Declaring a national emergency, regulating supplies and stores, testing the literal whole county and providing food and healthcare packages takes time, planning and frankly skill that I’m not sure governments have.
Do you mind elaborating on that?
But I think the negative impact of empty grocery stores, people hoarding hygiene products, shops closing because too many employees are staying indoors etc. will be very serious, and that it will take at least weeks before any centralised plan will be able to catch up with this.
Would it be such a bad thing if it took weeks? I would think that most people have enough food and hygiene products to last weeks. And for those that don’t, I would expect most of those people to have family, friends or neighbors who would share. And if that all fails, I would think the government would be able to provide some sort of support (eg. bags of rice and beans) early before the more official support that would come later.
Of course, although I do run into the problem that to me most of this is self-evident, which makes it hard to motivate. But I’ll try to explain some of these claims in more detail.
Declaring a national emergency is a huge cost for a country in general and a government in particular. I think the best way to look at this is that the converse state, “everything is fine please continue operating as normal”, is a very profitable and desirable state, and you’re destroying that. At the very least this can disrupt economies and production chains, but also public trust (between members of the public, the public and industry, the public and government, the industry and industry, etc.)
Regulating supplies and stores is hard. How do you decide how much goes where, which stores need to stay open and which can close, how much to downsize your public transport and community spaces and services? How much extra money is this all allowed to cost? Below you mention to steve2152 that workers will keep working if you just increase their salary, but who pays for this (which department/ministry/bill in particular)? How high are the salaries supposed to be? How do new findings on the spread of the disease impact each of your answers, what are your tipping points for swapping to a globally different approach? Do you even have people at the right level of the chain of command to suggest these ideas (to be honest I’ve never heard of governments paying workers extra during national crisis to keep them working, outside of cleanup of nuclear meltdowns). On top of this I think governments have very little experience with epidemics like the one we are facing (globally) today. Like I said I think this is very hard, and if there wasn’t any particular reason for my government to sort all of this out beforehand, I expect them to not have this sorted out at all.
(On testing the literal whole country) I don’t know about the global situation, but at least where I live I know we’re not doing door to door screening (in fact, general practitioners over here are already overburdened right now, with only the paranoid fraction of the population asking for tests. Which, mind you, are currently being denied unless the doctor deems it reasonably likely to give a positive result). I think the idea of “Eventually we’d be able to test the whole country” is an extremely weak link in any public health plan, and simply is too ambitious to work.
Providing food and healthcare packages is also a massive coordination and transportation problem. Out of all the points I mentioned this might actually be doable(?), but it would still require massive resources (the food/medical supplies themselves, trucks, workers distributing them, people filling the packages, and even people planning what should or shouldn’t be in these packages, people coordinating internationally?). On top of that this plan incurs all the costs of the ‘national emergency’. Plus it’s not even clear to me how giving everybody a food and healthcare box will fix the epidemic, it sounds more like a stopgap measure to me (isolation in combination with this would be the real solution, but telling entire regions to self-quarantine is again incredibly expensive).
Would it be such a bad thing if it took weeks? I would think that most people have enough food and hygiene products to last weeks. And for those that don’t, I would expect most of those people to have family, friends or neighbors who would share. And if that all fails, I would think the government would be able to provide some sort of early before the more official support that would come later.
I think the relevant scale to compare this on is not “life or death”, but “normal life, just trying to save up for a nice vacation/new car/future expenses”. The actual death rate of corona is not that high (I’m avoiding numbers on purpose, because I have no idea about the number of asymptomatic infections), and I expect most people to make it through this just fine on the scale of life to death. But I also expect entire stores and businesses to lose out on major profits, big events to be cancelled, supply chains to be closed off. This is a massive opportunity cost we are paying (in fact, some of my friends are already worried that the corona-recession might get them laid off). In a lot of instances it’s even a real cost, not an opportunity cost, because people have already committed resources to society continuing to function as normal.
Declaring a national emergency is a huge cost for a country in general and a government in particular. I think the best way to look at this is that the converse state, “everything is fine please continue operating as normal”, is a very profitable and desirable state, and you’re destroying that.
I think that’s a good point. I had been overlooking it. I have a tendency to use a “when death is involved, nothing else matters” heuristic.
However, my impression is that if P(>10% of the population is infected) is reasonably high — say, >25% — then the cost to the economy would be tremendous, and it would be worth paying a huge cost right now to avoid that possibility. I’m no expert of course and am totally just eyeballing those numbers.
This all is to say that if the reason why panic is so bad is due to the economic impact, it’s not clear to me that it’s better than the alternative of taking a chance at an even worse economic impact.
Regulating supplies and stores is hard.
For those questions you proceed to pose, my thought is that you have to just make your best guess and go with it. Best guesses may not be perfect, but I would expect them to be solid. In other words, none of those questions seem difficult enough where it would stop us in our tracks.
On top of this I think governments have very little experience with epidemics like the one we are facing (globally) today.
I thought the CDC researches and plans for all of these scenarios? Isn’t that their entire purpose? (Sorry for the sass; it isn’t aimed at you :))
I think the idea of “Eventually we’d be able to test the whole country” is an extremely weak link in any public health plan, and simply is too ambitious to work.
I can’t find the link but I recall a YouTube video where a doctor mentioned that tests cost somewhere around $20, and talked about how here in the US you have to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of sick people sneezing around you, but in Korea it’s a drive through where you get a quick swab and get your results a few hours later.
If we say the cost is $50/person total, that’d be about $15B to test everyone. I have a bad intuition for the magnitudes of numbers that are used in macroeconomics, but the market for laptops was about $100B in 2017, so I assume the impact of the coronavirus is roughly in hundreds of billions or trillions, in which case $15B isn’t that bad.
Plus it’s not even clear to me how giving everybody a food and healthcare box will fix the epidemic, it sounds more like a stopgap measure to me (isolation in combination with this would be the real solution, but telling entire regions to self-quarantine is again incredibly expensive).
My thinking with the healthcare box is that it’d be something that might be necessary if people isolate and if the panic is severe enough where people can’t get food at grocery stores, not that it would fix the epidemic.
However, my impression is that if P(>10% of the population is infected) is reasonably high — say, >25% — then the cost to the economy would be tremendous, and it would be worth paying a huge cost right now to avoid that possibility.
Are there any explicit approaches you’re thinking of that can be taken? Truth be told I don’t see how we would realistically stave off this scenario, other than the harsh quarantine measures that worked in China. This is (as far as I can tell) a main part of why so many people here are freaking out—we’re headed straight for this scenario and governments are not seeing the smoke. As an example, consider Italy to see the lack of preparedness to take action (closing off a massive region now because it’s too late to contain the Corona locally, 366 deaths total so far, leaked documents on containment causing people to move out of containment areas before containment set in).
For those questions you proceed to pose, my thought is that you have to just make your best guess and go with it. Best guesses may not be perfect, but I would expect them to be solid. In other words, none of those questions seem difficult enough where it would stop us in our tracks.
I totally disagree. I think “someone’s best guess and go with it” is going to be horribly mismatched with what we actually want from stores and supplies, and will be actively harmful. I don’t really know how to explain this in more detail, but I do not think most governments are adequate at the level needed to supply a whole country in an emergency.
I thought the CDC researches and plans for all of these scenarios? Isn’t that their entire purpose? (Sorry for the sass; it isn’t aimed at you :))
No problem ;). I don’t know much about the CDC in particular, but I am currently seeing rather varying responses from health officials globally. This is one of the weaker points in my fears though, maybe our health officials have been preparing for an event like this outbreak for a long time, and have entire flow charts and calling lists and plans ready. I rather doubt it though, considering how (at least for me locally) they’ve been described as overwhelmed, and it’s taking them rather longer to respond than I expected. Also I think most of these health officials have other tasks than specifically targeting novel epidemics, such as fighting the seasonal flu, informing the public and dealing with more ‘mundane’ but far more commonly occurring disease outbreaks. I would love to be wrong here.
20$/50$ per person for a corona test
I think this is simply naive. First of all, there is (again) a huge difference between one test bought for yourself, and purchasing tests for everybody in a country. My limited experience with healthcare systems and bureaucracy suggests that the cost goes up from the increased scale, instead of down. Plus, there are huge costs you’re not including here. People need to administer the test (you think the public can do that individually? Maybe some can, but most? No way), they need to be distributed, and proper action needs to be taken afterwards on positive results. These tests first need to be checked for quality (do you happen to know the rate of type-1 and type-2 errors of that test you mention?), and we need a good way to deal with the millions of false positives that would come out of such a plan. All of this needs to be organised in as transparent and accountable a manner as possible, which is difficult and expensive. I think you’re easily looking at costs an order of magnitude above your estimate (so $100B+ for the USA, based on your number), and plausibly way more.
Plus, even if this would be economically beneficial, you still need someone to step up (ideally right now, instead of in three weeks) and say “The estimated costs are through the roof, let’s take a certain hit of billions of dollars now to prevent a potential loss of way more in the future.”. This is a very risky gamble, both from an economic point of view but also unfortunately as a career move. Also keep in mind the eventual costs to the economy are wide-spread, but the costs from triggering such a plan are highly localised.
Are there any explicit approaches you’re thinking of that can be taken? Truth be told I don’t see how we would realistically stave off this scenario, other than the harsh quarantine measures that worked in China.
Harsh quarantining is the main one. Also promoting low hanging fruit like the stuff we’ve found on the CJPA thread.
I totally disagree. I think “someone’s best guess and go with it” is going to be horribly mismatched with what we actually want from stores and supplies, and will be actively harmful.
Fair enough. It seems this is a pretty important prior. If you’re right about best guesses being horribly inadequate, then I do agree that it would be a bad idea overall.
I think this is simply naive.
Perhaps. You make some good points, and planning fallacy is certainly a thing, so I think your estimate of $100B is probably closer to the truth than my $15B one.
But even at $100B it still seems like a bargain. And I think that similar planning fallacy-related points can be made about estimating what it would cost us if it spread to eg. 10% of the world’s population. Eg. it probably costs a lot more than what our first estimates would be.
This is a very risky gamble, both from an economic point of view but also unfortunately as a career move.
Is it? I’m not well-versed with politics but my impression is that doing things in the name of safety is good for electability. Eg. through the roof military spending.
Well, that’s just one example, and I can also think of counterexamples. There are of course those who want to cut health care spending. And departments like the CDC seem to be underfunded. So overall I get a weak sense that it’d be a risky career move.
However, worrying about your career seems like a big lost purpose to me. Why acquire political power if you’re not going to cash it in at a time like this? I doubt they’re saving it up for something more important. It seems more like they seek power for power’s sake. But I digress.
Do you mind elaborating on that?
Would it be such a bad thing if it took weeks? I would think that most people have enough food and hygiene products to last weeks. And for those that don’t, I would expect most of those people to have family, friends or neighbors who would share. And if that all fails, I would think the government would be able to provide some sort of support (eg. bags of rice and beans) early before the more official support that would come later.
Of course, although I do run into the problem that to me most of this is self-evident, which makes it hard to motivate. But I’ll try to explain some of these claims in more detail.
Declaring a national emergency is a huge cost for a country in general and a government in particular. I think the best way to look at this is that the converse state, “everything is fine please continue operating as normal”, is a very profitable and desirable state, and you’re destroying that. At the very least this can disrupt economies and production chains, but also public trust (between members of the public, the public and industry, the public and government, the industry and industry, etc.)
Regulating supplies and stores is hard. How do you decide how much goes where, which stores need to stay open and which can close, how much to downsize your public transport and community spaces and services? How much extra money is this all allowed to cost? Below you mention to steve2152 that workers will keep working if you just increase their salary, but who pays for this (which department/ministry/bill in particular)? How high are the salaries supposed to be? How do new findings on the spread of the disease impact each of your answers, what are your tipping points for swapping to a globally different approach? Do you even have people at the right level of the chain of command to suggest these ideas (to be honest I’ve never heard of governments paying workers extra during national crisis to keep them working, outside of cleanup of nuclear meltdowns). On top of this I think governments have very little experience with epidemics like the one we are facing (globally) today. Like I said I think this is very hard, and if there wasn’t any particular reason for my government to sort all of this out beforehand, I expect them to not have this sorted out at all.
(On testing the literal whole country) I don’t know about the global situation, but at least where I live I know we’re not doing door to door screening (in fact, general practitioners over here are already overburdened right now, with only the paranoid fraction of the population asking for tests. Which, mind you, are currently being denied unless the doctor deems it reasonably likely to give a positive result). I think the idea of “Eventually we’d be able to test the whole country” is an extremely weak link in any public health plan, and simply is too ambitious to work.
Providing food and healthcare packages is also a massive coordination and transportation problem. Out of all the points I mentioned this might actually be doable(?), but it would still require massive resources (the food/medical supplies themselves, trucks, workers distributing them, people filling the packages, and even people planning what should or shouldn’t be in these packages, people coordinating internationally?). On top of that this plan incurs all the costs of the ‘national emergency’. Plus it’s not even clear to me how giving everybody a food and healthcare box will fix the epidemic, it sounds more like a stopgap measure to me (isolation in combination with this would be the real solution, but telling entire regions to self-quarantine is again incredibly expensive).
I think the relevant scale to compare this on is not “life or death”, but “normal life, just trying to save up for a nice vacation/new car/future expenses”. The actual death rate of corona is not that high (I’m avoiding numbers on purpose, because I have no idea about the number of asymptomatic infections), and I expect most people to make it through this just fine on the scale of life to death. But I also expect entire stores and businesses to lose out on major profits, big events to be cancelled, supply chains to be closed off. This is a massive opportunity cost we are paying (in fact, some of my friends are already worried that the corona-recession might get them laid off). In a lot of instances it’s even a real cost, not an opportunity cost, because people have already committed resources to society continuing to function as normal.
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I think that’s a good point. I had been overlooking it. I have a tendency to use a “when death is involved, nothing else matters” heuristic.
However, my impression is that if P(>10% of the population is infected) is reasonably high — say, >25% — then the cost to the economy would be tremendous, and it would be worth paying a huge cost right now to avoid that possibility. I’m no expert of course and am totally just eyeballing those numbers.
This all is to say that if the reason why panic is so bad is due to the economic impact, it’s not clear to me that it’s better than the alternative of taking a chance at an even worse economic impact.
For those questions you proceed to pose, my thought is that you have to just make your best guess and go with it. Best guesses may not be perfect, but I would expect them to be solid. In other words, none of those questions seem difficult enough where it would stop us in our tracks.
I thought the CDC researches and plans for all of these scenarios? Isn’t that their entire purpose? (Sorry for the sass; it isn’t aimed at you :))
I can’t find the link but I recall a YouTube video where a doctor mentioned that tests cost somewhere around $20, and talked about how here in the US you have to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of sick people sneezing around you, but in Korea it’s a drive through where you get a quick swab and get your results a few hours later.
If we say the cost is $50/person total, that’d be about $15B to test everyone. I have a bad intuition for the magnitudes of numbers that are used in macroeconomics, but the market for laptops was about $100B in 2017, so I assume the impact of the coronavirus is roughly in hundreds of billions or trillions, in which case $15B isn’t that bad.
My thinking with the healthcare box is that it’d be something that might be necessary if people isolate and if the panic is severe enough where people can’t get food at grocery stores, not that it would fix the epidemic.
Are there any explicit approaches you’re thinking of that can be taken? Truth be told I don’t see how we would realistically stave off this scenario, other than the harsh quarantine measures that worked in China. This is (as far as I can tell) a main part of why so many people here are freaking out—we’re headed straight for this scenario and governments are not seeing the smoke. As an example, consider Italy to see the lack of preparedness to take action (closing off a massive region now because it’s too late to contain the Corona locally, 366 deaths total so far, leaked documents on containment causing people to move out of containment areas before containment set in).
I totally disagree. I think “someone’s best guess and go with it” is going to be horribly mismatched with what we actually want from stores and supplies, and will be actively harmful. I don’t really know how to explain this in more detail, but I do not think most governments are adequate at the level needed to supply a whole country in an emergency.
No problem ;). I don’t know much about the CDC in particular, but I am currently seeing rather varying responses from health officials globally. This is one of the weaker points in my fears though, maybe our health officials have been preparing for an event like this outbreak for a long time, and have entire flow charts and calling lists and plans ready. I rather doubt it though, considering how (at least for me locally) they’ve been described as overwhelmed, and it’s taking them rather longer to respond than I expected. Also I think most of these health officials have other tasks than specifically targeting novel epidemics, such as fighting the seasonal flu, informing the public and dealing with more ‘mundane’ but far more commonly occurring disease outbreaks. I would love to be wrong here.
I think this is simply naive. First of all, there is (again) a huge difference between one test bought for yourself, and purchasing tests for everybody in a country. My limited experience with healthcare systems and bureaucracy suggests that the cost goes up from the increased scale, instead of down. Plus, there are huge costs you’re not including here. People need to administer the test (you think the public can do that individually? Maybe some can, but most? No way), they need to be distributed, and proper action needs to be taken afterwards on positive results. These tests first need to be checked for quality (do you happen to know the rate of type-1 and type-2 errors of that test you mention?), and we need a good way to deal with the millions of false positives that would come out of such a plan. All of this needs to be organised in as transparent and accountable a manner as possible, which is difficult and expensive. I think you’re easily looking at costs an order of magnitude above your estimate (so $100B+ for the USA, based on your number), and plausibly way more.
Plus, even if this would be economically beneficial, you still need someone to step up (ideally right now, instead of in three weeks) and say “The estimated costs are through the roof, let’s take a certain hit of billions of dollars now to prevent a potential loss of way more in the future.”. This is a very risky gamble, both from an economic point of view but also unfortunately as a career move. Also keep in mind the eventual costs to the economy are wide-spread, but the costs from triggering such a plan are highly localised.
Harsh quarantining is the main one. Also promoting low hanging fruit like the stuff we’ve found on the CJPA thread.
Fair enough. It seems this is a pretty important prior. If you’re right about best guesses being horribly inadequate, then I do agree that it would be a bad idea overall.
Perhaps. You make some good points, and planning fallacy is certainly a thing, so I think your estimate of $100B is probably closer to the truth than my $15B one.
But even at $100B it still seems like a bargain. And I think that similar planning fallacy-related points can be made about estimating what it would cost us if it spread to eg. 10% of the world’s population. Eg. it probably costs a lot more than what our first estimates would be.
Is it? I’m not well-versed with politics but my impression is that doing things in the name of safety is good for electability. Eg. through the roof military spending.
Well, that’s just one example, and I can also think of counterexamples. There are of course those who want to cut health care spending. And departments like the CDC seem to be underfunded. So overall I get a weak sense that it’d be a risky career move.
However, worrying about your career seems like a big lost purpose to me. Why acquire political power if you’re not going to cash it in at a time like this? I doubt they’re saving it up for something more important. It seems more like they seek power for power’s sake. But I digress.