> I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd tell you "for

> I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd tell you "forever". If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today". Neither of these answers are realistic solutions to this problem. > Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life. > At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations? > Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving. The philosophical capitalists would state that actors should be free to choose their desired level of risk. You statement suggests a stereotyped version of a capitalist who might order everyone to go out and work.