Comment by generalpass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by generalpass | Hacker News Reader

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> "At this rate, the deaths from draconian government responses will far outweigh the deaths from the Corona virus across all age demographics."

> Care to elaborate?

The "current rate" assumes a large percentage of the economy being forced to shutdown by government order for an indefinite period. This rate is larger than everyone thinks because we are not just talking about restaurants, theaters and salons. There are all sorts of manufacturing, repair, and other businesses which are also shut down.

(Note that Americans have very little savings.)

The elderly largely rely on government welfare though Social Security, Medicare, and other programs to survive. With payrolls substantially contracted, this is going to cause a very serious burden on these systems. The likely result will be substantially reduced payments to care providers as well as significant delays in payment, which then likely causes some providers to stop accepting from these systems, thus overloading other providers who may follow and do the same.

Everyone needing medical care is reliant on the healthcare system receiving so much money for its services, but given that U.S. healthcare is tied to employment, a lot more people won't be able to pay their bills, so the providers will then increase rates to those who can pay, and employers will be forced to further shed employees to cover premium hikes. Even in the short term, this will reduce new investment in healthcare, such new facilities, equipment, and even equipment maintenance and repair, so the facilities will perform more poorly. Number of beds available will fall because there will be fewer beds per person.

There will also be increases in suicide from the increase in unemployment as well as the social isolation

Drug overdoses rise.

Property crime and violent crime nearly always increase during periods of economic decline.

People will consume less healthy foods and be in poorer health.

The government is now creating money and giving it directly to consumers. This will increase CPI and exacerbate pretty much everything.

Couple of thoughts to your reasoned response.

"The likely result will be substantially reduced payments to care providers as well as significant delays in payment, which then likely causes some providers to stop accepting from these systems, thus overloading other providers who may follow and do the same."

Fed can print money and helicopter it out.

"Everyone needing medical care is reliant on the healthcare system receiving so much money for its services, but given that U.S. healthcare is tied to employment, a lot more people won't be able to pay their bills, so the providers will then increase rates to those who can pay, and employers will be forced to further shed employees to cover premium hikes. Even in the short term, this will reduce new investment in healthcare, such new facilities, equipment, and even equipment maintenance and repair, so the facilities will perform more poorly. Number of beds available will fall because there will be fewer beds per person."

Nationalize the healthcare system and move to single payer.

"There will also be increases in suicide from the increase in unemployment as well as the social isolation

Drug overdoses rise."

It will be interesting to track these numbers over time and compare them to the COVID-19 death toll.

> Couple of thoughts to your reasoned response.

> "The likely result will be substantially reduced payments to care providers as well as significant delays in payment, which then likely causes some providers to stop accepting from these systems, thus overloading other providers who may follow and do the same."

> Fed can print money and helicopter it out.

> "Everyone needing medical care is reliant on the healthcare system receiving so much money for its services, but given that U.S. healthcare is tied to employment, a lot more people won't be able to pay their bills, so the providers will then increase rates to those who can pay, and employers will be forced to further shed employees to cover premium hikes. Even in the short term, this will reduce new investment in healthcare, such new facilities, equipment, and even equipment maintenance and repair, so the facilities will perform more poorly. Number of beds available will fall because there will be fewer beds per person."

> Nationalize the healthcare system and move to single payer.

> "There will also be increases in suicide from the increase in unemployment as well as the social isolation

> Drug overdoses rise."

> It will be interesting to track these numbers over time and compare them to the COVID-19 death toll.

The way that the term "helicopter" is used in this comment and elsewhere recently suggests people using it may not be aware of its etymology. I believe it was first used when Milton Friedman used it euphemistically to describe the best way to generate inflation to consumers. It is highly undesirable. I'm pretty sure nobody takes the threat of inflation seriously, because the real issue is how to get out of inflation. The Fed had to increase interest to 20% the last time there were issues with inflation.

Nationalizing health care and single payer are different. Nationalizing something typically refers to having it managed by the Federal Government. Single payer refers to having the National Government pay healthcare providers.

This will not affect the funding issue because the money still has to come from some place, so either it comes from increasing the number of dollars in circulation or taking it from other sectors, resulting in layoffs.

I will be one of the skeptical ones in reports on deaths to COVID-19 because the government is now fully invested in maximizing the numbers to justify the incredible expense. A similar situation exists in current wars, where they claim every male killed over a certain age to be an enemy combatant because they need to justify their actions. They may likely claim that every person who dies with COVID-19 in their blood was a victim of COVID-19 (SARS2, or whatever the correct term is).

"Nationalizing health care and single payer are different. Nationalizing something typically refers to having it managed by the Federal Government. Single payer refers to having the National Government pay healthcare providers."

I do not disagree.

"I will be one of the skeptical ones in reports on deaths to COVID-19 because the government is now fully invested in maximizing the numbers to justify the incredible expense. A similar situation exists in current wars, where they claim every male killed over a certain age to be an enemy combatant because they need to justify their actions. They may likely claim that every person who dies with COVID-19 in their blood was a victim of COVID-19 (SARS2, or whatever the correct term is)."

My wife's hospital does not have enough test for the living. They do not use a nCov test on the dead as of 03/30/2020. To suggest that they are downplaying the cause of death to "justify their actions" is misleading and downright disrespectful to the departed. The comorbidity between COVID-19 and other causes of death, such as pneumonia is widely known. To downplay this fact is ignorant.

> "Nationalizing health care and single payer are different. Nationalizing something typically refers to having it managed by the Federal Government. Single payer refers to having the National Government pay healthcare providers."

> I do not disagree.

> "I will be one of the skeptical ones in reports on deaths to COVID-19 because the government is now fully invested in maximizing the numbers to justify the incredible expense. A similar situation exists in current wars, where they claim every male killed over a certain age to be an enemy combatant because they need to justify their actions. They may likely claim that every person who dies with COVID-19 in their blood was a victim of COVID-19 (SARS2, or whatever the correct term is)."

> My wife's hospital does not have enough test for the living. They do not use a nCov test on the dead as of 03/30/2020. To suggest that they are downplaying the cause of death to "justify their actions" is misleading and downright disrespectful to the departed. The comorbidity between COVID-19 and other causes of death, such as pneumonia is widely known. To downplay this fact is ignorant.

My stated speculations of government actions have nothing to do with the departed. You are making an appeal to emotion.

The government will have to convince the public that they are being thorough, which will only work when there is some belief in understanding how many are actually dying from the thing they claim to be fighting.

Ignorance is not a factor in government activities. We can clearly see there is no case presented to support the claim that damage done to the economy is offset by the benefits of the lockdowns. This is decision-making 101: will the action performed provide a net benefit. Absent such a case, it is imperative there be an appearance of high death rates so that whenever political pressures to provide a case emerge, they can have as much supportive evidence on their side as possible.

The absence of test kits may make things worse, because if they choose to claim that everyone who had symptoms of the virus and died was killed by the virus, this can often be accepted as evidence in government policy-making as they are not held to scientific standards.

You also fail to mention the marginal propensity to consume. Whereas poorer households tend to spend marginal income as opposed to higher income households who pay down debt or save the money. The former which tends to propel the velocity of money through the economy whereas the latter stagnates it via savings that have no where to go.

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