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The virus itself has already cost ~a million years of life just in terms of the accounted-for deaths, and combining that with the idea that the typical sufferer

The virus itself has already cost ~a million years of life just in terms of the accounted-for deaths, and combining that with the idea that the typical sufferer would have lived about ten more years (I don't have a citation, but I saw news to this effect a few weeks ago). And that's with an national infection rate of between one and five percent. I also just want to point out that public policy is only one of the forces that is slowing down economic activity. Even if the government were willing to shove its fingers in its ears and say "lah lah lah," people would eventually begin to fear for their lives and we would see significant economic contraction based on individual, uncoordinated mitigation (along with severely elevated excess deaths from the virus). I just also want to point out that losing ~1% of the national population to the virus would not be without contractionary effects, since 1% of the population is also 1% of the consumers, by definition. It's questionable whether this cost benefit analysis has actually addressed the benefits of the shutdown based on a complete modeling of what would have happened without it.

glofish 6y ago
No one says that the government should pretend everything is all right. It is about what policies you take. Should the mayor weld shut the entrance to a park to "protect" the people?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  I'm all for the idea of more targeted mitigations. In hindsight, the play we should have made is obvious. The moment is became clear that a highly contagious virus was happening in China, we ought to have closed all borders, shut down, instituted mandatory quarantine (including for repatriating Americans), and eradicated the virus, keeping numbers at zero. We could have reopened and at least had a working domestic economy, like Mongolia or New Zealand. However, I don't think anyone has yet demonstrated working policy stances that effectively mitigate the spread of the virus and are materially different from what we're doing now. I've heard plenty of folks articulate the idea that such policies are possible, but I don't think we know enough about the virus to really be confident that they would work.

glofish 6y ago

No one says that the government should pretend everything is all right. It is about what policies you take. Should the mayor weld shut the entrance to a park to "protect" the people?

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I'm all for the idea of more targeted mitigations. In hindsight, the play we should have made is obvious. The moment is became clear that a highly contagious virus was happening in China, we ought to have closed all borders, shut down, instituted mandatory quarantine (including for repatriating Americans), and eradicated the virus, keeping numbers at zero. We could have reopened and at least had a working domestic economy, like Mongolia or New Zealand. However, I don't think anyone has yet demonstrated working policy stances that effectively mitigate the spread of the virus and are materially different from what we're doing now. I've heard plenty of folks articulate the idea that such policies are possible, but I don't think we know enough about the virus to really be confident that they would work.