In all these threads, and I’ve read them all; I don’t know why coronavirus attracted my attention so -
It is easy to forget that about thirty people have died in the US so far.
It’s thirty too many. And I know it will go up.
But we lose about 90 per day in car crashes. This puts things in perspective for me. I am not angry at Trump. We need a measured response. The damage done by the reaction to this virus has been too extreme. I do believe that high risk folks should take extra precautions and that the health care system should prepare.
But shutting down life as we know it is very harmful to us all. If we started to lose say 180 per day, twice as many as car crashes? I’d expect the heavier response that many here are advocating.
Yes I know we want to act not react. But I am seeing FReepers saying institute martial law, close all campuses, forbid gatherings, bug out and don’t return for months, they are quitting jobs or essentially daring employers to fire them, cancel rallies, ban travel, force quarantine of healthy people ... I can’t support it.
Thanks for post. Will not agree with force either. There’s no known treatment re fo rer corona, only palliative methods (at least air bags etc for vehicle). So current priority is prevention
It's not about how many are dying today. That's what people just can't seem to wrap their head around. The reason other countries, and eventually the USA, are willing to go so far to stop this virus, is that the result of doing nothing would be too horrible. You can't wait until you get to 180 deaths a day. If you wait that long it will be too late. Hospitals will become overwhelmed, widespread quarantines will be attempted and fail, and the disease will get completely out of control. At that point, the current economic impact will look trivial. 180 deaths per day, or even double that, might be manageable as a peak, but you can't just wait for it. If you think other countries have virtually shut down to reduce the spread without considering the impact to their economies, you are mistaken.
You are correct that the high risk folks will have to bear much of the burden. They will bear it both isolated in their homes and isolated in in ICU rooms. Obviously, they don't want to be infected and they will do what they can to avoid it. But we can't just sit back and say "it's just old people" and let the virus run through unchecked.
Why would you think there would be any jobs for the young to go to work at, or schools for children to attend, without the seniors that own the businesses or the staff that run the schools, unlocking the doors? Commerce turns on seniors and their life-long efforts to build enterprise and shape society.
Auto-related deaths can be accepted. We know that auto makers build safety in and most wrecks these days are human error or drunks. That is, we know the cause.
Deaths from a virus we’ve never seen before, with no known mitigation, raises the concern level a whole lot higher. Seniors worry how they can protect their children and grandchildren. Children worry how to protect their parents. Both worry that they can’t see even each other because one group, the youth, most likely to be asymptomatic, are being allowed to infect each other to saturation it seems, while another group, the seniors, are told to isolate themselves. Allowing saturation seems counter-intuitive to a goal of eradication. What good does isolation of seniors do, if seniors can’t be mobile, can’t return to function, can’t get the wheels spinning, when the act of stepping out their door jeapordizes their health?
Seems to me, it should be the youth and their children under ‘house arrest’. For the 30 or so days it takes to express the virus. Reason being, the disease in youth is almost universally mild, and nowhere near the burden on the health system as 15% of the nation’s seniors being intubated in negative pressure ICUs. But what do I know? Most days I’m shaking hay off my jacket.
(and I get the university closings - better to get the students out of major metro areas where the hospitals may get crowded and back to their homes, which may not be so crowded. Otherwise the dorms risk becoming a cruise ship risk level)
You forgot to mention the nuts who want to nuke China. Thankfully they mostly seem to be gone from these threads.
The answer to your and my (and many other people’s) fascination with this (obsession with some) is partially fear. Fear of the virus, fear of how others will react, and so on. Much of it is fear of the unknown. There is even a certain “thrill” to it for some, I suspect. “Horror” movies attract many people for that reason, I know. They need the adrenaline jolt or kick to a higher awareness or alertness, perhaps?
That’s not all bad. Humans would have ended in short order if we didn’t know when to run. But, humans are individuals who respond on a sort of bell curve: Some react too soon, or too strongly. Some react too late or too weakly. Some react in self-defeating ways.
This (Free Republic) is mostly an older crowd, so a new disease that mostly kills seniors and is presently untreatable is a particular threat. Ditto for its demonstrated ability to spread rapidly. Most of this assessment is not unfounded: Estimates that COVID-19 might infect 20 - 50% of the US population in the next year seem reasonable to me. I find myself at moderate risk (age, mostly), ditto for others my age. I’m quite concerned about my elderly Mom, my brother with 1/3 of his lungs left, and my daughter with asthma.
The problem of course is that overreaction can cause more harm than the virus itself might do. I guess I’m “in the middle”, but what if the virus can’t be slowed by “reasonable” actions? I don’t know.
Are we all going to be running around with N95 masks on for the next year, just to be responsible to our fellow humans? It seems better than shutting down the country.
One thing is for sure. I’m not “thrilled”.