Remember that 100 years ago, and then again 80 years ago, large percentages of men in Europe were removed from their own countries and sent somewhere else; ships transporting food and supplies were actively sunk, houses and factories were bombed to smithereens. In spite of the massive economic damage that caused, civilization did not descend into anarchy, and very few people who weren't prisoners starved to death.
COVID-19 isn't going to destroy any of our infrastructure, and if we mobilize properly, isn't going to kill nearly as many people. If our [great-]grandparents made it through WWII, there's no reason we can't make it through this.
>very few people who weren't prisoners starved to death [during WWII].
If it's relevant, 3 million people in India died due to widespread starvation during World War 2 caused by British colonial and war-time policies. Additionally all their cloth production was used by the British war effort, so many Indians went without clothes during that period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Cloth_fa...
Right, I remember listening to an episode of Revisionist History about that [1]. Outrageous and shameful.
I'd have to listen to the episode again, but I think the most outrageous and shameful thing about it is that it wasn't actually necessary. The way Gladwell portrays it, they died mostly due to the personal spite of one person.
> Remember that 100 years ago, and then again 80 years ago, large percentages of men in Europe were removed from their own countries and sent somewhere else; ships transporting food and supplies were actively sunk, houses and factories were bombed to smithereens. In spite of the massive economic damage that caused, civilization did not descend into anarchy, and very few people who weren't prisoners starved to death.
> COVID-19 isn't going to destroy any of our infrastructure, and if we mobilize properly, isn't going to kill nearly as many people. If our [great-]grandparents made it through WWII, there's no reason we can't make it through this.
In The U.S., WWII was funded by the savings of that generation, which is really amazing considering they had been in the longest, deepest economic depression in the nation's history prior to the start of the war.
After the war ended, cooler heads prevailed and all wartime orders were lifted and capital and labor could reform, as it saw fit, and as such, the year immediately following the war produced the greatest annualized economic gains in the history of the country.
Going into what we are doing right now, Americans don't have any savings plus many private and nearly all public institutions have a lot of debt.
There is no indication that the government will permit such a freely flowing economy even after whatever it is we are doing has ended, so I don't find direct comparisons relevant.
> After the war ended, cooler heads prevailed and all wartime orders were lifted and capital and labor could reform, as it saw fit, and as such, the year immediately following the war produced the greatest annualized economic gains in the history of the country
the reason the US was ably to basically jump start it's economy after ww2 was mainly because all of its competitors got either got their industries and cities literally leveled, or their nation/people nearly utterly destroyed.
Even the UK, which was a victor of world war 2 had an economy which was basically dead in the water until the late 70's.
The US got incredibly "lucky" during world war 2 in the sense that it didn't fight the conflict on its own continent.
Also, the marshall plan was a smart policy in an economic sense because it allowed the war economy to transistion back into civilian goods thanks to having a massive (subsidized) export market.
> > After the war ended, cooler heads prevailed and all wartime orders were lifted and capital and labor could reform, as it saw fit, and as such, the year immediately following the war produced the greatest annualized economic gains in the history of the country
> the reason the US was ably to basically jump start it's economy after ww2 was mainly because all of its competitors got either got their industries and cities literally leveled, or their nation/people nearly utterly destroyed.
> Even the UK, which was a victor of world war 2 had an economy which was basically dead in the water until the late 70's.
> The US got incredibly "lucky" during world war 2 in the sense that it didn't fight the conflict on its own continent.
> Also, the marshall plan was a smart policy in an economic sense because it allowed the war economy to transistion back into civilian goods thanks to having a massive (subsidized) export market.
Nations are not competitors. They are trade partners.
> Nations are not competitors. They are trade partners.
Of course nations are competitors. International trade is an unregulated market, every nation competes economically with each other and tries to extract maximally favorable deal for themselves; when negotiations get heated, they get backed up by military strength, and the only reason we don't go to war often is a combination of sanity and MADness.
> > Nations are not competitors. They are trade partners.
> Of course nations are competitors. International trade is an unregulated market, every nation competes economically with each other and tries to extract maximally favorable deal for themselves; when negotiations get heated, they get backed up by military strength, and the only reason we don't go to war often is a combination of sanity and MADness.
What does this have to do with post-WWII economic recovery in the U.S.?
Do you have any sources that compare government and private savings at the two time points? I am surprised by your claim that savings were higher at the height of the great depression
> Do you have any sources that compare government and private savings at the two time points? I am surprised by your claim that savings were higher at the height of the great depression
Not immediately, but the U.S. was on a gold standard at the time and funded the war through war bonds (and establishment of income taxes) which were largely purchased domestically.
The gold standard bit is important because the government was not able to simply print money to fund the war.
It sounds like you're arguing against the idea of debt altogether. Debt is a great, great thing that's allowed us to accomplish way more as a society than we ever could before. Way faster too.
Yes, there is irresponsible lending that winds up in temporary value being created that we later find out was fake, and yes it's scary when the government is that lender. Maybe ironically, gold now works as a store of value that hedges against government money going bad.
But debt it still a great system that will continue to work well after COVID-19.
> It sounds like you're arguing against the idea of debt altogether. Debt is a great, great thing that's allowed us to accomplish way more as a society than we ever could before. Way faster too.
> Yes, there is irresponsible lending that winds up in temporary value being created that we later find out was fake, and yes it's scary when the government is that lender. Maybe ironically, gold now works as a store of value that hedges against government money going bad.
> But debt it still a great system that will continue to work well after COVID-19.
There is no argument for or against debt. You are inserting something not there.
It is notable, however, that to create debt there must be a creditor.
You know those signs we memed the hell out of last decade? They're so cliched that they don't mean anything anymore, but think of those.
Keep calm and carry on
You should relax. We're not the first humans to see some hardship. Everything isn't going to fall apart because the economy has a downturn. Society isn't going to collapse because of this. It didn't happen in the 1600s, nor the 1700s, nor the 1800s, nor the 1900s. It's not going to happen in the 2000s.
Two global wars, the use of nuclear weapons, and a 50 year cold war with the ever present threat of nuclear apocalypse didn't cause society to break down last century, a flu won't cause it to fall apart this century either.
While all of that is true, it can be very painful for most people. These types of events almost invariably lead to social unrest which compounds the problem. Ambitious and unscrupulous leaders in government and businesses will use this to undermine many of the norms we take for granted.
What is clear is that people are underestimating this crisis, no one wants to think we are in a WWII level moment, and so we don’t activate the appropriate level of response. But it is and will be a world altering period.
Once consistent pattern is that countries seem to feel like you do, it’s just a flu, then doctors see patients gasping for breath and literally drowning as their lungs fill up with fluid, and the true dread sets in. My friend is a doctor in NYC. She said this feels like war, and the nature of death experienced by people is horrific. If people were bleeding from their eyeballs like a movie maybe that would capture people’s attention but on the front lines people are terrified because this is an awful awful way to die.
I agree with you, but still would like to point out that the same line of argument (we’ve been fine before) would be as valid if society were to actually collapse. No species has ever gone extinct before... until it does!
So you're saying -- if things now return to conditions that were present during "Two global wars, the use of nuclear weapons" of last century... no cause for alarm?
1. HN is not "an informed audience", it's literally the public. And it's common for software developers to mistake themselves for domain experts on any domain but they aren't.
2. It's not an informed audience if misinformation is not challenged, it's a misinformed audience.
3. The flu is a bad parallel. The flu, while annually killing lots of people, does not overwhelm hospitals like a novel virus does. At best it makes people think this is like swine flu, while it has quickly shown to be nothing like swine flu.
Regarding 3, upper estimates for the 2009 swine flu are north of 500k deaths and the 1918 Spanish flu is 50 million.
Flus can be very deadly and the poster obviously did not intend to use the word in a diminutive way. You added that interpretation, knowing it is wrong, and then challenged it.
The whole post was playing down the effects of the current pandemic on society. The whole conclusion was that "a flu won't cause [society to break down]".
So yes, the poster was using flu in a diminutive sense. And yes, flu is deadly and a lot worse than a lot of people (who've probably never had flu) realise. But even given that, even recent novel flu strains haven't stressed and shut down the global economy like this pandemic has.
>The whole conclusion was that "a flu won't cause [society to break down]"
This does not minimize the harm a flu can do, it puts it in perspective. Nuclear bombs going off over LA, London, New York, and Beijing probably would not cause society to break down. That does not mean that does not mean that it wouldn't be terrible, deadly, and disruptive.
When planning for how to prepare and deal with this pandemic, people should not be preparing for some Mad-Max scenario where an assault rifle is their most valuable possession.
While the death toll remains smaller, at this point the global consequences of this pandemic are worse than LA, London, New York and Beijing getting glassed (assuming this hypothetical scenario was some kind of a terror attack, and not the first strike in WWIII).
To respond to "Clayton" in this thread, we did not have much of an option for reacting to the virus once it got to our land. Legally, the federal government cannot shut down the country and order lockdowns, only cities and states can do that. We could have taken the need for testing and equipment preparation more seriously, but we didn't.
In the absence of data around who is sick, who is not, and who is immune, there is no way to slow the spread of the virus during an outbreak except to keep everyone away from everyone else.
This is juxtaposition, a form of literary style. He is sarcastically downplaying the _flu_ in comparison to the world wars because the _flu_ is already significantly lesser than the holocaust or an atomic bomb landing in Japan.
You know that that meme originated from a campaign designed by the British government for motivation in the face of mass bombing anticipated in England before the onset of WWII right? I think saying that "this won't be any worse than being bombed by nazis" is not a particularly motivated slogan.
> a flu won't cause it to fall apart this century either.
If you think this is just a freak thing that is happening, som e flu what will pass, then you don't understand what is happening. What we're seeing is the way this pandemic is exposing vulnerabilities in our global capitalist system.
And finally, plenty of societies of collapse in those time periods. Of course humans and societies continue to exist, but there are more an enough examples of societies that have ceases to exist and the transition is a painful process.
It's actually way more ironic than that. It's traced back to the public stance of the British government during the spanish flu pandemic in WW1, where they decided that keeping the economy going was more important than trying to slow the spread of the flu.
"According to Dr Honigsbaum, the “carry on” advice may well have been responsible for thousands of the 250,000 Britons who ultimately died in the Spanish flu pandemic."
While many people will likely get very sick, they only stay that way for ~2-6 weeks. Further, around half of people below 50 will show minimal if any symptoms. So, while most non essential jobs are shut down we are likely to see a surplus of labor in terms of trucking etc.
My guess is plenty of essential jobs will have heavy overtime while many people are unemployed. Simply because the disruptions are going to cascade through individual factories very quickly. The economic impact is largely going to be a question of how much do we shut down to save lives?
That thinking negates the economic impact that a bunch of people dying is going to have on the economy. There are really two options here.
1) A huge impact on the economy and fewer people die.
2) A huge impact on the economy and lots of people die.
Nobody has the capability to predict the real outcome of one scenario over the other from an economic perspective.
If the US does everything perfectly, we'll probably lose 200k people to COVID-19. If we "reopen the economy" prematurely, the number could easily be 5x to 10x that figure.
Loss of human life has a very tangible impact on the economy, so folks should not be thinking of this as a binary decision ("do we save lives vs do we save the economy").
That’s incredibly simplified. Policy makers don’t have a simple switch to which results in some specific known outcome. Nobody wants millions of Americans to die or for another outbreak to happen in 6+ months. Unfortunately, avoiding both without shutting everything down until a vaccine is developed is tricky.
I'm pointing at the fact that it keeps getting presented like a binary decision in the media over and over again, and that's not an appropriate characterization.
If that’s what your thinking don’t say: There are really two options here.
Frankly, the US with effective leadership could have less than 1/10th your quoted 200,000 deaths, just look at South Korea. Any time someone says their are two options on a complex issue it’s a straw man argument which is what I objected to.
>Policy makers don’t have a simple switch to which results in some specific known outcome
BS: Donald Trump was specifically asked yesterday how he feels about the poor and especially illegal immigrants who will have zero access to help, both financial and medical.
He litaerally tilted his head and said "what are you gunna do?" knowing what that outcome is going to result in.
> around half of people below 50 will show minimal if any symptoms.
I have a middle finger for you for how cold hearted you sound. As though “it’s no big deal”. My wife went through this (previously healthy 34 year old) and it was terrible. The docs just said: “there’s nothing more we can do”
I'm sorry for what you're going through. Maybe reading a thread on the economic implications of this disaster -- which will inevitably discuss both the terrible parts and the silver linings -- isn't the healthiest thing for you right now?
"Forecasting is hard, especially when it's about the future"
Whether or not you need ammo probably depends on where you live... but I'd stock up on non-perishables and necessities if you can afford it.
Not sure you need vodka at all, but I think that's a matter of personal preference. I'm actually trying to be as healthy and fit as possible to fight the weirdness that is self-isolation and to be ready for the virus when it inevitably comes (if 80% of us really are going to be infected...)
Am also hearing PE funds are forecasting anything between "18 months until we're back to normal" to "it will never be the same"..
The vodka and ammo was a bit of the joke (though I think the saying goes that post-apocalypse currency is fuel, ammo and cigarettes).
I've stocked up a month ago for a minor supply chain disruption. But the more I read the news every day, the more it seems to me that it isn't going to be a minor disruption. I'm starting to worry about survival even if neither myself nor anyone around me actually catches COVID-19.
Food, non-perishables, fuel? Yes. Firearms and ammo? To each their own. We did, but we're more rural.
Our concern is a supply chain meltdown when you have millions infected and sick. I would rather be prepared and not need something, then need something and not be prepared.
> Our concern is a supply chain meltdown when you have millions infected and sick.
This is an absurdist prediction - we are looking at maximum 2 million 75+ year olds dying with some much smaller number of people of different ages. This is the group least likely to be involved in the day-to-day functioning of our supply chains.
Honestly, where are people coming up with these doomsday predictions?
Have you watched the supply chains? Spikes in demand followed by demand collapse have already wreaked havoc. From what I read from people from that business, there's total chaos.
And even if the elderly bear most of the risk, countries are shutting down completely for their sake - and that means companies stopping operations, leading to further disruptions. Also this article: US already has 10 million unemployed, and it barely started to consider doing anything about the virus.
I think this is closest to actual doomsday since the peak of Cold War.
If you were to value all human lives equally, the Cold War potential threat was far greater than this. The actual realized causality count is of course orders of magnitude lower for the Cold War.
In terms of being an existential threat to human life, this virus as we currently understand it (ignoring all the unknowns) isn't a real Doomsday. Historically it's merely a blip on the radar of awful things humanity has went through, endured, and survived leading to where we are now. People survived the bubonic plague and continued on. It was awful and they lacked much of the knowledge and understanding we now have to better curb these threats.
The vast majority of the population is going to be fine, healthy, and moving along. There may be economic restructuring after this (I don't see it as likely though). You're probably going to see a drop in quality/standard of living at large no matter what, but the majority of our infrastructure will still be there and the majority of the people who operate it will still be there. It's not like humans won't be around, infrastructure will be destroyed, our acquired knowledge and skills are lost...
The absolute worst case scenario is that this virus mutates regularly (perhaps with higher mortality rates) and we aren't able to manage it. Each mutation comes with significant risk of death. Although the risk could low for many, multiple exposures to relatively low risk leads to higher more realized unwelcome outcomes. This would absolutely force a complete systematic restructuring of societies, how we interact, how we work, etc. long term.
Based on what we currently know this will be a fairly long decline in productivity that most will be immune to and life will probably continue on mostly as is. It all boils down to questions about who deserves what, who takes the hit on losses, etc. Right now it looks like your average US citizen will see a larger decline in standards of living and our economic system will further consolidate/concentrate wealth and power barring some sort of (hopefully non-violent) social revolution.
As isolation habits go, it's slightly safer to overindulge in news than in liquor, but not much less unhealthy.
If you're worried about a real collapse, then do what you can to prepare, sure - ideally remembering that, by all the accounts of people who've been through such collapses and later told the tale, what really gets you through in the long run isn't liquor, smokes, or bullets, but relationships.
You don't need to soak in the news to do that. Indeed, soaking in the news probably makes it harder. Anxiety can get paralyzing, and there's a lot in the news to be anxious about. But it's also worth remembering that what's going to happen is going to happen whether you obsess over it or not. It can't be hurried, helped, or fought. It can only be dealt with as best you can, and from here it seems like you're not really helping yourself by what you're doing just now. So, maybe consider trying doing something else for a while? You know, just to see if it feels any different.
For food, fuel, and other essentials? If stuff like that starts getting disrupted to the point that people are actually dying, you can bet that we are going to lift our shelter-in-place. I have seen no evidence of that being borne out at all.
> I think this is closest to actual doomsday since the peak of Cold War
I agree, but I think that more speaks to the relative safety and stability of the post-Cold War era than any particularly huge danger from the pandemic. 2 million deaths is terrifying and we should do what we can to prevent it - I don't see any evidence that this is the lead up to general societal collapse or even substantial supply chain disruption for things you need to survive.
Because countries are shutting their borders and we have a tightly coupled network. Add to that decades of streamlining logistics to avoid any inventory and consistent dividends and stock buy backs that make scaling up additional capacity difficult and you can quickly see disruption.
If this triggers a financial crisis, then working capital can disappear so even if capacity exists liquidity won’t and there won’t be enough purchase power to float inventory.
I worked at the best corporate bankruptcy law firm in the country in 2008. I can tell you there was a real concern that lack of liquidity would result in grocery stores not having food for extended periods from lacking working capital. That can happen fast.
Not to mention that when the healthcare system gets overloaded with all the covid-cases, everything else that requires medical intervention also becomes dangerous.
The curve will barely flatten, before 'peak infection' is reached. At the current rate, we have only 1 or 2 months to accomplish this, and no progress so far.
Many folks will get sick; the oldest will die at home. For others it will suck, and there will be no help even from neighbors, churches etc (like the last time, they quit functioning entirely)
Some will not notice at all, apparently. They will survive into a world changed by loss, conservatism, suspicion and paranoia.
An initial recession, while paradoxically goods are plentiful due to the reduced demand
The Social Security fund will disappear entirely as a topic of discussion
Civilization won't fall, and public order will only be occasionally disrupted in small localities
I'd recommend establishing a network of close friends who will support one another during this time. It's about the only support we can expect.
> The curve will barely flatten, before 'peak infection' is reached. At the current rate, we have only 1 or 2 months to accomplish this, and no progress so far.
The curve is flat (at least the new "X" curve) in both Seattle and the Bay Area. That's definitely progress.
Yeah, well, I unnecessarily asked my question in the indirect way. What I meant is: what do we expect to see? Wars and famines, or just little hardship? Or something in between?
I've done some preparations over a month ago, but these were preparations for a short-term supply chain disruption. Not for what increasingly seems like a global economic meltdown.
Obviously it's impossible to say for certain. This was/is a relatively controlled economic crash landing. The decision was made to take the plane from 30,000 feet to the runway in record time. So everyone has bumps and bruises, some are going to have broken bones and a few may die as a result of their injuries... but that was the best option available at the time.
Personally, I find this a lot less scary than '08. The main objective of the current exercise is to ensure the healthcare system does not collapse... because if that happens, things could get dicey. (i.e. blind terror would likely cause more damage than the virus itself) Once we get to the point where the medical community feels like 'OK, we've got this under control' things should start looking up since we'll know for sure what the bottom looks like from a health/mortality standpoint. Then people can start sorting out the economic side of the equation. Right now there's fear because no one knows where the bottom is for either situation.
2008 started in 2007, things move slow until they don’t. Banks are just as leveraged as they were then. They started doing many of the same things they did then in recent years. They are stronger in part because of the stress tests and implications fed back stop they are counting on so luckily the won’t likely panic and stop lending to each other. But make no mistake. If mortgages and credit cards start to default their balance sheets have limits on what they can with stand. Tightly coupled systems implode quickly even with small changes.
I live in a state barely touched by COVID-19. Since Mar 15, I've never seen a roll of TP in any of the stores in town. Not Costco, Sam's Club, Target or the local grocery chain. I feel bad for people who didn't manage to stock up.
You speak as if the toilet paper factories have shut down and the delivery trucks are all sitting idle. Everyone decided to rush the stores and buy up all of the toilet paper, and unsurprisingly the stores don't stock enough for every household to buy 200 rolls in the same week.
All you need to do is wait for the next delivery to show up (which it will). The problem is, people like you will continue to buy up everything as quickly as possible, so after the first couple hundred customers the shelves will be empty again. Until the next delivery. That is the problem, not supply shortages.
Don't feel bad for people who didn't horde resources at everyone else's expense. Help those people by buying what you need plus only a little extra.
Thanks for the ad hominem and patronizing reply. I haven't been trying to buy TP, I just noticed it was missing every time. There may be plenty of TP (and other goods) in the pipeline, but that doesn't matter to the end user. They're just SOL because there's so little slack in supply chain management anymore.
Your post was completely and factually incorrect, then you not only blame me, but blame the people trying to adjust to a supply issue. How do you determine "what you need plus only a little extra" when you can't determine when TP will be in stock? It's been weeks now, and it's perfectly rational to buy more than you need since you can't count on the supply chain.
