VP Debate

[Doctor Steuss]

So basically in your opinion any inflation or negative economic effects we have seen over the past four years are due to the Trump policies from 2016-2020.

No. That is not my opinion.

Biden's only failure was they he wasn't far enough left.

No. This is also not my opinion.

Would you also say that states with Democrat governors that locked down longer and more restrictively on nonessential businesses during the COVID pandemic handled the pandemic better and are therefore better off now economically than states like Florida where people went back to work sooner and thus made themselves worse off economically due to increased hospital costs and long term disability in young people due to COVID infection etc?

I don't know, I've never dove into the data. It's hard to tell though just how "successful" Florida is, given that 1 out of every 3 dollars of Ron DeSantis' budget is Federal welfare. Even with that massive money printing welfare handout, Florida is ranked 19 in GDP per capita. Incidentally, every single one of the top 5 states for GDP per capita has one of those rascally economy destroying Democrats at the helm. Curious thing, that.

I am glad though that no Governors followed Trump's published plan for extreme full shutdowns of nearly everything, and debilitating long and prolonged metrics before anything could even partially open again.

Is this what Harris means when she says Trump and Republicans mishandled the pandemic?

I don't know specifically what she means. I do believe that even basic contact tracing and quarantine measures early on would have been game-changing. Probably the most significant thing would have been consistent, competent, and coherent messaging from our "leader," and the non-politicization of the most basic concepts of medical science and platforming people who believe yeast infections are caused by demon sex while sleeping. That would have paid significant dividends in avoiding the economic losses of not only workers being sick and dying, but of industries being non-functional for extended periods of time.

I think the Biden admin has somewhat fumbled COVID also, and we might be setting ourselves up for something gnarly this upcoming season. Vaccination rates right now are laughable.


ETA:
A few additional thoughts regarding COVID. I've noticed you always focus on the short-term economic cost of the shutdowns, but never the long-term economic costs of the deaths. Using only confirmed COVID deaths, the US lost over $3.5 Trillion dollars in economic output. Using the HHS-recommended VSL value with excess mortality, we end up with a whopping $9.82 trillion (yikes!) in economic loss because of COVID deaths. The COVID death rate in Florida is almost tied with the number 10 state (Kentucky -- 404 vs 406).

So, yeah, some businesses stayed open, while they also cashed all of their Trump socialist welfare spending checks, for some short-term economic gain. But overall, the long-term economic loss is pretty significant.

[ajax18]

I am glad though that no Governors followed Trump's published plan for extreme full shutdowns of nearly everything, and debilitating long and prolonged metrics before anything could even partially open again.

So do you believe DeSantis had the right approach or would you have preferred longer lockdowns that the blue state governors imposed? Has your opinion on the COVID lockdowns changed any since the June of 2020 or has it remained the same?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I am glad though that no Governors followed Trump's published plan for extreme full shutdowns of nearly everything, and debilitating long and prolonged metrics before anything could even partially open again.

So do you believe DeSantis had the right approach or would you have preferred longer lockdowns that the blue state governors imposed? Has your opinion on the COVID lockdowns changed any since the June of 2020 or has it remained the same?

Trump’s diapers are more packed than his rallies. Same content, though.

- Doc

[Doctor Steuss]

I am glad though that no Governors followed Trump's published plan for extreme full shutdowns of nearly everything, and debilitating long and prolonged metrics before anything could even partially open again.

So do you believe DeSantis had the right approach or would you have preferred longer lockdowns that the blue state governors imposed?

First and foremost, I'm definitely not an epidemiologist (or anything close), so this is obviously just an average person letting out noggin farts.

That said... No, I don't believe DeSantis had the right approach. I also don't think longer lockdowns was the right approach. I think there was a myriad of infection mitigation methods that could have been employed that wouldn't have required the size and length of shutdowns we generally saw. Those methods would have required a competent and effective leader at the federal level, and a citizenry that wasn't pathologically selfish though. Two things which the USA lacks, and still lacks.

I think we needed a coherent national plan. It makes little sense for one state to have infection mitigation mandates, when a state next door has infected people rolling across the border willy-nilly. This is one of the instances where our current day hyper-state-autonomy ethos can hobble us. This is why Trump's ban on non-essential international travel was so important -- but also somewhat meaningless. Keeping someone out from Europe makes little impact when your literal next-door neighbor thinks vaccines cause autism and that the pandemic is a "scamdemic."

Ultimately, I think the data is pretty incontrovertible. Things like mask mandates literally saved lives. What's really interesting is that mandates only made about a 10% increase in mask wearing adherence. So, where you saw about 65% mask wearing in non-mandate states, and about 75% mask wearing in mandate states, that modest difference in adherence resulted in about a 30% higher death rate for non-mask mandate states. Just imagine how devastating it would have been in non-mandate states had an even lower adherence than the majority.

Same thing goes for vaccination rates. Vaccination rates reduce hospitalizations and deaths. The data is pretty black-and-white.

Has your opinion on the COVID lockdowns changed any since the June of 2020 or has it remained the same?

I'd wager that a good portion of my opinions regarding COVID circa June 2020 have changed. I'd probably be worried about myself if they hadn't.

[Physics Guy]

The word "scamdemic" is a grammatical curiosity: a verb that only exists in the first person, because it means, "I am stupid."

[ajax18]

So basically in your opinion any inflation or negative economic effects we have seen over the past four years are due to the Trump policies from 2016-2020.

No. That is not my opinion.

Biden's only failure was they he wasn't far enough left.

No. This is also not my opinion.

Would you also say that states with Democrat governors that locked down longer and more restrictively on nonessential businesses during the COVID pandemic handled the pandemic better and are therefore better off now economically than states like Florida where people went back to work sooner and thus made themselves worse off economically due to increased hospital costs and long term disability in young people due to COVID infection etc?

I don't know, I've never dove into the data. It's hard to tell though just how "successful" Florida is, given that 1 out of every 3 dollars of Ron DeSantis' budget is Federal welfare. Even with that massive money printing welfare handout, Florida is ranked 19 in GDP per capita. Incidentally, every single one of the top 5 states for GDP per capita has one of those rascally economy destroying Democrats at the helm. Curious thing, that.

I am glad though that no Governors followed Trump's published plan for extreme full shutdowns of nearly everything, and debilitating long and prolonged metrics before anything could even partially open again.

Is this what Harris means when she says Trump and Republicans mishandled the pandemic?

I don't know specifically what she means. I do believe that even basic contact tracing and quarantine measures early on would have been game-changing. Probably the most significant thing would have been consistent, competent, and coherent messaging from our "leader," and the non-politicization of the most basic concepts of medical science and platforming people who believe yeast infections are caused by demon sex while sleeping. That would have paid significant dividends in avoiding the economic losses of not only workers being sick and dying, but of industries being non-functional for extended periods of time.

I think the Biden admin has somewhat fumbled COVID also, and we might be setting ourselves up for something gnarly this upcoming season. Vaccination rates right now are laughable.


ETA:
A few additional thoughts regarding COVID. I've noticed you always focus on the short-term economic cost of the shutdowns, but never the long-term economic costs of the deaths. Using only confirmed COVID deaths, the US lost over $3.5 Trillion dollars in economic output. Using the HHS-recommended VSL value with excess mortality, we end up with a whopping $9.82 trillion (yikes!) in economic loss because of COVID deaths. The COVID death rate in Florida is almost tied with the number 10 state (Kentucky -- 404 vs 406).

So, yeah, some businesses stayed open, while they also cashed all of their Trump socialist welfare spending checks, for some short-term economic gain. But overall, the long-term economic loss is pretty significant.

How much money does it really cost to be dead? How can you equate lost wages due to death with lost wages due to being quarantined?

[Kishkumen]

The word "scamdemic" is a grammatical curiosity: a verb that only exists in the first person, because it means, "I am stupid."

ROFLMAO!!!

Boy, I sure needed that side-splitter.

Keep up the great work.

[Doctor Steuss]

How much money does it really cost to be dead? How can you equate lost wages due to death with lost wages due to being quarantined?

The research paper goes into the estimates. I believe lawyers have a standard annual life value as well that they use (I may be mistaken on that).

Just using myself as an example. The economy would lose at least two decades of economic output from me, if I were to die today. A quarantine (depending on if it were an individual proactive vs massive reactive quarantine) would mean the US economy would lose a few weeks, to a few months of economic output from me.

Every year that I'm alive, the US economy gets a year's worth of output from me, but more importantly it gets a year's worth of spending (which fuels other people's earnings). That's a an exceptionally good thing from an economic perspective.

[ajax18]

Every year that I'm alive, the US economy gets a year's worth of output from me, but more importantly it gets a year's worth of spending (which fuels other people's earnings)

I'm not sure I buy into supply side economics to that extent. You have to account for the fact that dead people don't consume anything, not just that they don't produce anything. How many of us consume less than we earn?

[Doctor Steuss]

Every year that I'm alive, the US economy gets a year's worth of output from me, but more importantly it gets a year's worth of spending (which fuels other people's earnings)

I'm not sure I buy into supply side economics to that extent. You have to account for the fact that dead people don't consume anything, not just that they don't produce anything. How many of us consume less than we earn?

Exactly, dead people don't consume anything. Which means that's one less person (or a million + less) to produce for. Healthcare, food, textiles, gasoline, durable goods, etc. You remove a person's consumption, and you also remove the manhours needed to produce, service, transport, maintain, etc., that person's consumption.

If death had a null economic impact, population collapse wouldn't be the economic boogey man that it is.

When you remove workers and consumers, there are measurable impacts. Since you like to use Florida a lot, what has happened there economically in its agricultural and construction industries each time it has tried to remove just a fraction of its workforce? Do you think inflation on agriculture isn't impacted when billions of dollars of food literally rots in fields because it can't be harvested?

When you remove a person from an economy, there's an impact. In the case of death, you aren't just removing their productivity (assuming they are working age), you are also removing their consumption, which is a one-two-punch for an economic system.