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Comment by brigandish | Hacker News Reader

I know someone who handles import/export in a manufacturing company with a factory in China. Right now they're delaying orders because of how shorthanded they are, 70% of the staff are off with COVID, some worse than others but that's a lot by anyone's reckoning.

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So in a couple of weeks the vast majority of that 70% will be back at work.

That is not how it seems to work. The US has been “back to work” for quite a while now, but there are a lot of staff shortages. People don’t just bounce back to status quo after immense trauma.

The western world hasnt had staff shortages, it has had pay shortages.

Inflaition is double digits and employers appear to prefer to lose money (bold move from the capitalists, lets see if it pays off) rather than take a slightly lower profit margin to keep workers.

As such workers have done a round of musical chairs, and the companies left with empty chairs are crying that millenials are so entitled that they dont want to scrub toilets for $1 a day anymore.

If your theory involves market participants acting against their clear and demonstrated interest (capitalists preferring to lose money rather than reduce margins), maybe contemplate your theory being incorrect rather than mass irrationality from a large number of people.

> If your theory involves market participants acting against their clear and demonstrated interest

It happens all the time, look around!

And the other 30% may be off, or not, and the workforce will be at reduced capacity either way. I’ve no idea what kind of speculation could claim any amount of certainty on whether a particular group of people - in a pandemic of all things - will catch a disease, how they will fare, and how long it will take for them to recover so I’m at a loss as to what your point is. We’re in the realm of horoscopes now.

Hopefully, but by then 70% of the workers at some other factory will be off with COVID, and so on. So, possibly a total disaster in the making.

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