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Comment by tachyonbeam | Hacker News Reader

I know it's really not PC to talk about this (how dare you value money over human lives!?), but at what point does the economic damage this causes become too much? 15% joblessness would be ~50M americans. If just 0.1% of them commit suicide as a result of losing their jobs or businesses, that would be 50,000 dead.

Maybe there's some kind of intermediate between forcing everyone to stay home and not having any mitigation measures in place whatsoever? Maybe a midway strategy would be less destructive. Protecting the economy isn't just about protecting the rich. The rich will be fine, they will get huge government bailouts (zero-interest loans). However, as you point out, a large percentage of small businesses will never reopen. If anything, this crisis is hugely benefitting Amazon & co.

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the problem with your statement that NOT doing any of the counter measures (like self isolation) would result in the overloading of the healthcare system and many people dying. (heck, the healthcare system in the US seems to be overloaded already).

When you have no further option for healthcare because the system is broken and overloaded, why would going into work make any sense if it resulted in either an period of illness with structural symptons or even death.

In times of crisis, people want food on the table and a roof over their head, if the cost benefit of doing legal work and following the rule of law turns negative, people might aswell just steal food and stop paying rent, who is there to stop them?

Because the vast majority of people under the retirement age resolve the illness in a week or two without the need for healthcare assistance.

The people who need to be locked-down are those over 60 - not the entire population.

There are also measures that can be taken that are not a complete lockdown, eg: limiting public events, temperature monitoring in workplaces, etc.

We're not going to hold stay at home forever - even Wuhan is exiting lockdown (after 2.5 months).

I mean, I hope not, it certainly doesn't seem realistic to do so, but I see people pushing for multi-month lockdowns until mid-summer.

Unfortunately not really https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/chinese-c...

I think the difference here is that virus bring death to us. Suicides can be reduced if governments create the correct stimulus.

Again, it's super easy to criticize when not in charge, but my reaction would have been to shut down any means of travels to and from the country, shut down the country for 45 days completely, slowly restart the economy from crucial business to less and introduce couple of strong measurements to compensate workers for lost income.

Hard to say.

At start of year, situation normal, the economy we had was unsustainable. We were collectively waging war on our environment and winning. Folks mostly had jobs, which was good, but income inequality was nuts and lots of jobs didn't pay a living wage. Housing costs, healthcare and college were out of control.

In short, the world could really use a correction. The pollution reduction from this shutdown has been dramatic and wonderful.

This will hit the economy very hard. The rich will be livid and will push hard to return to business as usual. The rest of us will suffer terribly. Maybe so terribly, and in such numbers, that we have to address it. Maybe we'll come out the other end with something more sustainable for everyone.

(Probably not.)

> Maybe so terribly, and in such numbers, that we have to address it

That’s unfortunately my reading. There are stores boarding their storefronts in LA [0]. Very very premature but gives you a glimpse into the believes of some.

I’m sure at the end we will come out of it in better place that we entered it, but I’m dreading the path we have to take to get there.

[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/tmz/status/1244412908273991680 (I know, I know, it’s TMZ)

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