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Comment by robbrown451 | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree that it will have an economic impact and cause a lot of pain in the short term, but this is also very likely to stimulate some positives economically as well as environmentally.

Some parents are now going to be working at home, side by side with their kids attending school at home. While this may not be ideal all the time, it's not a terrible thing to make all of this work. We're all going to be set up for telecommuting and online education going forward. If nothing else, it's less fossil fuels being burned.

Just like WW2 got us out of a depression and started us on a huge economic upswing -- and yes, at an immense cost -- this might have a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. I would not be surprised if 6 months from now, with the virus gone and a whole lot of disruption behind us, we'll find it stimulated the economy more than it hurt it.

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The families where the parents can work from home are not the concern. The families that are of concern are the ones where parents can not work from home: in service jobs and hospitality, for instance. These are the people with the most to lose (bad job security and low pay) and have the least flexibility in their work schedules already. And this is going to inordinately affect them compared to other groups. As far as I’m aware this is still one of the largest (if not the largest) employment sectors in the economy, so it applies to a lot of families.

Even if you are working from home, a toddler is going to require continuous supervision from at least one adult. But thankfully Washington state hasn’t closed the daycares down (yet).

I think you're trying to put a positive spin on what is clearly an appalling situation, but I think it's important to remember that at the heart of this people are going to die. People are going to lose parents and grandparents. The UK prime minister literally said that in a statement yesterday ("many more are going to lose loved ones before their time", https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-51862282/coronavirus-pm-say...). Talking about how you believe it'll be good for the economy within 6 months is both a bit heartless and possibly very wrong.

Ok, well lots of people talk about its impact specifically on the economy, so I'm not sure how it is heartless, but ok. Can I only talk about the negatives? That feels dishonest, I'd think the HN audience can handle both sides of that particular part of the picture.

And late comedians are making jokes about the whole situation right now. Not about the deaths, but about other aspects of it.

$11.5 trillion dollars has been wiped off the stock market in the past few weeks[1]. That's not just the virus because there's an oil price war going on too, but it does seem like suggesting it'll be back to normal in 6 months implies you don't understand the scale of the problem.

[1] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market...

> suggesting it'll be back to normal in 6 months implies you don't understand the scale of the problem

No one knows the scale of the problem. It's the uncertainty that's driving the volatility.

Get off your high horse. When people are having a discussion about potential negative effects on the economy, it's perfectly fine to talk about potential positive effects on the economy.

Thanks! :)

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