How will people put food on the table if they're dead, invalided with crippling lung damage, or bankrupted by healthcare costs after a spell in ICU?
It's hard to imagine a better demonstration of how our economic systems are utterly unable to deal with real-world challenges, because they have no mechanisms for pricing non-trivial real-world consequences of externalities of all kinds, and provide no incentives for intelligent collective behaviour.
Remember the coronavirus mostly affects elderly people. At about a ~3% rate it’s not insanely deadly. Sure lots of people get flu and they eventually recover.
The reason of social isolation is to ensure the 3% that do get serious don’t overwhelm the healthcare system. The virus will spread, we just want to slow the spread.
It is sad but inevitable that economic activity will be disrupted by shutdowns. But delaying the shutdown will only lead to longer shutdown down the lane.
> Till when?
For as long as the disease outbreak is contained (it is not going to be forever)
> How will people put food on the table if economic activity stops?
No idea! Maybe something like UBI will help? But the question will remain and will be more troublesome if the outbreak is not contained for sure.
I agree that Goods still have to be produced. I didn't say UBI is a substitute for economic activity. I didn't say UBI was all that you need. You are attacking a straw man here.
To expand a bit more, UBI might help service workers and others other hourly wage workers to take care of themselves. The service workers are the people who interact with other people the most, so an infected service worker who doesn't have an option but to work will end up spreading the disease. UBI might be the answer to temporarily keep them alive.
All of us have to live on reserves if there's a shutdown. Just like China did. It is not going to be great. But the alternative is much worse. And I am not claiming this is a permanent solution.
The government doesn't remotely have mechanisms in place to directly feed millions of civilians for a long period of time. It would make much more sense to give out money (like EBT cards) that can be redeemed to purchase food through the existing private sector food distribution network of grocery stores and restaurants.
While everything is shut down? Including the food distribution network? What good will money do in that scenario?
Shutting everything down isn't an option. The economy isn't some nice-to-have thing you can turn on and off on a whim. It's an essential part of providing the basic necessities that people need to live—which includes much more than just food.
The government is not going to shut everything down. Obviously grocery stores, pharmacies, hospitals, doctor offices, etc., need to stay open. They've all remained open even in Wuhan and Milan.
No one is saying to shut down everything, because of course you don't want to starve everyone (starvation has a mortality rate much worse than COVID-19).
It's shutting down most things that is being suggested. Healthcare and food stay open.
I OBVIOUSLY refer to non vital things like offices, all public places that aren't pharmacies and grocery stores, and even those should have access strictly regulated like in Italy and probably cut to a minimum public transport and put checkpoints on the major bridges to make sure people move only if strictly necessary. Essentially what's being done in Europe already.
Only a person in bad faith would think something different.
for a while it doesn't, we have ample strategic reserves. This is exactly the job FEMA was invented to do even if in this country it's not funded properly and it would be a problem for sure.
But this thing is going to be a huge fucking problem no matter what, if we keep doing what we're doing about 17M people are going to die.
