You might get a thousand dollars stimulus package

[EveDallas]

Spend it where? Stores and restaurants are all closed or closing. Travel is at a near-halt, and only the logistics of closing colleges and resort areas and needing to get people home is reportedly delaying a total grounding of flights. Even Amazon is deprioritizing shipments of non-essential supplies, and if we follow Europe's lead, mail service will soon face disruptions.



I agree. The flatten the curve message has gotten out, but I'm not sure people are really thinking about what that means for the long haul. The majority of people will eventually get this virus; really, that's the only thing that will eventual contain spread, when most people are immune via exposure or vaccine. The question is whether it happens over a period of a month or two, overwhelming our medical system, or if we can drag it out over a much longer time, sparing the medical system at the expense of the economy. Because slowing the spread doesn't mean we can abandon isolation measures - if we do, exponential growth will resume in the unexposed portion of the population.

There's a report out of the UK that takes a longer view than most of what we're hearing here, and it really isn't encouraging. Twitter thread woth a link and a summary of the findings:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1239975682643357696

If it plays out along these lines, I strongly suspect public opinion will pretty rapidly veer towards taking our chances with the virus rather than endure the social and economic costs of 18+ months of isolation.

I agree. At some point we have to weigh the cost of the virus versus the cost of millions and millions being homeless and dying in the streets.

 

[morgan98]

Roughly 3500 people died in China out of a population of more than a billion, and infections are on the decline. Think about that. This is hardly a virus that is going to cause mass casualties or cause 60% unemployment. The only thing hurting the economy is the business closures which hopefully don't last more than two weeks.

I think the biggest issue is your two weeks part. I have seen no evidence of things getting back to normal at all in two weeks. If anything everyday it seems more and more things are getting pushed back in terms of reopening. Things that were closed through the end of March have already pushed to mid April. The issue here is not everything is happening at once. If we could all say close everything down on March 18th and open on April 2nd that would be one thing. But school closures, event cancellations, etc are already on track to go way past two weeks.

 

[morgan98]

Depends on how you define non-esential and who should close. There are lots of companies who may be "non-essential" but can let workers work from home (I'm in that category). We may be non essential in this situation but us staying open doesn't risk anybody and a lot of our customers are the same. So unless you are a company directly facing with the customer day in and day out is interfacing with customers face to face there is not a need to shut down and there are lots of those.

I too am in an industry where our people can work from home, in some cases, (large accounting firm) and we are. We have a backlog of work and are trying to do as much work as possible remotely. We are even trying to find ways to do work that required some people to be at client sites, even though that may not be possible now. Here is the thing, people are going to be distracted, clients will probably not provide the work in the agreed upon timeframe as they are dealing with the fallout from the virus. I am just concerned that it cannot be business as usual for many people if this goes much past the beginning of April. I am in a position to see the numbers, for the record.

 

[Christine]

Spend it where? Stores and restaurants are all closed or closing. Travel is at a near-halt, and only the logistics of closing colleges and resort areas and needing to get people home is reportedly delaying a total grounding of flights. Even Amazon is deprioritizing shipments of non-essential supplies, and if we follow Europe's lead, mail service will soon face disruptions.



I agree. The flatten the curve message has gotten out, but I'm not sure people are really thinking about what that means for the long haul. The majority of people will eventually get this virus; really, that's the only thing that will eventual contain spread, when most people are immune via exposure or vaccine. The question is whether it happens over a period of a month or two, overwhelming our medical system, or if we can drag it out over a much longer time, sparing the medical system at the expense of the economy. Because slowing the spread doesn't mean we can abandon isolation measures - if we do, exponential growth will resume in the unexposed portion of the population.

There's a report out of the UK that takes a longer view than most of what we're hearing here, and it really isn't encouraging. Twitter thread woth a link and a summary of the findings:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1239975682643357696

If it plays out along these lines, I strongly suspect public opinion will pretty rapidly veer towards taking our chances with the virus rather than endure the social and economic costs of 18+ months of isolation.

Thanks for the link; saving to read later.

I do think we'll probably get to the "taking our chances" point fairly soon. But for me, I think that will be more like 8 weeks from now.

What I'd like to see is enough of us taking this seriously through the end of May to give the medical community time to ramp up as much as they can. Give the Army Corp of Engineers time to get out and build temporary medical facilities, which they can do quickly, and slow things down. Then, coinciding with that, maybe we'll get a help from Mother Nature with summer and see a natural little dip so that by the time this ramps up again in the Fall (along with influenza) we are equipped better medically to deal with it.

 

[mrodgers]

I think that’s the idea. Wether you need it or not is irrelevant. Mine will go to something travel related.

Makes no sense to me how you use it to spend in the economy when the economy is shut down and there's nothing to spend it on.

 

[mrodgers]

I hate caps. They *never* take into account the people in high CoL areas that, while appear to make a lot of money on paper, have such high expenses. My DD just went over that cap a few months ago. Her rent in the city is $1800 per month. There are people who earn above caps that have expenses and also don't get paid during something like this.

I dislike when people complain about living in a high cost of living area. Move to a lower cost of living area and you solve it.

 

[kdonnel]

Roughly 3500 people died in China out of a population of more than a billion, and infections are on the decline. Think about that. This is hardly a virus that is going to cause mass casualties or cause 60% unemployment. The only thing hurting the economy is the business closures which hopefully don't last more than two weeks.

The closures and changes have thus far been implemented with an advertised short time frame to make it more palatable. Those time frames will be extended dramatically. Some companies will initially go work from home but will end up closing as no one buys their product.

 

[NYCgrrl]

The hospitality industry is taking a major hit and the layoffs are already in the tens of thousands; same for the overall service industries. Farmers have been hurting for a variety of reasons. Next stop, housing industry and manufactured goods.
I don't think we'll get to sustained Great Depression levels of unemployment but it going to be hairy. Whether it's 1K or 2K (or nothing directly) we get as stimulus money I won't be spending it on extras. I see hard times coming and and as usual it won't be pretty.

 

[billlaurie]

If we do this the way some "experts" are recommending with extended social distancing of weeks and weeks or more up to almost two years, I fear the death toll will be much much higher than their coronavirus death predictions due to the collapse of our economy, chaos, suicide, starvation and so on. And the already destitute and downtrodden here and throughout the world, they will surely be goners, who's going to help them when people have lost their businesses, their jobs, their wealth, and their hope for a future?

 

[DisLiss]

We'll hang on to it. We don't know if DH will eventually be out of work and he's currently the only one in the house who is working. We do have enough saved for a certain amount of months without any paychecks, but I don't know if a work closure would exceed that amount of time. So we're already spending less and will continue to cut back, and if the money actually comes through, then we will just set it aside in case we need it.

 

[pryncess527]

If we do this the way some "experts" are recommending with extended social isolation of weeks and weeks or more up to almost two years

I have not heard ANYONE suggest a year of isolation, much less two.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I have not heard ANYONE suggest a year of isolation, much less two.

Social isolation--I read that to mean social distancing measures (though maybe I'm wrong).

Even if we can return some things to normal I don't anticipate them recommending we go from what we are in now to a free for all soon after. I expect them to still recommend a level of social distancing to be done until it's more or less clear that there are so few new cases the bulk of the U.S. is at a 'safer' level.

When my governor closed all in-person schooling for the rest of the year (leaving districts up in the air as to online measures or not) it was mentioned she'll be reviewing if schools can reopen come August...that's big to mention that now IMO.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I've read some articles stating this could go on for as long as it takes to get a vaccine. Maybe not to the degree it is now but there may be some level of social distancing/isolation for 12-18 months.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I have a friend who works for a coffee company. He manages shipping to companies in our area. From bigger companies to diners to small mom and pop shops. He told me that 50% of his clients have already told him that they will never reopen after this shutdown.

I'm in NJ and almost everything is closed. Bars and restaurants are open but for take out only. The malls are shut down. Casinos closed. And we don't know for how long.

 

[billlaurie]

I have not heard ANYONE suggest a year of isolation, much less two.

Yes, they are, some are saying that unless we have social distancing until we get a vaccine or develop antivirals, 2 million people, mostly 60 and older, will die from the coronavirus.

 

[kdonnel]

I have not heard ANYONE suggest a year of isolation, much less two.

There was a study referenced a page or so back in this thread that suggested we may need to isolate until a vaccine is administered to the population. That would be 12-18 months from now.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

https://twitter.com/x/status/1239975682643357696

The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China/Korea/Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what happens if the US does absolutely nothing -- if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course?

Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself.

It gets worse. People with severe COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number available in the US. Nearly 100% of these patients die.

So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.

How many is 4 million people? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's 4 times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust.

Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. If we extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (warning: MOE is high here), this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19, in 3-6 months. 15 Holocausts. 1.5 times as many people as died in all of World War II.

Now, of course countries won't stand by and do nothing. So the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, this time assuming a "mitigation" strategy: all symptomatic cases in the US in isolation. Families of those cases quarantined. All Americans over 70 social distancing.

This mitigation strategy is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals.

And it does flatten the curve -- but not nearly enough. The death rate from the disease is cut in half, but it still kills 1.1 million Americans all by itself. The peak need for ventilators falls by two-thirds, but it still exceeds the number of ventilators in the US by 8 times.

That leaves the actual death toll in the US at right around 2 million deaths. The population of Houston. Two Civil Wars. One-third of the Holocaust. Globally, 45 million people die: 7.5 Holocausts, 3/4 of World War II. That's what happens if we rely on mitigation & common sense.

Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, assuming a "suppression" strategy: isolate symptomatic cases, quarantine their family members, social distancing for the whole population, all public gatherings/most workplaces shut down, schools and universities close.

Suppression works! The death rate in the US peaks 3 weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit but don't exceed the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear.

But here's the catch: if we EVER relax suppression before a vaccine is administered to the entire population, COVID-19 comes right back and kills millions of Americans in a few months, the same as before.

We are possibly going to have to decided between isolation for a long time or saying goodbye to many of our friends and family for the sake of the economy. It is all models, just like the weather forecast. So it could be all wrong.

 

[billlaurie]

Yes, they are, some are saying that unless we have social distancing until we get a vaccine or develop antivirals, 2 million people, mostly 60 and older, will die from the coronavirus.

Correction, 2 million in the US alone. Check Colleen27's thread upstream.

 

[disny_luvr]

If we get any money, we will save it. I’m a teacher but currently getting paid and DH is still working, but if this goes on for some time, who knows if either of us will be working and/or getting paid. We might need that money down the road.

 

[kymom99]

I have not heard ANYONE suggest a year of isolation, much less two.

No one of any expertise anyway. Plenty in these boards have

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

If we do this the way some "experts" are recommending with extended social isolation of weeks and weeks or more up to almost two years, I fear the death toll will be much much higher than their coronavirus death predictions due to the collapse of our economy, chaos, suicide, starvation and so on. And the already destitute and downtrodden here and throughout the world, they will surely be goners, who's going to help them when people have lost their businesses, their jobs, their wealth, and their hope for a future?

I've been worried about some of this stuff for the future.

We normally diagnose people with disorders when they confine themselves in their homes rarely if ever leaving, we normally diagnose people with disorders when they have an aversion to essentially all social interaction outside their home, etc.

But now now we're asking the entire country to do some of these things and for long or even undetermined amounts of time. The mental health component has taken a backseat right now which is completely understandable we have to have priorities. The problem is I don't think many people have actually even considered the implications of what's being done.

We have considered impacts to our economy and are at least looking into some things but it's a lot more deep than I think some have considered.