Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by majormajor on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @08:21PM (#24218487)

So something like a million+ people dying if we let this run without intervention - because our ability to control transmission is pretty limited even with dramatic measures - out of the US population only matters if they distribution is balanced age-wise?

Economic-cost-wise, why is this cost the one that gets people so riled up?

Is it because it also comes with personal inconvenience, and so much of the other ways we spend money fighting death - or trying to extract revenge for death like after 9/11 - doesn't?

Driving, for instance - the government makes us spend a lot more to have safer cars, but other than styles and types of car available as a result, we don't really get impacted by it. It just makes the cars more expensive, and few people care.

Or maybe we're just bad at dealing with adversity without having someone to blame? So we go reaching for "bad guys"?

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Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by pdonis on Thursday August 20, 2020 @01:25AM (#24220173)

> our ability to control transmission is pretty limited even with dramatic measures

The ability of politicians to control transmission by making decrees, even dramatic ones, is limited, yes.

The ability of ordinary people to control transmission by taking obvious common sense precautions is not. And those obvious common sense precautions should include, yes, not engaging in activities that have a high risk of transmission.

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