(06-23-2020 05:04 AM)RutgersGuy Wrote: I want sports back as much as the next guy, but I also don't want more people to die so i'll deal with my slight inconvenience for the greater good.
I have not involved myself in the laymen mask debate because to me it is a minor inconvenience and wearing one makes common sense - a mask might help me and others and it doesn't hurt, so why not wear one? I've worn a mask every time I've gone in to an indoor public place for the past three months.
What I do object to is the lockdown approach. We have suffered tens of millions of unemployed, thousands of lost businesses, and about $4 trillion (and counting) to basically do what?
Put it this way: On a typical pre-covid day, about 8,000 people a day die in the USA. On the worst covid death day we've had so far, about 2,700 people died. So instead of 8,000 people dying that day, around 11,000 people did. Had nobody paid attention to it - meaning mass media coverage - probably "nobody" in a general sense would have noticed. Who was it who said "one person dying is a tragedy, a million is a statistic"? I think one of those evil mass killers like Stalin or Hitler. But at a societal level 8,000 dead a day is obviously a statistic as nobody ever gets riled up about it.
Put it one other way: If *last* February, in 2019, a team of Scientists, universally respected by everyone, had said "about 8,000 Americans die each day. But, we have come up with a method that can reduce that to 6,000 a day for next 180 days, or a savings of 360,000 lives during that time. The cost will be 20 million unemployed .... 150,000 lost businesses ... $4 trillion in spending ... and the loss of movies, restaurants, sporting events, travel shopping, and other such stuff for that six months, schools closed, everyone largely confined to quarters .... all to drop the death rate from 8,000 a day to 6,000 a day ... would that have gotten even 10% of the public support if put to a vote?
Countries like Japan and Sweden did the right thing. Sweden messed up a bit because they didn't protect their nursing homes, but they basically had the right approach. What should have been done was extreme lockdowns and hazmat-level protection for nursing homes, assisted care facilities, and similar facilities, isolation for anyone with diabetes, heart disease, or aesthma ... everyone else go about your business, including business.
Yesterday, our governor, John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, said something that has had me pulling my hair out. In announcing a delay in moving to another stage or reopening, he said (paraphrase) "young people crowding the bars and clubs should think about not just themselves, but their grandparents", as kids who go to these places will then bring the virus back home to vulnerable grandparents. I'm sitting their at my TV shouting "NO! Closing the bars is not the solution! The solution is for the kids to NOT visit their grandparents! Social isolation, but for vulnerable people at home, not inhibiting what the kids do out and about".
My wife and I are in our 50s, and normally we travel up to DC three times a year to visit her mother, who is 82. By mutual agreement, we have skipped our March and also will skip our July visits to avoid possibly bringing the virus in to her home. That's how to handle this, not for me and my wife not to go out to restaurants.