[rrivers]

Rental properties are an investment, why in the world would we subsidize investment losses? The fault is having housing for the majority of people classified as a financial instrument. There is no scenario where the landlords should be compensated.

Also your argument that they imposed lockdowns that were economically destructive and caused death is exactly the opposite of what we know to be true as evidenced by the countries that successfully implemented lockdowns initially and slowed the spread. It's these types of mental gymnastics that represent our failure as a nation to combat this.

[TuringNYC]

Punishing landlords seems like an odd choice, I’d begin with the CDC punishing themselves for testing lags and not forcing people to wear masks.

Like, imagine I have a bug in my Production hospital billing system, and instead of looking inwards, I decided to say “there is now a moratorium on car sales — they sell cars which cause accidents which land people in the hospital, to hell with the dealerships — those dealerships are investments and deserve to lose!

[heavyset_go]

> Punishing landlords seems like an odd choice

That's a odd choice of words to describe policy that is preventing people from dying from exposure during the worst pandemic in a century.

[thelean12]

> why in the world would we subsidize investment losses?

We do that all the time. Major industries are bailed out all the time by the government with negligible interest loans. We've literally done that in COVID times already.

We should have deferrals up the chain if the government is preventing people from working.

[bitcurious]

> Rental properties are an investment, why in the world would we subsidize investment losses?

Unless you can change the reality that rental properties are investments, making them artificially riskier will reduce new housing construction and lead to less affordable housing overall.

[ironickat342]

Investments are things you place a gamble towards. Stocks, Lottery, Bonds, Business and etc.

Once your investment has renters and a legal document it's a contract and a business. And the person that signed the lease made an agreement and the gamble is almost over, now the issues you have afterward are quite risky ( maintenance, evictions, and etc ). I am glad the CDC is stepping up to stop people from being kicked out during issues of business being closed. But a contract is in place which ends the fact its an investment and turns into a structured business.

[AlexTWithBeard]

> why in the world would we subsidize investment losses

Well, I think if you are changing the rules of the game, then you ought to compensate my losses.

The government essentially expropriating your investment is not a part of traditional risk profile.

[djbebs]

Becausr you imposed those losses?

[__blockcipher__]

Why is Sweden back below normal excess mortality if lockdown works so well? Somehow everyone in “your camp” refused to accept evidence that the herd immunity strategy does work. Note Sweden should have done a better job with their elderly care facilities - but so should have New York and California.

[evgen]

The continued belief in this herd immunity bullshit by people who apparently cannot comprehend basic statistics is simply beyond me. Sweden fucked up. They choked on this one, big time. Their excess mortality was far in excess of their neighbors and the Swedes know it. They killed thousands of their own citizens and did not even get the economic benefit that they had hoped for. The only morons who still think that Sweden performed admirably are right-wing Americans desperate to pretend that lockdowns don't work.

[AlexTWithBeard]

Sorry, are we looking at different statistics? From [1] I see that Sweden death rate is somewhere between that of France and Italy.

I wouldn't call it "admirably", but not a "choked up" either. Just in the middle of the pack.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...

[evgen]

Sweden with a lower population density and actually having meaningful warning about what was about to happen vs. Italy who took the brunt of the more virulent first wave? Yeah, Sweden failed. Take a look at the map on your own link and you will see Sweden as a dark blue failure surrounded by light blue neighbors who succeeded at containing the spread.

[__blockcipher__]

EDIT: You weren’t even replying to me. I’m sorry for totally misinterpreting your whole comment. That’s what I get for being on mobile.

Leaving my comment up cause the points themselves are still valid

—-

(1) Middle of the pack while having never locked down is incredible. Most pro-lockdown people still trot out Ferguson’s model which predicts about .8% of the entire population dying.

(2) You didn’t really look at the number I said to. Look at excess mortality over time. Sweden at this point had no excess mortality. They are done with COVID mortality.

—-

Unfortunately there is a vested interest in ignoring Sweden’s success. They fucked up the nursing homes, Tegnell has said as much, but they got the important part right: they NEVER locked down and COVID-19 mortality is no longer a thing.

[__blockcipher__]

Herd immunity is a natural emergent phenomenom. I don’t know how your “side” has suddenly decided it’s a myth. It’s just math.

BTW, you never answered my question about how Sweden’s mortality is back at or below baseline in the absence of lockdowns nor universal masking. All you did was screech angrily about politics, not realizing that it is the lockdown-loving camp that made this whole thing about about politics over public health policy.

[maxerickson]

The bullshit is that Sweden has reached herd immunity. People in this thread clearly understand that there is a certain level of population immunity where R₀ goes below 1, they are arguing that Sweden has not reached the point where things are 'normal' and R₀=1, they are taking various measures to control the virus, and the rate of spread will go up if they relax those measures. That's not unqualified 'herd immunity', it's not even close.

(https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-decline-coronavirus-d... discusses some of the things that Sweden is doing, which are indeed largely voluntary)

[__blockcipher__]

I'll chalk it up to an innocent typo, but you got the terminology wrong. R_0 means R(t) where t=0. In other words, it by definition means the basic reproduction number which does NOT account for any level of immunity.

R, or as I prefer to call it, R(t), is the number that factors in how many have immunity. So you mean herd immunity is when R(t) < 1.

---

Anyway, I was having trouble understanding exactly what you were saying about Sweden, but to be clear, Sweden has hit herd immunity, unless you think that the utter absence of COVID mortality at this point is due to seasonality.

What you need to understand is that simplistic models view the population as homogenous, both in terms of mixing (social connections) AND susceptibility/transmissibility. Neither are true. Essentially, the people who tend to get infected sooner in the pandemic are the ones who tend to spread more, so the first, say, 10% of antibody prevalence is worth a lot more than the next 10%.

There's also the presence of pre-existing T-cell cross-reactivity; exposure to other hCoVs is protective against SARS-2. It seems that it does not protect infection, but it does make the disease course a non-issue: this probably explains the high degree of asymptomatic infection (with part of it just being explained as an artifact of the PCR cycle threshold fuckery). Technically these findings are already implicitly factored into the estimates we have for R_0, etc. (BTW, initial studies were claiming R_0 of 5.2, 5.5, etc, but now with more data it seems it's around 2, give or take)

Many, and I am in this category, believe that the true herd immunity threshold is somewhere around 20% of the population. That explains what we've seen in places like New York, Sweden, etc. This is lower than what the classic herd immunity formula would predict, because that formula does not account for a non-homogenously-mixed population (as I mentioned earlier), nor does it account for certain individuals having an innate genetic resistance that makes it less likely that they get infected.

[maxerickson]

Is Norway even more immune than Sweden then?