Coronavirus

[Investor20]

BTW - math on cost per life is very high for the US government. 

 

My assumptions (just guesses)

 

Number of people would have died from Covid if just kept everything open:  1 million

 

Incremental cost to economy:  $ 2 trillion

 

Cost per life:  $2 million

 

I am not sure if the average age but it may be  ~76-80

 

It is interesting because I am guessing the market value in a court settlement would be much less.

 

If a million people die (regardless of age) the economy would be trash anyways. Probably worse than it is right now (if that’s possible).

 

Can you expand on this?  If a million people die... would the economy necessarily be trashed? 

 

I'm interested in thoughts on this.

 

 

--

I suppose if we got to point of 1million dead, we would have completely overwhelmed the health care system, and a lot more doctors and nurses would sicken and die from COVID.  And many people would die from untreated heart attacks (et al) due to lack of medical care.

 

If 1 million people die over 6 months or 1 year that is 30 bps of the US population.  But the US population was growing around 70 bps per year so still some slight population growth.

 

I don't know how much the economy would go down in a no stay at home situation (probably less though).

 

Covid response is not about money vs lives. 

 

Its lives vs lives. 

 

See above two postings about warnings from UN about Childrens deaths.

 

Even for an adult, if they cannot buy insulin or other medicines or cannot get good nutritious food, as they lost employment, those are also lives.

 

The life expectancy in US started going down after Great recession and only recently started going up.  Obviously, economy has effect on how long we live.

[arcube]

Director of U.S. agency key to vaccine development leaves role suddenly amid coronavirus pandemic.

 

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/21/rick-bright-out-at-barda/

 

Not sure of the reason but I don't blame him.

 

[Spekulatius]

BTW - math on cost per life is very high for the US government. 

 

My assumptions (just guesses)

 

Number of people would have died from Covid if just kept everything open:  1 million

 

Incremental cost to economy:  $ 2 trillion

 

Cost per life:  $2 million

 

I am not sure if the average age but it may be  ~76-80

 

It is interesting because I am guessing the market value in a court settlement would be much less.

 

If a million people die (regardless of age) the economy would be trash anyways. Probably worse than it is right now (if that’s possible).

 

Can you expand on this?  If a million people die... would the economy necessarily be trashed? 

 

I'm interested in thoughts on this.

 

 

--

I suppose if we got to point of 1million dead, we would have completely overwhelmed the health care system, and a lot more doctors and nurses would sicken and die from COVID.  And many people would die from untreated heart attacks (et al) due to lack of medical care.

 

If 1 million people die over 6 months or 1 year that is 30 bps of the US population.  But the US population was growing around 70 bps per year so still some slight population growth.

 

I don't know how much the economy would go down in a no stay at home situation (probably less though).

 

The economy would go to trash with 1M excess death in let‘s say 6 month due to widespread panic. It is irrelevant that the population would still keep growing or if the government would claim we are open for business. The multiplicative nature of epidemic vs randomness of natural causes makes a huge psychological difference.

 

If human psychology wouldn’t play a role, 9/11 (~3000 dead) would have been a non- event economically for example.

[arcube]

New York City will throw the “biggest, best” ticker-tape parade for its health care workers and first responders once the city reopens from the coronavirus pandemic, the mayor announced Tuesday.

 

“We will honor those who saved us,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “The first thing we will do, before we think about anything else, is we will take a time, as only New York City can do, to throw the biggest, best parade to honor these heroes.

 

“This parade will mark the beginning of our renaissance,” he added. “But it will also be, most importantly, a chance to say thank you to so many good and noble people, so many tough, strong people.”

 

This schmuck wants to throw a parade—Like the one Philly threw during 1918 Flu... :o

 

His stupidity knows no bounds.

 

Such a moronic move...so many different messages.. what a cluster%$#@ this has been.

[Gregmal]

The damage is psychological much like a shark attack at the beach. The day after, only a couple people there. A week later, a few more. A month later, back to normal assuming there are no new attacks. Same thing will happen here. At this point the damage is done and it doesnt matter that there was a total overreaction and coordinated media effort to make this the scariest thing in the history of the world.

 

And yea, De Blasio wants a parade! Go figure. NY, NY!

[arcube]

The damage is psychological much like a shark attack at the beach. The day after, only a couple people there. A week later, a few more. A month later, back to normal assuming there are no new attacks. Same thing will happen here. At this point the damage is done and it doesnt matter that there was a total overreaction and coordinated media effort to make this the scariest thing in the history of the world.

 

And yea, De Blasio wants a parade! Go figure. NY, NY!

 

Tell that to almost a million people going through this in US that the damage is psychological and media hyped it. Cmon man! 

[Gregmal]

For the 320 million who don’t have it, well, most, might as well. The panic and fear is far greater and crippling short term in economic respects than the toll on the 1m who tested positive and 40k or whatever who died.

 

If you're old this is bad. The rest? All evidence seems to indicate its a glorified nothing burger. I thought the Bill Maher rant nailed it. The media is obsessed with finding young people who died from this. The real numbers? like 800. Compared with the flu, which we have a vaccine for, at 3,000 annually.

 

Not long ago we were talking about the dire consequences of kids going wild on spring break and how Florida was the next Italy... yea..about that.

[SnarkyPuppy]

For the 320 million who don’t have it, well, most, might as well. The panic and fear is far greater and crippling short term in economic respects than the toll on the 1m who tested positive and 40k or whatever who died.

 

Please specifically state what would cause you to change your mind

[Gregmal]

For the 320 million who don’t have it, well, most, might as well. The panic and fear is far greater and crippling short term in economic respects than the toll on the 1m who tested positive and 40k or whatever who died.

 

Please specifically state what would cause you to change your mind

 

I dont know. If things turned out anywhere remotely near all the doom and gloom projections(projections of course that now are denied or revised/edited/deleted and were never committed to with hard numbers anywhere) posted here 4-6 weeks ago? We all love our elders, but Im sorry...shutting down the entire country because the 60+ population with underlying symptoms carries greater risk is doing significantly more damage than just proposing stay at home orders for those most at risk. As some have pointed out, it didn't need to cost $2T a month to approach this rationally. Tell me why we're shutting down business in Oneonta, NY and telling 25 year olds they cant work?

[SnarkyPuppy]

For the 320 million who don’t have it, well, most, might as well. The panic and fear is far greater and crippling short term in economic respects than the toll on the 1m who tested positive and 40k or whatever who died.

 

Please specifically state what would cause you to change your mind

 

I dont know. If things turned out anywhere remotely near all the doom and gloom projections(projections of course that now are denied or revised/edited/deleted and were never committed to with hard numbers anywhere) posted here 4-6 weeks ago? We all love our elders, but Im sorry...shutting down the entire country because the 60+ population with underlying symptoms carries greater risk is doing significantly more damage than just proposing stay at home orders for those most at risk. As some have pointed out, it didn't need to cost $2T a month to approach this rationally. Tell me why we're shutting down business in Oneonta, NY and telling 25 year olds they cant work?

 

Are you confused about high sensitivity of key variables in the models and the reduced deaths due to the effectiveness of shelter in place?  Choosing to ignore them?  Aware of them and disagree with them?

[LC]

To reopen you need representative sampling of the asymptomatic population to understand existing prevalence of the virus.

 

If it’s highly prevalent I would then look at daily death rates to see if it has peaked and YOY all factor death rates to determine the marginal contribution of the coronavirus. If the first is trending flat or down and the second is “low” (insert your threshold here), you can make the argument for reopening.

 

These steps do not cost 2trillion to implement, every day this doesn’t happen is a failure of the federal government to protect the people’s jobs and livelihoods, by gathering the relevant information needed to potentially reopen safely.

[tng]

 

Are you confused about high sensitivity of key variables in the models and the reduced deaths due to the effectiveness of shelter in place?  Choosing to ignore them?  Aware of them and disagree with them?

 

What happens when shelter in place ends? Or are we just not going to end it until we discover a vaccine? A lot of the "open the economy" people are simply pessimists that think we are going to be forced into the herd immunity route whether we like to or not. It's not that they don't realize that staying in lock down prevents deaths right now, that's obvious, but a life isn't saved because someone is moved from one sinking boat onto another sinking boat.

[Gregmal]

The only thing I am confused about is the absolute certainty and conviction that was put behind the idea that this was massively mismanaged and that deaths would be hundreds of thousands and probably even millions and yet, a few weeks of shutdown and all of a sudden we're talking about 40,000 deaths(forget that the bulk are because of NY, a city thats been begging for a health/sanitation related crisis for ages) almost entirely consistent of elderly and at risk? Obviously we would like to be safe than sorry, but you have to be completely ignorant to just assume collapsing the economy and destroying jobs EVERYWHERE, with no respect for circumstance, has no consequence? Certainly not one equivalent to a few percent of a few percent of the population(that isn't part of the contributing economy btw) being affected. The net consequence, longer term, is that more lives are ruined via crushing the economy than it will be from the virus. Some of you seem to think there is zero consequence because for whatever reason you cant equate economic duress, job loss, wealth destruction, etc, with death and despair.

[LC]

Obviously we would like to be safe than sorry, but you have to be completely ignorant to just assume collapsing the economy and destroying jobs EVERYWHERE, with no respect for circumstance, has no consequence?

 

The net consequence, longer term, is that more lives are ruined via crushing the economy than it will be from the virus.

 

No need to be ignorant at all. Perform enough tests and you can make an educated decision. Tests cost $50/ea at the high end: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/mac-covid-19-test-pricing.pdf

 

Let's call it another $20 for distribution. For $2.5B you can test 35 million people, which is frankly way more than enough from a statistical perspective. Obviously I am ignoring problems of lab capacity and getting 35 million people to take the test (if the gov't was smart they would use existing supply chains i.e. food delivery,  USPS/Fedex/UPS, etc.), but I would think over 1 month they could make this happen. For a fraction of the stimulus packages already approved. And for even more billions in opportunity costs avoided by being able to re-open. Trump is an idiot for not doing so frankly as it is in his best interest to open the economy (unless you think he wants society closed to just pay poor people to vote for him).

 

If the second quoted opinion turns out to be correct, a federally-coordinated national testing effort would cost a few billion and provide justification to re-open the economy and ultimately would have saved hundreds of billions. Why isn't Trump doing this right now and/or why didn't he do this 1-2 months ago?

[SnarkyPuppy]

The only thing I am confused about is the absolute certainty and conviction that was put behind the idea that this was massively mismanaged and that deaths would be hundreds of thousands and probably even millions and yet, a few weeks of shutdown and all of a sudden we're talking about 40,000 deaths(forget that the bulk are because of NY, a city thats been begging for a health/sanitation related crisis for ages) almost entirely consistent of elderly and at risk? Obviously we would like to be safe than sorry, but you have to be completely ignorant to just assume collapsing the economy and destroying jobs EVERYWHERE, with no respect for circumstance, has no consequence? Certainly not one equivalent to a few percent of a few percent of the population(that isn't part of the contributing economy btw) being affected. The net consequence, longer term, is that more lives are ruined via crushing the economy than it will be from the virus. Some of you seem to think there is zero consequence because for whatever reason you cant equate economic duress, job loss, wealth destruction, etc, with death and despair.

 

Again - highly sensitive variables and effective lockdowns = 40k (and still clearly rising) deaths.  This isn't really debatable and frankly isn't that hard to understand. 

 

The lockdowns were to buy time to

 

a) prevent healthcare system from collapsing because any idiot without significant preconceived bias understands that there was a wide range of sensitivity to the key variables -> potential catastrophic outcomes that conservatism was the only rational decision and

 

b) as LC points out to gain information - specifically the actual CFR and IFR through asymptomatic testing which is mind-blowing that we haven't seen solid results on (although you're starting to see data come out)

 

Obviously if the IFR is actually low (because R0 was actually significantly higher than originally thought by a factor of 2-3x and large % of the population has been infected) you'll claim you were right - and I truly hope that's the case

[Investor20]

 

Are you confused about high sensitivity of key variables in the models and the reduced deaths due to the effectiveness of shelter in place?  Choosing to ignore them?  Aware of them and disagree with them?

 

What happens when shelter in place ends? Or are we just not going to end it until we discover a vaccine? A lot of the "open the economy" people are simply pessimists that think we are going to be forced into the herd immunity route whether we like to or not. It's not that they don't realize that staying in lock down prevents deaths right now, that's obvious, but a life isn't saved because someone is moved from one sinking boat onto another sinking boat.

Not pessimists thats is a real possibility:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/coronavirus-second-wave-hydroxychloroquine-trial

CDC chief warns of 'even more difficult' wave of coronavirus next winter

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/04/08/coronavirus-is-big-one-harvard-epidemiologist/2975019001/

Interview with Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard

Q. In the hot spots like Wuhan and northern Italy, 3% or 4% of the population had confirmed infections. But you and other epidemiologists talk about 40% or 70% of the entire population getting infected. Can you explain that gap?

 

A. There's a first wave, and then there's the whole epidemic. A lot of the confusion is premised on the misunderstanding that if you control the epidemic once, then you're done. There's no reason to think that. Wuhan is starting to see resurgence of cases as they let up, and in 1918, we saw it all over the country as restrictions were lifted. So 40% or 70% is the number that you need to have immune before viral transmission stops on its own. The number that get infected under very intense control measures is the number that happened before those control measures fully take effect. Those are two different numbers.

[meiroy]

At this point, it seems futile, better to just reopen everything.  USA Management Team is not going to improve and you cannot make up for a lost time or previous incompetency.  If even one area allows reopening to some degree and people are not wearing masks it will just spread. Futile.

 

How's this for a hashtag: #OhFuckItJustReopen or #ReopenResistanceIsFutile

[Investor20]

At this point, it seems futile, better to just reopen everything.  USA Management Team is not going to improve and you cannot make up for lost time or previous incompetency.  If even one area allows reopening to some degree and people are not wearing masks it will just spread. Futile.

 

People did not wear masks because they were told not to wear masks.  The surgeon general tweeted in February "Dont buy masks".

 

Right now we have data to guide us. 

 

Sweden and Japan were not following the lockdown and as far as I know in below list, other countries are following lockdown. 

 

Looking at deaths/million at worldometer

 

Japan 2

Germany 61

Denmark 64

US 137*

Sweden 175

UK 255

France 319

Italy 408

 

Are Japan and Sweden doing worse or better without lockdown than other countries with lockdown?

 

US deaths are about half from NYC metro.  Taking out NYC metro area, US deaths/million is similar to Germany. 

 

US did pretty well within western countries.

[Spekulatius]

Re Antibody Tests from Roche CEO. He could be talking his own book of course, but I don’t think so:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disaster-roche-ceos-verdict-covid-055050902.html

[Liberty]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/493879-texas-lt-governor-on-reopening-state-there-are-more-important-things

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/georgia-leads-race-become-americas-no-1-death-destination/

[Dalal.Holdings]

At this point, it seems futile, better to just reopen everything.  USA Management Team is not going to improve and you cannot make up for a lost time or previous incompetency.  If even one area allows reopening to some degree and people are not wearing masks it will just spread. Futile.

 

How's this for a hashtag: #OhFuckItJustReopen or #ReopenResistanceIsFutile

 

I am pretty much on board with this at this point due to incompetency/federal leadership vacuum.

[Dalal.Holdings]

Re Antibody Tests from Roche CEO. He could be talking his own book of course, but I don’t think so:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disaster-roche-ceos-verdict-covid-055050902.html

 

Too bad--a lot of folks will be misled into believing they have immunity/prior exposure when it is merely a false positive...

 

On the flipside: Depending on testing dynamics, repetition of a test even with high false positive can be useful. If you test positive two times but on the third negative with a test that has low PPV but high NPV, then you know you likely do not have antibodies and are not immune. If these finger prick tests become widespread and have high NPV (which is possible), they could be useful in someone after a series of repeat testing...

[KJP]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/coronavirus-testing-pneumonia.html

 

It's an op-ed, but it has a useful discussion of how at home pulse oximeters (easy to find) can help avoid bad outcomes from an unusual Covid-19 symptom.  My apologies if it has already been posted.

[Liberty]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/coronavirus-testing-pneumonia.html

 

It's an op-ed, but it has a useful discussion of how at home pulse oximeters (easy to find) can help avoid bad outcomes from an unusual Covid-19 symptom.  My apologies if it has already been posted.

 

Agreed:

 

[Jurgis]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/493879-texas-lt-governor-on-reopening-state-there-are-more-important-things

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/georgia-leads-race-become-americas-no-1-death-destination/

 

"There are more important things than living"!