That's the plan?!
This is the plan for dealing with this virus? Stay in our homes, don't gather in groups larger than 10...don't have events larger than 250? Wait and hope it passes...re-assess the situation in two months?
So, to hell with anyone who has a job in the restaurant industry then? The wait staff, the cooks, the management, the dishwashers? To hell with everyone who earns their living producing supplies to them or delivers those supplies?
To hell with anyone who works in a theater or provides supplies or performs routine maintenance?
To hell with concert venues, the staff, the ushers, the janitors? To hell with the vendors? To hell with the bartenders? To hell with the bands, the speakers, the comedians? To hell with their crew, their roadies, the sound engineers, the electricians?
To hell with all of them and their ability to feed themselves? To hell with each and every last one of them in every city in the U.S.?
All these people, some low income, some living paycheck to paycheck, they can all...each and everyone one of the in the entire U.S.... just sit and not earn a living for the next two months?
To hell also with the travel industry? To hell with the airlines? The TSA crew? the baggage handlers? the people who run the ticket counters? The flight staff? The mechanics?
What, please ask yourself, will be left in two months?
In most cases the employees would have had to find new work. Just as an example, the TSA would need a new workforce, trained from the beginning in most cases, how does that idea grab you?
Are you under the impression that these businesses and individuals will survive and just come back to provide those services after you are all satisfied that this virus has gone away? You think those venues will survive? Those restaurants? The airlines? You think they can just not generate revenue for two full months and reopen their doors like nothing happened? For the sake of argument, imagine if you can that they do not have a bank vault full of gold to out last this plan, and never re-open.
Imagine the concert halls don't re-open and the bands do not reform, imagine those comedians and speakers are never again in the financial position to go out performing, imagine the theaters also stay closed. It may seem trivial now, but you'll remember very soon that human joy is precious.
If that is too abstract for you...not necessary enough then include in that list all the local restaurants, and thee impact they have on the economy in the city in which you live.
and...Imagine only two airlines left, or maybe only one, or maybe only one government run airline set up for whatever is deemed "required travel" until whatever is left of the last one can rehire/train enough new employees to resume flights, as the majority of their workforce would have had to move onto other jobs in order to continue to eat.
The workforces of all the businesses and industries that would be crippled or done in by two months of inactivity, would have to go find other jobs. Maybe yours. But to hell with you too.
To hell with political rallies, and the constitutionally protected right of peaceful assembly?
To hell with all of it, the death toll after two full months is 69...In a country of 330 million. Why, if that's not cause for shutting the whole thing down than what is, right?
That's the plan. I assume that will be the plan next year to when a new flu virus makes itself known. Every year, right? That's what we're doing? or just every few years when a virus with a scary name hits the news that's killing people with compromised immune systems in some third world country, with third world hospitals.
There's a new one every three years or so for the last couple decades. Sars, Mers, H1N1, bird flu, ebola.
This seems like a poorly thought out plan. This seems like a plan conceived under the delusion that the only cause of human misery is this new virus.
We could just do what we did when H1N1 (swine flu) hit. Remember what we did? You don't, do you. Say that out loud to yourself "I don't remember what we did about swine flu"...and now look at the plan you're going along with to deal with this virus. Seems like there would be a mid range between measures so invisible you don't even remember them and SHUTTING DOWN AN ENTIRE COUNTRY FOR TWO MONTHS.
If I could only choose between the two, I'd choose between how we handled H1N1. It hardly caused anyone to get evicted and or starve or destroy entire industries.
It's ALL about the banking collapse and the reset of the economic system.
Corona is just the excuse to keep people off the streets during the ensuing chaos.
(imo).
(in 2018 ,over 4000 people died in car accidents in the US, over the same 6 weeks period. But no car ban or anything. The whole thing is totally illogical, for those wishing to think)
whatever the reason...people wishing to do any "thinking" are even more rare than people in the U.S.who have actually died from this virus.
It's easy to say it's an over-reaction, but it gets scary when your parents have a 1 in 7 chance of dying if they get it. Still, in places where there are few cases we ought to be able to carry on fairly well. People will say it's a government plot, but all countries would have to be in on it and companies are making their own plans. Trump has shown he has no idea by saying it would just go away and then have to introduce stricter conditions. There are likely to be thousands of deaths in many countries. At least some other deaths will go down as less people will be driving or catching other diseases.
But how bad is it compared to the global depression that is almost guaranteed at this point? How many people will that kill?
Those deaths may be preventable. An incurable virus is a real threat that is killing people right now.
So every time coronavirus reappears, this one or another strain, we are supposed to shut down the economy for 6 months (or more)? It just isn't feasible. Even if a vaccine is developed (and there isn't any guarantee...the common cold is a coronavirus too), it is likely to be of limited effectiveness (much like the flu vaccine) where they have to guess at the correct strain for the year and if they are lucky it will be 50 percent effective even if they do.
If extraordinary measures need to be taken, then lets at least focus them on the people who need them most. Not every person on earth.
And no, the deaths that will happen in an economic depression will not be preventable. Oh sure, you could look at any single one and say we could have prevented that but they will happen anyway. Starvation in poorer countries, suicide, drug overdoses and other acts of desperation. They will happen.
Do you have alternatives? Do we just let the virus sweep through the population killing millions and totally overloading all available healthcare? Young people may not suffer too much, but they can spread the disease.
This is not just like the flu. That may be killing more in the US for now, but coronavirus is still on an exponential increase and will overtake it easily.
I don't envy the politicians trying to strike the right balance. They need to rely on real experts and not pretend they know better or just make up statistics. The virus does not care if you are rich or poor or how you vote. Mind you, men seem more likely to die of it.
Why listen to my non-expert view anyway? ;)
It's very, very much like the flu. A bad strain to be sure but hardly unique in human history. The solution would be for those that are most vulnerable (elderly, those with other health problems) and for caretakers and others who must be in close contact with those same people to self isolate. Not the entire population of the earth. For most people, Covid-19 is no worse than the flu (and in many cases not as bad). Perhaps a requirement for everyone to wear masks in public would be helpful as well. Not only does it offer some protection against contracting the virus, it offers significant protection against those that have it (and might not even know it) from spreading it to others.
Right now we are talking about 30%+ unemployment, production stopping in many cases and yet the government printing money. What happens when you print money at a rate unparalleled in human history but forcibly stop the production of goods (many anyway) and services? There's no guarantee that Covid-19 (or a new variant) won't be back next year. Are we just going to keep doing this? The economy only operates half the year now? Never mind basic freedoms... The human toll will be far worse from that than this virus...that's my prediction anyway.
How many people died from influenza A and influenza B last year? I'm betting you don't know.
In the US, somewhere between 35,000 and 65,000. Even though it is a highly studied viral infection that we have been living with for many, many decades, and the death toll is regularly multiple tens of thousands, you don't shut down local businesses every year when flu season comes in. You protect the most vulnerable while recognizing that you need everybody else going about their business in order to be able to afford to do it next year. On top of that, and this is the part that might disturb people, you accept that some people are going to die that maybe you could have saved if you had done more intrusive, more destructive, more aggressive intervention.
You can't cure influenza, either. You can vaccinate for it, and we do every year, but it's been a bad series of years for the flu shot and they've only bet the right way in about 40% of the tested cases. Is that better than 0%? Sure. Did we shut down entire economies about it?
That would be stupid.
Doing it now is also stupid.
If you really wanted to save lives and didn't care about the economic cost, you'd be advocating for the shutdown of the interstate highway system in the US. Millions of people are injured and tens of thousands die every year in entirely preventable accidents. If only they couldn't get on the highway and drive to somewhere else. Entirely preventable. Maybe we should just take away the ownership of vehicles altogether and save even more lives!
You see, this line of reasoning is idiocy because there's no end to it. There is no acceptable place to stop.
I like to stop when you start talking about government intervention into directly limiting what has been touted as essential, elemental freedoms not just in the US but in the Western world since the Enlightenment. I know, I'm a dreamer. Crazy.
But at least I'm not an idiot.
I was aware that a lot of people die from the flu and that vaccines can reduce that. Of course people will die, as they do of all sorts of things and it's foolish to imagine we can save everyone. Still, everyone is an idiot in some areas.
Politicians get a lot of flack, but they are people too. Their motives may not always the in the interests of the people. They may do some things that seem idiotic in an effort to be seen to do something.
From what my feeble brain can understand the measures being taken in various countries are to prevent health services being overwhelmed. We may all end up getting this virus, but we can spread that out a bit and possibly keep the hospitals operating.
Is it idiocy for us to be writing essays for strangers here? It's not like many will see them. ;)
Stay well.
This is a perfect time to take the idea of a UBI seriously. As a viewer from abroad I see that the US is one of the countries which will be hardest hit due to its politians and rampent capitalism.
Part of me is kind of excited that this reset will make us realise what is really important. I just hope that at the other end it won't be back to business as usual.
...is this...Is this someone from IRELAND lecturing a different country on how to run an economy? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA wow, thanks. That's a laugh I needed
Yes, I know right. I should really be charging for my services. In all seriousness though I follow the science. The economy will have to wait till all this has passed
You know what else science says? If you killed everyone, you would stop the spread of the virus. Overkill right? I think that's the point.
It's not capitalism if the government is shutting down everything. You can't just shut down the economy and then print free money for everyone. There won't be anything to spend it on.
The amount of money that was printed to bail out the banks and Wall Street would disagree with you. Giving money to the people would yes increase the national debt but it would have a positive effect for people in this time of crisis. Money is not the important thing at the moment it is survival.
So how is UBI effective if everybody is at home and much of the means of production is shut down? What is even the motivation for people to work in lower paying jobs even if such jobs weren't shut down anyway? And no, I'm not a supporter of printing massive amounts of money to bail out banks either. The repercussions of that are largely still forthcoming.
I believe UBI will be used to pay for house hold bills and food which will keep the economy ticking over. Unfortuately we will never know if Shutting down the many non essential industries was the right thing to do because we can won't see the outcome if they don't. Doctors and scientists who understand the potential risks of the new flu have given their advice to world governments and I tend to trust them.
It will be a hard time for every country when this is over and maybe it should be looked on as potential to fix all the inequalities in society caused by capitalism.
Those same doctors and scientists apparently don't understand the risks of largely shutting down the world economy. Those include, but are not limited to, war and famine.
Covid-19 is a risk to a very specific group of people. The elderly and those with certain health problems. For everyone else, it is no more risky than the flu (which isn't to say 0 but then nothing is). The goal of all these restrictions is to prevent is the healthcare system getting overwhelmed by so many sick people at once. It's not that they expect fewer sick people, they just expect to spread them out further.
Anyway, my question is why can't we put all these restrictions on the people that are most in danger and let the rest of us get on with our lives? Caretakers and those living in close proximity to the elderly and sick would also have to take precautions. It doesn't mean everybody does. Alternatively, why not put a small fraction of those trillions of dollars they are trying to bail out the economy with towards getting the healthcare system up to where it needs to be to ensure there are enough beds, respirators and medicine for those that might need it?
Yes, scientists may be giving very precise and correct answers but what exactly is the question being asked?
Don't worry, the Federal Reserve will just print money to give to everybody out of job. What could go wrong?
Hahaha I was thinking the same thing
And with social distancing, we can't even do this:
The cynic in me wants to point out that the mass media has been looking for an excuse, a way out, of talking about tremendous gains in the economy – so when the opportunity comes along to not only talk about inevitable corrections but create a sense of panic so that they forge a self-fulfilling prophecy about a true economic collapse, how could they possibly resist? Their political self identification was at risk. You don't even need a conspiracy, you just need a largely homogenous social group which inhabits a large chunk of the culture of mass media.
Of course, once panic has been unleashed in the population, the population doesn't act in sane, reasonable ways. They scoop up toilet paper by the truck load, even though toilet paper doesn't go off, will continue to get produced, there's millions of units in logistical storage along the way – and they will rapidly pick up all the fresh vegetables they can get their hands on, at least for a few days, even though they have no means of storing it long-term.
At a time when Uber should be blowing the top off of potential earnings and its stock skyrocketing, because it, GrubHub, and DoorDash are in a prime position to help keep what local restaurants and shopping locations can scratch by scratching by doing delivery – their stocks are crashing and staying low.
It's almost as if when you have dire warnings blaring 24/7 about how everyone is going to get a highly lethal virus, there is no protection, there's nothing you can do, except isolate your self from society and each other (incidentally making you more suggestible and controlled), people get a little antsy.
Four years. There's a new one every four years for the last couple of decades. I wish I could think of something else that happens every four years, something that might have political import. Something that could be used as a fear leverage against the populace in order to make them more amenable to certain modes of thought. I just can't put my finger on what it is.
It must be the Olympics. That's gotta be at. The Olympics. Absolutely no political events with significant import going on every four years.
And it's at this point I start sounding like one of those crazy conspiracy theorists that I deride so often, and I don't want to. I resent being put in the situation where I start sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I am not positing a conspiracy.
I am positing opportunism, and the best I can hope for right now is that the out and out economic panic that has been inspired comes back to bite those working in media who have hyped up threat at the cost of everyone else's jobs right in the ass.
I've said this about the lines coming out of politicians mouths over the last two months and it doesn't stop being true. They talk and what I hear is:
"I can make you safe, so safe. I can make you completely safe from everything. All you have to do is be my slave. Just be my slave. You'll be very, very safe."
Personally, I can take a little risk. I want to take a little risk. When the opposite of a little risk is slavery, I can take quite a bit of risk, indeed.