An added 200,000 deaths, then, would not even constitute a 10% increase.
Are you starting to understand that we are being played for fools, because most of us ARE fools?
An analogy I would use is we are paddling down a river, when suddenly word comes from down-river that there is a torrent nobody knew about that is particularly terrible. It is killing people. So we pull over and think “what should we do?”
The Democrats all say “we should just stay here. It’s much safer”. Many Republicans concur, although for different reasons. Democrats think Trump just wants to go down the river, so they want to stay. Republicans, on the other hand, are by nature security and safety conscious. They have strong protective instincts, and the media and the most replicated and amplified part of the “expert” class are screaming DANGER DANGER.
So what to do?
The torrent isn’t going away. It will only cease to be dangerous once everyone is through. Perhaps a few of the less vigorous and sickly can portage around, but the young and healthy need to just go right through the middle, knowing some of them may die.
No matter how long they stay on the side of the river–in this analogy until a cure or vaccine is found, which most experts and most Democrats seemingly hope will never happen–the problem never gets easier. But the sun is setting. And when it is dark, it will stay dark. The economy will crash.
So why not get moving? I ask this question every day. I try to limit what I have to say, but this is one of the first times in my life since the first election of Trump that the issues being pondered seemed to be of existential importance to the future of our nation and people.
We can go in shifts. We can lift the quarantine in parts, and have good plans to move ventilators around. For people ACTUALLY trying to solve the problem while realizing millions of bankruptcies is not good for anyone’s health, these are not difficult challenges.
I have proposed even zip codes–either for the business or the person working there, with the latter making slightly more sense to me, since all businesses get somebody in them. I have proposed names ending, say, A-L. We could even literally do every other State. Open up California and New Mexico, but leave Arizona closed. Prepare to move Arizona’s respirators to California as needed.
Or open up every other county. Or do sound demographics, build some sort of unit, and then alternate. Or hell open up one quarter of businesses. ANYTHING is better than the idiocy we have right now.
I literally think an honest case could be made at this moment that those who are infected should make every effort they can to infect as many people as they can. Not because they are bastards. Not out of spite. Not to prove a point. But because they RECOGNIZE that this disease is not traveling fast enough, that some 60% of us need to get it, and that a continued shut down is going to lead to more misery, possibly, than there has ever been in this country. People are horrified now by pictures of the ER in Brooklyn. What about tent cities and hungry people? What about famished AMERICANS? What about MORE full ER’s from people sick of a variety of diseases that good nutrition would prevent? There is nothing so bad that sufficiently stupid policy cannot make ten times worse. Just look at Venezuela. Just look at our own Great Depression. Absent the mistakes, nobody but specialists would remember the recession of 1929-1930.
These are likely overblown scenarios, but that is the zip code in my view where people’s thoughts should be.
And to be clear, I am NOT, repeat AM NOT recommending people who are sick do anything but stay home and get well
[I will note that all the other usual disease remain in circulation too. A friend of mine went through the big production of getting a COVID-19 test, since he WAS sick, and he tested negative; meanwhile, people are still dying of the regular flu, of heart attacks and strokes, and of cancer].
The big problem is the policy, not anything any one person may or may not do, so it would in any event be pointless. It would be a symbolic act that might well prove fatal to someone, which is an awful thought. So don’t do it. Don’t always take me literally. Don’t even always assume I mean what I say. I don’t. Sometimes I just like to see how things look when written. It is YOUR job to form your own opinions, and to notice and make allowance for my bullshit.
I simply offer that as what Edward de Bono called a “Provocative Operation”. My intent is to break mental boundaries by crossing into places you never thought to go.
Everyone seems terrified. Everyone seems to feel helpless. We don’t need to be terrified. We are not helpless.