I don't really get trying to equate COVID deaths vs. any other existing reason for death, or necessarily that the overall death rate even matters. It's an entire new thing to die from. It's additive. It doesn't matter if we normally have X people dying per day, and COVID is like X(.7). That's still x(.7) MORE DEAD PEOPLE. The other X are still also dying, for all the same old reasons. Yeah maybe COVID gets a little early credit for some of the X that were on their way out anyways, but still. This is a whole new way to die, that our psyche and medical systems were not prepared for.

Our psyche should have been prepared for it, but aside from that it's about putting it in appropriate context. I.e., how much is worth shutting down large sections of the economy for, and for how long. How much should we obsess over it compared to other causes that we blithely accept/try not to think too much about/etc. It's about perspective and having our head screwed on straight.

I start to get uncomfortable anytime someone starts down the "when is it too expensive to save peoples' lives" trail.

I totally agree with you that it's uncomfortable. As I said a day or two ago though, the concerns essentially overlap. People die all the time, thankfully far less in this country than it happens elsewhere but still, because of economic issues. Consider just those who get addicted to opiods and overdose, or those who ration insulin due to the high price, etc.

To the rich money>people, unless its them.

People are a resource that is basically endless. There are always people looking for work.

I'm not there yet but I am seeing online a very shortsighted money vs lives arguement when in reality it is lives vs lives. Not going to do a super thorough search because just making a point but people die due to bad economies. Again it seems worth saving lives now and that we are saving a lot of lives but at some point the economic hit will be worse, much worse. This would be 2008, I'm sure the great depression is a lot worse.

Financial crisis caused 500,000 extra cancer deaths, according to Lancet study
Financial crisis caused 500,000 extra cancer deaths, according to Lancet study

Harvard University › hsph › news
Global economic downturn linked with at least 260,000 excess cancer deaths | News | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - Harvard University

Forbes › sites › 2014/06/12 › m...
More Than 10,000 Suicides Tied To Economic Crisis, Study Says - Forbes

I dont think it's the rich who suffer the most with a collapsed economy. In fact they recover the quickest.

Remember that first you need a sufficient number of infected to 'create' enough momentum to truly have it explode. And many positive tests today were likely infected more than a week ago and most deaths 2 weeks ago or more. So really you are always looking at the past when seeing those numbers.

And since the US really only started seriously testing and thus also reliably identifying subsequents deaths as being infected prior to them dying around March 22nd, everything before that now seems to good to have been true. Italy did the same progression to more testing and thus exploding Cases around March 8th and their death numbers truly exploded about 12 days later with a couple steps in between.

Now i dont expect the US as a whole to come close in per-capita numbers due to a number of reasons (more capacity, different social structure, large distances) but it won't remotely stay at current levels i'm afraid.

Awful news: Adam Schlesinger, the incredibly talented co-founder of Fountains of Wayne and Ivy, dies at age 52 from complications of #coronavirus. https://t.co/VXd4mo2KK0 pic.twitter.com/qFwVtifB2J

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) April 1, 2020

Or the point that they just made on the news (NYC guidelines: if you don't have a pulse, don't send someone to the hospital in hopes of revival), you are going to see MORE people dying of the other things because services that normally could save them may not be able to.

The hospitals and doctors Offices even more hopelessly overflowing with Coronavirus patients (and tons of healthcare workers getting infected and out of comission) would also lead to a lot more non-Covid deaths in the short and longterm.

The only way to create this trade-off (rather Covid deaths than others) would be if you just let them die and were somehow as a nation able to ignore that growing mountain of bodies stacked in the corner, so to speak.

I'm not a fan of the 'the economy kills people, too' argument, either. I don't remember chaotic scenes inside hospitals in 2008 as they were overwhelmed with the dead.

I don't understand what people think can be done about the economy. If they ended all these orders, do you think the economy would just get right back on track? Do you think restaurants would be packed?

There are some dummies who will do their thing but as the bodies pile up, I don't see most people putting themselves in danger to attend a sporting event or go out to dinner. Ask yourself, would you attend a Knicks game in New York tonight with 20,000 people?

The economy isn't bad because of lockdowns and quarantines. It's bad because of the virus. It comes back when the virus is contained and/or controlled. There is no alternative route.

An interesting idea is setting up a way where people who had the disease (and are no longer contagious) could get some kind of "clearance" to do jobs involving more people. I'm not sure how feasible it is, but as more people get this (and recover), we may want to look at ways to leverage the immunity a certain percentage have.

Also for those comparing numbers, the 100k-240k death total is if we do all this distancing crap. If we did nothing it would be in the millions according to most models.

How do you think a country reacts to seeing 2-3 million people wiped out in the next 6 months? Your options are open things up, maybe see a little better economy, and have millions dead. Or keep things shut down, have a bad economy for a year, and see 100k deaths. I don't know how you can argue for the first one.

Good news! Hope they make it through safely.

https://apnews.com/cabbd6ade631320d515b365a6cb4c971

Really? Yes, deep down everyone knows that a pandemic is a possibility. But that's like saying deep down we also know that California could fall into the sea. Or that Yellowstone could erupt. It's true, but don't pretend anyone should be mentally prepared for it.

An off-his-rocker Conspiracy theorist (is there any other type of conspiracy theorist?) deliberately crashed a train to prove the hospital ship USNS Mercy was part of a government take over. Folks, we're through the looking glass here.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...mercy-n1174461

Good for them that this charade is over (IIRC just Yesterday i read that command was still maintaining essentially they could do business as usual)

Shocking if he's not full Q.

It's not at all like those two things. Both of them are far less likely. As I said a few times near the start of this outbreak, we're collectively paying the price for assuming the future would be as good or better than the present, and it cuts across many levels and aspects of society. I'm guilty of it myself, but I'm not going to pretend that's down to anything but my own hubris.



Just using these as representative of this POV. I totally agree that it's necessary to deal with the virus, and exactly for the stated reason of medical capacity being overwhelmed and all the extra deaths that would entail. At the same time, an extended economic shutdown would almost certainly cost more than 100k deaths from everything I know.

Pointing out that people will die to the depression we're entering into here is not the same thing as advocating for no restrictions or saying it isn't justified. I've got relatives who are against the shutdown and I've used pretty much the exact same argument being made here. When this balancing act becomes relevant is in terms of how soon you open things back up once the virus is under some reasonable level of control. The cultural impact of it also has a price.

My main point is just to have some balance in the equation, and facing reality means facing the fact that people will die because of this (necessary) action. And that means the tradeoff isn't purely money for lives. It's more nuanced and complex than that. .

If 2-3 million die in 6 months what does that do to the economy? Surely there would cause some serious issues.

In other news, another American first - first to report a thousand deaths in a day. Yes I know there's actually more across the board blah blah blah.

You obviously don't remember the death panels.

Studies after this period will be fascinating. In NYC there's a much greater incidence of domestic violence already, but fewer auto accidents and non-family violent crime.

It was only like 2 Mondays ago where we hit 100. Now we are over 5,000+ dead and 1,000 a day.

Not sure we have the info but assume these deaths are not because they did not get ventilators or medicines. They died in spite of our best efforts (e.g. lack of effective therapeutics).

I don't think ventilators are the issue … yet. NYC is talking about it becoming one soon, but so far they've kept ahead of that happening yet. So yeah, despite best efforts.

About 20 mins away from me another nursing home outbreak was announced yesterday. Unfortunately there will almost certainly be a number there that don't recover.

it's been so long since I've posted here, I feel like a visitor. I still read from time to time, but it took a Pandemic and me wondering what all of you were thinking to get me back here to actually post.

I'm with Rainmaker in thinking that even if the "shelter in place" orders were lifted, the economy would still continue to take a hit.

I am starting to think that we're not going to be back to business as usual until there is a vaccine for this thing. Unless the virus disappears not to return when the weather turns hot, this is going to continue to reshape the world until it we can "manage" it. When will it be okay to risk your life or the lives of those that live with you to: Go to a football game? Go to a concert? Go to a restaurant? Go to school?

I think that barring the virus disappearing as quickly as it appeared, we're shut down for the long haul. A year or two. The implications of that are hard to grasp, but I can't imagine us just saying "yeah we're going to just grin and bear it".

The first nursing home breakout has happened here in NKY. About 20 min away, one resident and two workers. Have to believe with two workers infected, there's more than one resident infected.

If this is indeed the case, I will be out of a job, and the airline mergers will start.

Welcome back!

I can't see us getting back to normal anytime soon either. And I wonder if the entire baseball and football seasons will be cancelled. I can't imagine we'll get back to having 80,000 people packed in a Stadium this year. Maybe if they get more testing but can you test everybody all the time?

HEY! AT LEAST WE GOT $1200!

I don't' think there's any way it takes a year or two. That simply isn't sustainable, regardless of how much we might want it to be. If the world largely tries that, you run out of money to borrow, and just printing more would only make things worse.

Plus it's likely to regress in the summer with warmer weather, therapeutic med trials will be completed well before then, possibly even a vaccine in that timeframe, and the virus will naturally weaken at least some due to natural mutation.

There will be a point where people hit their limit with this (financially and mentally) and the virus will be less of a threat. My guess is this will happen around June. I think April and May will be pretty tough and sports will start back in June (albeit without fans in the stadium).

Especially for sports, the TV deals are big money to go without. People will convince themselves it's OK for MLB and the NBA to play in empty stadiums by June (IMO). Not sure when restaurants/bars will be back to normal - that probably won't happen until the fall. But, I expect a relax on this "shelter in place" by June.

dola - Interesting question from one of the guys I work with today: If we assume that the nation won't have the stomach/financial ability to shelter in place until September/October - would it better to relax a lot of the constraints in July?

His reasoning was viruses usually don't do as well in the summer due to the heat, low point in allergies in many regions and other factors. So, isn't it better to let it propagate more in July/August than October/November when it could take hold in a serious way again?

Not sure what the answer is, but it made me think.

We'll see a lot from Europe first how gradually re-opening things over the next few months impacts the numbers. It looks like the Nordic countries (filled with people for whom social distance is part of life in regular times) seem eager to start the process pretty shortly.

You don't have to pick one side or the other between fighting the virus or salvaging the economy. Both are critical. If the economy doesn't matter, why bother with a stimulus package? We could have used that time, and resources, and borrowing, to more directly attack the virus instead, instead of worrying about people eating and salvaging some businesses and jobs. Obviously lives are at stake in both battles. It's just like a war where you have an enemy on both sides. If either are ignored, you're fucked. But timing of distributing resources matters. And there's always some maneuvers and plans that can fight one enemy that don't necessarily involve losing ground against the other enemy.

I just can’t see us having the ability/stomach to keep this going past September. And lifting the restrictions in Sept/Oct seems a lot more dangerous than late June/July in terms of allowing the virus to do damage. And it’s not like people are going to be flocking to concerts/sporting events if things do get relaxed a bit.

https://www.aei.org/research-product...-to-reopening/

I mentioned it earlier, and here's a link to the former Trump FDA head's re-opening plan. It's very good.

I think when we get back to normal is largely going to be decided by hospital & healthcare capacity/overload. Regardless of how stir crazy people get you can't ease restrictions if it means that little Timmy goes to the skate park, breaks his leg, then can't ever walk again or dies of an infection, because there weren't any beds available at the local hospital.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Stupid articles, discriminating against robots...

So it looks like my coworker had her wallet stolen, allegedly by another coworker.

I wish her good luck getting her ID back when most government services are shut down.

I keep coming back to the language that I heard and hear from most of the medical experts. For the most part they have said something to the effect of If we don't do these X number of things then horrible things will happen. We have spent the better part of the last month plus trying not to do the X number things, and yes horrible things have happened. I am optimistic that we finally have arrived at a point where we are actually serious doing those X number of things. I don't think we are going to see too many people throwing coronavirus parties any more.

I don't think this will last through the summer. Provided we do those X number of things nationwide, I think we will be in a place to reopen slowly. I think we will get to a point where people will identify symptoms, think coronavirus first as opposed to just a cold or just the flu and take whatever the precautions need to be taken. People will understand that just fighting through it may not be a good idea given what it might be and what the possible end. I think we need to prepare for the tens of cases that will pop up but be vigilant that we don't allow it.

Trick question. There weren't 20K people paying to watch the crappy Knicks before Coronavirus :p

SI

WB! I came back for the same reason a couple of weeks ago! Can we get some cool nickname like COVID compadres? Coronavirus companions? Retrovirus returners?


SI

Exponential growth does not go on forever. At some point enough people have contracted the virus and recovered that you have some herd immunity. I think projections for the numbers dropping off a lot are between end of June or July depending on where you live.

When things open up, there will be another wave, but it will be far less people and enough for the health care system to handle it. Hopefully there will be some drugs or techniques to fight it by then too.

For older people, I do think it's going to be a rough year or two. Nursing homes may require an antibody or negative test before you can enter the premises. Others will have to avoid crowds as much as possible.

Worth mentioning that we will probably never have an accurate accounting of deaths from this. Whether it be for lack of tests (are doctors going to waste a limited test on someone who is dead?) or political reasons. Some estimates in Italy have the actual number at 4 times what is being reported. They've only been recording those who die at a hospital with a positive test. Not people who died in their homes or at nursing homes.

Digging through the Cook County medical examiner's website. Theres been a noticeable increase in deaths by "pneumonia" and "acute respiratory distress" this week that arent being listed as COVID deaths pic.twitter.com/ZWn2CZDTSn

— ��Don't Spread On Me�� (@lib_crusher) April 2, 2020

Sure reads like neither the Sec. of the Navy or Sec. of Defense is happy with the Captain of the Roosevelt. The guy should be honored for doing what needed to be done to save his sailors.

Yeah, I think we are woefully undercounting actual cases and somewhat undercounting the death numbers. My best guess is we have 10X more cases and 2X more deaths, but it is really tough to know with any degree of certainty.

I think we take it month to month and see how it goes. And in the same way I couldn’t see Trump’s Easter comments happening, I don’t see a scenario where we are all in “Shelter in place” still in July.