CALiforniALUM said:
hanky1 said:
Big C said:
If he were alive, he would probably think, "Please make everybody self-isolate, so I don't die like I did."
It's amazing to me that Americans are so ready to give up all their freedoms and not even question if you scare them a little.
Look at the political environment today. Anyone who questions what local governments are doing (shutting down small businesses and driving 10's of millions to unemployment) is immediately branded as an attempted murderer.
"There is probably a middle ground where we can keep people safe and not drive everyone to unemployment."
"No there's not! We need to all self-isolate and shut down everything. Economy, businesses, and livelihoods be damned!!! You'll kill my grandma if we don't do this."
"How will I kill your grandma if we allow small businesses to open in a limited manner and all high risk people self-isolate?"
"You'll kill my grandma!!!"
"How? By mental telepathy?"
"Murderer!"
It's amazing to me how some people seem to think the fear is something manufactured by people with dubious intentions rather than just heeding good sense and science.
I wish people who support the shelter-in-place control measure would not advertise "science" so forcefully as the justification for their support when there is very little certainty over the empirical data of the disease and even less over the efficacy of shelter-in-place. No one in the world can say with any reasonable degree of certainty what the hospitalization rate or death rate of the disease is because no one has a definitive basis for the number of people who have been infected. Similarly, no one can say even approximately how many lives will be saved by the particular set of control conditions being employed by our authorities versus the numbers that would be saved by any of the alternative set of controls. Without that information, justifying shelter-in-place with "science" is saying nothing more than these measures will help to some real but largely unknown extent.
Moreover, I wish those who support the shelter-in-place orders as currently formulated would realize how weak the moral ground they stand on really is. What we have in California is NOT how China contained the disease. Their restrictions were far more severe. We could implement the same controls here in CA and surely more lives would be saved, but more money lost and more discomfort felt. If you're satisfied with what we have and don't want to go farther then you're guilty of shorting the lives-saved half of our cost-trading balance by some amount that makes it fall short of the maximum.
Quote:
There is hundreds of years of history on how populations who either didn't follow or didn't know how pandemics work have suffered.
Yes, you're right. In fact there's one particular example which has great salience for us because of the relatively high similarity in circumstances: the Asian Flu Pandemic of 1957 (H2N2). Like Covid-19, it was a novel virus outbreak with unusually high transmissibility and deadliness*, but was typically only lethal to a minority of the population. Here however there was an important difference; Covid-19 is only really deadly to the elderly and those underlying compromising health conditions, whereas the 1957 H2N2 was much more dangerous to healthy children than Covid.
*Covid may be more deadly overall; by how much is still up in the air, but I strongly expect that if it is more deadly it is by something like 2x as opposed to 10x.
1957 serves for comparison as well because unlike earlier centuries they knew what the disease was and how it was spread. They also had the capability to organize and enforce containment measures if they so chose. By and large, the authorities did not choose to shut down regular life. Even schools did not tend to close until severe outbreaks had hit the student body.
The death toll result: 70,000 Americans dead out of 170 million US population, equivalent to 136,000 US deaths today. How many fewer would have died had they shut down to the extent that we have? It is impossible to know for sure; I would expect tens of thousands.
The economic result: S&P -9.5%; Dow -11.5% -- a gradual slide beginning in August and not ending until March of 1958; real GDP growth was +2.1%. Average Unemployment Rate was 4.3% only 0.2% higher than 1956. As of now, S&P is -22.4%, Dow is -25.8% and options markets right now are indicating the indexes will get much worse before they get better. CBO currently projects Q2 GDP at -7%. Fed is currently predicting over 30% peak unemployment, a figure that would shatter the previous Depression era record of 25%. An important note about all 2020 projections: over the past two weeks they have continuously been revised upwards. Also important note: the outbreak caused no federal debt, brought no multi-trillion dollar stimulus package or bailouts.
The other results? Life carried on. People went to school, to work, on outings and dates and vacations. They graduated and got promoted and got married and bought homes.
Quote:
Where is freedom paramount to one's life? How about as a society better understanding how this impacts people of all ilks and simply make the societal choice to support everybody in order to rid us of the pandemic. I don't think I am willing in my situation to just roll the dice and hope that I won't be one of the millions who would likely die if we threw caution to the wind and said hell with social distancing and stay at home orders.
My feeling about everyone bearing the weight of this pandemic together would be much nicer if this was the attitude that was brought to all consideration of public need. "There's no such thing as society" is what the champions of wealth hoarders tell the people during the status quo. Then a crisis occurs and "We're all in this together" and suddenly it's everyone's duty to be socially responsible for the greater public good. We're going to move mountains to save those threatened by Covid today (and save those markets that need supporting) but once that's done it's every man for themselves again.
The ugly truth is risk from the disease and the costs of the shelter order are largely split. I've had a lot of trouble finding statistics on the median age of Covid deaths in the United States or California but all median age of deaths statistics I've found whether it be foreign countries or US states confirms what we already know: the median age of people dying is well beyond the typical retirement age. In general, it is people who are not going to school or work or out to socialize (at least as much) who are being protected at the expense of people who do all those things. I want to stress this is only general. There are people in the elevated risk category who do go to school or work, and many elderly people have active social lives, but generally speaking the characterization holds.
It's worth noting at this moment that the age category that most strongly opposes Medicare For All is Over 65. That is also the age category that most strongly opposes student loan debt relief.
To defuse any assumptions about how my own status affects my opinion, let me disclose that I am not at elevated risk. I am not elderly and am in good health. I am also not economically threatened by shelter-in-place. It has not cost me employment or means of living including housing and healthcare, it is not threatening to saddle me with debt or destroy my business, it has not interrupted or postponed any major life milestone and it has very little impact on my social activities. I am not even significantly invested in any investment market. My concerns are for my community, not my own well-being.
