It’s amazing that "lockdowns didn’t cause the economic crisis, the pandemic did", a statement that is *obviously* retarded when used to argue there can be no economic case against lockdowns, has gained almost universal acceptance among the sophisticates.
See this thread for an elaboration of this point. Tl;dr; "the pandemic caused the economic crisis" doesn’t imply "lockdowns couldn’t make it worse" and they almost certainly will in many cases. If you don’t understand this very simple point, you may not be as smart as you think.
Please, before you reply, note that I didn’t say lockdowns could *never* be good for the economy. This is almost certainly false, but it depends on the context and in many contexts the fact that lockdowns can sometimes be good is irrelevant.
Those are very basic points, anyone who isn’t cognitively impaired can understand them, but somehow every very intelligent person on Twitter just keeps repeating simplistic, dumb slogans like "there is no tradeoff between health and the economy".
Can we please not be retarded and have a serious debate about this? I guess we can’t, but that’s a pity. There is plenty of room for reasonable disagreement, you don’t have to use obvious non-sequiturs to defend your position 🤷‍♂️
Oh and, to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that only health and the economy narrowly construed matter for the debate about lockdowns. It also hinges on complicated questions about distributive justice (both intergenerational and socioeconomic), how to deal with uncertainty, etc.
It’s okay to have a strong opinion about this, I sure as hell do, but you have to recognize that it’s a very complicated debate. If you think it’s not, I can *guarantee* you that it’s because you haven’t thought hard enough about it. It doesn’t matter how smart you think you are.

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More from @phl43

31 Oct
Le détail des subventions pour 2019 vient de paraître et celle de @CedricMas a touché 19 477€ de l'État cette année-là, alors que le dernier article publié sur le site du "think tank" remonte à décembre 2018 et qu'il a été sabordé quelques mois plus tard.
Voici la ligne du fichier que vous pouvez trouver sur le site du Ministère de l'Économie montrant la subvention versée à l'Institut Action Résilience pour "prévention de la radicalisation". budget.gouv.fr/documentation/… Image
C'est quand même étrange pour une association qui, d'après ce qu'on peut trouver sur Internet, n'a pas eu la moindre activité en 2019 et a sabordé son propre site web cette année-là 🤔
Read 5 tweets
30 Oct
This shows year-to-year change in weekly purchases with a debit card in Spain, where a lockdown started on March 14 and was gradually lifted after May 2. But people still maintain that legal restrictions don't make a huge difference for the economy because people are scared 🙃 Image
I guess they got massively scared all of a sudden around March 14, which happens to be when the lockdown started but that's just a coincidence, then suddenly started to stop being afraid as the lockdown was lifted, but again this is just another weird coincidence.
By the way, the change by category also track the way in which legal restrictions were gradually lifted after the lockdown (e. g. leisure/entertainment expenditures really start to go up as restaurants, theaters, etc. open again), but again let me stress it's just a coincidence.
Read 5 tweets
29 Oct
Oh for Christ’s sake, this chart doesn’t mean shit, you’re looking at cases and comparing countries with totally different testing regimes... Does anyone seriously think it makes sense to compare e. g. Nigeria’s cases data with Denmark’s? Please be serious.
Even if the data were really comparable, nobody doubts that many factors beside the prevalence of immunity in the population affect the epidemic, so this chart still wouldn’t show anything since confounding would obviously be a major issue.
There is no doubt that, other things being equal, a greater prevalence of immunity in the population slows down transmission. Stop being dumb by denying that. There is just no reason to think that things are equal and the prevalence of immunity is still very low in most places.
Read 5 tweets
28 Oct
Thread intéressant qui s'essaie à une estimation par la force des choses très approximative du coût d'un reconfinement partiel et qui compare ça à l'impact économique du contrefactuel où on ne fait rien.
Personnellement, je pense que le coût économique d'un reconfinement partiel sera encore plus important, parce qu'en réalité une grande partie de l'impact du premier confinement n'a pas encore été mesuré, car les mesures de soutien du gouvernement ont entraîné un délai.
Par ailleurs, même quand les faillites commenceront parce qu'il faudra payer les charges qui ont été reportées ou rembourser les prêts obtenus grâce à la garantie de l'État, ça n'aura pas épuisé le coût économique : pensez par exemple à l'impact à long terme des perturbations du
Read 5 tweets
28 Oct
Je me fais encore un curry de poulet en attendant que notre Führer nous annonce le suicide national. C’est en train de devenir une tradition. Image
Il a choisi un décor aseptisé pour rester dans l'ambiance hôpital ?
"Nous avons fait tout notre possible."

Malheureusement, c'est la vérité.
Read 11 tweets
28 Oct
Le reconfinement que va annoncer Macron ce soir, c'est le triomphe du court-termisme : on voit les morts tout de suite, mais il faudra des mois, des années voire même des décennies pour que les effets d'un nouveau confinement se fassent sentir et ils seront absolument désastreux.
Si le gouvernement avait fait preuve de prévoyance, d'initiative et d'audace, il y avait pourtant des alternatives : investissement massif dans les infrastructures de test, quarantine centralisée des malades et des cas contacts, isolement des personnes vulnérables, etc.
Pour être juste avec le gouvernement, ce genre de mesures n'auraient sans doute pas été facile à faire accepter par la population (les tests obligatoires sur des millions de personnes chaque semaine ne serait pas passé comme une lettre à la poste), mais il n'a même pas essayé.
Read 6 tweets

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