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> If anyone in the family gets a minor cold, please keep your kids out of school. Etc. Unfortunately this is effectively "let them eat cake" for many people.

> If anyone in the family gets a minor cold, please keep your kids out of school. Etc. Unfortunately this is effectively "let them eat cake" for many people. Keeping kids out of school means not going to work. Not going to work means not having money to pay the bills, and very possibly losing your job. In China, where the state has basically total control, things like this can be done. In the US, it's going to be a tough sell for an awful lot of people.

po 7y ago
Ask any taxpayer and they will tell you that the US also has total control. I get your point about not having the right to force people to do things (ie people ignoring mandatory hurricane evacuation orders) but they do have the power to make it such that the people who do want to stay home but can’t due to financial reasons can. If there were the will for it.
jacobolus 7y ago
I would feel a lot more comfortable if the USA had a testing setup like South Korea (where they have performed something like 500 times as many tests per capita as the USA, and then done aggressive isolation and contact tracing for positive cases). If it were up to me the federal government and state and local governments would be closing schools, closing nursing homes to visitors, canceling church services and sporting events, figuring out how to make transportation less risky, closing restaurants and bars to customers and drafting those workers to make deliverable prepared meals instead, recruiting childless people aged 15–40 into temporary (paid) public service jobs, doing everything possible to guarantee sufficient supply of protective equipment, taking every roadblock out from researching antiviral drugs for treating positive cases, etc. Governments should be figuring out how to guarantee anyone with untested minor colds to stay home from work without losing pay until they can be tested; figuring out how to temporarily relieve rent, loan payments, and taxes for people quarantined or with jobs in temporarily affected industries; preparing to distribute food, medicine, and other items to patients in quarantine or isolated at home, and so on. With a robust public response it should be possible to dramatically slow this virus without completely collapsing the economy. The fallout (not just illness/death but also economic impact) from all the cases hitting at once within a few weeks is going to be much more worse. I’m not sure exactly what the best responses would be, I’m just spitballing here. But it seems to me we should have been thinking and talking about possible extreme measures for the past 6 weeks instead of collectively twiddling our thumbs and going on with our ordinary lives.

po 7y ago

Ask any taxpayer and they will tell you that the US also has total control. I get your point about not having the right to force people to do things (ie people ignoring mandatory hurricane evacuation orders) but they do have the power to make it such that the people who do want to stay home but can’t due to financial reasons can. If there were the will for it.

jacobolus 7y ago

I would feel a lot more comfortable if the USA had a testing setup like South Korea (where they have performed something like 500 times as many tests per capita as the USA, and then done aggressive isolation and contact tracing for positive cases). If it were up to me the federal government and state and local governments would be closing schools, closing nursing homes to visitors, canceling church services and sporting events, figuring out how to make transportation less risky, closing restaurants and bars to customers and drafting those workers to make deliverable prepared meals instead, recruiting childless people aged 15–40 into temporary (paid) public service jobs, doing everything possible to guarantee sufficient supply of protective equipment, taking every roadblock out from researching antiviral drugs for treating positive cases, etc. Governments should be figuring out how to guarantee anyone with untested minor colds to stay home from work without losing pay until they can be tested; figuring out how to temporarily relieve rent, loan payments, and taxes for people quarantined or with jobs in temporarily affected industries; preparing to distribute food, medicine, and other items to patients in quarantine or isolated at home, and so on. With a robust public response it should be possible to dramatically slow this virus without completely collapsing the economy. The fallout (not just illness/death but also economic impact) from all the cases hitting at once within a few weeks is going to be much more worse. I’m not sure exactly what the best responses would be, I’m just spitballing here. But it seems to me we should have been thinking and talking about possible extreme measures for the past 6 weeks instead of collectively twiddling our thumbs and going on with our ordinary lives.