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RE: So...that's the plan in the U.S. for dealing with Coronavirus?!
It's easy to say it's an over-reaction, but it gets scary when your parents have a 1 in 7 chance of dying if they get it. Still, in places where there are few cases we ought to be able to carry on fairly well. People will say it's a government plot, but all countries would have to be in on it and companies are making their own plans. Trump has shown he has no idea by saying it would just go away and then have to introduce stricter conditions. There are likely to be thousands of deaths in many countries. At least some other deaths will go down as less people will be driving or catching other diseases.
But how bad is it compared to the global depression that is almost guaranteed at this point? How many people will that kill?
Those deaths may be preventable. An incurable virus is a real threat that is killing people right now.
How many people died from influenza A and influenza B last year? I'm betting you don't know.
In the US, somewhere between 35,000 and 65,000. Even though it is a highly studied viral infection that we have been living with for many, many decades, and the death toll is regularly multiple tens of thousands, you don't shut down local businesses every year when flu season comes in. You protect the most vulnerable while recognizing that you need everybody else going about their business in order to be able to afford to do it next year. On top of that, and this is the part that might disturb people, you accept that some people are going to die that maybe you could have saved if you had done more intrusive, more destructive, more aggressive intervention.
You can't cure influenza, either. You can vaccinate for it, and we do every year, but it's been a bad series of years for the flu shot and they've only bet the right way in about 40% of the tested cases. Is that better than 0%? Sure. Did we shut down entire economies about it?
That would be stupid.
Doing it now is also stupid.
If you really wanted to save lives and didn't care about the economic cost, you'd be advocating for the shutdown of the interstate highway system in the US. Millions of people are injured and tens of thousands die every year in entirely preventable accidents. If only they couldn't get on the highway and drive to somewhere else. Entirely preventable. Maybe we should just take away the ownership of vehicles altogether and save even more lives!
You see, this line of reasoning is idiocy because there's no end to it. There is no acceptable place to stop.
I like to stop when you start talking about government intervention into directly limiting what has been touted as essential, elemental freedoms not just in the US but in the Western world since the Enlightenment. I know, I'm a dreamer. Crazy.
But at least I'm not an idiot.
I was aware that a lot of people die from the flu and that vaccines can reduce that. Of course people will die, as they do of all sorts of things and it's foolish to imagine we can save everyone. Still, everyone is an idiot in some areas.
Politicians get a lot of flack, but they are people too. Their motives may not always the in the interests of the people. They may do some things that seem idiotic in an effort to be seen to do something.
From what my feeble brain can understand the measures being taken in various countries are to prevent health services being overwhelmed. We may all end up getting this virus, but we can spread that out a bit and possibly keep the hospitals operating.
Is it idiocy for us to be writing essays for strangers here? It's not like many will see them. ;)
Stay well.