member kimmy, as an aside, I expect tied to your limited corporate world employment experience, you show your complete naivety in railing on about the relatively short job loss period to-date in relation to COVID-19 shutdowns... even extending that forward to say, 6 months to a year of unemployment. Those extended periods of lost job related unemployment are not that unusual in the work history of many of the boomers you so brazenly and repeatedly denigrate.
The boomers have certainly not experienced anything like this in their lifetimes. The nature of the steps undertaken to fight this epidemic are unlike anything seen since WWII, and the economic impact of this is being projected by every expert to be worse than anything since the Great Depression. In short: no, the Boomers don't have anything like this in their work histories.
Some things we saw after the 2007-8 recession:
-stock markets and real-estate prices rebounded a lot faster than the job market
-the job market was depressed for 4-5 years afterward
-younger workers were disproportionately affected (older workers either kept their jobs or got early retirement packages; workers with the less experience and less seniority were cut loose, with less benefits and severance than their more senior peers.)
With this new economic depression, we can well expect that the crater is going to be deeper and wider than the 2007 recession. And we can expect that young people will fare even worse. Not just because of the reasons mentioned above, but also because the industries hardest hit by the pandemic (restaurants, hospitality, travel, tourism, retail) are industries that disproportionately employ young people.
BC Chick's parents will be fine, boomers with defined-benefit pension plans will be even better and will probably be able to scoop up some real estate bargains while the market is recovering. Coonlight proposes that Millennials might be able to find real estate bargains during this time as well, but probably most of them will be too broke to take advantage.
"this summer" ... is that June, July, August or what - 2+, 3+, 4+ months away or what? The point being, they can't {yet} say, let alone estimate. More to the point, per B.C. Health Minister Dix:
Dix said finding a balance where British Columbians could resume some activities while containing the virus would be a huge task for officials in the weeks ahead.
"We must find a healthy way forward for the next 12 to 18 months … a healthy new normal that sustains us and keeps us safe," he said.
"We need to find a way forward that allows us to socialize. Whatever actions we take, we know there's a significant human cost if we get it wrong. The situation is complex, and it is without precedent in our lifetimes."
Dr Henry speaks of resuming some activities within the next few weeks, and way more socializing this summer. Health Minister Dix speaks of finding "a new normal" over the next 12 to 18 months. Do you feel those two ideas are contradictory? They aren't.
the waldo trusts the data and analysis is there; however, my crack research team hasn't found it... sure, sure, the Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports are readily available, but just how has the B.C. Health Authority used them to arrive at that current 30% level of interaction figure? Notwithstanding the most basic points that this Google "geolocation tracking" data presumes upon using Google Maps and requires people to have turned the normally off defaulted "Location History" setting on..... cause who has any concerns about privacy!
Dr Henry's statisticians and analysts and data crunchers are well aware that people can turn off the geolocation features in their phones. I haven't asked them, but I can 100% guarantee that they know this. I have to point out that your level of pomposity and hubris here has gone from its usual level (merely obnoxious) to an astounding new height (laugh-out-lout funny, comical, self-parody).
Your notion here, that you've spotted a "gotcha" that BC Health's data scientists and epidemiologists never thought of, reminds me of our old friend pliny (at MLW) and his notion that he'd spotted flaws in physics theory that the greatest physics scholars somehow missed for centuries.
I can't tell if you're serious or you're trying to be funny, but whichever your intent: it's funny.
"But kimmy," someone might ask. "If people can turn off the location features in their smartphone, how do we know what's really going on?"
Well, it's like this. We don't need data from every person, or even every smart phone owner, to know what impact the restrictions are having. We get lots of data from people who do have their location features enabled, and we can compare the data since the lock down to the data from before the lockdown, and see how much the lockdown is restricting people. We can use information provided by the people who have location features enabled to make projections about how the restrictions are affecting everybody else.
So how does this possibly skew the data? Or that the reports are by generic type, rather than particular location specific (e.g. the broad/generic Retail and Recreation category). In any case, your described "room for some restrictions to be lifted" over the interaction range 30%-to-60% has no foundation without some degree of specificity in term of "room, restrictions & lifted by how much"!
example - April 5th snapshot of 'up to April 2nd' data => if nothing else, an interesting statement on Canada versus the U.S. and, in particular, where certain states and provinces slot within. As for British Columbia: 54% mobility reduction in the Retail & Recreation category... 47% mobility reduction in the Workplace category
Again you post a graph and expect everybody to go "wow, that looks sciency! the waldo has really done his homework!" while hoping that nobody reads the fine print. Your graph tracks "mobility", while Dr Henry's analysis is based on "contacts", not "mobility".
"But kimmy," someone might ask. "What's the difference?"
Here's the difference. Mobility doesn't measure how much you're interacting with people. For example: a single trip to the grocery store, since after social distancing measures were put in place, would have the same "mobility" as single a trip to the grocery store before social distancing measures. But it would would result in fewer contacts. Before social distancing, you're in a busier store, you're standing within a couple of feet of each other at the broccoli counter and the checkout. Since social distancing, the store is only letting so many people in at once, people are mostly taking steps to give each other space, and the checkout line has everybody spaced out by 2m. Also consider the kinds of activities that are still open and those that are closed. A trip to the local arena to see a concert could generate a huge number of contacts, a walk in the woods could generate the same "mobility" as the concert while creating zero "contacts" at all.
So while the "mobility" data might indicate that people are making just 50% as many trips as they were before the lockdown, we can also project that the amount of "contacts" has decreased by an even larger degree because of social distancing measures.
-k