U.S. economy grows at blockbuster 4.9% pace in third quarter

[The Barbarian]

Which position conveys a greater sense of narcissism?

The one that is good with cutting funds to protect people against death one thinks think will not affect one, but objects to cutting funds for protection against things that one thinks might happen to one.

Nothing I've said is gaslighting.

Denial is part of the package.

The gaslighting occurred when you jumped into the conversation with the assertion that the lives lost were a major contributor to the economic woes

As you learned, it's not only a major cause, the medical data shows it will continue to cost money for the foreseeable future. American Medical Assn. Journal estimates that about 15% of unfilled jobs are attributable to long COVID.

So, to clarify, is it only inappropriate to talk about the economic impacts of covid when the economic impacts are a net negative...but perfectly acceptable to discuss the economic impacts of covid so long it's being done strictly withing the context of myopically looking at only one metric that conveys a "more restrictions = better" sentiment?

And we're back to gaslighting. It's always a bad idea to fake quotes. Dead giveaway.

 

[The Barbarian]

So, which entity is it that we shouldn't be trusting?

The one that didn't bother to look at the short term and long-term economic costs of bungling the pandemic. As you now see, they missed the damage that will be with us for decades, draining GDP. Not just the dead who will cease contributing to GDP forever, but also the living whose long-term disabilities will lower their economic contributions.

 

[The Barbarian]

A more realistic model...
Sci Rep
2021 Oct 14;11

Epidemiological and economic impact of COVID-19 in the US ​

Abstract ​

This research measures the epidemiological and economic impact of COVID-19 spread in the US under different mitigation scenarios, comprising of non-pharmaceutical interventions. A detailed disease model of COVID-19 is combined with a model of the US economy to estimate the direct impact of labor supply shock to each sector arising from morbidity, mortality, and lockdown, as well as the indirect impact caused by the interdependencies between sectors. During a lockdown, estimates of jobs that are workable from home in each sector are used to modify the shock to labor supply. Results show trade-offs between economic losses, and lives saved and infections averted are non-linear in compliance to social distancing and the duration of the lockdown. Sectors that are worst hit are not the labor-intensive sectors such as the Agriculture sector and the Construction sector, but the ones with high valued jobs such as the Professional Services, even after the teleworkability of jobs is accounted for. Additionally, the findings show that a low compliance to interventions can be overcome by a longer shutdown period and vice versa to arrive at similar epidemiological impact but their net effect on economic loss depends on the interplay between the marginal gains from averting infections and deaths, versus the marginal loss from having healthy workers stay at home during the shutdown.

It's not a simple as your guys at the university imagined.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

The one that is good with cutting funds to protect people against death one thinks think will not affect one, but objects to cutting funds for protection against things that one thinks might happen to one.

That's a misrepresentation of what I said.

At no point did I ever make it about myself.

You keep obfuscating the issue here by trying to make it sound like my statements are in regard to what impacts me personally.

I wouldn't expect everyone in my town to lose their job to save my life.

Denial is part of the package.

Denial of what?

As you learned, it's not only a major cause, the medical data shows it will continue to cost money for the foreseeable future. American Medical Assn. Journal estimates that about 15% of unfilled jobs are attributable to long COVID.

The study you're citing there was from 2022, and some of their hypothesis has already proven to not play out as forecasted

Rates of Long COVID in the U.S. Have Declined Since June of 2022 | KFF

The share of people who say they have had long COVID has declined since the summer, according to a new KFF analysis of self-reported data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among people who have ever had COVID, the share who say they currently or have ever had long COVID...

www.kff.org

The rates of people who report having long dropped between June 2022 and and January

Among those who have ever presented as having long COVID in 2022, over half are no longer reporting symptoms by Jan of 2023

While the study you linked about long covid job impacts were certainly going off of the best data they had at the time, they were conducted in Jan 2022, which was the tail end of the Delta wave (and when Omicron - a much milder illness - was just starting to creep up). And that's not the researchers fault, nobody could've predicted at that time that after 3 consecutive "strains getting more dangerous" cycles, it would out of the blue get replaced by a strain that was much milder in comparison.

For most mild infections, long Covid symptoms clear after a year, large study finds

A new study analyzing nearly 2 million patient records in Israel concludes that for most people, the troubling symptoms that persist after a mild Covid infection fade away after about a year.

www.statnews.com

And based on more current data, there's nothing to suggest that long covid will have the kind of impact previously suggested.

Given that we're to the omicron strains (which involves much more mild infections), and that for most people who have it, the symptoms clear in around a year.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

A more realistic model...
Sci Rep
2021 Oct 14;11

Epidemiological and economic impact of COVID-19 in the US ​

Abstract ​

This research measures the epidemiological and economic impact of COVID-19 spread in the US under different mitigation scenarios, comprising of non-pharmaceutical interventions. A detailed disease model of COVID-19 is combined with a model of the US economy to estimate the direct impact of labor supply shock to each sector arising from morbidity, mortality, and lockdown, as well as the indirect impact caused by the interdependencies between sectors. During a lockdown, estimates of jobs that are workable from home in each sector are used to modify the shock to labor supply. Results show trade-offs between economic losses, and lives saved and infections averted are non-linear in compliance to social distancing and the duration of the lockdown. Sectors that are worst hit are not the labor-intensive sectors such as the Agriculture sector and the Construction sector, but the ones with high valued jobs such as the Professional Services, even after the teleworkability of jobs is accounted for. Additionally, the findings show that a low compliance to interventions can be overcome by a longer shutdown period and vice versa to arrive at similar epidemiological impact but their net effect on economic loss depends on the interplay between the marginal gains from averting infections and deaths, versus the marginal loss from having healthy workers stay at home during the shutdown.

It's not a simple as your guys at the university imagined.

Again, I would hesitate to put a whole lot of stock in old models, especially one from Oct of 2021.

That model was from a month before Omicron even appeared, and months before it became the dominant strain.

Omicron changed the dynamics of a lot of things, and I think that's been realized by a lot of people. A person's prognosis (both in terms of severity and in terms of likelihood of long covid) improved greatly by Omicron overtaking Delta.

Case in point, vaccine uptake of the original vaccines isn't much better now than it was in Oct 2021. (most aren't even getting the new boosters). Yet, I presume most people probably aren't too concerned about social distancing and masks anymore, and nobody would be recommending business closures at this juncture. But that would've been very different back in Oct of 2021.

 

[Pommer]

Yes, and they're still feeling some of those lingering effects now

https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2023/309/article-A001-en.xml

New Zealand’s economy is now in a recession after a strong post-pandemic recovery. Compared to most other advanced economies, New Zealand recovered from the pandemic faster, gaining 10 percent since the middle of 2020 aided by generous fiscal support, strong investment, and private consumption (Figure 1). But this came at the cost of significant overheating against capacity constraints exacerbated by restrictions on labor movement due to border closures and disruptions in global supply chains. Following significant policy tightening, the economy entered a technical recession, with real GDP declining by 0.1 percent q/q (SA) in 2023Q1, following a 0.7 percent decline in 2022Q4 GDP. High frequency indicators, such as retail sales, point to ongoing demand slowdown amid weaker sentiment. Wholesale activity is also subdued with manufacturing (PMI) and services (PSI) surveys weakening in recent months.


In addition, they had to implement one of their biggest rate-hikes in their history...

As well as having their currency lose value as well on the international stage

New Zealand’s Dollar Is on Brink of Longest-Ever Losing Streak

The New Zealand dollar looks poised to suffer a record losing streak.

www.bloomberg.com

It's all in what a country opts to prioritize.

Per the link to the USC study I posted earlier, with regards to how it played out in the US

USC Study: Mandatory business closures drove the economic decline during COVID-19 pandemic

A multidisciplinary team of USC researchers used a novel economic analysis to tally the $14 trillion cost of the COVID-19 pandemic to the U.S. economy.

priceschool.usc.edu

Business closures have had by far the greatest impact. During the first six months of the pandemic beginning in early 2020, for example, business closures accounted for a 26.3% decline in U.S. GDP, compared to a 12.2% decline through work avoidance.

Deaths and illnesses had the least effect because people who were no longer able to work were replaced by the large number of people who were unemployed by COVID.

View attachment 338951


So, in a purely economic sense, borrowing and subsidizing to stave off as as many deaths and illnesses as possible provides the "least bang for the buck" so to speak. And to reiterate, that's just in an economic sense... I'm not suggesting we do nothing and/or put no value on the "years of life lost" metric. I do think it's appropriate to make lives part of the conversation provided the juice is worth the squeeze.

For instance, if the dynamic was "We need to borrow $X Trillion, and completely upend the economy to save 100 lives"...obviously the answer would be no, that would wouldn't be practical. If the dynamic was "we need to do this thing that will cost everyone an extra $2 and make a few temporary closures, but it'll save 250,000 lives, then yes, that's a policy decision worth considering.

The key is deciding where the "line" is with regards to it making sense vs. not making sense in terms of practicality.

Yeah hindsight is 20/20; mayhaps we should open a thread for how New Zealand fared coming out of the COVID pandemic instead of derailing this one?

 

[The Barbarian]

Again, I would hesitate to put a whole lot of stock in old models, especially one from Oct of 2021.

It's not the age of a model; it's how much the model corresponds to reality. The one assumption of this model that doesn't precisely fit the pandemic, is that long COVID is going to be a lot longer than initially thought. So the model tends to underestimate the economic damage of the virus itself.

Omicron changed the dynamics of a lot of things, and I think that's been realized by a lot of people. A person's prognosis (both in terms of severity and in terms of likelihood of long covid) improved greatly by Omicron overtaking Delta.

Turns out, the variant of the virus doesn't change the frequency of long COVID:

October 30, 2023
More than 50% of long-COVID patients failed to improve 1.5 years after their initial diagnosis, according to a new study based on cases seen at a Danish post-COVID clinic, both before and after the Omicron variant period. The study was published yesterday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The analysis included 806 patients who were infected with the wild-type strain, Alpha, Delta, or Omicron strain. All case-patients had been referred to a long COVID clinic with symptoms persisting at least 12 weeks from onset of COVID-19. Seventy percent of participants were female, with a median age of 48.

Study: Regardless of variant, half of long-COVID patients fail to improve after 18 months

The analysis included 806 patients who were infected with the wild-type strain, Alpha, Delta, or Omicron strain.

www.cidrap.umn.edu

What we've learned is that long COVID tends to happen to younger people, which again means more economic harm:
Information collected so far shows that long COVID tends to affect younger people: those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Younger women are more likely to report lasting symptoms than younger men, but it is not known if there are any differences due to race, socioeconomic class, or to other diseases a person might have.

Delta Variant and Long COVID Are the Biggest Pandemic Issues, Experts Say

Infectious disease experts from Johns Hopkins University discuss how the Delta variant of COVID is now dominant in the United States and how long hauler numbers are on the rise.

www.verywellhealth.com

Another reason the USC model fails to accurately estimate the economic harm of the virus.

 

[The Barbarian]

That's a misrepresentation of what I said.

At no point did I ever make it about myself.

So you're telling us you're old? You were fine with people dying from COVID to avoid spending money to prevent it, but you were very opposed to cutting funding for hazards that would affect younger people as well.

Tell us about it.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

It's not the age of a model; it's how much the model corresponds to reality. The one assumption of this model that doesn't precisely fit the pandemic, is that long COVID is going to be a lot longer than initially thought. So the model tends to underestimate the economic damage of the virus itself.

The age of the model is pertinent if it was formulated before major changes in the conditions happened.

For instance, if I modelled out what I thought was a reasonable estimate for foreign aid spending, and 6 months later, the Russian invasion of Ukraine happens, that throws some wrenches into the gears that nobody was expecting.

More than 50% of long-COVID patients failed to improve 1.5 years after their initial diagnosis, according to a new study based on cases seen at a Danish post-COVID clinic, both before and after the Omicron variant period. The study was published yesterday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The analysis included 806 patients who were infected with the wild-type strain, Alpha, Delta, or Omicron strain. All case-patients had been referred to a long COVID clinic with symptoms persisting at least 12 weeks from onset of COVID-19. Seventy percent of participants were female, with a median age of 48.

That would mean this particular study you're referencing goes directly against these.

Ironically enough, this one is from the same source (as in, same research institution) as the one of the ones you cited, and they're only 2 months apart

Omicron variant may be less likely to lead to long COVID

The study took place before availability of the 2-strain COVID-19 vaccine, which offers protection against Omicron and the wild-type virus.

www.cidrap.umn.edu

And for this one:

https://www.science.org/content/article/people-catch-omicron-are-less-likely-get-long-covid

These days, Willan is less anxious. After Omicron began spreading in late 2021, COVID-19 deaths became a rarity even among his frail and immunocompromised patients, he says. And infections now carry a lower threat of lingering complications. “These patients with Omicron, they’re much less likely to get Long Covid,” says Willan, whose patients are overwhelmingly vaccinated. Earlier this month, he reported in the British Journal of Haematology that his patients’ risk of Long Covid symptoms 3 months after infection had dropped from 46% with the original coronavirus strain and another called Alpha, to 35% with the Delta variant, to 14% with Omicron.

The trend appears in both vulnerable and healthy people. A group in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy reported this month in The Lancet Oncology that the risk of Long Covid among cancer patients fell from about 17% in 2021 to 6% more recently, as cases shifted to Omicron. Another just-published study of healthy Swiss hospital workers describes a similar pattern.

“The risk of Long Covid is not comparable between these variants,” says Philipp Kohler, an infectious disease specialist at St. Gallen Cantonal Hospital, who co-led the Swiss study. Vaccination, Omicron’s tendency to cause milder disease, and its distinct biology may all play a role, though the degree to which different factors blunt risk is a mystery.

What we've learned is that long COVID tends to happen to younger people, which again means more economic harm:
Information collected so far shows that long COVID tends to affect younger people: those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Younger women are more likely to report lasting symptoms than younger men, but it is not known if there are any differences due to race, socioeconomic class, or to other diseases a person might have.

Per the CDC:

Products - Data Briefs - Number 480 - September 2023

National Center for Health Statistics

www.cdc.gov

It does show a breakdown and some difference by race and income level.

...but it also reiterates my earlier point, which is that long covid seems to be tapering down. Meaning, apart from a rare cases, there's no reason to expect that people will still be suffering from long covid in 2025 from a case they caught in 2021.

Per this study out of McMaster University in Canada
found that most people infected with the SARS-CoV2 virus recover within 12 months, irrespective of the severity. However, although 75 per cent had recovered at the 12-month mark after becoming ill with the virus, 25 per cent of patients still had at least one of the three most common symptoms, including coughing, fatigue and breathlessness. Researchers also found that patients with persistent symptoms also had antibodies associated with autoimmune illnesses


Which tends to jive with the study I linked earlier...which showed that of the people presenting with long covid in June of 2022, more than half said they had recovered and were no longer experiencing those symptoms by Jan of 2023. Which is predictable given that the trajectory appears to show that long covid tends to resolve after 12 months.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

So you're telling us you're old? You were fine with people dying from COVID to avoid spending money to prevent it, but you were very opposed to cutting funding for hazards that would affect younger people as well.

Tell us about it.

I didn't say I wanted to "avoid spending money to save lives", that's far too broad of a statement.

The point I was highlighting was suggesting that there's a spectrum of

"Spend $1 to save a hundred million lives" (No brainer) <-> "Spend $100 million to save 1 life" (may need to carefully weigh that one out)

As noted before, these are the types of decisions we all make concessions on, on a daily basis.

The fact that we allow motor vehicles to exist (despite the fact that 4 million people per decade in the US - of all ages) die as a result of them being on the roads is a "lives vs. economics" trade-off we all have made and accepted. We allow people to drink/smoke/eat fast food (collectively, those cause over 500k deaths per year...we've opted to go with freedom over restriction on that one as well)

So I don't see why it should be viewed as horrific or ghastly to merely suggest that the same exercise is applicable here.

We all have embraced freedoms on certain things that we know will lead to the loss of lives (perhaps even our own), so we're not really arguing over the underlying principle...we've all acknowledged and embraced the principle to varying degrees, we're really just arguing over thresholds here.

 

[The Barbarian]

"Spend $1 to save a hundred million lives" (No brainer) <-> "Spend $100 million to save 1 life" (may need to carefully weigh that one out)

As noted before, these are the types of decisions we all make concessions on, on a daily basis.

I notice you objected to schools closing in pandemics and other steps that would protect older people. But you weren't ready to quit enforcing traffic laws that also protect people in your age group.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I notice you objected to schools closing in pandemics and other steps that would protect older people. But you weren't ready to quit enforcing traffic laws that also protect people in your age group.

The school closures thing has nothing to do with money... as far as I know, teachers were still getting paid during that time window and education spending didn't shift a whole lot. My objection to the school closures (not even the initial ones...before we knew what we were up against, I supported the remote learning approach) was merely due to how long they kept them going for. Long after it became evident that children were not a huge risk (and neither were the 83% of teachers that are under 55, most of whom had prioritized access to the vaccines), there were districts that were still pushing to do remote learning due to "covid concerns". Sorry if it comes across as cynical...but if a 36 year old vaccinated teacher is claiming they wanted to extend the remote learning out of covid concerns, I question how much of it is sincere vs. how much of it is merely "I like working from home, and I don't want to go back to having to get dressed up and fight the traffic driving to work every morning"

But to the other part:

How much does it cost to enforce traffic laws? How big is the benefit of traffic law enforcement relative to the imposition it creates?


As it currently stands, the total sum of policing in the US costs $100 Billion per year, obviously not all of that is traffic enforcement.

But for the sake of argument, let's say it was.

$100 Billion (in comparison to the potential amount of life lost due to people ignoring stop signs, red lights, and driving 100mph), and traffic laws themselves don't completely prohibit you from engaging in automotive travel in any significant way.

Now, if you said that traffic law enforcement was costing $6 Trillion per year, and the "rules of the road" were such that every speed limit was set 20mph, and there would be rolling "stay off the road orders" every time the weather conditions got a little slippery, making everyone wear double seatbelts and a helmet every time they drove, and setting up DUI checkpoints 24/7 every 2 miles, on every major highway.... then no, I would say despite those measures saving lives, the amount of disruption they cause in other areas of life/society/economy would be a situation where the juice isn't worth the squeeze, I'll take my chances.



There were other options that I would've been very supportive of with regards to Covid mitigation measures that would've been a lot cheaper, a lot less disruptive, and wouldn't have resulted in same level of disruption...and probably wouldn't have changed the overall death rate by any significant degree.

For instance, after we'd gotten to day 60 of the 15 days to flatten the curve, and saw that the main groups at serious risk were 65+ (and 55+ with specific comorbidities), we could've made arrangements to allow people in those categories to be eligible for benefits while everyone else went back to something more resembling normalcy. And I was fine with the money spent on the vaccines and testing kits...that made perfect sense. What didn't make sense were rules like (but not limited to)

- You can go to a Wal-Mart, but "Joe's hardware" has to stay closed, we'll just back PPP loans for Joe
- You can go to a restaurant, but it has to be < 15% capacity, tables have to be 6 feet apart and you have to wear your mask when you walk to the bathroom, but it's fine to take it off when you're at the table.
- We're going to pay 27 years olds to stay home
- Eviction moratoriums lasting well into late 2022 (when the proper response to anyone who's healthy and under 50 should've been "yeah, the I'm afraid of covid thing isn't going to fly anymore, get your jab and go back to work, rent's due")

 

[The Barbarian]

How Many People Have Long COVID? The Statistics Are ‘Pretty Scary’​

Long COVID threatens to amass into a new wave of chronic illness with ramifications for health care systems and the economy for years to come.
The majority of Americans have had the coronavirus at some point in the past two and a half years. A smaller number – though still a substantial proportion – went on to have lingering symptoms for months or longer from a condition known as long COVID-19.
Just how many people have had long COVID or are still experiencing it? Estimates vary, but the numbers might be a surprise to many. And the high estimates could signal lingering problems for America’s health care systems as well as the economy even after the pandemic is over.
According to federal government estimates released last month, nearly 1 in 5 adults who have had COVID-19 in the past were still experiencing at least one symptom of long COVID – fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, chest pain and headaches among others – as of mid-June. The number jumps to more than 1 in 3 when considering adults who have experienced the condition at any point in the pandemic after COVID-19 infection.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-07-08/how-many-people-have-long-covid-the-statistics-are-pretty-scary

The school closures thing has nothing to do with money... as far as I know, teachers were still getting paid during that time window and education spending didn't shift a whole lot. My objection to the school closures (not even the initial ones...before we knew what we were up against, I supported the remote learning approach) was merely due to how long they kept them going for. Long after it became evident that children were not a huge risk (and neither were the 83% of teachers that are under 55, most of whom had prioritized access to the vaccines), there were districts that were still pushing to do remote learning due to "covid concerns".

It's the fact that kids get infected easily and spread the virus around. It's like those superspreader events held by antivaxxers who then went home to various places to begin spreading the virus themselves.

How much does it cost to enforce traffic laws? How big is the benefit of traffic law enforcement relative to the imposition it creates?

So it's just the value you put on people who aren't older.

BTW, if the nation had just gotten vaccinated completely, this wouldn't be a problem.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

It's the fact that kids get infected easily and spread the virus around. It's like those superspreader events held by antivaxxers who then went home to various places to begin spreading the virus themselves.

Well sure...which is why I mentioned that I was for the remote learning in the early phase, but as soon as the 2-dose cycle was made available to to the higher risk groups, at that point, from a public policy perspective, we're done. Teachers and high-risk individuals became vaccine eligible in January of 2021. 2-doses, 14-21 days apart (depending on which kind you got)...plus 2 weeks for the antibodies to build up. Kids should've been back to in-person and businesses should've been entirely reopened by March 2021.

So it's just the value you put on people who aren't older.

BTW, if the nation had just gotten vaccinated completely, this wouldn't be a problem.

It's not that I put the value on a particular age groups, it's that I'm placing the value on whether it's putting large impositions on every demographic at the expense of every other aspect of society for the benefit of one specific cohort. If this was a scenario where they were upending every aspect of society for the primary benefit of 35-44 year olds, my answer would still be the same.

On your second part, we're largely in agreement. Our vaccine uptake should've been far better than what it was. I don't know that we can be sure that "it wouldn't be a problem", as other nations that had much better uptake still had their peaks and valleys with regards to the covid waves...but it certainly would've been beneficial during the delta wave in terms of hospital utilization.