Moving forward from the Pandemic

Kevin LaCroix

Adventurist
I will start. We will survive. Most large businesses will survive. Many medium sized businesses will survive. A lot of small businesses will not. We will likely have double digit unemployment for a while. The real estate market will be crappy for quite a while, fortunately foreclosures are off the table for now. Farms that rely on foreign labor will be hit hard if workers cannot come, or are unwilling to come. Military enlistments will probably go up. Repo business will probably be good.

Your thoughts?
 
Sadly the economic toll will likely be 100x higher than the death toll of this pandemic, in the US. It is going to devastate a large number of small business and mid to low income families. It is a very fine balancing act between public health and public livelihood. I honestly would not want to be anyone in the position to have to make those decisions for a large populous. Basically it is a lose/lose situation.

I only hope the things that are being done will greatly reduce and shorten the world altering event. Though mankind will survive this, the impact of this event will be felt for decades to come.
 
Unfortunately the whole point of "flattening the curve" is to prolong the event.. to stretch it out hoping to avoid overwhelming health care systems which in theory will save lives. Instead of everyone getting sick at once and living/dying then back to business as normal. You hope that by slowing the spread and stretching it out more lives will be saved through greater resources and possible vacines/treatments that may be found along the way.
 
I will start. We will survive. Most large businesses will survive. Many medium sized businesses will survive. A lot of small businesses will not. We will likely have double digit unemployment for a while. The real estate market will be crappy for quite a while, fortunately foreclosures are off the table for now. Farms that rely on foreign labor will be hit hard if workers cannot come, or are unwilling to come. Military enlistments will probably go up. Repo business will probably be good.

Your thoughts?

We grow all of our food. Except for a few things like coffee and chocolate, both of which I admit I would miss. Thanks to fracking, we are now energy independent. We still have the most powerful navy in the world, and we're still protected by two oceans. We're going to be fine.

Quite frankly, it's the rest of the world that's going to be fucked.
 
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Here's an interesting article that will get you thinking.

So, what’s the right amount of economic pain to endure in order to save lives? The debate will only intensify over the next month, as we approach the April 30 endpoint Trump set for national social-distancing guidelines, and pressure builds to re-open businesses, despite the high likelihood the virus will still be spreading.

Politico Magazine turned to a handful of thinkers—people who have studied the impact of pandemics, recessions and more—to helps us understand how to even begin to think about the dilemma ahead. Do we really need to weigh lives against money? If so, how do you do it right?

https://www.politico.com/news/magaz...economy-reopen-deaths-balance-analysis-159248

this one should be a no brainer. if i buy an iphone, i should be able to live like the person who put it together.
 
This event has changed our world, yours and mine, in ways we can't even imagine yet. Some of the change will be negative, uncertainty, fear, financial pain, inflation etc. I think some of the insane things government and big business has been doing over the last couple of decades are going to come to a head. That's the start of the positive results of this wake up call. Many of the business models developed, in spite of warnings of economists and scholars, are going to be proven failures. I don't believe we'll see a return to global thinking, not that we'll become isolationists, but certainly more independent in the world. The path this country has been on was dictated, in large part by WWII. I think that will change. We live in a different era now and we need to take advantage of that. The will to put our country and it's people ahead of everything and everyone else has been awakened by this event. I know people who never cared about " Buy American " never understood the point as they merrily made their way to Walmart. Some of them, as I talk to them now, get it. China has mishandled this bigtime. They can't control a world with instant communication and folks who never understood the threat are starting to get an inkling. I am not going to blow the " we'll come back stronger and better " horn, there's plenty that are doing that. The adjustments we are all going to have to make are going to be real and difficult. Like it is said, the first rule of holes is to stop digging.
 
Unfortunately the whole point of "flattening the curve" is to prolong the event.. to stretch it out hoping to avoid overwhelming health care systems which in theory will save lives. Instead of everyone getting sick at once and living/dying then back to business as normal. You hope that by slowing the spread and stretching it out more lives will be saved through greater resources and possible vacines/treatments that may be found along the way.

Reading another article earlier today (hit me up if you want me to dig it up and share) they wrote that continuing our policy of extreme social distancing for another two weeks allows us options in the future. In two weeks things may look differently (maybe worse with rates of mortality on the high or maybe better with a breakthrough in treatment on near horizon) and we can make a decision to continue to social distance or discontinue the practice. If we discontinue it now, there aren't really options, the horse is out of the barn and we would most likely be stuck with a very widespread diffusion. The demographic and economic impact of such widespread diffusion would most likely be worse than what we are facing by locking everything down as we go.
 
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