(04-10-2020, 10:12 AM)burger Wrote: Doesn't that still imply a giant loss of jobs and, essentially, a permanent recession? Half-full restaurants only need half the staff. Quarter-full stadiums provide 1/4 the revenue. Flights at 60% capacity means grounding a lot of planes if it's going to be profitable for the airlines.
I am increasingly certain that there is no solution to the economic hit until we have a vaccine or hit herd-immunity levels of infection. If the ongoing social distancing is mandatory, it essentially puts a cap on how many jobs the economy can create. Scott Gottlieb, Trump's earlier FDA commissioner thinks that 80% of the economy can return if we open up again soon. A 20% hit to the economy is still near great depression levels.
Voluntary social distancing is still going to be a thing, too. As Farm93 pointed out, a lot of people (including my family) will not be doing anything unnecessary in public until there is a vaccine or a cure. Again, even if only 20% of people isolated themselves, we're looking at a depression, at least in a lot of service sectors.
If you are thinking that contact tracing will save us, I'd encourage you to read this article, which probably deserves its own thread: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215494/c...employment
It is 3-38. "We" got a FG, so we did a few things right in 2020, but we gave up 38 points.
The Feds are cheering the idea that we are testing more than other countries. A bit like getting chunk plays when down by 5 TDs and claiming no other opponent got big plays against that same team. It is a bit sad because most of us are on this team, but the winning countries will never touch our testing numbers per capita because they never lost control.
For the USA, and really the world since the EU is in the same place, this economic game in 2020 is over. In a real war countries wouldn't focus heavily on economic metrics during the war. In most wars even the winner's economy is thrashed and it takes several years to recover.
Every form of social distancing will cause economic pain. Mandatory reductions in the numbers at stadiums, restaurants, shopping centers will all be massive economic drags. Even without the mandatory reductions the voluntary reductions are going throw the USA, and all of Europe, into a real nasty recession.
That's downturn is our reality, and the best government officials around the world are already getting their citizens prepared for that reality.
POTUS45 and his allies are selling a fantasy they will claim before the election that we could have had if everyone had trusted them in April.
At this point, I trust Fauci, Cuomo, Newsom & Dewine.
POTUS45 is a cheerleader and at this point and he has about as much credibility to me as that cheerleader that holds up a "MAKE SOME NOISE" sign late in the 4th quarter with the team down 3-38.