Growing up, my parents maybe would have had an extra $100 at the end of the month. My dad would have probably been out of work - given that, each month they were out of work would have put them in a year's worth of debt. A financial death.
It is clear that sheltering does reduce the speed of infection growth, but it is also very clear that sheltering puts enormous stress on individuals, families and companies. I have empathy for those who have to work at home while simultaneously home schooling their children, or families that are in economically over-stressed situations where they don't have an option to work at home, or for communities that don't have adequate running water and other resources.
If the science supports shelter-in-place for now, it's automatically bad that Democrats support that to avoid splitting from Republicans?
Also, it appears that by "science" commenters here really mean epidemiologists or medical scientists, not economists, psychologists, political scientists, etc. Scientists from each of these fields have a limited perspective, a good leader tries to balance these perspectives when choosing a course of action. Of course, the medical view matter a lot now but its not the only view that matters.
It’s simple math that reducing the number of people in contact with each other would reduce the number of people that got infected.
no, that’s the nuclear option, not a surgical strike, much less the only option, and based on an insufficiently precise perception of the problem.
the mechanism of spread can be crudely described as spitting into each others’ mouths, not standing nearby, touching, or breathing in the same room. with the problem sufficiently, if crudely, framed, it should be easier to imagine other ways of preventing spread besides locking everyone in their abodes. physical distancing by itself, for instance, is probably sufficient for most folks. for “essential” workers, you might add a mask.
Without ordering places closed there's too much incentive for businesses to fudge and force their employees to come to work. Don't forget there were runs and shortages of masks so service industry employees wouldn't have complete reliable access to simple masks.
> the mechanism of spread can be crudely described as spitting into each others’ mouths
Somewhat true but coughing etc makes loads of the tiny particles that can carry the virus and they can linger and spread.
There's a lot that could have been done better but it requires a level of coordination and action the US isn't super great at, both in general and right now in particular..
the US, by construction, is all-in on decentralized solutions, and one of its strengths is resisting unwarranted coordinated and centralized action, which is simply an amassment of power, because that's inevitably destabilizing (usually over long time periods, which humans have a hard time properly and understandably rationalizing about).
what's generally warranted, at a national level? defense and international relations. centralizing power is so threatening to the existence of the state itself, we limit it to other mortal threats to the state (international relations are centralized so other nations, say, russians, don't pick apart the states).
we are obligated by our forebearers to apply our ingenuity and our massive resources to finding a solution given the few constraints placed on us by the constitution. we do that by applying our brains, teasing apart the problem, trying solutions, and generally being good people. we don't go running to the apron strings of the nanny state.
But we’re getting off on a tangent about the fundamental design of the US government made at a very different point in history. I don’t think either of us can convince the other here before we both wind up [dead].
On the topic of bungled mismanagement there’s things like states being forced to bid against each other for various medical supplies on the open market and then after being paid for the federal government taking those supplies to redistribute. Instead of those steps just buy them all an do the distribution based on the need in each state which won’t be tied to how much they have to spend. We could have started programs earlier this year to increase the supply of PPE and ventilators knowing that this would inevitably come to the US. We could have followed through on programs like this [0] to ensure that there were cheap easy to build options for ventilators instead of allowing the existing companies to buy out the company contracted and then get out of the obligation because ‘it wouldn’t be profitable enough.’
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-v...
stay-at-home and physical distancing primarily concern transmission.
we want to control transmission to reduce death and suffering, not eliminate them. even with dystopian and draconian measures (not to mention economy-destroying), reducing death and suffering to zero is effectively impossible (and seasonal recurrence is highly likely). moreover, the US is simply not designed, for good reason, to willingly tolerate such measures.
life is full of (similarly likely) risks, and we don't generally panic over them. if this were plague-levels of bad, more draconian measures might be warranted, but this isn't that.
sub-linear transmission is likely the best we can do.
with that in mind, physical distancing (combined with other carefully targeted guidelines like quarantining the sick and having workers wear masks) doesn't need to be perfect to be effective at reducing transmission to sub-linear levels. people who are likely to cough for any reason are already highly discouraged from going out, and most people in public are already hyper-aware of not coughing openly, especially not into each other's mouths.
stay-at-home doesn't meaningfully decrease the risk further, but it's a huge risk to social order.
So if the IFR holds up at around 1%, and herd immunity ends up being the only solution since vaccines are tough, the pandemic in the US would be quite bad, no?
Help me see where the following is flawed:
Population of the US: 328M
Herd Immunity infection total (generously assuming 60%): 196M
Hospitalization totals (generously assuming 10%): 19M
Fatalities based on IFR of 1%: 1.97M
So with 1.97M dead Americans, and 17M seriously injured (but surviving) fellow citizens, what exactly would you envision plague-levels of bad? What would be the economic damage from this level of bad?
Even if the IFR is off, closer to the flu at 0.1%, the infectiousness of this virus means we'd still need 60% or higher infections for herd immunity. With this IFR, we'd still have 17M hospitalized with serious effects, and still have 197K dead. That's at flu level IFR.
The economic value of losing 2M people, as well as 17M with shortened life spans would be far worse than what any lockdown we've implemented would do. It will take all we can to maintain social cohesion for the next 12 months.
We all understand that in a crisis sometimes leaders have to take decisive action based on incomplete data. That's fine. Just don't dress it up with some fake veneer of "science".
Would you like to revisit that topic before we talk about reopening anything? Or how about Hokkaido facing another wave of cases due to reopening too early? Because it seems to me it's only a matter of time for any country that's currently open to see a spike in cases regardless of their culture.