👴🏻"No one wants to work anymore! (And also, they can't work, because half a million are dead)."
And the Fed still underestimates the number who are effectively disabled or can no longer pursue their core line of work due to long Covid.
And they undercount those that can't work, because they suddenly find themselves primary care givers. People are still talking about "learning loss" due to school closures, and not due to *checks notes* the loss of a parent.
I have questions.
Data suggests that every time you get Covid, your overall probability of getting Long Covid increases. As in someone that has had Covid 5 times is more likely to get Long Covid than someone that's had it 1 time.
So every Covid spike, the number of people removed from the US labor pool increases. At some point, this might become unsustainable.
Where is that line? 160MM? 150MM? 120MM? What's the line below which the US economy ceases to function?
More questions.
Uncontrolled spread of Covid, causes "labor shortages." Euphemism.😢
Labor shortages, cause supply chain shocks.
Supply chain shocks, cause inflation.
How does raising interest rates address this?
Yes labor shortages also cause salary increases (good! 👍🏿) which also contribute to inflation. But can't we increase the labor pool more by, I dunno... keeping more people alive and healthy? And by providing more options for affordable childcare?
@mekkaokereke that is politically not desired.
Also not people demanding a living wage are creating ibflation, but billionaires siphoning huge quantities of money from circulation do.
https://mstdn.social/@kkarhan/109691446103101590
Content warning: Covid, deaths, excess mortality
Upward of 90% of US children are estimated to have been infected now.
This new paper on long covid makes it clear why we'll never know the true infected numbers: Undercounting, plus antibody tests don't work for more than a few months and don't work at all for some people. This combo makes it hard to pin down which percentage of the US population has long covid so far, but it's a lot of folks.
Interesting read. It's not downloadable yet, but you can print it to PDF on Mac.
Exactly.
And, again, alas: #AI and #automation will have made many jobs unnecessary.
I agree that it'd be great for the fed to call on Congress to keep people healthy and to provide childcare because the fed can't do those things. They can only grow or shrink the money supply in response to economic conditions the rest of the government creates.
Since the government shrunk the economy with its COVID response, the fed has to shrink the money supply.
Labor force participation (as a percent) is basically at pre-pandemic levels, and in raw volume the labor force is larger than it has ever been.
The reason there's a labor shortage is because there is an increase in *demand* for labor--more positions are opening up. That's what rising interest rates helps with.
https://mastodon.top/@JUSTIN/109523920452447171 You might be interested in this post which addresses this directly.
The missing workers who are never coming back @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] https://www.axios.com/2022/12/16/the-missing-workers-who-are-never-coming-back
as well as more #HomeOffice and #WorkFromAnywhere on top of massive investments in #PublicTransport.
@mekkaokereke That's the totally insane thing about it. And the exact same thing is happening with climate change. They just ignore it like it's not an issue until the crisis is right in front of their noses. By then it's too late.
Healthcare won't be able to pay all the claims. People won't be able to work. Those with long Covid that do work will produce faulty products and so on.
Collapse is coming and it's inevitable.
@LibertyForward1 @mekkaokereke #DisposablePeople - exactly.
"A few sacrifices will need to be made in order to keep the economy running" is total bullshit.
The Government is literally committing slow motion economic suicide.
@rkofman Does that change what we should do?
As in, suppose that out of a US labor force of 164MM people, 30MM are "susceptible to Long Covid." And suppose that 140MM is the threshold where the economy just doesn't work. And suppose that with uncontrolled spread (as we have now), that 60% of everyone, including that 30MM, will get Covid at least once a year.
What should we do?
@mekkaokereke it changes the concern from geometric growth to linear growth, so umm -- wildly different mathematical margins on the scale of a potential problem, societally.
Not saying there's little to criticize in the nation's response, but..the scale of the negative impacts seems very germane to the discussion.
@mekkaokereke Well, there are other variables. Like, the ever weakening variants that appear in succession one after the other. The chances of long COVID can't be the same with each variant, right?
At some point, it becomes a game of diminishing returns, both in terms of the viral capacity to make us sick and the number of times we are collectively infected with each new variant.
People determine whether variants are "strong" or "weak" based on respiratory symptoms. But there have been several studies showing that Long Covid happens even in mild infections. Because Covid is systemic.
90% of Long Covid cases started with "mild" symptoms.
https://www.webmd.com/covid/news/20230106/most-long-covid-cases-started-with-mild-symptoms-study
I do hope that one day we will get better at preventing / treating Long Covid, but we are not there today.
@SallyStrange @neoteotihuacan @mekkaokereke Maybe. If enough people smarten up, there might be more survivors than not.
The plague definitely needs to kill "the economy" though - the big, large, imaginary economy, that caused this plague in the first place. The real economy will be fine.
@KanaMauna @mekkaokereke The Musks and Kochs (whose particular family name was explicitly pronounced "cock" before they changed it) know like Exxon knew, and will use Think Tanks to deny it's true, and McKinsey-ite PR to cast their victims as "lazy people who have ruined the economy" that must be dealt with.
Every time you spread the uncomfortable truth about what COVID is doing to society, you make the horrors less likely! I hope.
@mekkaokereke that assumes the politics actually care about the average worker or their ability to survive via wagework.
#Spoiler: the average Wageworker ms' opinion already doesn't matter in politricks, so OFC people get thrown under the bus!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
Learn more at http://Represent.Us/TheProblem, and go to https://represent.us/TheSolution to see our plan and join the Anti-Corruption Movement. Click on "sho...
Agreed but... There's a huge gap between "catastrophizing" and "wearing masks in public places."
There's no good reason why we aren't doing simple things that would keep millions of people alive, and save 10s of millions from unnecessary suffering, and why we are doing things that make it worse. Especially when it's clear that the Fed understands these dynamics.
@paulchurch I don't know about "collapse of civilization" but "shrinking of the US economy" seems very possible. Much of civilization wears masks.
My pops wasn't able to visit for Christmas, because the hospital that he's head of emergency surgery at is facing critical nursing labor shortages. Don't have an accident in Houston right now.😬
We also have teacher shortages, retail shortages, food service shortages, pilot shortages, childcare provider shortages, etc.
@paulchurch We don't have to be extra worried about some terrible hypothetical collapse, because the thing I'm talking about is happening right now.
Yes, it can accelerate further, but I'm asking about our current slope.
And there are lines of reliability and tipping points below which things feel very different. As in, crossing from "hospitals are too busy during this Covid spike!" To "In the US, most hospitals are now always too busy to provide the best care."
@mekkaokereke back-of-napkin math by fmr govt data scientist at beginning of Pandemic, with more optimistic estimates than data now shows, put it at just 5-6 years before a full 30% of the workforce of USA has LC w/ disability. That's fatal for "economy" as it is today. 10-15 years before 90% incidence.
Their estimated figures were 4% incidence of PASC with disability, that resolves in six months, and a 1% increased chance of PASC per infection. Incoming: horrors!
Objectives To determine the clinical sequelae of long covid for a year after infection in patients with mild disease and to evaluate its association with age, sex, SARS-CoV-2 variants, and vaccination status. Design Retrospective nationwide cohort study. Setting Electronic medical records from an Israeli nationwide healthcare organisation. Population 1 913 234 Maccabi Healthcare Services members of all ages who did a polymerase chain reaction test for SARS-CoV-2 between 1 March 2020 and 1 October 2021. Main outcome measures Risk of an evidence based list of 70 reported long covid outcomes in unvaccinated patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 matched to uninfected people, adjusted for age and sex and stratified by SARS-CoV-2 variants, and risk in patients with a breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with unvaccinated infected controls. Risks were compared using hazard ratios and risk differences per 10 000 patients measured during the early (30-180 days) and late (180-360 days) time periods after infection. Results Covid-19 infection was significantly associated with increased risks in early and late periods for anosmia and dysgeusia (hazard ratio 4.59 (95% confidence interval 3.63 to 5.80), risk difference 19.6 (95% confidence interval 16.9 to 22.4) in early period; 2.96 (2.29 to 3.82), 11.0 (8.5 to 13.6) in late period), cognitive impairment (1.85 (1.58 to 2.17), 12.8, (9.6 to 16.1); 1.69 (1.45 to 1.96), 13.3 (9.4 to 17.3)), dyspnoea (1.79 (1.68 to 1.90), 85.7 (76.9 to 94.5); 1.30 (1.22 to 1.38), 35.4 (26.3 to 44.6)), weakness (1.78 (1.69 to 1.88), 108.5, 98.4 to 118.6; 1.30 (1.22 to 1.37), 50.2 (39.4 to 61.1)), and palpitations (1.49 (1.35 to 1.64), 22.1 (16.8 to 27.4); 1.16 (1.05 to 1.27), 8.3 (2.4 to 14.1)) and with significant but lower excess risk for streptococcal tonsillitis and dizziness. Hair loss, chest pain, cough, myalgia, and respiratory disorders were significantly increased only during the early phase. Male and female patients showed minor differences, and children had fewer outcomes than adults during the early phase of covid-19, which mostly resolved in the late period. Findings remained consistent across SARS-CoV-2 variants. Vaccinated patients with a breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection had a lower risk for dyspnoea and similar risk for other outcomes compared with unvaccinated infected patients. Conclusions This nationwide study suggests that patients with mild covid-19 are at risk for a small number of health outcomes, most of which are resolved within a year from diagnosis. Data supporting the findings of this study came from Maccabi Healthcare Services. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, and they are therefore not publicly available. Owing to restrictions, these data can be accessed only by request to the authors and/or Maccabi Healthcare Services.
> Where is that line? 160MM? 150MM? 120MM?
i didn't see anyone else mention this point, so:
I think it's not just about raw numbers; it's also about the large number of systems/subsystems that fill a role similar to xkcd's thanklessly-maintained project:
... where a very small number of people (say, less than 5) really understand how it works & how to fix it when things break.
@mekkaokereke So there's definitely going to be (or already are) systems like that that *irreparably* fail/failed because the small number of people who maintained it:
(1) are no longer available because of death or disability, and
(2) did not have enough time/opportunity to pass on what they know to other people.
@mekkaokereke and this is not just about of artifacts of engineering; e.g. specialized business processes are also threatened.
basically, we're potentially in a lot of trouble around each instance where (1) there's a very small number of people who take care of something that is both complicated and vital, and (2) all of them either died or otherwise developed a condition that prevents them from working.
and there will be (are?) many such instances.
@mekkaokereke So how do we estimate the potential damage that could result from the loss of experts like this?
Well, one thing we could do is to start interviewing them. Maybe ask them to review some important bug-fixes/enhancements from the past decade or so, and ask them what could have happened if everyone who had the relevant expertise at the time had been simultaneously prevented by health issues from doing that work. (And: "how long does it take someone to get up-to-speed on this?")
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