Thread by @arijitchakrav

(🧵It's the Сονіd, ѕtυріd!): Viewing the US election through the lens of the ongoing ЅАRЅ-Соν-2 раndеmіc.

(My hot take on what happened, and where things are headed. Prelude to the final 🧵in the "How does it end" series)

(1/)

The post-mortem season for the elections is in full swing, and commentators on the left & right have lots of theories about why the Dems lost.

US elections are part of a global trend- incumbent parties in developing countries have lost vote share in every election this year(2/)

A common explanation for this is cost of living. Polls worldwide show dissatisfaction with the cost of living (the gap between the cost of goods & purchasing power), which by some measures is wider than ever before.

(Note that cost of living doesn’t map 1:1 with inflation.) (3/)

If inflation causes the price of your daily coffee to rise by 30% over two years, and then goes to 0, that coffee is still a lot more expensive than it used to be! Eventually, of course, wages should catch up- but it's not a guarantee.

Inflation surged worldwide in 2021-22. (4/)

More broadly, the idea that the Democratic defeat was due to two things- a surge in inflation and a surge in immigration- has gained a lot of traction in the post-mortem period, and it's easy to see that there might be some truth to this. (5/)

"Since the pandemic", developed countries have been facing significant social & economical upheaval (👀👆).

Making things worse in the US, key measures that (partially) alleviated the cost of living crisis were also eliminated in '21, even as the pandemic continued to rage. (6/)

Absenteeism & loss of productivity with Сονіd are well documented.

Labor shortages & reduced growth are the logical consequence of removing people from the workforce - stagflation is the logical outcome if the workforce shrinks far enough. (7/)

(In fact, that's just the tip of the iceberg- pandemics have a broadly negative impact on economic growth & social stability (as described in my recent 🧵👇)).

So, the causal chain: Сονіd- disability- labor shortage - inflation is easy to justify. (8/)

The workforce has, indeed, been impacted by Long Сονіd. This point is not controversial- there are reports from numerous different countries that quantify it, eg:
minneapolisfed.org/research/insti…

brookings.edu/articles/new-d…
cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/two-s…

(9/)

News media throughout the pandemic have reported on labor shortages: name any high-contact profession you can think of. These shortages have been across multiple sectors in the US, and widely observed in other countries. (10/)

The media often talks about these labor shortages without bringing up Сονіd- some creatively ascribe shortages to the brief lockdowns in '20 (remember those?). In an ongoing pandemic of a disabling disease, "special pleading" about unique explanations only gets you so far. (11/)

The pandemic is not over, of course- far from it. By many measures, the number of people sick & disabled is not shrinking.

If you take no precautions, you can expect to get Сονіd 1-2x/yr, with a low (15%) but non-declining risk of LC from each infection. The math is ugly. (12/)

(The number of individuals actively seeking disability can also decrease because people drop out of the workforce).

As expected, the US workforce contracted sharply at the beginning of the pandemic, and took several years to recover. (13/)

How did the workforce rebound? Was it because people with LC eventually recovered? The data showing long-term recovery for LC is not encouraging, and in fact a case can be made that LC gets progressively worse for many who have it. So that's not it.

(14/)cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/9-10-…

As it so happens, the immigrant population in the US has grown in leaps and bounds during the (ongoing) pandemic.

There are ~7 m immigrants more in the US now than before the pandemic. Interestingly, it's not just illegal immigration- legal immigration is also up sharply. (15/)

Newer immigrants, bucking a trend, are coming in with lower levels of education than the US born.

It's not hard to see that this wave of immigration is acting to blunt the labor shortages for those in high-contact professions (e.g. retail) and those disabled by LC. (16/)

Recent immigrants - legal or illegal- who come to the US to work, and become disabled by LC, have no recourse to our safety net. If they're disabled (legal or not), they go back home. No safety net until the green card, which takes years. This approach creates an underclass (17/)

Meanwhile, the Fed repeatedly put the squeeze on wage growth- the topic was mentioned explicitly in FOMC meetings& press releases by Powell.

So labor supply contraction (due to disability) caused upward wage pressure, which was combated using high interest rates. Great. /s (18/)

Meanwhile, immigration policy is weaponized to bring in an underclass of workers with no recourse & no claim on our safety net.

Taken together, the admin took a problem (pandemic -> labor shortage -> inflation) & "fixed" it in the most shortsighted & callous way possible. (19/)

The truth of the matter is- you can't fix a pandemic with PR. People taking no precautions will get infected continuously & some will become disabled. Millions newly disabled each year- an enormous human tragedy- will create a frictional drag that'll tow the economy under. (20/)

No country can expect sustained 3% growth, if 3% of its workforce drops out every year.

There is no path forward - for the US or any other country - without addressing this. Repeated covid infections are not a sustainable situation.

This problem won't go away on its own. (21/)

The incoming administration has clearly expressed a set of specific policy preferences: reduced access to vaccines, cutbacks on immigration, loosened monetary policy.

Each of these policy preferences, if enacted, will pour gasoline on this smoldering fire. (22/)

Leaving a long-running pandemic unaddressed is just incredibly bad Public Health policy. This administration's performance on Сονіd has been an unmitigated disaster, with millions dead & disabled, as PH spent its effort getting the public to courageously "accept infection" (23/)

There are many other things that can go wrong with Сονіd, but this alone will make this course of action unsustainable- you cannot contract your labor force continuously and hope for economic growth.

It's trillions of dollars in lost revenue and unneccessary expenses. (24/)

Сονіd remains a fixable problem.

For a fraction of that cost, efforts aimed at suppressing ЅАRЅ-Соν-2 could make the disease a lot less common & far from inevitable (more on this in the next 🧵).

Biden's failure on Сονіd doomed his legacy.

This virus is not red or blue. (25/)

@sophia_surfs When Harris asked what she would do differently from Biden on the View, she said “not one thing.” And then said “maybe I would’ve had a Republican on my cabinet”

The swing to the right was nationwide, and strongest in low income groups & minorities. (2/)

@sophia_surfs Show me where in the county breakdowns & exit polls you see sexism & racism. Accusing minorities & women of sexism & racism is not productive. Refusing to nominate women candidates is the wrong lesson to take away, imo.

Either way, this is off topic, the 🧵 is about Covid. (3/3)