US hunger crisis persists, especially for kids, older adults

Re:US hunger crisis persists, especially for kids, older adults by ryandrake on Friday April 02, 2021 @11:27AM (#26672201)

The economic victims were the businesses that voluntarily closed and their employees, and the ones in the few regions where business closures were enforced. The businesses that horsed around and didn't close were mostly fine, but contributed to a public health disaster.

Hopefully the lesson learned in 2020 is that actual lockdowns work (see the countries that actually did them), but if you're too timid to enforce lockdowns (like the USA), then don't send mixed messages and do it half way. We could have 1. done a lockdown and gotten on with life after a very short period of economic hardship, or 2. ignored it and let a whole bunch of people die. Somehow our government managed to pick a worse option: 3. implement unenforced and unevenly enforced measures, which both craters the economy long term AND lets a whole bunch of people die. Great work, USA.

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Re:US hunger crisis persists, especially for kids, older adults by sershe on Sunday April 04, 2021 @03:15PM (#26692044)

Per capita cases/deaths in the USA are not worse than many major European countries, so I am not sure why you singled out the USA.

Moreover, I am not sure the strictness of lockdowns really correlated with outcomes - Sweden is a famous example, Belgium vs Netherlands another iirc. The only lockdowns that worked (so far) were either islands (meaning very few points of exchange that are easy to control) or totalitarian (e.g. China).

Or a little bit of both, like cops barging into somebody's home in Australia over a Facebook post. At that point I'll take liberty over safety, thank you.

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