If you focused more on a constructive discussion than an immediate kneejerk reaction to anyone with a view that differs from yours, you would notice that I never said the current measures were wrong or should be removed. The furthest I went in definitive claims was that we couldn't keep restrictions this tough going all the way until we have a vaccine in 18 months. And I wholly stand by that statement.

What you are pointing out isn't a counter argument to what I'm saying.. I just said that the economic impact can't be totally ignored. Do you seriously disagree with that statement? Take Norway - we have a $1Tn sovereign wealth fund. If we threw all economic considerations out the window, we could use all those 1000 billion dollars for medical research and purchasing medical supplies. But no one would suggest that, because it's ridiculous.

I didn't say exactly where I'd draw the line, but we can look at some other cases to get an idea.

https://morgenbladet.no/ideer/2018/12/hvor-mange-kroner-er-ett-godt-levear-verdt

(You are danish so this should be perfectly readable)

Anyway, what that article shows is that in the Norwegian public health system, if a treatment costs more than about $100k per "good year of life" it saves, it likely won't cover treatment - the amount of good you could do with that money elsewhere outweigh the benefits. That is a rather on the nose case because it puts a very concrete monetary value to something that is very hard to value. It does however illustrate that we already weighed economic considerations against human lives before Covid-19. But $100k per good year of life is probably a good measuring stick for acceptable economic damage, though it feels wrong to put such a concrete economic figure on something like that.

v

To give you a concrete answer, heart disease and cancer do. Though that's not really the important part.

This pandemic will very likely kill many times more people than traffic, suicides etc. this year. Consequently, the acceptable economic damage to fight this pandemic is much higher than the acceptable economic damage for fighting those causes of death. That still doesn't mean that everything goes and economic considerations are out the window.

No country will maintain a full lockdown til we have a vaccine. If you remember, I don't disagree with these restrictions for now because we need to buy time for the health system to temporarily increase capacity for when the inevitable peak arrives. But we can't lock down society completely for the many months or even year(s) it will take to get complete control of this virus.

As for slowing the spread - you can do that without a complete lockdown. You can have more preventative measures for risk groups. You can still maintain social distancing, just to a lower degree. People will still have to be more vigilant with personal hygiene. These are all effective measures for flattening the curve. Which is what we are trying to do. 

I don't understand what part of my logic you find erroneous. We are buying extra time for health services to prepare for a huge influx of Covid-19 patients that will arrive when the pandemic peaks. That's what we should be doing right now - and it's what we are doing. Which part do you feel is wrong?

And your still probably looking at the Tip of the Ice berg, thinking its the whole of it.

Its still accelerateing and growing.
Right now: 135,000 confirmed cases and ~2400 deaths.
3-4 months from now :  ~a few million confirmed cases + 100,000-200,000 deaths (from today, Dr. Fauci estimates).


"people who are losing their jobs far outpaces the number of people who get confirmed to be infected and on top of that, the number of people who die is even smaller."

And? even if 100 people lose their jobs, for every 1 death, thats more than acceptable.

Give it a month or two, and most of those people will find new jobs.
Give it a month or two, most of those dead, wont be comeing back.


"What needs to be mentioned is that unemployment has risen dramatically despite huge measures by governments. In both Austria and Germany people's jobs are saved by scaling down their work hours to 10% which the employer pays while the state tosses in another ~70% of the regular wage, so people work only 10% of their usual time, but still receive ~80% of their wage. But many businesses had to close shop altogether, so not even such a generous measure could prevent the loss of jobs. Other countries face the same issues."

^ yes, jobs will be lost.  Its a good way to try and off-set the worst of it. In denmark we did something simular, so job losses arnt too insane.

The projections of some of the so-called experts are silly. Recently I've seen one for the UK where a projection of deaths was scaled down from 500k to 20k. The hunger for news means that people who shouldn't get a word in get news time and that can foster fear, paranoia, panic and hysteria.

Meanwhile, the economy is getting hit hard on a level that is approaching the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Helping the economy is not going to be an instant death sentence for people infected with corona. The measures are going to get adjusted soon because governments will be looking to find a balance between saving lives and keeping countries running.


^ this is where your logic falls apart.


How many people did the financial crisis kill?  How many survived, but had ruined lunges + kidneys + livers?
Liveing on dialysis doesnt sound fun, or needing to carry around a oxygen tank, because someone was worried about the economical impact of trying to stop spread of a virus. Theres a cost, to just carrying on as if nothing is wrong (in terms of lives (more will die), and interms of liveing (people will survive but have issues because of it).

Ultimately I think its about saveing lives.
Even if liveing standards (economically) might have to drop a slight bit for a periode of time.

I think most are more than willing to do that.

Okay Teequz, after reading your last post, it sounds like we mostly just talking past each other.
Also ofc the economy matters, and this wont go on forever.
So naturally there comes a point, where you have to ask weather its time to open things back up.

We're still not anywhere close to that point though.

*edit:
I cant find it now, but I think yesterday or day before, I read a article about how they expect GDP (Gross domestic product?) in denmark
to drop like 1,5% pr month, we stay in full lockdown.

Job losses havnt been too bad, because of the state covering alot of the workers wages.
Hopefully a few months down the line, when things to back to a more normal state, the cost to jobs hasnt been that drastic.

"To give you a concrete answer, heart disease and cancer do."

I just checked... your right in the US, Heat diseases kill like 1700 people each day (its rated #1 cause in the US).
Its crazy that it actually kills 3 times as many as are currently dieing to the virus.

Oh no, we certainly disagree as well, but the discussion will be fruitless (at least not worth the time it takes to research and formulate coherent arguments).

100 jobs gone per life saved is more than acceptable? I'm sure you have good intentions, but you haven't actually thought this through.

There are 150 million people employed in the US. This virus killing 1.5 million (~0.5% of the population) in America if it spreads unabated is very possible - and a huge tragedy. But if every single American has to lose their job to avoid it it is decidedly not worth it. 

Saving the economy is also a matter of saving lives. It's just less obvious than saving people from Covid-19. You and I are lucky to live in countries with strong social nets, and we were both probably very sheltered from how serious the Great Financial Crisis was - I know I was at least. In fact both of my parents are government employees and I'm a student so I'll be sheltered from the financial effects of this crisis as well. But the GFC caused millions of personal bankruptcies, homes were foreclosed. That affects your financial wellbeing - and your personal wellbeing - for the rest of your life. The economic fallout will lead to people not being able to afford proper health insurance, a good education, not to mention a decent quality of life.

Furthermore, we are currently in need of a huge transition to renewable energy and green technology. A massive financial downturn will drastically reduce both governments' and private companies' ability to do the required investments for that transition. The most accepted estimate is 200 million climate refugees by 2050. Which in turn will lead to huge conflicts and millions of lives lost every year (and further economic damage).

It's frustrating to see so many completely lose perspective, but I'm not going to spend any more of my evening arguing about this.

1) I actually didnt know numbers of job losses, but ment to write 1000 pr deaths.

2) "get their jobs back in a month or two"  (after the shutdown ends, thought this part didnt need to be said)

3) "solidarity has limits and when living standards drop in both monetary value as well as social life, then people will begin to think more about themselves than anyone else. There are people who already had a hard time going through two weeks of measures and the next two weeks will feel even longer and more depressing. An outlook of an extension is bound to make them change their mind on solidarity, and the longer the measures continue, the louder the cries for a different approach will be."

This is the sad part... even if its unsafe, risks killing yourself or others, or surviveing with damaged organs... people will likely still reach that point.
Virus sucks.

I think you're confusing mitigation with flattening the curve. to flatten it enough so the health care system can cope would mean to drawn it out over a decade or more.
https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly-delusion-eea324fe9727

The hammer and dance is what we're looking at as the best strategy: (but called flattening the curve by the media, better soundbite)
https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/255968-analysis-beating-coronavirus-covid-19-hammer-and-dance

Currently we're in the suppression phase to get the spread under control. Then it becomes a matter of managing it until widespread vaccines are available. It is not the goal to flatten the curve so it can spread through the entire population while the healthcare system tries to keep up. That would take far too long. The goal is to minimize infections and work out a balance between getting on with life while keeping the virus under our thumb until a vaccine can end it.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/6/21161234/coronavirus-covid-19-science-outbreak-ends-endemic-vaccine

A vaccine will take between 9 and 18 months, depending on success and red tape obstacles. There is also promising research in anti bodies that can fight this virus, however while that can be ready much sooner, it will also be a lot more costly to produce than a vaccine. Thus it's still necessary to keep the nr of infected low.

The same number will be infected in both scenarios
Absolutely not. If that happens we will have failed completely.

1 million is so bad, I wonder what the ceiling is for this 10-15 million!?! 50 milloon?? 

"In Italy, authorities have conceded that their coronavirus death toll did not include those who had died at home or in nursing homes. Similarly in France..."

h/t @RMFifthCircuit https://t.co/ycMijSW2Ab pic.twitter.com/cM0oqOtKuy

— Steve Lookner (@lookner) March 29, 2020

Don't worry, it would be my 3rd visit and I have already planned trips there for the next 3 years.

The asian countries were able to contain the epidemic. That includes even China. They had to lock down the Hubei province, but the rest of the country had taken way milder actions and therefore wasn't bogged down economically that hard. So why only try to spread the time for infections, if we can defeat it completely?