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The economy could function, indeed, but they don't seem to [0], certainly not on the baseline level. Human psychology that allowed our ancestors to survive even

The economy could function, indeed, but they don't seem to [0], certainly not on the baseline level. Human psychology that allowed our ancestors to survive even more deadly plagues is at work here. And people are correct in their everyday choices, herd immunity is just wrong when you have no idea what this virus actually does to people and you can afford to not get sick. If indeed 50% of people including young and middle age asymptomatic/mild cases of COVID-19 lead to permanent lung damage (we don't know!), then "herd immunity" means destroying health of the population, while killing millions at the same time. We are certain that people needing intrusive ventilation will need years to go back to fully normal life, but they may never recover full health. And I agree, maybe USA, Africa and India can not afford to suppress the virus. Starvation will very likely be bigger killer in those countries. I was and I still am especially worried about India, because I don't see how they could stop exponential spread even with full lock-down. Social distancing is just impossible there. And they have millions upon millions of people that have to work to eat. Thankfully, India seems to be easing lock-down. But EU economies certainly can afford lock-down. Even Swedish people paid and are paying heavy economical price to stop the exponential growth. But we did suppress the virus, now we can go back to sort of normal life and keep things under control. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105922

CryptoPunk 6y ago
The voluntary reduction in economic activity is far less disruptive, and extreme, than the mandatory reduction caused by indiscriminate lockdowns. When voluntary, each individual can judge whether a particular activity should be continued based on their own circumstances and the particularities of that activity, and give up those activities that provide the least economic return relative to risk incurred. A cookie-cutter rule OTOH has no such intelligence, and leads to a massive amount of waste, from critical activity being prevented that would have provided a large risk-adjusted social benefit.

CryptoPunk 6y ago

The voluntary reduction in economic activity is far less disruptive, and extreme, than the mandatory reduction caused by indiscriminate lockdowns. When voluntary, each individual can judge whether a particular activity should be continued based on their own circumstances and the particularities of that activity, and give up those activities that provide the least economic return relative to risk incurred. A cookie-cutter rule OTOH has no such intelligence, and leads to a massive amount of waste, from critical activity being prevented that would have provided a large risk-adjusted social benefit.