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But after this blows over, how many people will take better care of themselves? Are the majority of people going back to their unhealthy lifestyles? Ignoring annual doctor visits? Letting the obesity epidemic increase? Continue smoking, vaping, recreational drugs? Are people just hypocrites in the long-run?
There is no way of knowing what would have happened. We can perhaps compare the states that went not lock-down with the one that did not.
The toll it has or will take outside of death from viruses will never be fully identified. There are a lot of impact that are unlikely to be considered. A few examples I have seen:
Beggars and homeless people are starving/dying. There is no one in the cities to get money from. No place to duck into to get warm for a bit, or to get some food. Many charities are shut down and with no church services, the churches are not collecting money and supplies to donate to the food banks and the like. Supplies are dwindling. A majority of food banks and charities are religious based. That means the government can't/won't provide support. A lot of kids depend on free school lunches to get food. At the same time, the number of people needing their services has exploded. the virus seems to be impacting poor people disproportionately, but the lock down impact may kill even more of them.
My father 89 has severe a urinary tract infection. He was going to go to the hospital, but we told him to call his doctor. Doctor told him not to go to the hospital under any circumstances. Dr. will not give him a prescription over the phone, but has no time to see him either. "Drink cranberry juice and lots of water, if it gets worse call me (and wait on hold for up to three hours). If the infection spreads, it will likely kill him. He would be a victim of the-virus and resulting lock-down but never recorded as such.
A lot of older people where we live, live alone and have no support. They are not poor,but they are terrified. They will not go out even to get food. If they do get out to get groceries, most items are gone. Sometimes younger people will steal choice items from their cart while they are waiting in line. Some of them will weaken and die because they cannot get things they need and do not eat well. Some are so terrified they cannot sleep and eat very little. Fear and media hype are killing them.
Between financial losses, fear, anxiety, and the stress of being stuck at home, suicide will jump up. This will probably not be attributed to the virus or lock-down. If you are comparing the harm of the virus vs. the harm of the lock-down, which side will you put the suicides on anyway? Was it the fear and anxiety from the virus, or the isolation and loneliness of lockdown?
There are countless impacts that woudl fall on either side of the equation that no one will ever even think of that will not be considered on either side. We have chosen the path we will take to try to combat the virus and regardless of whether it does more good or harm, that is the path we are on. It is not going to change.
Rather than fretting over what we cannot change, perhaps there are things we can do to minimize the impacts.
We're just trying to minimize the number of casualties, while avoiding crashing our economy.
It's a balancing act.
No, it's not. We have spent decades putting the needs of the wealthy first, putting war first, tax cuts, bailouts, and when regular working folks actually need the tax monies they already paid back, politicians are shocked and appalled they actually want something for all they sacrificed. We should have universale healthcare. There is no reason whatsoever we don't have it already. The United Kingdom has had it for 80 years now.
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So you finally got to the point you were trying to make - universal healthcare! If any type of healthcare could damage the loves of seniors it's that as is being witnessed in those countries with universal healthcare.
As I said in my post, I am not going to debate the question of this thread. However, I do want to answer the above.
Perhaps I am taking your use of the word "logical" the wrong way, as I took it to mean that you think the question is ridiculous because the answer is obvious, but my question IS a valid one, as shown by the fact that people are taking opposite viewpoints. I think that very few questions are ridiculous because the answer is obvious and non-debatable, and I had to think for a couple of minutes before coming up with even one, which was "Is eating nothing but Tootise Rolls for an entire month a healthy diet?" (Although maybe someone will debate even that!)
In any case, for my husband and myself (and we are both in our mid-60's, btw), the selfish answer would be that the extreme measures HAVE been worth it because my husband was going to retire early and give his notice about March 27th (just this past Friday) because of the virus, but because he was laid off on March 16th, he is now able to collect Unemployment. So instead of getting just one more month of regular pay, he will now receive 39 weeks of Unemployment plus four months of the extra $600 per week from the federal stimulus bill. For us, that will mean about $23,000 more in our savings account than if he had just quit a month later, as we had planned. And so the extreme measures have been very good for us, and the only downside about the virus for usso far, besides worrying about it, is that we are voluntarily self-quarantining (no shopping and no socializing with others) until at least mid-May, and that we will almost certainly run out of fresh dairy and fresh produce, but these are measures that we have inflicted on ourselves. So because we have no relatives we are worried about, if we were to look at it from only a very selfish viewpoint, the extreme measures have been a very good thing for us. (Btw, we are now in the process of deciding about which local charity or food bank to send a very generous donation.)
OTOH, however, taking the unselfish view, we are very worried about those who are not as financially fortunate as we are, younger people who cannot self-isolate without incurring severe financial hardship, those heroic medical personnel who are risking their lives, and all the other concerns I raised in Post #1 of this thread. I also want to point out that although people can do without hair and nail appointments, this will create a very bad hardship for the beauticians and owners of these shops -- and if a Depression results (continues) from this, they might not recover financially.
But, again, the question of this debate is whether or not all the extreme measures that have been taken will have been worth it if the death count turns out to be much lower than was first predicted by some experts. At this point, I think it might be too soon to say; that as others have said, that it IS a balancing act with no obvious answers; and I think that the question that is the subject of this thread will be debated for many, many years to come.
P.S. Thanks again to EVERYONE who has posted in this thread.
Last edited by katharsis; 03-30-2020 at 09:18 AM..
We cannot really speculate about statistics yet, because they are not testing everyone, its only certain people, so there is no way to know how many people are infected with it yet (2 weeks to show symptoms).
We are only in the early stages of this too, (its been only 2-3 weeks), figures, predictions and statistics will go up and down for the next few months.
I think we are going to be very slow in getting back to normal, a large number of people are going to be scared to come out of their house or go to work, and federal and state Govts are ONLY going to re-open places and lift restrictions when they know for a fact the danger has passed, (they do not have any other choice).
So you finally got to the point you were trying to make - universal healthcare! If any type of healthcare could damage the loves of seniors it's that as is being witnessed in those countries with universal healthcare.
Yes, I've taken slack for this (and I don't care) but all this is doing is showing how awful socialized healthcare is over there and how good healthcare is here.
Bet lots of Europeans wish they lived here right about now, even though they'd never admit it.
Revisit this question in July, when unemployment is 20% and we've released social distancing and reopened some parts of the economy, only to realize we must immediately clamp back down, indefinitely, as cases of infections explode again from 10,000 to 200,000 in just 2 weeks of "getting back to normal".
Yes, I've taken slack for this (and I don't care) but all this is doing is showing how awful socialized healthcare is over there and how good healthcare is here.
Bet lots of Europeans wish they lived here right about now, even though they'd never admit it.
There is consensus that South Korea handled this epidemic much better than the US is, and the statistics prove it: S Korea has had fewer cases per capita and fewer deaths per capita.
S Korea also has universal healthcare. Everyone gets "free" healthcare under a mandatory national government-run insurance program.
When this is all over it is clear that some, but not all, of the universal health care systems will do better than the US.
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