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No one paid attention. After the H1N1 crisis, the US burned through its reserves of N95 masks and other pandemic supplies, and never refilled them. We aren't e

No one paid attention. After the H1N1 crisis, the US burned through its reserves of N95 masks and other pandemic supplies, and never refilled them. We aren't even learning now, even after it was obvious Italy needed to lock down more, the US still wasn't taking it seriously. I listened last night to my city council argue that it was still no big deal. Two members, a doctor and scientist said we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses and it wasn't that big a deal to anyone but the elderly. We just don't learn.

chrisco255 7y ago
20-50 year olds with no pre-existing conditions are at low risk. The policy of shutting down the economy indefinitely is frightening on its own and we'll be dealing with the steep repercussions of that for many years. This is not sustainable.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  Well, you can kick things off by sacrificing any member of your family over the age of 50 then. It's almost as if people don't realise economies are reliant on people to contribute to them. You infect half the population you're going to have the same effect regardless. Only this way, we might not end up killing millions unnecessarily.
- m_mueller 7y ago
  Japan shows that wide use of masks, good hygiene and a decent HC system should actually allow to keep the country running. After what's happened so far, I wonder whether Western countries will be able to learn from this - it's going to need lots of politicians to walk back on previous statements.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    Some European countries weren't as deep into bad HC as the US so there are going to be a wide range of reactions and adaptation. Weird thing: in my country, the political entities responsible for budget cuts in HC are applauded at the moment for their handling of the situation they made worse because of those previous cuts.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      We have an expensive healthcare system in the U.S. but it's not a bad healthcare system.
      - bigmanwalter 7y ago
        Depends on whether or not you have a job.
      - johnchristopher 7y ago
        Sorry, I abused the language. I'd say you have good healthcare but a bad healthcare system.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Japan shows nothing besides doing a better job of the appearance games that US tried and failed to play. Everyone I know in Japan is saying the response is a disaster and bracing for the worst. There was a huge uptick in cases just reported and the media is starting to break their government-imposed silence and warn people.
    - baq 7y ago
      Now that Olympic Games are cancelled they don’t have much reason to cook numbers anymore. I expect a gradual change in tune of official communication starting immediately.
    - bigmanwalter 7y ago
      Those aren't mutually exclusive. Japanese people can accuse their government of not responding effectively even though the Japanese government is doing a better job than the US.
      - claudeganon 7y ago
        From all the news I’ve seen (I watch Japanese news broadcasts most days), people there aren’t comparing the Japanese response to the US, but Taiwan, South Korea, and China. And the comparative failings are obvious and stark.
    - m_mueller 7y ago
      I'd say Japan is pulling through despite failings of the government. I don't think their #deaths is cooked much.
      - claudeganon 7y ago
        They’re literally not. I watched the news this morning and the broadcasters were panicked at a level I haven’t seen since 3/11. No meaningful measure have been put in place to curb the spread of the disease or strengthen healthcare infrastructure in Japan. But Aso Taro, a leading politician of the ruling LDP, did announce his major response initiative: giving out certificates for Wagyu beef.
- CerealFounder 7y ago
  Its pretty simple. We didn't scale testing at all which turns a national isolation into just isolating people that are potentially infected. Then you keep isolating those people until it dies on the vine. This current solutions SUCKS, but it silver medal sucks to just letting the disease roam free and infect everyone. Also, the whole "young people and what not are at low risk" is anecdotal. We have no clue what the longterm, and passive ramifications of this virus are.
- gregcrv 7y ago
  "nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were age 20 to 54" So yes, they are low risk because they get priority in the hospitals. But when the hospital is full, what will happen to them? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-...
  - misun78 7y ago
    Hospitalization does not imply high risk. That article also has an unnecessarily wide range to make the data meaningless. Why are 20 year olds and 54 year olds bucketed in the same category? For more accurate data, 0 deaths have occurred in Italy for those under 30. Under 40, the few (9) are due to severe pre-existing conditions. Median age for fatality is 80 years old. The exponential curve not only applies for rate of infection but seems to be holding true for age as well. Edit: Source for Italy data here - https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infografica_19marzo%20ENG.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infograf...
    - dajohnson89 7y ago
      could you please share a source? I dont think your comment deserves to be downvoted like it is, but a source on the data you mention would be very helpful.
      - _delirium 7y ago
        This article from yesterday has a decent summary of case fatality rates by age in various countries: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-...
      - wolco 7y ago
        He is right on 0 deaths in Italy, Spain has one but 15% hospitalized rate. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- amluto 7y ago
  They may be at low risk of death, but not of transmitting the disease. When the economy reopens, we need real measures to reduce transmission. For example, all businesses with more than one person or with customer contact (including not-quite-employment situations like UPS or ride sharing) should take everyone’s temperature every day. Feverish or otherwise sick employees should be sent some, with pay, and there should be very strong disincentives for managers to encourage their employees to pretend to be healthy. For another example, everyone on public transit or otherwise in a crowded place should wear a mask. If a real surgical mask is not available, a couple of layers of fabric should still help.
  - misun78 7y ago
    This comment applies to any viral disease that spreads amongst humans. What warrants a complete shutdown this time around when we didn't do the same for H1N1, SARS etc?
    - amluto 7y ago
      I’m not personally convinced that a complete shutdown is the right choice. But SARS wasn’t very contagious and only had a few total cases in the US. Arguably H1N1 should have had a somewhat stronger response. Also, people are used to the flu and it’s not as scary. (Also, there wasn’t really any research needed to vaccinate against H1N1. It was just a matter of production. On the flip side, the flu mutates very quickly to evade immunity, whereas coronaviruses seem to mutate very very slowly. A COVID-19 vaccine that works* seems likely to provide protection essentially forever.) * Early indications were that the obvious vaccine design for SARS made the disease worse, not better. That’s why we haven’t seen much excitement about inactivated COVID-19 vaccines.
    - rovolo 7y ago
      SARS was much more contained, and only infected ~8K people. It infected ~3K people outside of China, most whom were in east Asia. The case counts outside east Asia were in descending order: - Canada: 250 - US: 27 - Germany: 9 Areas affected by SARS instituted targeted quarantines after detection and were able to contain the virus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea... H1N1 was much less deadly than Covid-19 and spread less quickly. There were only ~18K confirmed deaths worldwide. (The estimated number of deaths was much higher at 150-600K. Basically, we confirmed it was less deadly than the seasonal flu so we didn't test everyone for it.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic People are freaking out about Covid-19 because it spreads faster and is already stressing hospitals. Deaths and cases double every 2-3 days absent control measures. It can take 2 weeks to cause symptoms, so even if everything gets shut down now, we could have 25x as many hospitalizations/deaths than today. If smaller control measures aren't as effective, it'd take time to confirm and the peak would be multiples higher. H1N1 spread much slower so we could have responded much more leisurely if things started to go out of control. https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
- enumjorge 7y ago
  So do we treat anyone outside the group of 20-50 year old with no preexisting conditions as acceptable collateral damage to keeping the economy afloat?
  - Klinky 7y ago
    It's almost as if some people think human's purpose is to sustain an economy, rather than the other way around. Economies and markets are a tool used by human's to achieve goals(ideally better quality of life), they are not the goal itself.
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      It seems like you are making their point for them. If an economy's purpose is to sustain humans, then letting it crash and burn puts those humans at risk. It's a balancing act. We just can't forget that too much economic destruction will cost lives as well.
      - Klinky 7y ago
        It is a balancing act, but we need to watch out that we're not letting the economy run the show based on things like overinflated valuations and speculation, which at the first sign of trouble, implode on themselves at almost a 50% loss. How much actual value(quality of life) is really being generated here? How much of it is hype, bandwagons, and charades? How sustainable is it and what safety nets are available when the bottom falls out? During this time you also think about how many people are telecommuting effectively right now, and how much downtown economies and real estate relies on everyone getting in their car, or on a bus/train going downtown each morning, and then the knock on effects this has on the environment. A lot of people don't want to hear pessimism or realism, they want to see growth, growth and growth. Growth at all other costs can still result in the side effect of quality of life improvements, but unlimited economic growth has not been sustainable, and we've had quite a few boom and bust cycles the last 2 decades now. If you're designing the economy to continually boom & bust, it's hard not to expect eventual economic destruction. It's not a matter of "not letting it happen", it's a matter of that's how it's been designed. It's what it does.
- wbronitsky 7y ago
  The alternative is a wildly increased death rate, which you cannot reverse. There are so many ways to fix economies, only a few ways to address a pandemic. If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    There's only so many trillions of dollars the Fed can print before the whole structure of the economy buckles. And when economies buckle, death and despair ensue. The economy is about more than just making money. The Great Depression caused a lot of secondary effects including World War II. We definitely want to avoid situations like that. EDIT: All complex decisions involve trade-offs. Right now, there's at least a few dozen more likely ways that people will die other than COVID-19. Heart disease, cancer, car accidents, even seasonal flu currently has a higher death count. You cannot lock down the economy for months on end, ratchet up unemployment to 30%+, and continue to feed people and keep their housing and shelter paid for. People's lives and livelihoods depend on the economy staying functional and healthy. It's not trivial. You have to find some way of moving forward without locking down all 320 million people. Maybe you look at areas of outbreak and you quarantine those areas on a piecewise basis. You ramp up testing, you use masks in public, you do something pro-active to keep the economy going. You provide assistance to those that are at high risk, but you let low risk individuals get back to work and keep the economy moving. The food you eat. The healthcare services you depend on. The military. The semi-truck drivers delivering products and services. The aircraft to transport products and people. All of that depends on the economy working. Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.
    - wbronitsky 7y ago
      This argument is not worth responding to. You are arguing that our economy should be protected before people are protected. It is disgusting, and I'm tired of rehashing the same disgusting crap over and over. If you really think that the economic effects outweigh the loss of life this virus can and will cause, all I can do is be glad that all you have is your ability to express your opinion, not the ability to do anything about it. Thank god for that. Finally, and yes I'm quoting myself here "If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say." > Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself. This is absurd; you're responding to me. And this isn't a discussion, these are opinions, with no facts to back them up. I simply find these opinions disgusting, as they do not prioritize keeping people healthy and alive.
- hbharadwaj 7y ago
  Forgetting the overload of medical infrastructure for a bit, here are some of the myriad of issues that this leads to: 1. There are 20-50 year olds with pre-existing conditions such as asthma who are at higher risk. For example, a colleague on my team has asthma. Another colleague on my team has a husband who has asthma. As a Manager, I can't ask either of them to come into work. 2. What about 20-50 year olds who come in contact with 50+ year old or live together with them? They may be at low risk, but they will definitely spread the virus around more It becomes quite complicated dealing with these things on a case by case basis.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  At low risk of dying. Not low risk of getting hospitalized and having permanent or long-lasting lung damaged. Do you want compromised breathing for the next 5 years?
- misun78 7y ago
  No idea why you're getting downvoted, this comment is spot on.
slg 7y ago
> we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses The problem is that they are right with this. Shutting down the city will probably destroy small businesses. Those same people also can't do much to help small businesses. It is understandable that they don't want to sentence these businesses to death when they are powerless to save them. This is why the relative inaction by the federal government is such a problem here. They are the only entity that has the power to stop the wide spread of the virus and absorb the economic repercussions of the shutdown.
- davidw 7y ago
  What happened in Italy is that they delayed... and then ended up shutting down everything anyway - just with a lot more infected people and deaths, and the exact same economic hardships.
  - birdyrooster 7y ago
    Probably worse economic hardship with the added strain on the labor force.
- yiyus 7y ago
  Staying open is not a panacea for small businesses. Nobody is travelling, nobody is spending. My parents have a small shop (in Spain) and they had to close before the lockdown started because they were not selling anything. And, by that time, things were much better that they are now around here.
  - slg 7y ago
    You are certainly right, but it is a question of blame. If the government shuts down your business and it never recovers you will likely blame the government. If the government lets you stay open and your business still fails you will likely blame the virus. EDIT: This is being downvoted, so let me make a clarification that I am explaining the government's potential reasoning but I am not excusing or agreeing with it.
eternalban 7y ago
You are making assumptions here. I'm working on a joke and only have the punchline: "Western Democracy with Chinese Communist Party Characteristics".
xwdv 7y ago
What if what we learned is simply that there’s nothing we can do? You can lock down, you can isolate... destiny still arrives.
- spuz 7y ago
  Then fine, we just keep moving on and accept deaths from the virus in the same way as we do for deaths from the flu or road traffic accidents. However that is absolutely NOT the situation we are in. If we do nothing, significant numbers of people will die from the virus. If we completely shutdown the economy, significant numbers of people will die from lack of access to essential services. What we decide to do matters a great deal. There is no reason to be fatalistic.
- fatjokes 7y ago
  Avoiding infection was never the goal. "Flattening the curve" so as to not overwhelm the fragile health infra is, and it's already been shown to be working.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

chrisco255 7y ago

20-50 year olds with no pre-existing conditions are at low risk. The policy of shutting down the economy indefinitely is frightening on its own and we'll be dealing with the steep repercussions of that for many years. This is not sustainable.

wastedhours 7y ago
Well, you can kick things off by sacrificing any member of your family over the age of 50 then. It's almost as if people don't realise economies are reliant on people to contribute to them. You infect half the population you're going to have the same effect regardless. Only this way, we might not end up killing millions unnecessarily.
m_mueller 7y ago
Japan shows that wide use of masks, good hygiene and a decent HC system should actually allow to keep the country running. After what's happened so far, I wonder whether Western countries will be able to learn from this - it's going to need lots of politicians to walk back on previous statements.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Some European countries weren't as deep into bad HC as the US so there are going to be a wide range of reactions and adaptation. Weird thing: in my country, the political entities responsible for budget cuts in HC are applauded at the moment for their handling of the situation they made worse because of those previous cuts.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    We have an expensive healthcare system in the U.S. but it's not a bad healthcare system.
    - bigmanwalter 7y ago
      Depends on whether or not you have a job.
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      Sorry, I abused the language. I'd say you have good healthcare but a bad healthcare system.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Japan shows nothing besides doing a better job of the appearance games that US tried and failed to play. Everyone I know in Japan is saying the response is a disaster and bracing for the worst. There was a huge uptick in cases just reported and the media is starting to break their government-imposed silence and warn people.
  - baq 7y ago
    Now that Olympic Games are cancelled they don’t have much reason to cook numbers anymore. I expect a gradual change in tune of official communication starting immediately.
  - bigmanwalter 7y ago
    Those aren't mutually exclusive. Japanese people can accuse their government of not responding effectively even though the Japanese government is doing a better job than the US.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      From all the news I’ve seen (I watch Japanese news broadcasts most days), people there aren’t comparing the Japanese response to the US, but Taiwan, South Korea, and China. And the comparative failings are obvious and stark.
  - m_mueller 7y ago
    I'd say Japan is pulling through despite failings of the government. I don't think their #deaths is cooked much.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      They’re literally not. I watched the news this morning and the broadcasters were panicked at a level I haven’t seen since 3/11. No meaningful measure have been put in place to curb the spread of the disease or strengthen healthcare infrastructure in Japan. But Aso Taro, a leading politician of the ruling LDP, did announce his major response initiative: giving out certificates for Wagyu beef.
CerealFounder 7y ago
Its pretty simple. We didn't scale testing at all which turns a national isolation into just isolating people that are potentially infected. Then you keep isolating those people until it dies on the vine. This current solutions SUCKS, but it silver medal sucks to just letting the disease roam free and infect everyone. Also, the whole "young people and what not are at low risk" is anecdotal. We have no clue what the longterm, and passive ramifications of this virus are.
gregcrv 7y ago
"nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were age 20 to 54" So yes, they are low risk because they get priority in the hospitals. But when the hospital is full, what will happen to them? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-...
- misun78 7y ago
  Hospitalization does not imply high risk. That article also has an unnecessarily wide range to make the data meaningless. Why are 20 year olds and 54 year olds bucketed in the same category? For more accurate data, 0 deaths have occurred in Italy for those under 30. Under 40, the few (9) are due to severe pre-existing conditions. Median age for fatality is 80 years old. The exponential curve not only applies for rate of infection but seems to be holding true for age as well. Edit: Source for Italy data here - https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infografica_19marzo%20ENG.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infograf...
  - dajohnson89 7y ago
    could you please share a source? I dont think your comment deserves to be downvoted like it is, but a source on the data you mention would be very helpful.
    - _delirium 7y ago
      This article from yesterday has a decent summary of case fatality rates by age in various countries: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-...
    - wolco 7y ago
      He is right on 0 deaths in Italy, Spain has one but 15% hospitalized rate. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
amluto 7y ago
They may be at low risk of death, but not of transmitting the disease. When the economy reopens, we need real measures to reduce transmission. For example, all businesses with more than one person or with customer contact (including not-quite-employment situations like UPS or ride sharing) should take everyone’s temperature every day. Feverish or otherwise sick employees should be sent some, with pay, and there should be very strong disincentives for managers to encourage their employees to pretend to be healthy. For another example, everyone on public transit or otherwise in a crowded place should wear a mask. If a real surgical mask is not available, a couple of layers of fabric should still help.
- misun78 7y ago
  This comment applies to any viral disease that spreads amongst humans. What warrants a complete shutdown this time around when we didn't do the same for H1N1, SARS etc?
  - amluto 7y ago
    I’m not personally convinced that a complete shutdown is the right choice. But SARS wasn’t very contagious and only had a few total cases in the US. Arguably H1N1 should have had a somewhat stronger response. Also, people are used to the flu and it’s not as scary. (Also, there wasn’t really any research needed to vaccinate against H1N1. It was just a matter of production. On the flip side, the flu mutates very quickly to evade immunity, whereas coronaviruses seem to mutate very very slowly. A COVID-19 vaccine that works* seems likely to provide protection essentially forever.) * Early indications were that the obvious vaccine design for SARS made the disease worse, not better. That’s why we haven’t seen much excitement about inactivated COVID-19 vaccines.
  - rovolo 7y ago
    SARS was much more contained, and only infected ~8K people. It infected ~3K people outside of China, most whom were in east Asia. The case counts outside east Asia were in descending order: - Canada: 250 - US: 27 - Germany: 9 Areas affected by SARS instituted targeted quarantines after detection and were able to contain the virus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea... H1N1 was much less deadly than Covid-19 and spread less quickly. There were only ~18K confirmed deaths worldwide. (The estimated number of deaths was much higher at 150-600K. Basically, we confirmed it was less deadly than the seasonal flu so we didn't test everyone for it.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic People are freaking out about Covid-19 because it spreads faster and is already stressing hospitals. Deaths and cases double every 2-3 days absent control measures. It can take 2 weeks to cause symptoms, so even if everything gets shut down now, we could have 25x as many hospitalizations/deaths than today. If smaller control measures aren't as effective, it'd take time to confirm and the peak would be multiples higher. H1N1 spread much slower so we could have responded much more leisurely if things started to go out of control. https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
enumjorge 7y ago
So do we treat anyone outside the group of 20-50 year old with no preexisting conditions as acceptable collateral damage to keeping the economy afloat?
- Klinky 7y ago
  It's almost as if some people think human's purpose is to sustain an economy, rather than the other way around. Economies and markets are a tool used by human's to achieve goals(ideally better quality of life), they are not the goal itself.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    It seems like you are making their point for them. If an economy's purpose is to sustain humans, then letting it crash and burn puts those humans at risk. It's a balancing act. We just can't forget that too much economic destruction will cost lives as well.
    - Klinky 7y ago
      It is a balancing act, but we need to watch out that we're not letting the economy run the show based on things like overinflated valuations and speculation, which at the first sign of trouble, implode on themselves at almost a 50% loss. How much actual value(quality of life) is really being generated here? How much of it is hype, bandwagons, and charades? How sustainable is it and what safety nets are available when the bottom falls out? During this time you also think about how many people are telecommuting effectively right now, and how much downtown economies and real estate relies on everyone getting in their car, or on a bus/train going downtown each morning, and then the knock on effects this has on the environment. A lot of people don't want to hear pessimism or realism, they want to see growth, growth and growth. Growth at all other costs can still result in the side effect of quality of life improvements, but unlimited economic growth has not been sustainable, and we've had quite a few boom and bust cycles the last 2 decades now. If you're designing the economy to continually boom & bust, it's hard not to expect eventual economic destruction. It's not a matter of "not letting it happen", it's a matter of that's how it's been designed. It's what it does.
wbronitsky 7y ago
The alternative is a wildly increased death rate, which you cannot reverse. There are so many ways to fix economies, only a few ways to address a pandemic. If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  There's only so many trillions of dollars the Fed can print before the whole structure of the economy buckles. And when economies buckle, death and despair ensue. The economy is about more than just making money. The Great Depression caused a lot of secondary effects including World War II. We definitely want to avoid situations like that. EDIT: All complex decisions involve trade-offs. Right now, there's at least a few dozen more likely ways that people will die other than COVID-19. Heart disease, cancer, car accidents, even seasonal flu currently has a higher death count. You cannot lock down the economy for months on end, ratchet up unemployment to 30%+, and continue to feed people and keep their housing and shelter paid for. People's lives and livelihoods depend on the economy staying functional and healthy. It's not trivial. You have to find some way of moving forward without locking down all 320 million people. Maybe you look at areas of outbreak and you quarantine those areas on a piecewise basis. You ramp up testing, you use masks in public, you do something pro-active to keep the economy going. You provide assistance to those that are at high risk, but you let low risk individuals get back to work and keep the economy moving. The food you eat. The healthcare services you depend on. The military. The semi-truck drivers delivering products and services. The aircraft to transport products and people. All of that depends on the economy working. Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.
  - wbronitsky 7y ago
    This argument is not worth responding to. You are arguing that our economy should be protected before people are protected. It is disgusting, and I'm tired of rehashing the same disgusting crap over and over. If you really think that the economic effects outweigh the loss of life this virus can and will cause, all I can do is be glad that all you have is your ability to express your opinion, not the ability to do anything about it. Thank god for that. Finally, and yes I'm quoting myself here "If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say." > Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself. This is absurd; you're responding to me. And this isn't a discussion, these are opinions, with no facts to back them up. I simply find these opinions disgusting, as they do not prioritize keeping people healthy and alive.
hbharadwaj 7y ago
Forgetting the overload of medical infrastructure for a bit, here are some of the myriad of issues that this leads to: 1. There are 20-50 year olds with pre-existing conditions such as asthma who are at higher risk. For example, a colleague on my team has asthma. Another colleague on my team has a husband who has asthma. As a Manager, I can't ask either of them to come into work. 2. What about 20-50 year olds who come in contact with 50+ year old or live together with them? They may be at low risk, but they will definitely spread the virus around more It becomes quite complicated dealing with these things on a case by case basis.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
At low risk of dying. Not low risk of getting hospitalized and having permanent or long-lasting lung damaged. Do you want compromised breathing for the next 5 years?
misun78 7y ago
No idea why you're getting downvoted, this comment is spot on.

slg 7y ago

> we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses The problem is that they are right with this. Shutting down the city will probably destroy small businesses. Those same people also can't do much to help small businesses. It is understandable that they don't want to sentence these businesses to death when they are powerless to save them. This is why the relative inaction by the federal government is such a problem here. They are the only entity that has the power to stop the wide spread of the virus and absorb the economic repercussions of the shutdown.

davidw 7y ago
What happened in Italy is that they delayed... and then ended up shutting down everything anyway - just with a lot more infected people and deaths, and the exact same economic hardships.
- birdyrooster 7y ago
  Probably worse economic hardship with the added strain on the labor force.
yiyus 7y ago
Staying open is not a panacea for small businesses. Nobody is travelling, nobody is spending. My parents have a small shop (in Spain) and they had to close before the lockdown started because they were not selling anything. And, by that time, things were much better that they are now around here.
- slg 7y ago
  You are certainly right, but it is a question of blame. If the government shuts down your business and it never recovers you will likely blame the government. If the government lets you stay open and your business still fails you will likely blame the virus. EDIT: This is being downvoted, so let me make a clarification that I am explaining the government's potential reasoning but I am not excusing or agreeing with it.

eternalban 7y ago

You are making assumptions here. I'm working on a joke and only have the punchline: "Western Democracy with Chinese Communist Party Characteristics".

xwdv 7y ago

What if what we learned is simply that there’s nothing we can do? You can lock down, you can isolate... destiny still arrives.

spuz 7y ago
Then fine, we just keep moving on and accept deaths from the virus in the same way as we do for deaths from the flu or road traffic accidents. However that is absolutely NOT the situation we are in. If we do nothing, significant numbers of people will die from the virus. If we completely shutdown the economy, significant numbers of people will die from lack of access to essential services. What we decide to do matters a great deal. There is no reason to be fatalistic.
fatjokes 7y ago
Avoiding infection was never the goal. "Flattening the curve" so as to not overwhelm the fragile health infra is, and it's already been shown to be working.

deleted 7y ago

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