The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is analyzing damage due to COVID and projecting further severe consequences if current policies persist. They state “despite involving short term economic costs, lockdowns may lead to faster economic recovery by containing the virus”

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Note: This report doesn’t do a dynamic analysis that makes things much clearer, but it does a thoughtful statistical analysis based upon increasingly available data.

https://t.co/5Xmt8y7lCL

A few more quotes:

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“The analysis also finds that lockdowns are powerful instruments to reduce infections, especially when they are introduced early in a country’s epidemic and when they are sufficiently stringent.”

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“lockdowns become progressively more effective in reducing COVID-19 cases when they become sufficiently stringent. Mild lockdowns appear instead ineffective at curbing infections.”

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“The results suggest that to achieve a given reduction in infections, policymakers may want to opt for stringent lockdowns over a shorter period rather than prolonged mild lockdowns...

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..Based upon past experience, tighter lockdowns appear indeed to entail only modest additional costs while leading to a considerably stronger decline in infections.”

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“The analysis also suggests that lockdowns must be sufficiently stringent to reduce infections significantly.”

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“The effectiveness of lockdowns in reducing infections suggests that lockdowns may pave the way to a faster economic recovery if they succeed in containing the epidemic and thus limit the extent of voluntary social distancing...

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..Therefore the short-term economic costs of lockdowns could be compensated by stronger medium-term growth, possibly leading to positive overall effects on the economy.”

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“These findings suggest that economies will continue to operate below potential while health risks persist, even if lockdowns are lifted.”

“Therefore, policymakers should refrain from withdrawing policy support too quickly and preserve spending on social safety nets.”

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“The prevailing narrative often portrays lockdowns as involving a tradeoff between saving lives and supporting the economy. This characterization neglects the point that, despite involving short term economic costs, lockdowns may lead to faster economic recovery..

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by containing the virus and reducing voluntary social distancing. These medium term gains may offset the the short-term costs of lockdowns, possibly leading to positive overall effects on the economy.”

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The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.