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Economic implications of a SARS/Coronavirus outbreak

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Satan its not a question of money, its a question of our culture.
 
IFocus said:
Satan its not a question of money, its a question of our culture.
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Incorrect, everything comes down to money, since the existence of man.

The reality, is few are willing to provide some insight/discussion to the question, but the question remains and will always remain
 
satanoperca said:
Incorrect, everything comes down to money, since the existence of man.

The reality, is few are willing to provide some insight/discussion to the question, but the question remains and will always remain
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My sister in law is a doctor and the truth is that the older you get the less they will spend. 80 year olds are not given $40,000 operations.
 
For example Focus,

Who pays for these testing kits.

As Sptrawler says, "precious resource must be rationed" again comes down to a $$.

For fu--k sake, this whole forum is about $$$$, but when it comes to human life, no one can put an intrinsic value on it.
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
Sorry @barney

That makes no sense.

Ockhams razor needs to be applied.

gg
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Lol …. You need to read it upside down Garpel

What @IFocus said above was in line with what I was babbling on about.

ie. If we had enough testing equipment/facilities and suitable quarantining, the problem could be contained effectively. (we don't)

If we can't test large amounts of the population quickly we have no way of knowing who to isolate.

If we don't know who to isolate, the problem will continue to escalate.
 
The question of deciding who gets treated, how deeply and for how long is perennial in the medical world.

All medical intervention requires resources of doctors, beds, materials, overall support structure.
All medical systems triage. First analysis of people is "How serious ?" "What can we do ? " Is it appropriate? ".

In crisis times ie war triage is swift and expedient.
Too injured to survive.
Too difficult to treat (not same as before )
Treatable if we are quick.
Treatment will be quick and dirty.

The situation in Wuhan and Lombardy has been accurately described as war time. An overwhelming number of critically ill people requiring ICU care. In these circumstances it has been physically impossible to treat many patients at all and in the discussion of who to should use the limited ventilators age and prior condition of people have to be considered. Nobody in their right mind would consider treatment of a 90 year old with advanced dementia. After that relative age and health issues of people are also considered.

There is minimal time to make these decisions. They just have to be done. In the current situation the shortage is, allegedly, ventilators. No doubt it is but I suspect that even if they created another 5,000 ventilators I can't see how hospitals would have the space or the staff to use them effectively. There will also be a ton of other equipment necessary for the effective treatment.

From a financial POV ? Again the "important" "the social critical" the well off will get preferential treatment over others. In reality becasue this crisis, if it is allowed to expand exponentially, will overload the health systems. IMV there will almost certainly be decisions made to constrain the overall medical efforts to ensure the system itself doesn't collapse from impossible demands. This will also happen to ensure that particular people can be treated.
 
Not a bad question, Bill Bryson from memory says around $50 in elements, gold, calcium, etc
Some would argue that some 10y destined to jail or endless medical treatment have probably a negative value, but i would be interested in an average $ per head based on tax paid/received..b
as i pointed: why him not me we can safely bet that this value varies widely by postcode and social background..sad fact
 
satanoperca said:
What do you do? Does a persons life become worth less as they get older, in regards to using resources to keep them alive.
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I think it would be generally accepted that once the proverbial hits the fan in extreme situation like this is becoming, its either first in best dressed, or in the case of where a choice/decision has to be made (Italy for example), it will be survival of the fittest ….

The above would be "most of the time". Probably the likely exceptions would be the extremely wealthy who can afford their own personally paid health professionals and may therefore jump the queue.

Copy from … https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/

The principle they settle upon is utilitarian. “Informed by the principle of maximizing benefits for the largest number,” they suggest that “the allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care.”
 
barney said:
. If we had enough testing equipment/facilities and suitable quarantining, the problem could be contained effectively. (we don't)

If we can't test large amounts of the population quickly we have no way of knowing who to isolate.
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I'll simply say that it is completely ridiculous that we have hospitals stretched to the limit on a routine basis, that we don't have the capability to manufacture medical equipment in a hurry, we can't even make chemicals or bottles to put them in and because of that this is going to cost far more, both in terms of lives and economically, than it needed to.

If there's one thing that needs to come out of all this it's to take globalisation and send the nonsense to the same place toilet paper goes. Australia needs far greater self-reliance that's extremely clear.

We just shouldn't be in this moronic race to the bottom where we're trying to compete on price with third world countries, a situation that frustrates efforts to fix everything from health to climate change. We'd be far better off spending what we need to spend on things like hospitals, have industry here so we've got the ability to repurpose things in a time of emergency and do things properly.
 
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satanoperca said:
For fu--k sake, this whole forum is about $$$$, but when it comes to human life, no one can put an intrinsic value on it.
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Fundamentally our culture doesn't like doing that but some of the more hellish places on earth would have a figure and it's alarmingly low.

As a starting point though we could take GDP per capita and multiply that by the person's remaining life expectancy. For a 40 year old that comes to $3.9 million - seems reasonable in terms of order of magnitude.
 
Money only ever a tool nothing more.

Eskimos used to put their old out on the ice for the polar bears, other tribal groups used the old for culture continuation money has nothing to do with it its just culture.

BTW testing of old people is to allow proper control for whole populations.
 
IFocus said:
Money only ever a tool nothing more.
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If you think of it in terms of money being a future claim on resources, which it is in practice, then it becomes fairly straightforward.

Have a lot of money = you can control a lot of resources either materials or human.

Money isn't the only way to gain control but it's one way.
 
Looking at the lasting implications once the dust settles on all this, an issue is that the entire economy is affected in some way, much of it in a fairly drastic fashion, and we can expect significant changes to costs.

Taking oil as an example to make the point, one can certainly calculate a "break even" cost for any oil producer based on costs as of 2019. Once all this is sorted though, well it's a fair assumption that most things will have changed somewhat.

What's the cost of steel pipe in 2021? What's the cost of manual labour per hour? How much does a drilling company charge to drill? What's the approach to permits and taxes from government? What sort of % return do investors consider reasonable? Etc.

Odds are pretty much all of that will change such that it's rather hard to know what it would cost to do something a year from now. Same with anything - whatever someone quoted you for a house construction or a new car in January 2020 will almost certainly be significantly different to the price quote you'd get for the same thing a year later.

This is going to affect everything and in particular it makes valuing stocks based on the company's income hugely problematic since that income will in some cases change drastically.
 
Smurf1976 said:
Looking at the lasting implications once the dust settles on all this, an issue is that the entire economy is affected in some way, much of it in a fairly drastic fashion, and we can expect significant changes to costs.
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So will businesses who have had a significant drop in profits lower their prices to attract customers back or raise them to make up for the losses ?

This will be interesting to watch. I'd say the discretionary providers will lower prices and the more essential suppliers will raise them. I wonder if the govmint has considered this and will impose caps on things like power, food, rent and fuel prices ?
 
SirRumpole said:
o will businesses who have had a significant drop in profits lower their prices to attract customers back or raise them to make up for the losses ?
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I don't know for sure but my thinking is that:

Workers - simple supply and demand economics for the majority who aren't some sort of specialist. Same supply, lower demand as work dries up = better hope you're happy being paid the minimum Award wage and don't expect that to be raised anytime soon. With business now under serious pressure to find cost savings, and plenty of people out of work, if your job isn't something with a very limited number of people who can do it then your bargaining position has been greatly eroded.

Most businesses - fewer people with money who can afford to buy whatever you're selling and who under the circumstances still want your products or services. That goes for everything from beauty salons to oil drilling contractors. Some customers will be frightened to go in your salon, others no longer have the money, and only the most lucrative oil field would even be considered for development with prices as they are. As a business you're now competing for a diminished volume of work.

Landlords especially commercial - if your tenants can't pay the rent well then they're not going to be paying it. Whether or not you kick them out is another matter but if they don't have the money anymore well then they don't have the money. Finding another tenant who does have the money won't be anywhere as easy as it would previously have been.

Passive investors in anything - majority will have lost capital and/or future income.

So my basic thought is that most things will, once this is all over, have a price that's different to the price they'd have had if it hadn't happened. There's going to be plenty of spare capacity among most workers and business for quite some time.
 
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