Cure cannot be worse than the disease

Hardloper wrote:

We haven't seen anything yet. This week is going to be horrible. At the end of 15 days I expect cities will lock down even harder, though maybe some less densely populated areas start to open up.

I think you are right. We should have locked down hard from the get go instead of extended the misery.

billy pilgrim wrote:

As a physician who takes care of these patients and someone who has lost a ton of money in the stock market and has family members who have lost jobs because of this, I would like to say you (and the president) are totally full of garbage about this. This is an extremely serious thing that can be controlled if we do things right (South Korea, Japan, Singapore) and will be an absolute disaster if not. Bad management of this will hurt the economy dramatically more in the long term than strong short terM action

#1) This can't be controlled with short term action. If we let everyone come out of lockdown before there is a vaccine or widespread herd immunity, then there will still be a massive wave of infection just delayed by whatever short time we spent in lockdown.

#2) South Korea style tracking etc. almost certainly cannot be done in the US, and it also hasn't proven to be effective long term yet. Just because it seems to have been doing okay so far in the short term doesn't guarantee that it will work long term. And it likely simply can't be done in the US anyway.

#3) "Bad management of this will hurt the economy dramatically more in the long term than strong short terM action." This is kind of strangely worded--since I think the nature of this debate is about what is "bad management." But from the context, I think what you are trying to say is, "Weak/relaxed action will hurt the economy dramatically more in the long term than strong short term action." I think this is incorrect for two reasons. First because as I have already stated, I think your assumption that strong action will only need to be short term is not correct. Second let's not sugarcoat the fact that this disease disproportionately affects older people who drain more from the economy than they contribute to it. Shutting down the economy to save old people will not be a net gain economically. You can make your argument on moral grounds that it is worth the cost in order to save lives. But it is dishonest to claim that it will be a net gain economically. Just be honest and make your argument on moral grounds. Your claim that shutting down the economy to save old people will be economically beneficial long term simply isn't true. Dishonest arguments are counter-productive.

maybe this wrote:

No one has immunity.

Are you sure about that? Even in a worst case scenario where a bunch of people were quarantined on a cruise ship with a bunch of other infected people, fewer than half of them came down with the disease. Not to mention, people who get the disease and recover from it have immunity for a time.

If we really are convinced that a majority of people will inevitably get it, then we should be paying young volunteers--especially healthcare workers--to get the disease now so that they will be immune later when we need healthy immune people to care for all the sick. Anyone who opposes the idea of intentionally infecting young, healthy volunteers doesn't really believe that it is inevitable that most people will be infected.

I appreciate your argument, but it looks better with some carriage returns, so it is not an overwhelming wall of text.

Experts are NOT immune from panic.

The justifications for strict rules seem like panic masquerading as "science" and "professionalism."

We don't need a bunch of "experts" running around screaming that we need to burn down the economy in order to save us.

True professionalism would make a careful analysis of the cost and benefits.

How about:

Should the average member of society have to work an extra 5 years, in order to extend the lives of 500,000 (mostly very old people)?

Should 60,000,000 suffer extended unemployment to extend 500,000 lives?

I want to understand the trade offs.

This Bad Wiggins person is an idiot wanker.

Another reason why South Korea and Japan style tracking cannot work in America is because we have entire immigrant communieis living under the radar who can't speak a lick of English and entered into this country illegally. They're among the groups least likely to come forward for this testing.

So, for all of you sanctuary city advocates and other advocates of illegal immigration from south of the border, what say you about those groups?? Should we just keep allowing a group in who is less likely to participate in any of the protective screening measures due to their statuses?

You don't have this issue in South Korea and Japan and is just another reason why people more readily buy into any national system.

I am hopeful that this is not as bad as we think, here is why:

The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard. The population density aboard the ship was the equivalent of trying to cram the whole Israeli population into an area 30 kilometers square. In addition, the ship had a central air conditioning and heating system, and communal dining rooms.

“Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said. Based on those figures, his conclusion was that most people are simply naturally immune.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Yeah and I'm sure you would have justified African slavery by saying it is better than being in Africa..

Well...?

If nearly everyone is gonna eventually get this, and only 2% or less will have serious symptoms, and only 1% (more or less) will die, then locking down EVERYONE indefinitely and completely tanking the economic welfare of EVERYONE is unsustainable. Tell the old people and those with underlying health conditions to shelter-in-place TO THE MAX, and everyone else goes back to work. Sure some of the old people and weaker people will still get infected, but they can get treated. Give the younger and healthy folks the malaria drug & Zpack treatment and they stay home till they get better. A reasonable hybrid solution is better than either of the ALL OR NONE solutions, neither of which would work anyway. Our country is based on personal freedom and individual responsibility (except for the socialist nutjobs), so let people take some personal responsibility for themselves. If someone is old and says screw-it I'm going out, then they get what they get and live or die with the results. The healthcare community wants resources to treat patients, but without an economy and tax base, there is no money to pay for those resources. People working and feeding the economy is where the govt money comes from, so everyone staying home drains the govt coffers which drains the resources they are begging for.

If US economy can't withstand a bit of downtime from a limited-time precautionary measure, then the US economy is a joke anyway. The resilient economies, like China's, are going to do great after their rational decision to turn things down for a bit.

Likely, the US blinks and tries to rush back into things, it fails, and they try another round of half-measures. Rince and repeat. Rest of the world sees what's going on, places hefty restrictions on trade with the diseased US.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

billy pilgrim wrote:

Again, look at Japan and South Korea. Good control has prevented a prolonged economic shut down.

You're comparing mostly homogeneous societies with a fraction of the population of the US to a more diverse, bigger, multicultural society like the US. Those comparisons don't work. You can't enforce the same measures in the US that you can in more homogeneous smaller countries.

Japanese and Koreans and a whole bunch of other non-Western cultures respect adults. In the US, they are seen as dispensable. Old folks get put on the trash heap. Most Americans care more about their stocks than they do about they're aging parents who they've stuck in a nursing home to die somewhere. That's why you've got people talking about going about business as usual. This pandemic has exposed the US as being way behind the rest of the world in so many ways.

their, not they're

Both of those countries are open for business while the US is not. So your hypothesis is incorrect.

1/2 of the people don't understand economics. They believe that you can print money to pay rent and buy food.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

billy pilgrim wrote:

Again, look at Japan and South Korea. Good control has prevented a prolonged economic shut down.

You're comparing mostly homogeneous societies with a fraction of the population of the US to a more diverse, bigger, multicultural society like the US. Those comparisons don't work. You can't enforce the same measures in the US that you can in more homogeneous smaller countries.

Why Not? People are People regardless.

Because we have millions of illegal aliens still moving around within society. They live in multigenerational, multifamily homes and they continue to go to work every day for cash.

uncle sammy wrote:

1/2 of the people don't understand economics. They believe that you can print money to pay rent and buy food.

You pretty much can.

Money is just an exchange of numbers.

It can can be borrowed or granted.

Paid back or fixed someway later.

You can't go back and bring the dead back to life.

Money can't solve a rush of people going to emergency rooms not built to handle that many people.

Medical devices can't be produced out of thin air.

Qualified medical providers won't show up out of nowhere.

So the debt goes from $20T to $30T.

We can handle that over time.