Right. They are as stupid as you are.
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Their closing statement is what I was referring to:
"But we cannot afford to wait and hope. John Maynard Keynes famously quipped that in the long run, we are all dead. If we keep up our current strategy of suppression based on indiscriminate social distance for 12 to 18 months, most of us will still be alive. It is our economy that will be dead."
I'm not sure if you've read between the lines, but the strategy being employed by the government will not magically solve the issue after a 2-3 week quarantine period. It will have to be extended over a much longer time horizon to prevent reinfections and new clusters of outbreaks. It just hasn't been announced yet. It is precisely where we are heading, and which we need to find an alternative to post haste.
In your opinion, how long can a lockdown last without causing economic depression, if not 4 weeks?
Just so we are clear, a lockdown applies to only non-essential physical businesses, and a depression refers to economic decline that continues for more than 2 years.
I don’t think COVID-19 presents a threat to civilization in the long or even medium term. It’s just not that deadly. The only health crisis we face is in the next 3-4 weeks, when we don’t have testing kits, PPE, ventilators, and ICU space to run the hospital system.
The 1-month response should not bear any resemblance to the 12-18 month response.
This idiot still thinks this is about the virus, which is in fact not that deadly. You really don't understand what's going on here. First Qtr GDP expected at -6%, second Qtr at -25%. This has never happened before. I doesn't take 2 years to gut us, as we have just learned.
See this article on Hong Kong:
Hong Kong appeared to have the coronavirus under control, then it let its guard down - CNN
They just went through a several week quarantine period. They loosened restrictions and the virus came back. And now its back to a draconian lockdown. So how exactly will their month 2-3 response be different from the 1 month lockdown? They were seen as a model for infection control. Just curious.
You didn’t answer my question. If I am “spectacularly stupid” for saying 4-week lockdowns would not cause a depression, then please enlighten us about the maximum duration.
The Goldman note predicts -3.8% annualized for GDP (-24% is a quarterly rate) and does not predict a depression. Do you know what they assumed about lockdown durations?
What is your question? How long can we pause the nation's economy without there being a problem? It's been about 2 weeks, and today the nation's largest aluminum sheet processing mill -- Champagne Metals, a primary metals supplier for aluminum foil, beer cans, etc. -- has closed. This is not an isolated incident.
Here is another thought, per the podcast Rip and John Horgan just released. How many people die of lung cancer and smoking every year? How much money and manpower is sucked up by the healthcare industry dealing with smoking related issues? Why no mass hysteria?
It remains to be seen if there will be a pullback from the governors of those states who locked them down. But I listen to NPR on and off through the day and the last couple of days seemt o have them, at least, having awakened to the havoc they and their commercial counterparts have created. Yesterday there were the furrowed brows of the Permanently Concerned discussing how to manage children not in school and how having to socially isolate were already beginning to wear on some.
This morning, they began talking to former DHS folks and economists and the ramifications for the economy. With good fortune, this trend may become more general and the governors may be herded once again by media wolves in sheep dog clothing into more precise applications of quarantine. As in using a scalpel rather than a broadsword.