I am going to immodestly propose that any of you who read this and agree with it cut and paste it in the comments section of your local newspapers and other social media you may be engaged with. No attribution is needed. Just cut and paste it as is, or as modified by you to better conform to your taste and sensibilities.
I think the logic of the situation can be framed reasonably simply as follows:
1) Given sufficient healthcare capacity the same number of people, roughly, will die if this quarantine ends tomorrow versus if it ends a year from now.
1a) Ventilators are no longer a limiting factor, and we have the highest bed capacity per capita of any country in the world.
2) A vaccine is unlikely for at least a year, and to develop one at all historically new technology will need to be invented. It amounts to either a cure of, or vaccine for, the common cold, which has never yet been produced despite much effort. Putting our eggs in that basket amounts to whimsy and foolishness, although efforts should not be abandoned.
We have, however, established reasonably good protocols with Zithromax, zinc, and hydroxychloroquine. We are unlikely to do better no matter how long we wait.
3) Each and every day this coerced labor lockout continues, the cost in human lives RISES.
There is an immediate cost, in terms of people putting bullets in their brains, driving drunk into trees, and shooting heroin in their veins and never waking up, which would not have happened had these people not been pushed over the edge by government policy.
And there is a longer term cost, in lives lost due to stress. A mere 1% increase in long term unemployment–and I think most observers think the number will be higher than that for a while–causes an overall national increase in mortality from all causes of about 40,000 lives.
4) the logic, therefore, that we are KILLING more and more people, that we are costing more and more lives, each and every day this labor lockout continues is, to my mind, compelling and irrefutable.
These policies are CAUSING death, not preventing it. And they are causing MISERY too, among all those who cannot pay their bills, and will get no money from the government, or not enough, or not soon enough.
5) The sticking point for most seems to be delusional thinking stuck in the Bargaining phase of grief. They want there to be another answer, where a good number of good people do not die.
There is no such answer. It is not forthcoming. There will be no miracle. We are here on Earth, and on Earth magical thinking does not equate to actual results. And all of us die. This is how the system works. I didn’t create it, I am merely recording its operation accurately.
The HUMANE response, then–the ONLY humane response–is to begin opening the national economy up immediately. Anyone who wants to hedge their bets, and phase it, I will support, since that is better than nothing. But the long term effect–the number of deaths from this terrible disease–will be about the same, so my vote is full opening tomorrow.