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Comment by jennyyang | Hacker News Reader

This is a global recession, spending is drying up. You may or may not have seen the dot com bust, but this to me looks like that except across the globe. Many companies will die because they rely on cash flow and that will dry up. Restaurants, and entertainment venues will be dead until May 2021, unless we find a vaccine that treats this. As more and more celebrities get infected and possibly die it will hit the psyche a lot more than the financial crisis ever did.

It really is different this time, and it frightens me, not the virus itself but the economic ramifications.

The best case scenario is that summer stops the virus from spreading, panic lessens, and then a treatment is found before September that is effective and quick. Then a vaccine comes out next March 2021 and everyone is happy again.

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You're right that it's different, but this is nothing like the dot com bust. People could still do other work when that happened. Also note that equity busts are quite different from credit busts.

This really is a massive bomb under the economy. Credit is stretched by years of low rates and now a lot of things have to stop.

Other commentators hint at postponed spending, which would be good. But many things in the economy do not work that way. If you skip your holiday now, it's not coming back and the hotels and restaurants will not get that money later. Same with a number of other businesses.

You don’t think someone who was forced to cancel their February vacation wouldn’t take an August vacation once the situation sorted itself out?

This won't be sorted by August.

Cool, any data or is that just speculation? Either way I was asking a hypothetical question.

It’s more the other direction. What evidence do we have that this will be sorted by August?

There has been no evidence that Cov-2 is anywhere as heat sensitive as influenza. This isn’t “the flu”. It doesn’t have to conform to flu patterns.

Right now the only countries getting this under control are ones that have started social distancing early and left many measures in place.

Some will, but many won't. There's a fair few frictions in that. Say you couldn't get a refund for whatever reason. Or your boss won't give you the time. Or whatever occasion you went for is passed.

It's not that I'm saying it's all lost, but you have to count on some share being lost.

> Restaurants, and entertainment venues will be dead until May 2021, unless we find a vaccine that treats this.

Just because people over 70 won't be going to them, doesn't mean the rest of us won't be. Besides, once I've had cornavirus - which could well be inevitable - I'll no longer be scared for it and will head back out. So will everybody else.

To be honest, the best way to avoid a severe economic impact is to accept you'll most likely get it, and rather than killing businesses by staying inside, just got on with your life, stay fit and healthy, and hope for the best. You're more likely to be killed driving your car, so carry on living!

Old people in nursing homes don't get out much, and yet they're the ones that are dying. The fact is that the virus spreads because people don't always die from it, and so they go around spreading it to people who will. Most people probably won't know that they have it until they've spread it to 3 more people.

Your strategy will probably keep you alive, but the same is not guaranteed for many millions of people that are old or with immune system complications.

Well with an R0 of ~2 your speculation of at least 3 is definitely wrong.

So in other words: "who cares, the virus only kills old people who were probably useless to the economy anyway, so business as usual."

I sure hope you don't have any elderly family members. Plenty of people in their 40s have died too

Not what I said. Those most vulnerable should stay at home. No reason for the rest of us too of we are very low risk.

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