Quote:
Originally Posted by Maynard
All the 'lets balance ecomomic vs. health effects' or 'the shutdown will cause more problems than the virus' is really quite naïve. You are drinking the same Orange Julius denial kool aid that got us this far behind the curve.
Most of this thinking is probably coming from those who live in states that have not yet really heard the opening shots of this, so of course it looks tiresome and a bit unnecessary. In about a week NYC is going to start shipping the extra cases upstate. Another week or two and upstate will be swamped, and they start outsourcing to other states. By then, it will be harder to find open beds. Probably around that time, larger cities across the US will be nearing their own capacity limits; healthcare workers will also be showing infections and dying in larger numbers, so available care is shrinking. Once hospital capacity is reached, every case that would go on a vent becomes a fatality, bodies pile up, more providers go down. Most importantly, nobody has any functioning health care. All those preventable deaths from heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents, etc. become casualties.
Now in a lot of states (like Texas) I hear they got real good at "streamlining" health care by consolidating high cost care like vent beds into just a few central hospitals and closing those unprofitable small town hospitals. So you want to consider that the current crisis is occurring in the area of the US with the best and largest health care systems. Your buffer in the home town is probably quite a bit thinner. To me this looks like a lot bigger hit on the economy than the shutdown.
And that "balance economic effects with health effects" bit is kind of misleading. It really means "balance MY economic effects against YOUR health effects" - the current cost of life saving medical care shows that when it is the life of us or our loved ones, the sky is the limit for what it is worth. We have to face it - we let the house catch fire, now we need to put it out, not worry about whether the firemen break the windows or stain the carpets.
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I saw that there were two types of people back in Feb. There were the people more focused on individual loss of life and then there were people who were more focused on the economy. I would say that the latter are a group of people that look at the broader picture and take up a mentality of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". I'm not saying that one is better than the other but I don't think "naïve" would be the right description for this group. I personally have more compassion for the individuals that are sick and most definitely the dying and deceased than that of society having to slow down to an economic standstill. However, I cannot dismiss the fact that it is the group with the broader mentality that will step up and find a fix or strategy to beat this thing.