It's more like it is the only move we have...

The opposite extreme would be to let everybody get infected, see >15% of the 65+ population die, which I am sure some economic model might favor.

I do hope, but doubt, that this crisis will start changing how our society manages crisis and is pro-active about it, rather than being reactive. I this point I don't care which banner a politician represents. I will only care for the one with a plan for direct accountability at the highest level. Otherwise they're all d-bag.

Alameda County ORDER: http://www.acgov.org/documents/Final-Order-to-Shelter-In-Pla...

I was reading the Contra Costa County order when their site went down.

Google cache for Contra Costa County order shows it is nearly identical to Alameda County order:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ilhKHP...

When the panic hugs end, the Contra Costa order will be available in one of these two locations:

https://www.contracostahealth.org/coronavirus/pdf/HO-COVID19...

https://cchealth.org/coronavirus/pdf/HO-COVID19-SIP-0316-202...

Happy to see some exceptions:

10 a. For the purposes of this Order, individuals may leave their residence only to perform any of the following "Essential Activites."

...

iii. To engage in outdoor activity, provided the individuals comply with Social Distancing Requirements as defined in this Section, such as, by way of example and without limitation, walking, hiking, or running

> A surprising number of people commenting that this is an overreaction. I suggest reading this[1] and this[2] before you're so hasty to dismiss this. This is absolutely the right move (and if anything should have been done sooner).

> Also luckily the comment ranking here seems to mean your peers disagree with you.

> [1]: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop....

> [2]: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/

I've noticed these discussions all revolve around problems related to the virus. However, these quarantine measures are also economic in their nature and I'm not seeing even the standard university economics professor trotted out in front of the press to support why this is all going to be okay.

If you are concerned about old people, consider that their investments go belly-up, their pensions funds dry up, their house goes negative equity, and they cannot physically work. How bad is for them after this happens? Because this is what is going to happen with the economy shut down.

Old people are generally in bonds at this point in their life. Bonds have been on a tear lately. Their investments are doing OK.

Not the type of bonds that give returns. Anything that's yielding more than 0% real (higher than 2.5% nominal), like high yield bonds (4-5%) are way down, even high yield muni bonds are down 20% or more from their peaks.

People don't buy bonds for yield any more.

> Old people are generally in bonds at this point in their life. Bonds have been on a tear lately. Their investments are doing OK.

This is assuming no CPI increases from all the money creation, especially if they send the money directly to consumers, likely reducing the Cantillon effects.

And "lately" isn't after weeks or months of substantially reduced economic activity.

Consumer price inflation is mostly a monetary phenomenon. The increased money supply is only one side of the equation. We must also subtract the deflationary effects of debt defaults. Banks create new money by issuing loans, and when debtors default the banks are forced to write down the value of those loans. Thus money which formerly existed in the financial system vanishes.

So for the next year or so as defaults accelerate I expect that deflation will be a larger concern than inflation, and central banks will try to counter that by large, frequent injections of new money.

> Consumer price inflation is mostly a monetary phenomenon. The increased money supply is only one side of the equation. We must also subtract the deflationary effects of debt defaults. Banks create new money by issuing loans, and when debtors default the banks are forced to write down the value of those loans. Thus money which formerly existed in the financial system vanishes.

> So for the next year or so as defaults accelerate I expect that deflation will be a larger concern than inflation, and central banks will try to counter that by large, frequent injections of new money.

The flow of new money creation is not evenly distributed throughout an economy, and this is called the Cantillon Effect (which can also be applied to deflation).

The new money creation has been going strong for some time now, but hasn't been flowing into sectors measured by the CPI. This has kept CPI increases relatively low in comparison to the increases.

However, send $1000 per month to every American and nearly all of that will go into sectors measured by the CPI, which will then go up.

> And "lately" isn't after weeks or months of substantially reduced economic activity.

They'll be even higher if/when that happens. They're not in bonds for the interest. They're in bonds for safety and price appreciation.

> > And "lately" isn't after weeks or months of substantially reduced economic activity.

> They'll be even higher if/when that happens. They're not in bonds for the interest. They're in bonds for safety and price appreciation.

Assuming someone is interested in buying those bonds, since during inflation physical assets (e.g., precious metals) tend to be what buyers prefer.

That's a retro thinking back to the era of the bond vigilantes. That's gone. There's so much stuatory purchases of t-bills that will outweigh any inflationary pressure from QE4. The demand for t-bills was almost insatiable _before_ this mess. Now, it's even more.

T-bills will do just fine despite any outward appearances of inflation. BTW, would rather load up on real estate than "precious" metals. Gold is a relic from a bygone era.

> That's a retro thinking back to the era of the bond vigilantes. That's gone. There's so much stuatory purchases of t-bills that will outweigh any inflationary pressure from QE4. The demand for t-bills was almost insatiable _before_ this mess. Now, it's even more.

> T-bills will do just fine despite any outward appearances of inflation. BTW, would rather load up on real estate than "precious" metals. Gold is a relic from a bygone era.

It is further back to the inflationary period of the 70s, which is the last period that there was a mass flight from dollars due to the rate of CPI increase.

Investopedia[1] states the problem related to T-Bills rather well:

> Treasuries also have to compete with inflation, which measures the pace of rising prices in the economy. Even if T-Bills are the most liquid and safest debt security in the market, fewer investors tend to buy them in times when the inflation rate is higher than the T-bill return. For example, if an investor bought a T-Bill with a 2% yield while inflation was at 3%, the investor would have a net loss on the investment when measured in real terms. As a result, T-bill prices tend to fall during inflationary periods as investors sell them and opt for higher-yielding investments.

So when the CPI is going up and dollars are being used to bid up the price of physical assets, who is buying T-Bills?

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/treasurybill.asp

You're comparing stagflation double digit interest rates from the 1970s to today? We'll be in a declining or low rate environment for the rest of our lifetime. We'll never see double digit interest rates again.

Gold is useless.

> You're comparing stagflation double digit interest rates from the 1970s to today? We'll be in a declining or low rate environment for the rest of our lifetime. We'll never see double digit interest rates again.

> Gold is useless.

I am making the comparison on the worst-case assumption that $1000 is sent to every American every month (extended lock-down of the economy will still require people to have some measure of income or they will riot in the streets), so that's $330 billion pumped into consumer goods sectors every month. Your position is that this will not cause CPI rate of increase to go up?

I just reread my post and I can't find the word "gold" anywhere in the post and I am assuming that your claim is to be amended to state "Gold is useless [as an asset]" since it is one of the most useful minerals known to mankind. Where do you get this from?

"Physical assets" can be anything physical: a building; a lot's worth of used cars; a warehouse full of Play-Doh, etc. When people don't want dollars or financial assets, they will replace them with whatever seems like a better deal.

How bad is it for all these "old people" if they are dead?

It would be really nice to hear compassion instead of worry about money. How about we keep people alive, then deal with the economy? Something tells me the country that can burn $2T in less than a week will be just fine until this passes. Talking about the long term health of the economy in terms that push people out into unsafe situations, when we have a virus that kills people in 3 weeks, borders on evil.

There is one way to solve the virus problem: social isolation. There are infinite ways to solve made up economic problems we foist on ourselves.

>How bad is it for all these "old people" if they are dead? It would be really nice to hear compassion instead of worry about money.

Economic factors should absolutely be taken into account. Money pays for life saving medication and treatments. Tax money from the economy pays for social medicine.

For example, 280,000 EXTRA people died from cancer between 2008-2010 in the OCED. When you consider heart disease, other indications, and the rest of the world, you are talking millions of lives.

Far more people could easily die from the economic fallout in the US than the virus.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Small tidbit but the Federal Reserve, which I assume is what you refer to with the statement around $2T, is a private central Bank. It is not public and it is not affiliated with the US Government or what we would typically consider a “government bailout.”

---

EDIT: as expanded on below my main intent behind the Federal Reserve <> Government affiliation remark is that the Feds decisioning and repro market fund pumping is not government affiliated.

Not affiliated with the federal government? You do know about the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 don't you? Member banks are required to buy stock in their district Federal Reserve Bank and keep a certain amount of money on "reserve" at the Fed as set by the Governors. The Fed Board of Governors is appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate.

My larger intent behind the affiliation remark was "The Fed pumps $1.5T into overnight repro markets" is not a Government action and it is not government money - and theoretically all decisioning Fed decisioning is to be 100% apolitical. These outrageous figures that individuals are conflating with "Wall Street Bailouts" are not government affiliated and are not government funds.

Its board is appointed by the President, so you can't really say it isn't affiliated with the government to some degree.

You can see my reply to the above commenter. I do agree the Fed is affiliated - my intent here was that the Feds action in the repro markets, however, is not.

Might want to check your info; nobody "burned $2T". That was a loan.

Here's my barroom analysis:

Theoretically there are two factors that make this virus dangerous:

1. Experience elsewhere in the world suggests the transmission rate is high under normal social conditions. Say 2:1 or 3:1. If those numbers are accurate, the infection will spread exponentially. Are they accurate? Dunno.

2. Experience elsewhere in the world suggests a high rate of infections require long stays in ICU, with some of those cases dying. What rate and how long and how many? Dunno.

But there is some combination of transmission rate and hospital load where the healthcare system gets absolutely gummed up. If that happens, they must deal with the scenario where large numbers of patients who normally would have been treated get triaged to to end of life instead. I assume that would mean all major cities start digging mass graves, because what else do you do with 1000s of unplanned dead bodies all at once?

The purpose of the lockdowns is to lower transmission rate below 1:1, where it will essentially fizzle out on its own as long as we remain locked down. Again I've read that experience elsewhere in the world suggests this can be effective. Again, I'm not aware of any especially convincing evidence of this.

Given this model, the optimistic outcome is a short lockdown will buy enough time to come up with less harmful interventions. For example, better testing would allow healthy people to return to normal life while keeping transmission rate below 1:1. Or improved treatment would reduce the load on the healthcare system. Or a vaccine. Or maybe the estimated parameters are too high, but we can't know until more testing is done.

Less optimistic outcome is lurching along in uncertainty while the economy implodes, followed by the unpopular mass grave scenario.

One perspective is that people are tired of getting the short end of the stick. Yet again the young incur an outsized proportion of the cost while the old reap an outsized proportion of the benefit.

If ICUs are clogged with old folks with COVID-19, everyone else's care suffers. For example, young people who get into car accidents.

You aren't thinking of second-order effects.

In places where health care systems are overwhelmed, medical personnel are having to choose to who let in to the ICU, and they've been choosing to let in those most likely to survive, which tend to be young people.

In such a situation, old people are going to effectively be left to die, and it'll be younger people who are more likely to survive (which they are anyway, simply by virtue of being young).

The only old people that are likely to benefit are those who manage to live long enough in isolation to not get infected before a vaccine or effective treatment becomes widely available... which could take a long time.

you’re thinking of just covid-19 cases. but they compete with all other cases for medical care.

if you come in messed up from a car accident and you need 5 doctors to survive, or those 5 doctors can keep 5 covid patients alive each, you’re going to be left to bleed out. regardless of how young you are.

(i’m not claiming those relative numbers are realistic.)

Would they kick out an old person already occupying an ICU bed for a young accident victim that just came in?

EMTALA in the US appears to dominate among a myriad other sister regulations in this medicolegal and medical ethics problem space. The decision should be left to the staff on the ground with the details of the situation at the moment.

An unaddressed gap is medical staff on the pandemic front lines without adequate PPE are still shackled by these rules made for a system that is not overwhelmed by a pandemic. These need to be waived for the duration of the emergency.

No, but a person in an ICU bed will need a lot of other services which might be subject to triage. (Remember that "beds" is a shorthand here - it's not a shortage of physical beds that's an issue, it's easy and quick to build beds.)

I suppose it makes sense to have an explicit discussion of this trolley-style problem. Given an choice between $9.6 trillion damage to the economy and the deaths of a million mostly elderly people, which would you choose? An economist following the most recent US figure cited on the "Value of life" Wikipedia page [1] would say this is break even. A particularly selfish young person would say it's a good deal. I personally would not take it, but that might just be my own personal biases.

As with such trolley problems, real life is rarely so clear-cut. If done intelligently, massive loss of life can be prevented, and the economy can find smart ways to adapt.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

Agreed. And the frustration is that we are seeing tons of government action to prevent loss of life, but the effort to protect against the economic damage is basically non-existant. Couple a lockdown with something like a moratorium on rent collection and a widespread effort to help feed everyone and it would feel much less one-sided.

Young people are underestimating the risk to themselves. A 0.1% IFR still justifies spending $20k a person to avoid.

It's a CFR of 0% in Korea under 29, and we're still missing a large portion of the population that's already either had it, or has it and is asymptomatic, or has it and is writing their symptoms off as a mild flu. Potentially divide all the numbers by 6 if the other article posted today is accurate.

But the current order is closer to mass job loss and I don't know that the risk to young people justifies that.

There's likely to be massive job loss either way. At least this way there's a chance to keep our health care system from being overwhelmed as well.

Either way, we may be looking at an economic depression the likes of which hasn't been seen for a hundred years.

Unfortunately, the current government is very unlikely to offer a New Deal to get us out of it, and it remains to be seen what the voters who survive this pandemic will do about it.

I'm doubtful about your first statement. People are resilient - I find it hard to imagine a maybe 2x increase in annual US deaths causing such widespread and complete shutdown of economic activity.

The estimates that I've seen have ranged from 330k to 10 million deaths in the US.. and that's just directly from COVID-19 alone.

An overwhelmed health care system and lack of medicines and medical supplies is likely to cause even more deaths.

That's not to mention other possible deaths due to the ensuing chaos and social and economic disruption brought about by the above deaths, global political instability, and reduced supply and demand from the rest of the world as it battles this pandemic.

400k people die from smoking related illnesses every year. Can we ban tobacco? How about sugar to prevent obesity related illnesses? I think these measure are reasonable, I think allowing other such stupid things is unreasonable.

How many people will die from climate change? It really feels like unless it is an uncontrolled threat to baby boomers we will not take action on it.

> 400k people die from smoking related illnesses every year. Can we ban tobacco?

400K people die from smoking related illnesses, as a result of consuming something they knew would do that to them. What we outlawed was second-hand smoke, where we prevented innumerable deaths of people who didn't get to choose whether they smoked: at bars, at restaurants, at casinos, on airplanes. That is a fair place to draw the line. If you want to kill yourself smoking, you know the risks, and so long as you're not impacting anyone else, have at it.

> How about sugar to prevent obesity related illnesses?

As in this case a debate should be had: personal liberty vs. companies who know they're selling a harmful product. The right place to draw the line could easily be to outlaw advertising of sugar-added products to children.

> I think these measure are reasonable, I think allowing other such stupid things is unreasonable.

Not going out to the detriment of others is far closer to second-hand smoking than to first-hand smoking so I'd wager an entire couple of decades of case law and precedent exists.

> How many people will die from climate change? It really feels like unless it is an uncontrolled threat to baby boomers we will not take action on it.

Boomers represent 22% of the US population as of 2018, and obviously, falling. If I remember my math right, democracy gives the youth a pretty big edge so they can't really pin this one on the boomers anymore.

You’ll be old one day, if you’re lucky.

I don't think that's a very productive comment.

It's true, but it has zero relevance to the fact that people are naturally resistant to being told to make huge sacrifices almost solely for the benefit of another group of people. Particularly at a time when one of the major (pre-coronavirus) world storylines is around the first group of people suffering from the climate decisions made by the older group.

Every generation inherits a world full of the problems created or only half-solved by the generation before it. It's not unique to our generation and it won't be unique to the next one, unless the young people are the first generation of perfect people capable of living their lives without creating a single new problem for the next generation.

The older generation also solved a lot of problems, and gave us great gifts, as did every generation before them, and as we will for the ones that follow us.

It's not productive to try to pit the young against the old, and the GP is right to point out that you too will be old one day, if you're lucky, so it's certainly unwise to reform the system so that it discriminates against the very group you should hope to join someday (and sooner than you would imagine, sooner than anyone wishes), especially considering the alternative.

I think my point is more that the pandemic + this sort of government response inherently pits the young vs old. The government has enacted a sweeping lockdown (unprecedented loss of freedom AFAIK^) that overwhelming hurts people of working age for the benefits of high-risk older people. But where is the help for those that now can't pay their rent or buy enough food? That situation inherently breeds resentment at a time where resentment is already a mainstream topic.

^This matters because it shows that the government is capable of taking dramatic action

> The government has enacted a sweeping lockdown (unprecedented loss of freedom AFAIK^) that overwhelming hurts people of working age for the benefits of high-risk older people.

Be sure to tell grandma how much you care, junior.

> But where is the help for those that now can't pay their rent or buy enough food?

Folks in California are eligible for up to $1800/month in unemployment benefits.

> That situation inherently breeds resentment at a time where resentment is already a mainstream topic.

Response to a disaster should breed solidarity.

Your grandparents fought in a world war, and you ... need to stay at home for a few weeks. Some things are bigger than you, sheesh.

> people are naturally resistant to being told to make huge sacrifices almost solely for the benefit of another group of people

This has gotta be the most nihilistic thing I've ever read. And I spend time on Reddit.

The ascendance of humanity is due to a) our brains, and b) our aggregating into communities and working for collective benefit. Our entire existence disproves your hyper-libertarian/utilitarian notion.

Then again, clearly some people hold this perverse idea... which explains the random edge lords on Twitter bragging about violating social distancing protocols.

It's not nihilistic at all. It's just human nature proven time and time again over history. Us vs them is a core concept of human society. That's why it's so heartwarming when we see stories of people making major sacrifices for people that aren't part of their family/community.

If you're always agreeable and self-sacrificing, you'll be taken advantage of by malicious actors. And it's not always easy to figure out whether the other person is actively trying to take advantage of you or not.

Nah, that's prisoner's dilema at work.

And some people chronically defect, hence why tit-for-tat works.

This is a massive overreaction. We are past the point of containment, yet we are enacting policies based on containment.

The virus is here to stay in the US for the next year. It doesn't make any sense to limit social interaction (for young people) for just 2 weeks. If there is no vaccine and the rate of expose gets down, after the "lockdown" is lifted, transmission will simply pick up again.

The media and WHO are complicit in spreading hysteria like claiming the mortality rate is 3.4% (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/05/coro...) based on completely faulty numbers. These numbers are obviously flawed because they do not account for people who have not had major symptoms and thus have not been diagnosed.

The actual way to stop the spread is to tell elderly folks and people with underlying health conditions to stay at home. Not to keep young people out of their gyms (All bay area gyms are now shutdown). The hospitalization rate for under 45 year olds is very low. By allowing under 45 year olds to get sick and develop immunity, we can actually stop the spread.

There is no endgame for social distancing everyone other than waiting for a vaccine (won't happen soon) or hoping the summer stops the transmission rate (not guaranteed). It is selfish to expect the majority of the population to stay away from work and gyms when the risk is extremely low for them. Note that young and old will continue to cross paths in close proximity at grocery stores, the post office and other "essential" locations. It is just wishful thinking that a two week break will lead to a long term fix.

There is a lot that remains unknown about the COVID-19 disease. Is it biphasic? Does it leave lung scarring or other chronic ailments? I think you are being very presumptuous as to the type of virus SARS-CoV-2 and disease COVID-19 are. Could you imagine how naive you would sound giving this advice during other unknown viral pandemics? For example the 80s HIV and AIDS crisis. Obviously COVID-19 is nowhere as fatal, but to assume there are zero long term repercussions is a little early as of now. Perhaps slowing down and waiting for more answers as research ramps up is not the worst short term trade off.

Weird how every expert, who all have decades more experience than you, disagree with everything you said. I guess they are all wrong.

Out of curiosity, which "experts" have you seen claim that the virus can be contained at this point, and what is the timeframe for containment?

The only thing that I believe is objectively contentious in my post is whether allowing young people to get exposed would help things.

Hacker News deep-thinkers have the answer for everything!