Eventually people will warm up to the idea of letting the virus just run its course. Poorer countries might do this earlier, because they don't have the healthcare infrastructure anyway, and even if they want to, they can't help the weak and dying. (Africa, arab countries) Once society has cleaned itself from infections (you are either immune or dead), they can get back to business like nothing happened. Imagine this like a tsunami after an earthquake. Same thing happens just faster. People die, businesses go bankrupt, then eventually life goes on. There might be a short lived famine and inflation, but eventually life keeps going...
When a house is on fire and burning down it ain’t time for the fire department to hold a vote on what to do (democratic processes..etc). No sir, it is time for the fire chief to become extremely autocratic and bark out the orders and expect them to be obeyed. No dicking around. There is a time and place for autocratic leadership. NOW is the time and NOW is the place.
It would be hard to see how shutting down all economic activity will "save the economy" and "restore trust in the free markets". The times when something like this was done, nothing good came out of it. A fairly short market shutdown in 2001 resulted a calamitous week of selling. However, due to some timely information by @Sig, I do not want to get involved in this discussion. Thank you for pointing it out. A wresting match with a bovine has been cancelled.
Or the survivors just can't wait to go on a break from quarantening themselves. The youth are less in danger and older people when immune will celebrate life and live like you are dying. What is the point in saving for your 80+ years when a batfucker can kill you at 60?
We need a pessimistic optimist autocratic leader to step up and take the reins. Optimistic to give hope. Pessimistic to face the threat head on and use drastic measures. Churchill: “You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
I'm really worried, because there's no cure, no vaccine and undisciplined dumbfks not staying home. Like Spanish flu millions worldwide may die. One key point I saw a doctor make is back then, after the spring outbreak subsided, people got complacent during summer, failed to lockdown when it came back in fall, and millions more died. I am shocked at federal government incompetency right now. Like epidemiologists say there should be uniform lockdown etc
Nobert, this is acknowledged by the government, as I said, no dark conspiracy here. They're just overwhelmed. They simply don't have enough kits to test everyone, much less so quickly, so they're giving priority to testing the living, particularly the healthcare workers (10% of those acknowledged as infected). The Spanish government just had to return 600,000 faulty tests to China, etc. (Notice I'm not saying there are millions of dead people nobody is reporting, just that there is a backlog of a couple of hundred per day that will increase the total numbers later). If you can read Spanish, here is a link, from a newspaper of record: https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-27/el-coronavirus-causa-mas-muertes-de-las-detectadas.html
Balancing Act, the people that survive which is 99%+ of us, would like the world to not be in to much of a mess when this crap is all over. Back to dumping old people into care homes and not caring in no time
I will say this one more time. Throwing the old people off the bus is fine if this is what you want to do, but realize that with the health care system crippled, you aren't getting any health care either for months. As a young person, you might not be too worried about this virus, but over the next 6 months, you might have anything from gonorrhea that you can't get treated, a broken arm that will get no cast, or a serious accident which will leave you dying on the side of the road. Are you willing to take this risk? Access to healthcare isn't like a trade you can get out of when it goes against you for minimal loss. By saying that this is overblown and people need to get on with their lives, what you are saying is that you are ok with the healthcare system being overloaded because you are sure that in the next 6 months to 1 year you won't have any need for it nor will it in any way directly affect you. Its not just a simple question of sacrificing the old people. The knock on effects of just letting this virus run rampant are serious. US has 100k cases now and almost 2k deaths. If business was wide open, do you really think that when the case load hits 10 million or 20 million that the economy would still be great? At some point, you will see mass hysteria among healthy people. I bet that if nothing was done, within 2 months, you would have people themselves choosing to self quarantine without the government having to tell them to. The amount of paranoia would be unreal once you hit 1% or or 5% of the population catching this.