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Largely due to the extreme measures taken, Dr. Fauci now estimates that U.S. deaths from COVID-19 will now total between 100,000 and 200,000 instead of the previous estimate of up to about ten times that number that some other experts had predicted. https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronaviru...ry?id=69859267
So IF the final U.S. death toll from COVID-19 turns out to be about 150,000 (or less), if you figure in the despair of those who lost their jobs or businesses and might not recover, the possible violence due to shortages, the increased domestic abuse resulting from people being forced to stay home to some extent, medical personnel losing their lives because of caring for the sick, the stress and worry about loved ones, and the trillions of dollars that taxpayers will end up paying -- and also knowing that the usual number of deaths annually in the U.S. is about 3,000,000 -- do you think the extreme measures taken to prevent possibly hundreds of thousands more deaths will have been worth it?
P.S. As I personally have not formed an opinion on this question yet, I will not be debating anyone who responds, but I will most definitely be reading any responses that this post receives, so thanks in advance.
Last edited by katharsis; 03-29-2020 at 11:56 AM..
It's interesting to compare this to the 9/11 attacks.
Fewer than 3000 American died that day. The response? Two wars, at a cost of nearly 7000 U.S. troops (and nearly 8000 U.S. contractors) in the wars that followed and inured (many of them permanently) topping 50,000 with cases of PTSD soaring near a quarter million. A financial toll somewhere north of $2.4 trillion (estimates vary). Major incursions into individual privacy and security (the Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, monitoring of communications presumed secure, etc.) that persist to this day. And if you dissented, you were slandered as a fifth-columnist: as the then-president declared, you were either on board with the agenda of you were 'with the terrorists'.
And by and large, the same segment of society that was then demanding lockstep fealty to the government's lead is the one now carping that we're overreacting to a situation that promises to kill at least an order of magnitude more (several orders of magnitude more without mitigation).
Quote:
Originally Posted by maciesmom
If that happens it will most likely be the result of the actions taken not in spite of the actions taken.
They'll deny any correlation between the two. In fact, they've already started laying the groundwork for that excuse.
Largely due to the extreme measures taken, Dr. Fauci now estimates that U.S. deaths from COVID-19 will now total between 100,000 and 200,000 instead of the previous estimate of up to about ten times that number that some other experts had predicted. https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronaviru...ry?id=69859267
So IF the final U.S. death toll from COVID-19 turns out to be about 150,000 (or less), if you figure in the despair of those who lost their jobs or businesses and might not recover, the possible violence due to shortages, the increased domestic abuse resulting from people being forced to stay home to some extent, medical personnel losing their lives because of caring for the sick, the stress and worry about loved ones, and the trillions of dollars that taxpayers will end up paying -- and also knowing that the usual number of deaths annually in the U.S. is about 3,000,000 -- do you think the extreme measures taken to prevent possibly hundreds of thousands more deaths will have been worth it?
P.S. As I personally have not formed an opinion on this question yet, I will not be debating anyone who responds, but I will most definitely be reading any responses that this post receives, so thanks in advance.
Some idle thoughts about it.
I suspect part of any one individual's opinion about being "worth it" or not is going to depend on how they rank temporary negative effects (economic, emotional, social) against permanent negative effects (you know...like death). People haven't been equally impacted by the response measures. Not everyone lost a job. Not everyone suffers from social isolation. Not everyone works on the front lines in healthcare. There will always be those who are more buffered form taxpayer pain than others. There are probably quite a few people who welcome anything that thins out the human herd. There are people who value one human life (theirs) completely differently than they do human life in general. An altruistic person probably views this a lot differently than a very self-centered person. One sees noble sacrifice, the other sees irritating injustice. IMHO the response measures being taken could be a lot more extreme. They haven't even been in place very long. That's heading into fictional disaster movie realm. There are certainly people who are reveling in binge watching disaster films during isolation...let's hope they don't permit themselves to get TOO inspired.
Last edited by Parnassia; 03-29-2020 at 02:01 PM..
Based on the statistics at Wikipedia (as of when I made this post) it looks like we may be starting to see the effects of social distancing work - the percentage rate of new case growth is beginning to drop (but the absolute numbers of new cases each day is still increasing). Since it's been about two weeks since the "new normal" began for the majority of people (at least voluntarily), and that's about the average lag between catching the coronavirus and being tested, it looks like the strategies may be working (we'll need to wait another few days to see whether that's just statistical noise or the start of a trend).
While there's definitely no way we're going to be back to the "old normal" by Easter like Trump says, it is realistic that we may be able to take gradual steps towards getting back there by then (if the absolute number increase levels off and/or the growth rate is low enough to be within the available hospital spaces). The first phase would be to re-open semi-essential* businesses and non-essential ones with minimal or no public contact to help the economy, and relax lockdowns by allowing one to leave one's home for whatever reason provided there are no conglomerations of large groups. Opening of non-essential/high-public-contact businesses (e.g. movie theaters, open-door sporting events) and allowing groups like before will probably have to wait until May or so at the earliest.
*Semi-essential means like for example hair salons or clothing stores - things we can do without for a few days or weeks, but not so much for months or longer.
Would it have been worth it to have saved your life?
The lives of your parents, siblings, spouse?
The thing is, we can never know what alternative outcomes would look like, nor what unintended consequences might have occurred.
And much of the resistance to shut downs seem to discount the vulnerability of older people, who seem to an awful lot of people to count for little.
This. It is infuriating how little Americans care for the elderly. "Nana only has 6 years left in the tank, so let's just pull the plug. The economy matters more." That is exactly what Dan Patrick was saying, but he made it worse by making himself sound brave and noble, a sacrificial lamb on the glorified altar of euthanasia. As if he, a multimillionaire politician, would ever have to make that choice for himself in the first place.
Your question isn't logical. If the measures hadn't been taken, the country could have been overcome by disease, millions would have died, leaving the economy in ruin anyway. The only sensible choice was to take extreme measures.
Furthermore, you're assuming, that people who were laid off won't get their jobs back. But employers I've been polling informally, say they'll need to get their employees back, in order to get back into business. They're hoping their employees won't have wandered off, looking for permanent work elsewhere. This is especially true in businesses that have trained their staff in special skills.
Couples who can't spend time together without domestic abuse happening need to get a separation or divorce. That's a separate issue. Risking exposing the entire population of the country to a deadly virus by keeping incompatible couples at work isn't the solution to that problem.
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