No getting around the reality that the virus will kill as many as it will. Gotta go out there and live or die. Just like every other day of life.
On this here little board, where you would THINK we have great commonality of thought and philosophy, we had YUGE disagreement. We had flubros, TEOTEAWKI types, hysterics, skeptics, you name it. People from all sorts of backgrounds - physicians, clinicians, biostatistician, and even normal people - debated and yelled and name-called and so on. Gigabytes of links, articles, pictures, technical papers (I never read so much from the Lancet and the NEJM) were posted.
There was total freedom in the marketplace of ideas. And where did we, perhaps the most philosophically and politically homogeneous lot on the interwebs land by the time the DJIA went into free fall on March 9? Stalemate. Indeed, by the end of that week from hell, I think Wayne Allen Root summed it up best
I have many great friends and guests on my national TV and radio shows who are medical experts. Half believe this is the pandemic to end all pandemics. They quote Centers for Disease Control and Prevention models that report as many as 1.7 million Americans could die. So people are rightfully scared out of their minds. American business is shutting down. But the other half of my medical friends and expert guests say this is an overreaction. They predict fewer Americans will die than during the flu season of 2017-18 that killed about 80,000 people. They don't believe we need to close down American business and lock ourselves in our homes.
The problem is we won't know who's right until it's over.
And yet...dare I say it, that demolition derby of debate toughened us up and sharpened our minds. So much so, that I feel like I'm about 4-5 days ahead of where friends and family are thinking/acting/behaving, and where I can actively yell at the TV and computer "NO! There is NO WAY you know what is R0 at this point because it is only calculable after the fact...and a Case Fatality Rate requires a stable denominator which we don't have yet, you jackeagon!!"
The upside to this demolition derby and acquired intellect is we are now better able to call BS. Cohesion has (generally) returned in the form of a pro-open business attitude - and it is worth noting the fatality totals are closer to the "overreaction" crew Mr Root noted than the "pandemic" lot. Further, we have seen our philosophy being proven whereby statists have cranked up their dictatorial inclinations to the point where the mask is off and, clearly, this isn't about safety (HT Grampa Dave).
Thus, when "experts" warn us about reinfection blah blah blah, we probably have a graduate level understanding of the "experts" topic., and we're not gonna take their horse hockey anymore.