psuhoffman

Your “that’s just the way it is” justification wasn’t really logic based. Lots of things were “just that way” and then we decided there was a better way and policy changed. You’re also dismissing younger people with asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart disease, and chemo patients who are also seeing relatively high rates of severe infection. You are also dismissing the seriousness of this to people who survive. Many live but face long difficult recoveries and even permanent lung impairments. But you are entitled to that opinion. All that said my post wasn’t solely about you. This is starting to branch off on tangents everywhere on every side. Every point of view has been given ad nauseam at this point. No ones mind is being changed here and so the debate has become an unproductive exercise.

I stayed out if this for a long time. I decided to throw down for a bit. But I’m about ready to tap out again. Some of the arguments have veered off the path of intellectual integrity.

With no immunity letting this go would result in way more infections than a flu season. Even if the mortality was similar it would be an unacceptable result.

Lol if that was everyone’s attitude African Americans would still be property, women couldn’t vote, gays couldn’t marry, and 12 year olds would be working full time jobs not in school! Yep...that’s just the way it is...until people decide we can be better than that and then it isn’t You are probably just trolling now but that attitude is sad and has been used to justify a lot of bad policy over the years.

In my opinion our failure to do anything at all about something so horrific is embarrassing and yes my emotions play a part. I guess I have some empathy. What’s wrong with me! Everyone reacts on emotion. You may start with “logic” but that logic then elicits an emotional reaction. Unless you are a robit emotion factors in everything. My logic says random acts of mass violence are bad and worthy of at least some attempt to mitigate. Your calculus is different leading to a different emotional reaction but your attempt to dismiss a competing argument without doing the necessary refutation with cheap labeling is weak sauce. Wrt covid...are you lumping me in with others? I’ve not advocated using daily death rates to do anything. I’m not participating in a straw man argument.

Why do you keep referencing negatives about society to justify policy. Policy shouldn’t play to our weaknesses. It should be an attempt at the best possible outcome and to make things better. Not a white flag saying “that’s just how the cookie crumbles”.

You just referenced one of the most embarrassingly horrific things about our society in an attempt to justify a similar policy advocacy for something else! Couldn’t we at least try thoughts and prayers first? Next you’ll be saying stuff like “that’s just the way it is” or “shit happens”.

Yea well then we will end up in a bigger mess. The economy will suffer even worse if we have another spike. People might act all big and bad when that don’t see it and think it’s exagerated...the minute people around them get seriously ill and die they won’t be going out partying anymore. The economic result is the same only we lose more lives.

It can be. We exerted some emergency command controls during WW2 then ended them. Things can be implemented with a set expiration date. The 9/11 security measures have been debated and reauthorized multiple times. We could stop electing representatives who do that. We could exert enough pressure to stop them. But now we are veering way off topic. But you are basically advocating for a less effective policy because of your distrust of government. I’m not sacrificing people because of fear. I don’t live my life ruled by fear of the future. I’m not going to do something stupid today because someone else might do something stupid tomorrow. Deal with the problem in front of you in the most effective way possible. If or when government authoritarianism presents itself as a problem then we can deal with that.

One reason I favor a more universal policy with a temporary (and I mean temporary I am not attempting some socialist revolution) freeze and command controls of the economy, is if we try to run a market economy while one of the most significant sectors is shut down, we are going to exasperate what was already an unhealthy distribution of wealth and resources. The is no way to avoid the inequities this will produce. A freeze with temporary command controls then a reboot on the other side would be more equitable to everyone.

Likely the worst of both. Just enough do that to spread the virus but not enough to save the service industry economy.

Who is advocating for a complete lockdown for years? But the “opening” coming won’t be significantly different than now. Essential businesses are running and they used a liberal definition of essential. Most non essential businesses would struggle to survive in a social distancing construct. There would be less demand for their services anyways. There are some exceptions like golf courses where some intelligent policy changes could get them bank up and runninj. But that isn’t the majority. The effect of the loss of many service and recreation industry jobs is going to be a deep depression regardless of what we call the policy. So if you’re saying we should be planning some limited moves to get some sectors of the economy open that can do it in a way compatible with necessary social distancing policies I agree. But it’s not going to look substantially different than now to most people.

I agree 100% and Hogan has done terrific managing this. But I get annoyed when I hear certain people mentioning the restart and social distancing but then say “but schools have to open first because they are essential for parents to be able to work”. I totally get the practical economics behind that. But it makes no sense at all medically. No concerts. No sports. No gatherings. But let’s pack 1400 people into a small space everyday!

No idea how we can social distance if my school returns in May. I have 30+ students per class and my room barely fits that many desks in it. No way to keep students apart. When I first started working as a teacher I got sick constantly for a year until my immune system ramped up. I do fear they might feel pressured to open schools out of a need for “daycare” and not because it’s safe or medically prudent. I have chronic asthma and bronchitis and if covid is still at all prevalent in the community when they open back up it’s almost a certainty I will get it. And then I spent the last month isolating for nothing. I’m not saying I know when the right tome to open is. But the decision needs to be based on sound medical advice not pressure to provide daycare so the economy can start up again.

Everything you said is accurate. But you leave out what the cost of that will be. Herd immunity will require roughly 80-85% to get infected. Even if we accept your best case scenario that the IFR is .02 that means roughly 550,000-600,000 deaths. And what if you are wrong and it’s .05? Now we are talking well over a million. Got forbid the real IFR is .75... and that’s all factoring in that it’s way lower than the 4% inflated by missing cases. Additionally the IFR will increase with your plan because the healthcare system will crash. And what about the side effects of that. The people that won’t get medical care for other conditions because 80% of the population gets sick within a few months. You are free to have your own opinion. I personally find a plan that sacrifices half a million people or more and crashes our healthcare system totally unacceptable.

Yea that is a disaster waiting to happen. This is not something that impacts each person individually, your decisions will impact the risk to everyone around you. But I am not shocked that some people don't want to give up any autonomy over their decisions regardless of how they affect others around them.

I don't necessarily disagree that the IFR is much lower than the numbers currently estimated by the WHO and CDC. There is very good evidence using deductive reasoning of such. But that kind of thing is also baked into the numbers of many viruses. Yes we have a slightly better idea with the flu but it mutates significantly year to year and so we never do fully know the exact IFR each year and millions of cases go undiagnosed yearly so it is VERY likely the number is lower than the .01-.02 annually for the flu. But there is another factor you are completely neglecting when you assume that if the IFR is similar to the flu we are obviously over reacting. We have a degree of herd immunity built in to the flu. We have a vaccine and some people have some natural ability to combat it due to previous exposures to similar strains. Year to year the entire population isn't vulnerable. The flu isn't going to infect the whole population in a short period of time. This is not a comp situation. A flu that infects 10% of the population with a .02 IFR is going to have a radically different effect on society than a virus that infects 80% with a .02 IFR. That is the difference between 64,000 deaths (a bad flu season) and 512,000 deaths...(a major societal catastrophe). And that doesn't even include the impacts of likely crashing the healthcare system in every major urban area and the ancillary effects of that. Again...your Hubris shows when you assume people disagree with you because of ignorance. Perhaps they disagree because they are including MORE information not less in their impact calculus.

Your assertion the CFR is inflated by undiagnosed cases is logical. But beyond that everything else you assert is speculative. You have no way to accurately predict what the true exact IFR is. And when comparing this to other infections you fail to acknowledge that same effect. Millions of people get infected with the flu and never go to the doctors. They never show up in the data. This isn’t unique to covid. What is unique is the extreme strain on society it produces in places it spreads that are unprepared. Your assertion that the entire global medical community in conjunction with every policy maker and government leader are all overreacting based on pure speculation despite the fact they have access to way more pertinent information is one of extreme hubris. It must be such a burden being so much smarter than all the mouth breathing morons that obviously surround you!

But he stayed at a holiday inn once!

I didn’t say inflation isn’t real or that infusing too much currency into a market is always a good idea. In general it’s a bad idea. But not all infusions imbalance the economy equally. And there are ways to deal with the imbalance without drastic cuts. When the economy grows you can offset some of the imbalance simply by keeping expenditures level. There are also monetary tools to mitigate without fiscal measures. We could reduce the excess currency in circulation by selling securities. We can control inflation by raising the discount rate or reserve requirement. Ideally we want to avoid creating a currency excess but at times it can be managed and the lesser evil.

Printing money can’t solve a supply shortage. We don’t have a supply shortage. Not all economic situations are the same.

See my post to Yeoman. We can offset the imbalance later. During this crises you won’t see rapid inflation because of offsetting negative economic pressures. Supply shortages could become a bigger issue but most essential products will continue to be produced and the supply chain is operating for now. A disruption in that would be devastating but that’s a different issue. Other products won’t run out because there is a drop in demand with everyone on lockdown. The “print money = inflation” analogy is 100 level Econ. I’m talking advanced “real” policy here.

I teach economics. And the good old more money means more inflation example is true on a general level and I use that in my basic Econ classes but it’s not really that simple. We don’t spend money from tax revenues. We print it. Then the following year we remove the excess needed to prevent unhealthy inflation either fiscally by taxing or monetarily through open market operations or tinkering with interest rates. The deficit is just an estimate of the imbalance between spending and estimated taxes at current levels. But the economic imbalance caused by an infusion of currency isn’t equal in all circumstances. The negative destabilizing effects will be offset by the downward pressures on wages and consumer spending right now. We can spend much more recklessly in this situation without the negative consequences. And ultimately if everything were shut down and we HAD no choice inflation is much preferable to no money at all. Bottom line is my point that the government cannot run out of money to assist in an emergency is valid. The details are debatable if you really want to argue economics.

You’re points have some validity but you don’t convince anyone by always saying it in the most abrasive obnoxious way possible. You’re worried the gov ability to assist is invalid though since they literally print the money. They can never run out of it.

It’s not just die...as people with this publicize how nasty it can be even if you recover I think that has an impact. Look at Cuomo. No one sees that and thinks “yea I want that”.