Althouse: "Scooter sharing companies like Lime and Bird, which were booming, have suffered potentially fatal blows."

April 11, 2020

"Scooter sharing companies like Lime and Bird, which were booming, have suffered potentially fatal blows."

From "How the Virus Transformed the Way Americans Spend Their Money" (NYT).

And health care spending is down — because "those who conduct elective procedures, dentists and specialists not working on the coronavirus response are doing less business. Some hospitals, faced with lower revenues from canceled nonemergency work, have furloughed or cut the pay of doctors, nurses and other staff members."

77 comments:

wild chicken said...: On Reddit I saw that most ERs' incidents are down too. Fewer heart attacks, bleeding ulcers, psych freakouts, and even ODs. Some just dying at home instead.

Seems like much of the psych bs lets up when things get real.; 4/11/20, 11:54 AM
Ken B said...: I bet Lime comes out alright, once wipes are cheap again. It’s people not surfaces that are the real danger. Better ride a lime than the bus or subway.; 4/11/20, 11:54 AM
Sebastian said...: "Some hospitals, faced with lower revenues from canceled nonemergency work"

All "marginal businesses," as we've been told by commentators on this very blog.

Let'm die. To save health care, to save just one life.; 4/11/20, 12:04 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: A massive health crisis with hospital staff being laid off? That’s a bit like being impoverished and obese. And tattooed.; 4/11/20, 12:04 PM
Arashi said...: Ah hope springs eternel - but gee, shouldn't they get a bailout too, like the Kennedy Center in New York (though once they got it they fired everybody anyway)?

If the scooter menace in the cities dies from this - good.; 4/11/20, 12:05 PM
Lucid-Ideas said...: This pleases me greatly.; 4/11/20, 12:08 PM
Anne-I-Am said...: This news made my day.; 4/11/20, 12:13 PM
Anne-I-Am said...: The scooters, that is.; 4/11/20, 12:13 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: From "How the Virus Transformed the Way Americans Spend Their Money" (NYT).

If I were the NYT headline Editor, it would read:

"How the Government Response to the Virus Transformed the Way Americans Spend Their Money"

But that's just me - YMMV.; 4/11/20, 12:13 PM
Ken B said...: Althouse sets the same trap over and over, and still catches people.; 4/11/20, 12:16 PM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: Everything is fuckled.

chiComs and Hillary are celebratory!; 4/11/20, 12:18 PM
Michael K said...: My niece, an OR nurse on a liver transplant team, is only working two days a week. Primary care docs are really hit hard.; 4/11/20, 12:19 PM
Jupiter said...: Hey, why settle for mere health care when you can have intensive care.; 4/11/20, 12:22 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Just put the scooter companies on some of the excess ventilators.

Ken, you "Althouse sets trap" routine is not only wrong pretty much every time, but getting tiresome at this point.; 4/11/20, 12:30 PM
Yancey Ward said...: In other words, Ken, you are getting dangerously close to Chuck territory.; 4/11/20, 12:31 PM
Limited blogger said...: Isn't the left wonderful?

All their nanny-statism does is create unintended consequences worse than the original problem.; 4/11/20, 12:31 PM
Bob Smith said...: And while I haven’t spent any time researching the numbers I’ll wager that overall deaths since the first of the year are down compared to the last five years.; 4/11/20, 12:33 PM
FullMoon said...: Yancey Ward said... [hush][hide comment]

In other words, Ken, you are getting dangerously close to Chuck territory.

Strikingly similar, eh?; 4/11/20, 12:34 PM
Anne-I-Am said...: The delay in elective care will have consequences. The modifier doesn’t mean the care is unnecessary. Morbidity and mortality will increase as a result of delayed surgeries and screenings.

Try to broach this topic with a Panic! Adherent, though.

When told that I obviously want people to die, I guess I will begin to counter with, “Clearly, so do you.”; 4/11/20, 12:35 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: @YW,

"In other words, Ken, you are getting dangerously close to Chuck territory."

So, you're saying he's Chuck the Canuck?

(Ba-da-Bing!); 4/11/20, 12:38 PM
cubanbob said...: And health care spending is down — because "those who conduct elective procedures, dentists and specialists not working on the coronavirus response are doing less business. Some hospitals, faced with lower revenues from canceled nonemergency work, have furloughed or cut the pay of doctors, nurses and other staff members.""

And this is supposed to be a good thing?
"

Ken B said...
Althouse sets the same trap over and over, and still catches people."

Aren't you a Canadian? Maybe you should focus on how Canadians are moronic enough to keep electing Trudeau's?; 4/11/20, 12:40 PM
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: I work for Concentra. We have 600 clinics across all fifty states. These are primarily worker's comp.

We are laying off and taking pay cuts. Business is down a full 55%. People aren't working, so they're not getting hurt at work.; 4/11/20, 12:43 PM
Ken B said...: Yancey
Over 10,000 dead in one week. What was your prediction?
You are the last person who should be confident in his analysis.; 4/11/20, 12:43 PM
Ken B said...: “ Maybe you should focus on how Canadians are moronic enough to keep electing Trudeau's?”

Oh hell, I gave up trying to fathom that stupidity long ago. If Biden serves two terms will you be able to explain it? Same thing.; 4/11/20, 12:45 PM
rcocean said...: IOW, when the shutdown is over, all these people who put off their surgery, will then have to wait in line, till the system supply catches up with demand. Its a double whammy.; 4/11/20, 12:47 PM
rhhardin said...: Even companies working at home may find their customers' businesses losing customers and so be subject to cutbacks. Just a slower to happen effect down the demand side of the supply chain.; 4/11/20, 12:51 PM
Curious George said...: "rcocean said...
IOW, when the shutdown is over, all these people who put off their surgery, will then have to wait in line, till the system supply catches up with demand. Its a double whammy."

Gonna be a lot of people who can no longer afford their part of the surgery costs, or are no longer insured. This idea that things are just going to go back to normal is lunacy.; 4/11/20, 12:55 PM
Francisco D said...: A former colleague in Illinois is a clinical psychologist and her husband is a dentist. They had been living fairly well on their high joint income. However, that income is not just down. It has vanished. Zero. And they have two kids.

Dentists make good money, but they also have huge investments in education, equipment, rent, employees, etc. Clinical psychologists in private practice do not have to spend a lot on most of those items, but lots have huge grad school loans.

These smart, hard working people are getting screwed big time by the shutdown. They need to cash out retirement funds to get by and feed their kids.; 4/11/20, 12:55 PM
Stephen Taylor said...: I wonder about outfits like Keurig. My wife and I were discussing Keurig this morning. She tells me that one of those little pods makes a single cup of coffee, and that the single cup pod cost a dollar apiece. I use a Mr Coffee and drink Dunkin' Donuts, Seaport and Community. I'm aghast that a single cup of coffee might cost an entire buck. I think a lot of other people will become aghast as well.; 4/11/20, 12:57 PM
Francisco D said...: Ken B

I don't recall what Yancey predicted, but I do recall your complete inability to grasp statistics. In other words, defending your hysterical death projections by citing Yancey's lower predictions is not much of a defense.; 4/11/20, 12:58 PM
cubanbob said...: Ken B said...
“ Maybe you should focus on how Canadians are moronic enough to keep electing Trudeau's?”

Oh hell, I gave up trying to fathom that stupidity long ago. If Biden serves two terms will you be able to explain it? Same thing."

No. The point being worry about your house and not ours. As for Joe The Senile, yes out 3,200 counties 200 were responsible for voting that idiot as Vice President. Deal with your imbeciles and we will deal with ours.; 4/11/20, 12:59 PM
bagoh20 said...: I think the cops are looking to replace lost revenue from this stuff too. I rarely see cops in Vegas unless it's on the strip or a big event, but since the lock down they are everywhere hiding behind corners and looking for tickets. I got my first ticket the first day of lock down when I was at a red light that was broken and after about 2 minutes I went through it. Cop pulls me over and gives me a ticket, and tells me I have to wait for it to change even if it's broken. He then tells me to tell the judge what happened and he'll probably reduce it.

I have a friend that got a speeding ticket yesterday for 40 mph in a 35 zone. Of course there is no traffic right now, and that much over would never get you a ticket normally.; 4/11/20, 1:00 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Again, Ken, I predicted 7500 dead when the low prediction from the experts was 2 million dead. Who is going to end up being more correct- me or them?; 4/11/20, 1:01 PM
bagoh20 said...: "Over 10,000 dead in one week. What was your prediction?"

It will only take 2 years continuously at that peak rate for us to get to the low end of projections used to shut us all down. Then there were the 11 million some took serious for a while that would take 10 years at peak. Lets leave the "I told you so"'s to people who actually controlled their excitement back then.; 4/11/20, 1:13 PM
Clyde said...: The one thing I don't understand is why those hospitals haven't reassigned those other elective doctors and personnel to dealing with COVID-19? They all went to medical school, right? Just because someone has specialized in plastic surgery or something doesn't mean they couldn't be helping out in the current crisis.; 4/11/20, 1:16 PM
rehajm said...: ...and there was much rejoicing.; 4/11/20, 1:20 PM
bagoh20 said...: So in hindsight, did the models help us get closer to accurate numbers or did they lead us away from them?; 4/11/20, 1:24 PM
PB said...: Whoops!; 4/11/20, 1:24 PM
gilbar said...: scooter sharing companies, that were booming
assumes facts not in evidence
{oh BOY! i get to use it Twice in one day!}

by What standard were these things "booming" That they spent a LOT of money? that's not booming; 4/11/20, 1:29 PM
Curious George said...: "Clyde said...
The one thing I don't understand is why those hospitals haven't reassigned those other elective doctors and personnel to dealing with COVID-19? They all went to medical school, right? Just because someone has specialized in plastic surgery or something doesn't mean they couldn't be helping out in the current crisis."

Many of the them are not employees, they have a private practice. And I would guess that an orthopedic surgeon pulling in many millions per year would have no interest in working in a hospital with CV patients. My infectious disease doc, who I see regarding getting two infections during hip replacement, changes an annual follow up appointment to a telephone call.; 4/11/20, 1:31 PM
gilbar said...: My dad (who is 90 years old) needs a Root canal, because he has an abscess
BUT, he won't be able to get one (not This month, anyway) on account of because
34 people died; in a state with 3.5 MILLION residents. by My math that's 1 in a hundred thousand

BUT, He'll just have to (try to) live with the pain, and Maybe, just maybe some time in the next 12-18 months MAYBE things will reopen.
Serious Question
If my dad DIES, from a abscess on his tooth that's not getting fixed; does that count as a covid death?; 4/11/20, 1:35 PM
MartyH said...: I’d never rent a Zipcar after this. A scooter maybe.

A friend’s son cut himself and needed stitches. 35 minutes in and out of the ER. Fire dept calls way down in Sac. Police calls too.; 4/11/20, 1:40 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "So in hindsight, did the models help us get closer to accurate numbers or did they lead us away from them?

Since all the models were wrong in exactly the same direction, I think the people creating them, whether they were consciously aware of it or not, deliberately biased them towards predicting the apocalypse. Of course, when the end of the world fails to appear, like all doomsday cults, they face a choice- shut up and disband themselves, commit suicide, or move the goalposts and try to keep the faithful from leaving the church.; 4/11/20, 1:48 PM
David Begley said...: I was in an Omaha hospital last week for a test. Nearly empty.

I will not miss those scooters. Dangerous,; 4/11/20, 1:48 PM
Yancey Ward said...: And you see the backtracking plan already- 2nd and 3rd waves. I don't disagree that such seasonality will appear, but I also recognize the shutdown can't continue- you can't feed 330,000,000 people with half the workforce on staycation. Inventory eventually runs out in such a circumstance.; 4/11/20, 1:51 PM
Robt C said...: @Bob Smith, I read that overall deaths in March were down 15,000 from the average number of the prior four years.; 4/11/20, 1:51 PM
Sebastian said...: "a clinical psychologist and her husband is a dentist. They had been living fairly well on their high joint income. However, that income is not just down. It has vanished. Zero."

More "marginal businesses," as noted on this very blog by one illustrious commentator. Shoulda picked a different line of work.

Hey, if it only saves one life!; 4/11/20, 2:01 PM
Openidname said...: The economy is a row of dominoes. The businesses that are dying now are just the first dominoes to fall. Even governments will feel it when their tax revenues collapse. No part of the economy will be left unscathed. Except Domino's.; 4/11/20, 2:03 PM
Sebastian said...: "deliberately biased them towards predicting the apocalypse"

Exactly. The guesses were all systematically off, the "uncertainties" all weighted the same way, the overestimations all egregious, the use made of the models all biased toward fueling panic and justifying the most expensive overreaction.

Maybe not all. Were there any honorable exceptions?; 4/11/20, 2:05 PM
Jupiter said...: "Since all the models were wrong in exactly the same direction, I think the people creating them, whether they were consciously aware of it or not, deliberately biased them towards predicting the apocalypse."

I have yet to see anyone actually explaining the nuts and bolts of the calculations used in these "models". As a physicist and computer programmer, I find that deeply suspect. There is no reason to have a complicated model, if you are going to use it to produce "projections" with error bars of 5000%. If you can't write it as a single equation, with at most 5 parameters, you are just playing with your dick. The fact that they are so wildly wrong, and that their models are so easy to "correct", indicates that they are quacks, pure and simple.

But is it reasonable to expect politicians to ignore quacks? I'm not sure it is.; 4/11/20, 2:05 PM
Night Owl said...: IOW, when the shutdown is over, all these people who put off their surgery, will then have to wait in line, till the system supply catches up with demand. Its a double whammy.

So we'll have waiting lists. Just like Europe and Canada. Some people may die waiting. But these deaths will be worth it, if the shutdown spared just one life from the covid virus.
/s; 4/11/20, 2:05 PM
Dude1394 said...: If this continues for another two months,it will be catastrophic. It’s already disastrous.

We have to get the **** on with our lives. We aren’t school children who get to stay home while mommy takes care of them, as much as the democrats would like us to be.; 4/11/20, 2:11 PM
Jupiter said...: I am still waiting to hear how HCQ + Zn is working on a large scale. Crickets. Can it really be the case, that America's doctors are ignoring the reports of a treatment with 99% efficacy in less than a day, and just hooking sick people up to ventilators so they can watch them die? Did they try it, find it failed, and not bother to tell anyone? WTF?; 4/11/20, 2:20 PM
tcrosse said...: I am still waiting to hear how HCQ + Zn is working on a large scale.

It's disappointing that a medical judgement is made on an Ad Hominem basis, i.e. Trump "touts" it, ergo it's ineffective or even dangerous. QED.; 4/11/20, 2:25 PM
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: Clyde said...
The one thing I don't understand is why those hospitals haven't reassigned those other elective doctors and personnel to dealing with COVID-19? They all went to medical school, right? Just because someone has specialized in plastic surgery or something doesn't mean they couldn't be helping out in the current crisis.

In my county, we have two hospitals, 11 surgical centers, umpteen doctor's offices and 24 cases of covid with no deaths.; 4/11/20, 2:30 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Annie C,

My county is kind of similar- we have 11 cases and 1 death, we were at 10 cases 2 weeks ago. Hospital largly shut down (I walk past the parking lot every day- very, very empty- probably only employees' automobiles. I imagine all the surgery centers and doctors offices are the same. Even my dentist is closed down. I need to get a new pair of glasses, and I don't think the opticians open any longer, but I will find out for sure on Monday.; 4/11/20, 2:41 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Watching today's number coming in. Big holiday weekend effect. I predict you see a huge spike on Monday and Tuesday in new cases and deaths. Lots of people taking the weekend off. I bet the market spikes up on Monday morning due to the "good news".; 4/11/20, 2:47 PM
DavidUW said...: A healthy, not disabled 90 year old man has approximately an 80% chance of surviving for another 18 months.

Just saying Gilbar.; 4/11/20, 3:09 PM
sam said...: Ken B said...
Althouse sets the same trap over and over, and still catches people."

Aren't you a Canadian? Maybe you should focus on how Canadians are

moronic enough to keep electing Trudeau's?; 4/11/20, 3:37 PM
wild chicken said...: The only "model" I'm familiar with is a back of the envelope calc last month based on cases doubling every six days. A biologist on Twitter. She predicted a million cases by may, and we seem to be well on our way to that.; 4/11/20, 3:39 PM
Ken B said...: Sam
Asked and answered.
Do better dude.; 4/11/20, 3:46 PM
Ken B said...: A plan based on testing, not the only such plan, but a plan https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1248712889705410560; 4/11/20, 4:25 PM
Mark said...: Scooter sharing companies like Lime and Bird, which were booming, have suffered potentially fatal blows.

"And there was much rejoicing."; 4/11/20, 4:48 PM
Ken B said...: "And there was much rejoicing."

And Ward denies anyone falls into the trap!; 4/11/20, 4:53 PM
Birkel said...: Anybody else remember when I was mentioning this four or five days ago?

I am sure this shutdown won't cause enormous economic dislocation.
Or the lives of actual humans ruined.; 4/11/20, 5:19 PM
Birkel said...: I have explained the "more than two million deaths" from Winnie Xi Flu.

The US populations is roughly three times what it was in 1918.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 Americans.
Assume the same rate of deaths.
QED
More than two million deaths.

Prove me wrong!; 4/11/20, 5:54 PM
Birkel said...: Remember when we closed down the economy, spent 8.3 trillion USD, and dropped the total number of deaths in the United States, overall?

All so we could avoid an increase in deaths of 40-60k from a virus?

Good times.
Good times.; 4/11/20, 5:59 PM
Kathy said...: The study to test the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine is using Vitamin C as the placebo. Since Vitamin C has a therapeutic effect itself, this is bound to make hydroxychloroquine look less effective. Why did they set up the study this way?

https://nyulangone.org/news/clinical-trial-tests-efficacy-common-antimalarial-drug-prevent-covid-19-infection; 4/11/20, 6:57 PM
gilbar said...: DavidUW said...
A healthy, not disabled 90 year old man has approximately an 80% chance of surviving for another 18 months.

Yep, kinda a bummer though, that he'll have to be in pain for the rest of his life
(personally, i thing that they should just pull it (which again, they can't do: they're closed)); 4/11/20, 7:21 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "A plan based on testing, not the only such plan, but a plan https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1248712889705410560"

Romer is an idiot past the 4th tweet or so- the first few, though, are exactly right. The man is handwaving away the physical constraints to testing people, Ken. Anyone with an IQ above a non-COVID-19 body temp should be trying to understand why the US and every other country on the planet has plateaued in tests run each day. When things like that happen, there is a real constraint- but Romer completely ignores that.; 4/11/20, 7:22 PM
gilbar said...: Kathy posted a link about the drug trials, that said...
If hydroxychloroquine provides protection, then it could be an essential tool for fighting this pandemic
If everything goes as planned, the eight-week trial could provide answers by summer

In other words: It could be an essential tool for fight the NEXT pandemic
summer (which is their Best Case scenario) is two months too late. The dead will be dead by then.; 4/11/20, 7:25 PM
Yancey Ward said...: There are lot of high IQ people who keep going on and on about "test, test, test, trace, trace, trace." If this were ever going work, the US today would be running at least 1/2 million RT-PCR tests per day, and given the automation that has come on line, the obvious reason it isn't happening is that it is impractical to take more than about 150,000 samples/day. Why is this? Hard to say, but examining the procedures it suggests to me people just aren't willing to be tested, and the procedure is so complicated that the people taking the samples just can't do more than that number in a day. Of course, we will probably start mandating people be sampled, but it won't change much.; 4/11/20, 7:26 PM
Jupiter said...: " Kathy said...
The study to test the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine is using Vitamin C as the placebo. Since Vitamin C has a therapeutic effect itself, this is bound to make hydroxychloroquine look less effective. Why did they set up the study this way?"

Hey, once you have decided to let a bunch of people die horribly so you can publish a paper sometime in the Fall or Winter, it doesn't rsally matter what you put in the paper. They probably picked it 'cause they had it lying around and it looks similar to the HCQ pills. They are incapable of thought, or they would realize that you don't need a double-blind controlled random-sample study to determine whether a treatment does or does not eliminate all symptoms in 12 hours. What a bunch of dogma-addled technofascists.; 4/11/20, 8:00 PM
Sebastian said...: Birkel: "Remember when we closed down the economy, spent 8.3 trillion USD, and dropped the total number of deaths in the United States, overall? All so we could avoid an increase in deaths of 40-60k from a virus?"

Fun times, indeed. Remains to be determined that 1. the 40-60K were in fact "from" the virus; 2. there was in fact excess mortality on that order, and 3. any imagined reduction to that number had anything to do with the closing down.; 4/11/20, 8:36 PM
Ken B said...: Taleb https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1249149948827926531; 4/11/20, 9:47 PM
Ken B said...: Taleb is big on chloroquine btw, thinks there is a “strong signal” of efficacy.; 4/11/20, 10:03 PM
DavidUW said...: Fun times, indeed. Remains to be determined that 1. the 40-60K were in fact "from" the virus; 2. there was in fact excess mortality on that order, and 3. any imagined reduction to that number had anything to do with the closing down.
...
Indeed. indeed.

4. The Venn diagram of people who state (like Zeke Emanuel) that the healthcare system spends too much money on end-of-life care and should ration anything used on people over, say, 75, and those who state we should spend unlimited trillions, shut down the economy and ruin 20, 30, 40 million young people's lives.; 4/11/20, 10:16 PM