SnowGolfBro

My man we are going to be tracking winter weather again in a matter of months (maybe even this week lol). No hard feelings at all. I think we can all agree we want this virus to die a quick and unceremonious death!

She is on the front line so i value her opinion. She agreed with the social distancing policies in the short term. As most everybody did. But that attitude is changing quickly in my interactions with people.

Sure. You brought up the one percent and the super rich. Well they are the ones who are going to survive this shutdown and economic turmoil. I am worried about the 99% of people who don’t earn 7 figures. The people that are having their life savings wiped out. The people that are suffering severe depression from “the response” to the Pandemic. I’m not saying that there should be no weight given to concerns about the virus and the deaths it has caused and will cause. Those are tragedies. I am happy to hear opinions for staying shut down for months on end. But that is not my opinion. I believe we need to get moving again as a society before things deteriorate any further. And i got a little worked up with the BS comment. My apology for the brashness of that statement. Just felt i was giving an opinion in support of letting people live their lives again and you threw “Fox News” at me. I still don’t understand that

Why shouldn’t we be looking for a way to start the economy back up as soon as possible? Do we want 10s of millions of people to be without jobs waiting in bread lines? If you are old or have a comorbidity you need to take precautions as you see fit. If you are young and otherwise healthy, keep washing your hands maintaining distance from others where reasonable and wear a mask if necessary. People will not continue to go blindly along with destroying their lives. #openitup!

Well they just got a contract to feed some FEMA responders staying in a local Hotel! So he and his chef can get paid a few more weeks. They toyed with the idea of delivery. But the business model for most dine in/full service restaurants relies on Alcohol sales. So the to go food option is nearly impossible for a lot of restaurants.

This is what makes this situation so diabolical. Your situation is frightening and i genuinely feel your pain. My brother is a restaurant manager. His life has been upended. He is depressed, out of work and no idea if or when he will be able to provide for himself. So extrapolate your issues to the macro level. And extrapolate my brothers issues to the macro level. And we can see the struggle that is taking shape is encompassed in these two examples. Damn tough situation.

We have shut down society in an effort to save lives. Certainly a noble undertaking on the surface. We can reasonably assume that the virus will not spread as fast or as widely under the stay at home orders (but it will still spread because people are going to get food, medicine etc). So I’m not arguing that the policies in place currently aren’t helping some people avoid getting the virus and keeping others from dying from the virus. I am arguing that the unintended consequences these decisions are causing are getting exponentially worse and longer lasting everyday. It’s a brutal situation. Not an easy answer in my opinion. But we need to have an open conversation about mortality from a virus vs our way of life in the short and long term.

It’s much worse. They are random and injure indiscriminately. At least the virus tends to disproportionately affect the elderly and the infirmed.

it’s the law of unintended consequences. If u just look at the lives saved by enacting a policy (any policy you think will save lives) but fail to understand the unrelated consequences, you end up in the situation we are in today.

Finally someone who gets it!!! I didn’t think it was that complicated of a scenario. Soon people are going to go back to their lives because it’s a risk people will be willing to take. Just like we do every day.

What is your question? It is a hypothetical scenario. I’d be happy to elaborate to clarify the comparison.

So if 35000 people die a year from Covid 19 in a stable predictive pattern then you are good with getting back to normal? And a couple hospitals are overwhelmed like in NYC. However the vast majority of hospitals are actually not overwhelmed or anywhere close.

You miss the point entirely. We can mitigate the spread of the virus. We can also mitigate traffic deaths. It’s about assessing risk. We can lower the speed limit to 25 mph with strict enforcement and limit deaths on the roads to near zero. But it will be destructive to commerce and people’s lives. Same with Covid 19. We can enforce Strict social distancing and stay at home orders to reduce the number of deaths. But that comes with economic destruction as well. So it’s a cost benefit analysis comparison that makes perfect sense.

Again GDP is used as an abstract term. It is a measure of our productivity, which is directly related to our ability to work, socialize and enjoy life. Personally, i do not know anyone who has died from Covid 19. That may change sadly. However, i know many people personally that have had there lives ruined, or are teetering on the edge due to the destruction of our “GDP”.

We have to go back not to save the economy, but to save humanity. The economy is thrown around as some abstract term. The economy is people. It is our interactions, our livelihoods. People will not stand for this for months on end. Here is a question for everyone. If the governor of your state came out today and said we will be locked down for 12 months, would you abide? Or would u push back? How about 6 months? 3 months? 1 month (not even there yet in most places)?

I think you are both right. It is not abnormal for people in Italy to die from Flu and flu like diseases this time of year. The reaction as you describe is not normal.

I’m lucky enough to have a job where i can work remotely. But guess what? If this goes on for a few more weeks or even months, the downstream effects of a Depressed economy will be felt by everybody. And if it gets to that, my guess is people will say enough is enough.

For all my years reading your posts, I’d say you would whoop Corona’s ass if you got it. Stay well Jebman

The economic and social damage is already to much to bear. My brother is a Restaurant Manager. His life is more or less destroyed. Not to mention all the people that work for him. And extrapolate that to the Macro level and it’s devastating. And psychologically people are going to deteriorate quickly. We have to go back to normal soon or I’m afraid the damage will be far greater than the damage the virus is causing or will cause. It’s shitty calculation to have to make. Take Draconian measures to try to slow the virus and save lives. Or don’t take the measures to save the economy and the lives that will be shattered in the process. Shitty

At this point i don’t see how schools start up again until the Fall. I hope that’s not the case, but it doesn’t seem like opening in May makes a whole lot of sense. And extending school into the summer doesn’t seem likely.

Agreed. But inherently we already know that social distancing reduces risks of getting any virus. Some will choose to maintain there distance from people, but many will choose to return to normal life. If the government decides to punish those that want to return to normal life, i do not believe that ends well for anybody. Right now people are on board with the measures being taken in the short term. Dire projections will only scare people for so long. If (as i predict and hope and pray) that the projections are overblown, fear will subside and if the authorities aren’t nimble in responding to subsiding fear, anger will be the next emotion.

At some point people are going to get restless and want to get back to their lives Coronavirus or not. Right now most people are scared (perhaps rightly so). We all have an appetite for risk. We drive on highways knowing full well traffic fatalities happen at the rate of close to 100 per day. We send kids to school and Go to work knowing full well that 20000-30000 people die from the flu every flu season. We wake up every morning knowing we might get cancer no matter what we do or don’t do (and many do things that we know lead to cancer but they risk it anyway) We go to bars and restaurants and buffets and fly on airplanes etc knowing full well their are germs everywhere in these places. My point is one day soon people are going to wake up and say “i might get Coronavirus, but i still want to live my life”. My bet is that happens sooner than people are willing to consider right now. The caveat are the numbers we are all tracking. If we see 100,000 deaths in the US by the end of March, the risk calculus changes (again, rightly so). But if March comes and goes and we have 1000 deaths or less in the US. People will start demanding their lives back.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend anyone. I’ve respected your moderation of others in the past. So i will check my theories about executive power at the door. Hope everyone stays safe and we can get back to tracking weather and not killer viruses in the near future. Stay safe everyone.

Less developed countries are not going to be able to under report deaths from the virus. So while there is likely more cases than reported they are likely milder than seen in cold and flu prone areas. This by no means meant to say it’s right. I’m just making a prediction based on how i understand this stuff. Which is about as good as i can predict the weather lol

Look at the US. Warm places are seeing few infections and hardly any deaths. Look at our hotspots. Seattle area. New York. Look at Florida, Arizona, Texas, they have relatively few cases and deaths close to zero. Let’s come back to this post in a few weeks. And if I’m wrong i will readily admit it.