[dp0622]

and she didn’t die so it’s all good. The worst part of a pandemic is people dying. When lots and lots and lots of people don’t die it’s not much of a pandemic

but it is an excuse to ruin Trump’s economy and perhaps keep us quarantined until after the election

[sevinufnine]

I agree. The panic portion of this entire thing is manufactured for reasons well, beyond our “safety”. That said, there aren’t tons of folks dying from this. Those who are are the same category as would die from the common flu in the first place. The concern, of course, is apparently this bugger does spread easily which....sucks.

[DarthVader]

You will have martial law before what you suggest. Coronavirus was no accident.

[pburgh01]

I give this 2 weeks and governors and the President will be under tremendous pressure to adopt more of a quarantine the old and sick and do more a herd exposure\get immunity type program. What gets lost with the doomers is the fact that a country like China with 1 billion almost a homogeneous genetic profile and living in closer quarters than the US managed to keep this to a mild epidemic level and ridiculously low level of fatalities(no matter how you slice the data). As each day passes I am thinking this is more paranoid hype and Democrat political panic than anything.

...oh and we are what 6 days now behind the asent up the Italian bell curve now /s

[a fool in paradise]

AIDS was a pandemic and authorities couldn’t even close ‘bath houses’ where strangers would meet strangers to have sex in public.

now those afflicted don’t even have to tell potential sex partners

and those in risk groups want to donate blood (sex trade is fair trade)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is a global pandemic.[1] As of 2018, approximately 37.9 million people are infected with HIV globally.[2] In 2018, approximately 57% are men.[2] There were about 770,000 deaths from AIDS in 2018

[semantic]

You seem to have consistently been pretty neutral about the potential impact of CV. That may be because to a certain extent you may not particularly care, or perhaps you're actually a bit ahead of the curve in terms of rationale thinking.

FR is a great resource for leading edge thought and commentary. For the sake of encouraging more discussion along these lines, I pinged a few posters who have diverse opinions. Also, if you check my posting history, I've been pretty consistent in attempting to educate others about exponential growth effects.

OK, here are my predicates: I accept the modeled outcomes of a potential 66%+ infection rate; I also accept that humankind has no evolved, endemic response capability to CV, and that mortality rates may indeed reach 6-7% of the infected base. For the total US population, that would equate to around 15-20 million people dead, or 5% overall. Perhaps equivalent to a 'minor' nuclear war.

Alright, here's the 64k question: If large scale quarantines, travel restrictions & curfews (shelter in place orders) are enacted in an attempt to keep fatalities below 1 million, are the effects of economic destruction, and the resulting loss of liberty and freedom, a price too high? IOW, and not to be overly blunt, is the trade-off of 14-19 million people worth the cost of this nation's core concept?

Here's another way of looking at the situation. The direction we're heading is beginning to look like a gulag, with attendant deprivation & loss of dignity/liberty, while being ordered about and threatened by empowered bureaucrats. If there's a 5% chance I might die from DV, doesn't that mean there's a 95% I might escape? So, in this gulag, would you stay put on the 5% chance you'd be shot dead trying to escape, or bank your odds on the 95% that you might succeed?

From a global political standpoint, I would label a 'fvck it all' approach to what the UK is proposing as "let her rip". Will the US come to this same decision point? Perhaps we should have a national discussion on our collective fate. Some may argue it is selfish to endanger the 5% for our own personal comfort and material satisfaction, but what of the contra case? Aren't the 5% holding the other 95% hostage in that they must sacrifice their very lives and families, and potentially condemn future generations to a completely altered reality, for phantom, promised safety?