Me and my SO have now almost fully recovered from COVID-19 after a rough few days.
Now that I have these anti-bodies in my blood, should we not be allowed outside, spend our money and help the economy?
There are must be at least 100 000 people in my (small) country that are now immune. A number that is growing faster than published number of infected.
Let's make a plan for our return to society. Let us wear a mark or put a stamp in our passports or let's think of something clever.
I feel like I could be doing a lot more than just working from home with my newfound super-power.
What we need to be doing is envisioning what the future can look like in a world with permanently higher standards for germ control, not rushing to return to business as usual.
Historically, humans often lived in small villages surrounded by a relatively small number of the same people. Their entire lives could be mostly or entirely lived out in a five mile radius.
The drop in air pollution has measurable economic value. It can be measured in reduced need for medical care, reduced corrosion of expensive infrastructure, etc. Running around all over the place like crazy is not the only approach to life which has measurable economic value.
How we live today in developed countries is not the historical norm for humanity. There's no reason it needs to be held up as sacred and a standard we must strive to return to as promptly as possible or even at all.
People can and do live full and happy lives without galavanting all over the world. It's fine if we promote that as a value generally to enhance germ control and shrink our carbon footprint.
I think takeout is reasonably safe and I approve of walking more and actively try to encourage that. I think we should be moving to a takeout culture over a dining out culture.
We also need to be updating our design standards to make dining out safer. Due to increasing distances between tables and similar, I think this will be even more expensive than what we do currently and make dine-in restaurants mostly limited to more expensive restaurants.
I've left remarks about that elsewhere on HN. I am actively trying to encourage people to get takeout to try to support local eateries and hopefully reduce the damage to the economy.
I've been promoting Little Caesar's as a good example of what works well. They're entire business model is takeout and delivery. They had a pizza portal for contactless pickup before covid19, but it wasn't being used locally. The past few days, it is being used. There are pizzas in the customer facing pizza portal warming ovens for the first time ever.
I would also like to see Walmart write the handbook for how to design public bathrooms. The cleanliness of the bathroom is often a make or break for me personally in being a customer, especially for a fine in experience.
That cleanliness is highly dependent upon good design. No amount of maid service can really fix a badly designed bathroom.
I like motion activated faucets, motion activated hand dryers and motion activated paper towel dispenser and soap dispensers. Motion activated toilets are a nice to have, but less important to me than being able to properly wash my hands afterwards.
One of the best features of Walmart bathrooms is the lack of doors. Most people use a paper towel to open the bathroom door to leave rather than touch the door.
This is hard to do at a smaller scale. Walmart has large stores with large bathrooms.
But that doesn't mean it can't be done. It just means we haven't really tried to solve for this before because it wasn't a priority. I see no reason why we can't come up with better practices for public bathrooms on a smaller scale than what you typically see today in smaller establishments.
I agree about supporting takeout now; I'm focusing on independent restaurants, especially Asian ones as I fear they are having the toughest time now. Local publications have said this takeout business isn't much help right now. But it may be different case by case. I went to a local bakery the weekend before this past one expecting them to be having a hard time but they seemed to be doing more business than usual.
Takeout isn't a substitute for people going out to eat together, though, and if I am eating a distance from home, I will look for a place to sit.
People's requirements will differ though. Certain things like cleanliness are applicable for all, but others may not be. Little Caesars may be a good solution for you, but I doubt I could eat their food as I can't eat gluten. Another friend of mine can't eat soy, so she would need to skip most Chinese restaurants that I love. While it is an ideal for a restaurant to be able to accommodate all issues, it can't always happen.
Please note the framing of my remarks about Little Caesar's: that they are an example of something that works well for germ control. I was intentionally careful to not frame it as "Everyone should eat at Little Caesar's."
I was homeless for years. Dine in is problematic when you are homeless. You get profiled and thrown out of places when you show up with all your bags.
I also mostly didn't like eating in restaurants while homeless because of my health issues. People are awful about doing things like blowing their nose at the table without warning in a crowded restaurant (for which there would already be a de facto death sentence if looks could kill and you are doing it near me).
I generally tried to find open air picnic tables, got my food to go and ate it at some outdoor public seating area. I don't see any reason why we can't do more sidewalk care style seating generally.
I live in a really small town and have no car. The Denny's shuttered its doors a few days ago. The grocery store where I sometimes got self-serve soup has eliminated all self-serge food. The McDonald's inside the Walmart has been closed.
I'm seeing my options shrink dramatically. Little Caesar's and hot premade deli food from Walmart and a grocery store have been my takeout options of late. Fortunately, I recently reacquired a grill just as this was all beginning, so I have some limited cooking ability as well. For about a month, I was entirely dependent on takeout.
A week or so ago, the staff at the local Little Caesar's was clearly very stressed about the possibility of going out of business. Their business has picked up and, for the first time ever, I am seeing pizza boxes in their pizza portal warming ovens. Staff stress levels have come down.
Everyone there seems to know my first name and act like I'm their best friend. I've been a regular here lately, in part because other options aren't available to me.
I want to support them in part because they have the freshest dough of any large American chain. They make it in house daily.
Because they are takeout and delivery only, they have less overhead. The food is better quality and cheaper and the food is more hygienic.
Whatever takeaways one can come up from their business model may well separate the wheat from the chafe in coming months. No one has money. Everyone needs to be worried about germ control. Finding business models that combine cleanliness, high food quality and low cost instead of asking you to pick one or two of those would be extremely helpful in getting us to the other side in better shape and more able to face the future.
Outdoor seating as you described works in certain seasons and in certain locations. Not very practical where it gets below freezing.
Little Caesars may be high quality for you. It's poison for me. Doesn't matter how clean it is. Not saying that to disparage the points you made, but eating that food would slowly kill me. Food intolerances, or more likely our awareness of them, seen to be increasing so that is another challenge to accommodate. The restaurant business is a tough one.
I'm in a medium sized suburb in a metro area of maybe 3 million people. Partly public transit accessible in normal times. Service is of course curtailed now. There are lots of places to eat walking distance from my home. A good number are closed now. No doubt some won't reopen, unfortunately. Rent where I live has skyrocketed in recent years, we'll see what affect the pandemic has on that.
Blowing one's nose in public is gross. I wish I lived in a culture where it was not acceptable.
Re outdoor seating: I'm only trying to suggest that I was able to find viable answers under very difficult circumstances with significant constraints. I was very poor and very ill at the time.
I'm not actually trying to suggest that this is the one and only acceptable gold standard answer, though I do think there is room for using it more often than happens in places I have been.
Surely, the world can find answers that work. We just need to make it our business to do that.
I also have a lot of dietary restrictions. Again: I'm trying to convey details about the business model, not about the specific food type per se.
Agree about the business model. I don't think all places can meet all requirements, but those who can meet more of them will get more business. Still, from what I know as a consumer about the restaurant business, it's an extremely tough one and only getting tougher. I have sympathy for anyone getting into it and honestly trying to make a go of it.
And I did get carryout after our discussion during my socially distanced walk. Enjoyed my food, enjoyed my walk. And the restaurant is supposedly providing some meals to people in need, which is extremely generous of them. I do need to strike a balance with that, though. Most restaurant food has the down side of being too fattening. Something I need to watch.
There's no need for most of those changes. Pandemics are historically rare and the risk is low for the majority of people. Most of us will be back to patronizing dine-in restaurants within a year.
That's not necessarily the correct calculation if you want to maximize how many people you save.
Italy started intentionally letting people over 60 die, to try to save more people. For their dire circumstances, it was probably the right decision.
It might help to save a lot more lives if we understand how many people have already had Covid and what immunity looks like post-infection.
Every 1% jump in the unemployment rate kills a large number of people. If we're about to see 20% unemployment in the US, a hundred thousand people or more will die directly from that economic event alone (that's an intentionally conservative number, the routinely taught economics figure would imply upwards of half a million deaths over several years).
Getting the economy back to functioning may be just as important as limiting the Covid deaths of the most vulnerable. Understanding the spread of Covid, how many people are asymptomatic, how many have had mild cases, and what immunity looks like, is critical to that process.
> If we're about to see 20% unemployment in the US, a hundred thousand people or more will die directly from that economic event alone.
Provide evidence of this.
And in most countries there is a constraint over medical equipment and personnel. Also a person can be asymptomatic and still contagious which means merely testing these people can come at a serious cost.
If you definitely had it (i.e., you actually tested positive as opposed to inferring that you had it from your symptoms), and are definitely over it and past the point that you can infect others--maybe get a temporary/part time job as a delivery driver for take out food or groceries?
How do we prove, to everyone on the street for example, that you are immune? This problem is much thornier than you wanting to go outside because you believe you have already had and are now immune to this virus.
I totally agree. I also don't really want to go outside. I've been working from home for 10 years. It's not about that. There is, however, a big opportunity here for thousands of people to contribute.
Happy to hear you've recovered. Could you share your experiences? (e.g. your earliest symptoms, later stage symptoms, tips/tricks you used that helped, etc)
No offence, and your attitude is what we need, but what are you sure it was covid. Perhaps it was flu. Saying it was a few days doesn't fit with what I've heard other people who've had covid.
No, and there have been at least three reports of reinfection cases from multiple countries.
Though it's not clear if they failed to build immunity or if the virus was never totally eliminated.
Also, because of antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), which the virus is speculated to have like SARS and MERS, a reinfection could be deadly, e.g. triggering cytokene storms. This is why vaccine trials in animals failed for SARS and I think MERS.
Not a doctor here, but I also read that people can test negative when tested orally but still test positive anally. Three cases sounds a little anecdotal. Let's brings some facts into the discussion.
If you've "almost" fully recovered, i.e. still showing symptoms, you're still shedding viral particles when you go out and putting others at risk. Wait 14 days after all symptoms have totally subsided, then going out would be relatively safe. But really, you should have multiple tests to be sure.
Yes. Staying at home is key. Everybody should do that. And people in the US should probably have been doing that at least one or two weeks earlier.
Some countries are a little ahead though. I mean not just socially, but in the spreading of Corona and figuring out what works and what doesn't. Sometimes there are clear rules and guidelines in some cases the military is even enforcing national corona policies.
So when we're all used to staying home and that is working. We should not forget about the economy and start figuring out ways to kickstart it.
That seems unrealistic to me. We are on the brink of a depression and I think if we go over that brink it will take a decade to fully recover. I hope I am wrong.
From Wikipedia:
"In most countries of the world, recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the U.S., recovery began in early 1933, but the U.S. did not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high of 25% in 1933."
I'm not sure exactly how good a measure GNP is of this, but for what it's worth the US GNP both absolute and per capita was slightly above its 2008 level by 2010, and has kept climbing ever since. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gnp-...
The great depression had numerous additional problems that do not exist right now, including a global tariff war that was far beyond anything that went on with the US and China.
The central bank was mostly incapable of doing anything during the great depression. Today the central bank can shove $100 billion into JP Morgan if it's about to tip over and do it in a matter of hours. The Fed can set up a national small business credit line to the tune of $2 trillion and do it in a week or two (in this case the logistics are far more difficult than the money).
The US had no social safety net at all in 1933. The US remarkably saw a decline in homelessness between 2004 and 2011, despite the great recession, due to the very successful housing first programs run by the Bush and Obama Administrations. The existence and expansion of food aid programs during the great recession helped to prevent large bread lines. The great depression had no such national effort, much less one that was rapid and effective.
If we absolutely needed to do it, we can shovel $12,000 into the pocket of every adult in the country over the coming year. $36,000 per family of four. It would have a brutal cost, something along the lines of $3 trillion for a year. We would have to force our borrowing costs lower by using the Fed to manipulate those rates low, so we can afford to deal with the long-term costs of all of this - but we can do it. The US can't afford to spend $20 trillion on this diaster, but it can spend $3 to $5 trillion (and there will be hell to pay after, in the form of interest costs and plausibly tax increases (I won't hold my breath for fiscal responsibility in DC)).
What we can't do, is allow this to happen again anytime soon, and that will require numerous large changes globally, including to international trade.
this is all self inflicted, we could go back to business today if we wanted to, unlike in the depression, many banks went down along with their account holders.
That's not to say we wont get there if we do nothing. If we are really going to do this grand experiment, we need a big stimulus to offset it. especially for small businesses. So many restaurant and bar owners will not be able to handle this. Unlike Jim Cramer who says 'we dont need to help the rich', many of restaurants and bar owners have no other source of income and lots of debt, thus will become insolvent fast and there will be no jobs to go back to if we do nothing.
On the other hand it's a straightforward economic slowdown, there's no hidden or surprising cause and effect, we understand what's going on. Before the pandemic there was no shortage of capital. We should be able to recover from it well.
Unless we fail to contain this virus, or find a treatment for those severe cases and the situation lasts for months on end. In which case we're screwed :)
If we had a planned and publicly notified and unified worldwide lockdown and curfew for 20 or 30 days, including the stock markets - the recovery would have been sooner. People and businesses can take that hit.
But with segregated efforts, some doing serious lockdowns and some not so serious lockdowns, where countries are interdependent, the timeline is unknown and hence the impact is unknown. Businesses might be able to stay healthy may be 15 days more. But beyond that is a strong possibility, and hence the economic impact is going to be much larger and uncertain.
"A major contributing factor to some of the criticisms of the management of the H1N1 pandemic was that its mortality impact was considerably less than had been predicted. "
"The documented worldwide mortality from H1N1 is 50–100 times lower than conservative pre-pandemic predictions and substantially lower than seasonal influenza deaths."
How do they make sure that the mortality rate is between 2-3%? Same goes for the hospitalization rate, based on which the entire flattening-the-curve decisions are made.
From what we know many will recover with mild symptoms. Those "many" may not even be tested and accounted for total Covid-19 cases
Edit: I'm not trying to dilute the seriousness of this situation. Just questioning the statistical models based on the source above
My (not entirely serious) plan for getting rich: Wait until the economy hits rock bottom and buy cheap stock on a wide range of economies, than forget them until my SO and i retire (round about 40 years from now), then rediscover our assets, sell and get rich
If you're in the US, just make sure you sign into your brokerage account once or twice every year, to avoid your stocks going into escheat. Here's an episode of Planet Money which tells the tale of a man who bought some Amazon stock back in the day:
You're not going to time the bottom, but you can put a floor on your profits if you assume things will get back to where they were two months ago, and start buying little by little now. Because currently you can find many companies that are at 50% discount already.
Good point. This is still a highish risk investment, but again if you have faith in the government long term and distribute your investments, you should come out ahead.
>Whether market timing is ever a viable investment strategy is controversial. Some may consider market timing to be a form of gambling based on pure chance, because they do not believe in undervalued or overvalued markets. The efficient-market hypothesis claims that financial prices always exhibit random walk behavior and thus cannot be predicted with consistency.
What you are planning seems like a good idea but buying bottoms can be really hard. Lot of info in that wiki article. I like that you are thinking about it though! That already puts you ahead of a lot of the game.
We can't really say that any individual point in time is "the" bottom, but it's obvious just looking at pricing data that we are at "a" bottom. The S&P 500 is down where it was about 3 years ago, and the Dow is similarly situated. If you buy primarily indices, this drop is a bit like time travelling 3 years in the past to buy. And, it's hard to argue that that's not a better deal than buying, say, in December.
> We can't really say that any individual point in time is "the" bottom, but it's obvious just looking at pricing data that we are at "a" bottom.
I don't know if we can even say that. It's entirely plausible that the market continues to move down for months or years as the economic reality starts to become clearer. When the actual bottom is put in, March 2020 might look like "the end of the top", not "the start of the bottom".
You will never time the bottom, just dollar-cost-average over like six months. Also, focusing on how to spend the money is the easy, fun part of the 'plan'. What was the plan that ended up with this much cash today?
You would hopefully alter your risk profile and adjust your portfolio accordingly ~40 yrs from now. Stocks/index funds are great for the young, gotta diversify into bonds etc later on.
Right now I'm gathering up as much cash as possible to buy throughout this downturn. I'm loving the cheap index funds. Then again I am saving it mostly for 10+ years from now.
Currencies are not as save bet IMHO. For years and years Central Banks have printed money (Quantative Easing). When people start to distrust a currency like Dollar or Euro we will see a economic downturn as not seen since 1929.
Now that I have these anti-bodies in my blood, should we not be allowed outside, spend our money and help the economy?
There are must be at least 100 000 people in my (small) country that are now immune. A number that is growing faster than published number of infected.
Let's make a plan for our return to society. Let us wear a mark or put a stamp in our passports or let's think of something clever.
I feel like I could be doing a lot more than just working from home with my newfound super-power.