weasel decentral

I'm sure they have but my point is more directed at you than them. If you think this is an overreaction what are you comparing it against on the other side of the coin? This is the current scenario and this the possible scenario if we don't have a lock down. Surely that's the choice we are making - not what we did during the Spanish flu or last outbreak of winter flu.

scrubbedexpat141

I wonder what other global events gave the government the right to do these sorts of things and what happened after - world wars?

Millhouse

9-11 and the powers of surveillance come to mind.
2008-2009 and the government manipulation of money supply; rates, austerity and inflation.

general expansion of state is what happened... then populism creeps in, which is a disaster.

Millhouse

I’ve not run the numbers or seen the numbers in either scenario. Have you? Has anyone?

scrubbedexpat141

Could you argue the manipulation of money supply was to stop more risky alternatives in letting the world just collapse? The subsequent austerity and managing inflation the same?
Guess you could say I'm arguing your point but I'm sure we could find good arguments both ways on all of these events to be fair.

I don't think the UK will turn into North Korea after this though.

weasel decentral

That's my point really, how do you judge this as an overreaction?

weasel decentral

Kim is dead apparently

Millhouse

World GDP is around $85,000 billion
World population is around 8 billion
GDP/ person = $10,000

Cost of COVID - estimated between 2,000 and 4,000 billion
Worst case number of estimated deaths is between 2 and 50 million
2,000-4000 billion cost / 2-50 million = between 40,000 - 2,000,000 per life saved
So somewhere between 4 and 200 times the GDP per person.

Now if it's mostly the old and ill dying, then maybe we should have used a lower GDP/person as these people could be economically inactive.

Worth it? That's the political decision that no one wants to make.

What we do know is that the economic destruction we are doing will drive millions into poverty and expose them to all sorts of illnesses and premature deaths that won't get accounted for.

DXBtoDOH

What I do find fascinating is that we already know a great deal about COVID-19. Despite the media obsession with every young death, in reality it kills old people, and not just old people but old people with significant health problems. It's why the average age of death is quite high, hovering around 80. We do know it kills a small number of younger people with substantial existing health problems. We know the fatality rate overall for young people regardless of health is well below 1% (meaning for healthy young people it's inconsequential and just as rare as the healthy young man who drops dead of a heart attack at age 40).

This notion that some people have that we're at war with a virus is silly. The virus cannot be vanquished. It's not an enemy that can be humbled and reformed into obedience. It's here. We have to deal with it. A vaccine in due time (if one is found) will help, but it won't end the virus no more than the regular flu vaccine defeated the flu. Herd immunity is the most likely long term outlook. The one size fits all mass shutdown was an attempt to declare war on the virus and we have seen the obscene economic toll paid so far, and when all's said and done, didn't really save lives. This one size fits all mass shutdown did have the advantage of buying some time but that time has also showed us the virus is far less deadly for the larger population than earlier believed. It has always been obvious to me from the early days the pragmatic approach was to quarantine the care homes and identified high-risk people still living in their own homes. Instead of devoting so much resources to mass testing of general populations, test everyone who works for a care home, and test them daily to prevent asymptomatic people from transferring the virus to the care homes or hospitals. And let everyone else get on with life.

thebadger

I've been in touch with my Nepali tea boys, concerned about them and whst they are living in. As said before - if I hadn't actually been there, I'd think he was exaggerating how bad it is.

Genuinely would rather be in prison here in the UK, than a labour camp during Covid.

csdf

When you say cost of COVID, is this direct expenditure to mitigate the virus, or loss in GDP as a result of lockdown?

scrubbedexpat141

And so we begin.

Millhouse

The US stimulus package is estimate at 2T, the U.K. around 0.5T and that’s just two countries.

weasel decentral

I like these back of envelope calculations - so to play advocate on the other side using the same figures.

Lets take worst case of 50 million deaths times your GDP per person of 10,000USD that's 500 Billion per year. Conservatively giving them 6 years life expectancy we reach the equivalent 3,000 Billion spread over 6 years. I guess this is the flattening of the financial curve.

csdf

Understood, but that stimulus package isn't disappearing into thin air, it's being spent and injected into the economy and ultimately into people's hands. Whether it's the right people is another matter.