In [1] it says in the last 10 years the # of deaths from the flu was 10 to 60k, avg about 30k for all americans. I'm not contributing fear. I'm talking about the facts of the situation and the fact is its a serious issue. I'm frustrated that so many people act like it won't hurt them so they dont care somehow. We have to make serious choices between variations of opening up and helping the economy vs saving people. We need to do this in an informed way and not what can ideologically help or hurt various politicians.

[2] is a great article about how different cities in 1918 made various choices about socially isolating and the impact of that.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-1...

You are creating a Sophie's Choice in your dichotomy of "opening and helping the economy vs. saving people". It isn't that black and white and I would hope you understand that. It is "saving people vs. saving people". That is the stark choice we have to make. It isn't "getting a haircut vs. killing children" or even "helping small business vs. giving old people another year or two". It is literally lives vs lives. If you are so disconnected from the reality of a majority of the country to not understand that three months without work is a life risking disaster, then you won't see the damage created by our continued draconian response to a virus which is much different than originally assumed.

My point is, if you stratify death rates by age[1] you see that children are at a very, very low risk from COVID-19. This is the nuanced approach that universal lockdowns trample over.

You literally employed the "think of the children" fallacy[2] (technically appeal to emotion) when you know well that children are at a low risk.

I mentioned flu, TB, and malaria because they kill legions of children every year. TB killed 200,000 children in 2018[3]. Malaria kills .5 million children a year worldwide[4]. So don't tell me you care about the children. Unless of course you mean American or European children, in which case make your case but admit to yourself that you are viewing the world through a lens of personal risk, not actual risk.

Either you want to save the children, in which case we need to dedicate 20% of our GDP to combating TB, malaria and flu worldwide, or you only care about local children, in which case you are okay with burning through 20% of our GDP to prevent kids from getting a disease which isn't dangerous to them.

[1] https://twitter.com/daniellevitt22/status/126945491074919628...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

[3] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...

[4] https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#all-charts-preview

Putting it as saving people vs saving people is a better way to put it than I did. I agree that it's not a straightforward issue.