(05-27-2020 09:08 PM)ken d Wrote: (05-18-2020 12:03 PM)bill dazzle Wrote: Would a politician of either party or somebody on this board other than me (maybe I've overlooked and apologize if so) please say the following:
The longer we keep the economy locked down, the more people will suffer — not just economically but mentally and physically (suicide, weakening immune systems and diseases spread due to depression and homelessness, lack of physical exercise, etc.).
This is one of my major complaints: Few folks who want to get the economy cranking again (and I strongly do) are noting the potential mental and physical health damage being done by not doing so. The argument seems overwhelmingly "economic" as opposed to both economic and a whole slew of non-virus related mental and physical health concerns that could worsen very soon if we don't resume some element of normalcy.
And because the politicians seemingly are too unskilled to articulate this (I will not mention names), ... it lessens the strength of their argument to reopen the economy.
I wish it were as simple as politicians not being articulate enough. What they are doing is playing to their base, and the bases of both parties aren't interested in finding a practical solution to the inherent dilemma between economic and public health issues. Making the false claim that those who advise a slower return to normalcy are acting out of fear accomplishes nothing except provoking a retaliatory response that all conservatives are greedy bastards who don't care whether your grandma lives or dies.
Americans have always accepted a certain amount of death from communicable diseases without shutting down the economy. But I'm sure that a majority of Americans don't believe that tolerance for casualties should be unlimited. I would ask conservatives who throw out epithets like "nanny state" and "fear mongers" what the right number of deaths should be before we do something to try to stop the spread.
Clearly that number is far north of 100,000 which is the number we have already reached in the very early stages of this pandemic. And nobody knows what the true mortality rate is, because we don't know the true bottom half of that fraction.
If the true rate turns out to be only 0.5% of those infected, and half of all Americans eventually become infected, that's a lot of dead people. More than 1.6 million of them. Are conservatives OK with a number that high? Probably some are, but it's going to be a sliding scale. The higher the number goes, the fewer the people who will accept it as something we shouldn't take steps to mitigate. Is 60,000 a year acceptable to liberals? Apparently, since for years we as a nation have implicitly accepted that as something we just have to live with.
So the number that a large share (like two thirds) of the US population could compromise on probably falls somewhere between those numbers. The unknown is just how much higher will it get if we try to get back to normal with no mitigation. And I say no mitigation, rather than some mitigation, because Americans have already eloquently demonstrated that left to their own choices that's what we will get. Because half of Americans wearing masks and half not equals no mitigation. The virus will continue to spread widely.
What no Americans should want is that, if we are truly at war against this pandemic, our government should choose to fight it on the side of the virus. There has to be a middle ground at the very least.
The enemy isn't the virus. The enemy is the Chinese Communist Party. The two viruses in combination are natural, their bond isn't.
It's hitting my demographic the hardest. To shut down the economy is to give our human adversary their victory. To shut down the economy does hurt a much wider group of our people than the virus. They need to work and we all need to eat and it's just that damn simple. The quarantine should remain in effect for those of us past 65, those with compromising medical issues, and anyone with immune deficiency. The rest can return to work and be tested often for the sake of seeing family members who have to remain constrained.
Those I find offensive are those ridiculing the modicum of social protections that all should observe out of common courtesy and a sense of solidarity.
For me it's been a bit more of a worry but not for my health but because my wife and I have two elderly mothers to care for, one in an assisted living facility that did a wonderful job of quarantining a woman returning from the hospital for emergency surgery. She returned to the facility with COVID 19. All residents were served in their rooms and the staff working with the COVID patient were also quarantined. All survived in that facility thus far. Seven miles down the road an infected church member visiting the elderly at the nursing facility wiped out over half of the residents. They came from a church where many members fell ill due to services. When singing proves to be a more effective delivery system for the virus than touch or breathing then the knee jerk reaction to concerns over worship were asinine as well. Smart churches remained open and one not too far from here held services in a parking lot with portable lectern and speaker system and people in cars parked with their windows rolled down listening. I think they had a trash can dedicated to offerings at the exit to the parking lot.
Adaptation and innovation are what we need, along with a healthy dose of common sense.
What concerns me the most, aside from the jackassery on both sides of the political aisle, is that the virus recurs. If it hides in the lining of the brain like HIV and Herpes we won't have a vaccine, but might be able to develop a maintenance treatment that forces the virus to stay in hiding where it is not contagious. But if that indeed is the case we are going to be living with this for years to come.
So locking everything down is not an option. Protecting the most vulnerable is more workable. And learning to live with it is a must that requires study, planning, adaptation, and innovation in order to defeat its intent and its threat.
Personally I just didn't want to die before the end of next month. I have some timed investments that will set my wife and heirs up nicely but it gets annuitized if I don't live to roll it over into a different instrument. That would piss me off!
The world is rapidly changing. Between nearly 9 billion people on the planet, the incredible stupidity of many to continue to live on the surface rather than beneath it in a much more sustainable way freeing surface space for food production and energy production, and by tossing so much garbage in the oceans where it threatens 70% of humanity's protein sources is a statement unto itself that insinuates that we are too stupid to live.
I'm not sold on Global Warming since nature runs through that in cycles, but I am sold on pollution as a major threat. Plastics may yet kill us all. Why is glass which is clean and oh so easy to recycle a problem?
Then there's peak oil. Energy and transportation are not the key issues around petroleum. Fertilizer is. Until around 1885 the human population hoovered plus or minus periods of pandemic around 3.5 billion people because that's about all that agriculture could feed. Then came petroleum fertilizer. Yields increased as much as 20 fold in some areas. More food equaled more people. When oil runs out the land will take us down to fewer than 3.5 billion because we've covered so much surface with concreate and asphalt and it takes about 100 years to reclaim that soil free of contaminants. And that's not even the biggest crisis.
The Pentagon's long range strategy for the 21st century is the protection of potable water supplies. Aquifers it took nature 1000's of years to create we are draining in a few decades. They aren't being replenished. There's your crisis.
So Ken D in the great scheme of things this little virus launched by the Chinese Communists isn't that big of a deal. If it kills 500,000 out of 320 million Americans it will be sad, but in the great scheme of things no greater than 2 bad influenza outbreaks.
The way I look at it we are being provided with a chance to learn how to pull together in a crisis. Those who want to turn it into a political football should be identified and voted out of office regardless of party. If we can't work together for the common good in a time of crisis we are toast. But even in your description of the events you taint your remarks with your political bias.
Right now neither side has the answer but many of the people do know it. Our neighborhood is extremely mixed politically but we all know each other, trust each other, overlook our differences, and work for the common good. There's your answer. To do less is to be complicit with the enemy at worst and pro virus at best.
So polemics won't gain us anything but death and life resides in cooperation. But Social Media and the Tube do nothing but alienate and divide. Maybe its time to turn them both off, and attend a parking lot church and remember our community. There is no us and them in this one, only we.
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