We don't live in a vacuum. Economic activity is not some cute thing people do in their free time. Recession also costs lives, including those of some grandmas.
But instead what we get is "the economic effects aren't worth it" where none of the assumptions are quantified.
I shall not buy what you are selling.
The stakes are not "my stocks". The stakes are civil society, which as you may or may not know, can't exist for long without a functioning economy.
We must take care of each other, it is our basic obligation as citizens of a civil society, and this is the only way we can do that right now.
But people feed their children using the value of their stocks.
Do you think it's possible that a seriously damaged economy will lead to more suffering and deaths than are being prevented by the lockdown?
Why is it so wrong to ask 'are we sure we're going the right way - this way seems to have a lot of problems - are we sure the other way has more?' Some people literally kill themselves when they become unemployed. We have millions of new unemployed people.
You say it's not forbidden but you're comparing me to a turd for doing it. Why does it cause people to abuse me?
This is my last message in this subthread because your misreading of my post to put on a hairshirt has convinced me that you are not here to discuss the topic in good faith. HAND.
There isn't a country on Earth right now that isn't doing social distancing of one form or another. It's an inevitable consequence of a pandemic; it's not some elective choice that we made.
That said; the economy taking a dive is preferential to the population doing the same. There will always be work to be done as long as we wake up every day; and the trick is figuring out how to adapt to new circumstances to get that done.
For instance, now would be a fantastic time to train additional medical personnel or build additional infrastructure for them. Research efforts into mitigating the pandemic are also highly desirable. Logistics solutions to enable financial compensation and product dispatch from community kitchens restauraunts, etc without necessitating physical congregation are sure bets, and just about anything that isn't dependent on getting a bunch of people all in the same place at the same time is also good.
The economy is perfectly fine if you don't assume there is an implicit guarantee that the same endeavors that were profitable yesterday must remain so always. What we're experiencing is an economic record scratch and pivot.
Perhaps for a while most actual economic transactions will be centered on "because it needed to be done, and the government is subsidizing everything until we can find a way to get private enterprise running freely again." Who cares? Life'll have to keep going. If a Jubilee has to happen to reset things... Oh well. It'll suck; but no one asked for this.
The type of work to have people thrown at it is what has changed, and the acceptable methods of execution have been altered. I doubt we'll see a wholesale collapse of civilization by a long shot. What'll be far more interesting to see is if we'll weather the transition to less globalised work smoothly or not. The predictability of life just took a hit; that's all. Time to show how to change. No?
Are widespread food shortages in six months realistic? I guess we'll see.
Food shortages don't appear to be realistic and hinge on assumptions that don't seem to hold water.
I could be wrong, but I'm going to guess you have no idea what you're talking about on this particular topic.
You’d have to find somebody to debate with, however, and most people are not particularly interested in “hang your Grandma for my stocks”. That is not a restriction of debate, it’s the social dumpstering of people beyond either statistics or empathy and that’s a feature and not a bug.