Regarding ethical/moral dilemmas, to me it seems like the trolley problem is definitely highlighted during this crisis (it to some extent exists also during normal times), but now it's extremely apparent in my opinion.
Especially because also another question is very apparent - how valuable are different human lives?
Loosening economy means less deaths within general population, while it means more deaths specifically for elderly. Loosening isn't binary either so there's a balanced line that you have to draw. So you have to draw that balance between somewhere where you have to weigh economic damage, young productive human lives vs lives that are about to end anyway.
For instance. Would you save 20 people who were expected to live 1 year compared to a person who would go on to live 40 years?
If we considered years and probably higher quality years it would be 40 > 20 however death count would be 1 < 20
People dying costs money, both in the lost productivity of the dead and reduced productivity among those emotionally affected. More people will die with an early end to lockdown than would if it was maintained for another month or two.
I expect lots of grim economics research to come out of this.
Rural areas that are less impacted may reopen with little risk. More urban areas need to be more careful.
I don't think it's necessary to spread fear about reopening. Hopefully your local authority is well-informed enough to make good decisions regarding reopening.
The last I heard one of the county public health officials say anything, it was that they don't have enough testing to know what is going on in the community.
This means that any costs are just advanced 2 years.
But since those 86 year olds do not provide value to the economy at this point, only consume resources, it will probably offset that by some margin. 2 years worth of resources and care.
Very simplistic way to look at this, but it could also make sense even if not only the elderies die. There is a possibility it is a net positive for the economy.
Michigan has had hundreds of people in their 40's and 50's die (~13% of deaths):
https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_9817...
If you look here, you can see only 72% who die are above 64
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
Median I would guesstimate based on this data to be around 72 or so.
But the point is how many people are dying who weren't productive members of society and how many years these people would have lived if coronavirus didn't strike them.
For illustration purposes if it always killed those first who were closest to death anyway and death rate was 2% it would mean I guess 74 * 0,02 years lost for median person or 1.5 years.
This number will increase of course because true nature is more random.
And to be completely fair then if in US each year dies a bit less than 1% of people and not all of them at old age. So let's say it's 0.6% dying of old age, then 2% death rate might mean around 3 years lost for median person.
But as I said this are illustrative and non-precise calculations.
If I had to guess I would say it's reasonable to estimate that median person would lose 1 - 7 years of their life due to coronavirus.
I believe with some precautions (masks specifically and distancing and prohibit mass gathering for a bit) most places could open right now and the amount of additional hospitalizations and deaths would likely be economically inconsequential. People in general are going to be careful for a while.
Yes, opening would likely lead to more deaths, that is true, and perhaps we should not open for a bit for safety, but the key concept here is "economically inconsequential".
Or people can go to an Oklahoma restaurant packed shoulder-to-shoulder without masks with their governor and expedite the restart the pandemic curve to end up with 100k more deaths.
Rose said she was reopening her shop after closing a month ago, not because she wants to but because bills are piling up and she feels she has no choice."
I don't think people will be rushing out to get tattoos...
What we need is an open and honest discussion, where conflicting opinions are not ridiculed or shut down but vigorously debated. This would put a premium on clear logic substantiated by numbers and estimates on error bounds. And explanations that an average engineer can follow; not super-complicated things that require a supercomputer to run and a bunch of PhDs to interpret.
In the end it comes down to figuring out what additional risks we, as a society, are willing to accept to stave off specific erosions of personal freedoms and economic impacts. If we do not learn to make this choice consciously it will be made for us by whoever is loudest today (and swapped by whoever is loudest tomorrow).
Why even have intelligence services, scientific expertise, governments, infectious disease agencies and emergency plans if they are all ignored until it is too late. I don't understand how so many countries messed this up.
The right answer is SIP plus invest massively in building out testing and contact tracing capacity so you can reopen while replacing SIP with targeted quarantines of the infected and exposed.
There's no painless answer, and there's no answer as good as a better early response would have been, but there's a pretty clear right answer.
It's really not hard to understand why this played out the way it did.