No I really can wrap my head around it. I understand being proactive.
I am no epidemiologist and perhaps they know better! But the stuff being advocated by many here is in my opinion way over blown. Harmful.
Anyway I don’t think any epidemiologists are saying we should forcibly quarantine healthy people, shut all schools and businesses, lose our jobs, hide in the hills, etc. I oppose this sort of talk.
As for saying “it’s just old people” I think that is being overreacted too as well. The limited info we have is pretty clear that younger people are at far less risk of death. That doesn’t mean we are HAPPY about it. It just means that perhaps elderly should be avoiding conventions or cruises and the younger can probably still go to work and school.
Yes, some of the stuff being posted is over the top.
Quarantining “healthy people” and closing down schools is no longer just talk. Half or more of the 2500 passengers from the MS Grand Princess are probably healthy and not infected, yet they are quarantined. K-12 schools are closing when ordered, and hundreds of Colleges and Universities are going to remote lessons for the spring semester and possibly beyond. If public health officials determine someone needs to be quarantined, or a business closed, they will probably not have much say in the matter. That is just reality.
I have yet to see anyone on this thread advocate quarantining healthy people. Where did you see that?
It has been confirmed by several countries now that children are silent spreaders. They won’t get sick but they will carry it to vulnerable populations, and not just elderly. Obesity is another high risk as well as many other common conditions, and now you are talking about half if America.
These measures are not to stop the spread, but to SLOW the spread. Left unchecked, this virus will deplete our healthcare system within weeks. Then you have collateral damage because people with other health conditions cannot get hospital care.
I am not advocating giving up our rights but at the same time, I believe our rights do stop where another’s begins. We cannot go around endangering others because “muh rights”. Here is an article you really need to read to understand the scope of what we are facing here without mitigation:
What does the coronavirus mean for the U.S. health care system? Some simple math offers alarming answers
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/
we are not ‘old people’ we are not ‘elderly’ we are Seniors.
You seem pretty reasonable in asking what the big deal is, so I’ll tell you what happened in California, as I remember it from about 40 years ago:
One huge fear that agriculture had for eternity in California was the Fruit Fly - tiny little bugs that destroy crops. In other parts of the world, once they became infested, agriculture, as they knew it was wiped out. So California was always on the lookout for them. To this day, they have inspection points on Interstates going into California for just this reason. But, of course, some slip through (people bringing them from other states or countries, or wherever). So they have a monitoring system where they set up traps. If they find some in a trap, that means there is some level of fruit fly infestation. And they have a department at the state level that knows how to deal with it. They will use some level of chemical spraying to eradicate them. I remember listening to the news and hearing that 3 of them were trapped yesterday in Escondido (or wherever) and now they’re going to spray a 20 square mile area. And I would think that an overreaction.
So did Governor Jerry Brown, about 40 years ago, thought the same. Some were caught, the experts said you need to aerial spray this relatively small area, and truck-spray this larger area (or something like that). Governor Brown, however, was an environmentalist, and didn’t like using chemicals. So he had them do less spraying, far less. Of course the number being caught increased, and still Brown would not permit aerial spraying. Finally, they told him that the state’s agriculture would be lost, FOREVER, if they didn’t spray now and spray hard. So Brown relented, the planes came out, and dumped a boatload of malathion on crops, cars, people, and anyone/anything else unfortunate enough to be in that large area.
They did stop it...but they waited too long and the measures were much more severe, and people did get sick and cars damaged from that high-dosage spraying.
Bottom line, there’s a right way to fight infestations and infections (which is to cut them off early, as in Singapore), and there’s a wrong way. And even with today’s hair-brained politicians in California, no one ever second-guesses the people who deal with fruit flies.
>>> As for saying “it’s just old people” I think that is being overreacted too as well. The limited info we have is pretty clear that younger people are at far less risk of death. That doesn’t mean we are HAPPY about it. It just means that perhaps elderly should be avoiding conventions or cruises and the younger can probably still go to work and school.
Problem is, they’ll go to all these places and events and get the virus and give it to their grandparents and aunts and uncles and the little old lady in the supermarket.
Stick with us for a week or two.
There are a lot of _very_ smart folks here.
We have predicting this every step of the way—and not one the regular posters on this thread has been over-aggressive in their predictions.
This virus is following virus rules—catch me if you can...and so far the virus is winning...