> The virus doesn't and cannot care about the economy or holidays, or any other irrelevancy brought up for arguments This is an overly simplistic view. The vir

> The virus doesn't and cannot care about the economy or holidays, or any other irrelevancy brought up for arguments This is an overly simplistic view. The virus doesn't care, but policy makers should care, because if you optimize too much for saving lives from the virus at the cost of everything else, you might find the cure is worse than the disease. Say you are a policymaker and a new disease emerges that will kill 1% of the population if left unchecked over time, mainly in the elderly. Also say that draconian control measures will cause suicide rate, unemployment, and mental health cases to go up 1% for every day they are in effect, mainly in young people. What's your policy? Are you going to do everything you can to save the elderly at the expense of the youth? Or are you going to make sure the youth are good at the expense of the elderly? Something else entirely? As far as I can tell in the US, we are optimizing for saving the elderly and throwing everyone else under the bus in pursuit of that goal. We can expect to see a very large increase in suicides, unemployment, and mental health issues above and beyond what we saw in 2020 (including substance abuse) in coming months if we stay the course.