@LeafByNiggle I find your comparison of our Covid environment to a war zone to be rather ignorant of the reality of life in war zones. One who lives in a war zone has problems much bigger than we are experiencing today. Like obtaining water, food and medical care. I pray every day that we in the US never find ourselves in a war zone anywhere on our soil, but if one ever finds themselves living in that hell, they’re going to wish for the halcyon days of summer 2020 when you and I had the freedom to dicker with each other at CAF.
You cited the numbers of deaths for 1968. Okay, but you were playing fast and loose. A fairer comparison is
per capita. Something you use when it helps your case but will not use when it doesn’t help your case. Here, the per capita doesn’t help your case that much. The US population in 1968 was about 205m so deaths in 1968 extrapolated to today’s US population of 330m gives about 161,000 deaths. Then remember the flu death toll in 1968 cut across all age groups. But 44% of Covid deaths are in long term care facilities. Which leaves about 92,000 deaths for the
rest of us not in an LTCF. Hence per capita for the rest of us does not yet match 1968. Granted we may still get there, but for the rest of us so far, this is not much worse than a bad flu year. Yet your insistence that the healthy not be permitted to make a living persists.
You called this coronavirus a “novel” coronavirus. Fair enough. By that logic, those flu strains that hit hard before flu vaccination was common were technically “novel” influenza viruses because like this coronavirus, we didn’t have anything to counter it. There was no vaccination around the corner in 1968; widespread vaccination for influenza would not begin until 1976.
About 1918, I looked up Philadelphia and St Louis. St Louis banned large gatherings so their death toll was much smaller than Philadelphia. Many schools and other entities engaged in voluntary quarantines across the country. But nowhere did I see St Louis banning the healthy from attempting to make a living otherwise. That was never done. They didn’t even shut down the baseball season.
My take isn’t complete totally open, no precautions necessary. My take is sure, ban the large gatherings, but also issue guidelines for caring for the sick and vulnerable at home. These are readily available; we already have guidelines for cancer victims at home when treatments have ravaged their immune systems and these can be adapted for the coronavirus. Now I never said stop there, do not put that in my mouth. I don’t think highly of masks, but I am big on washing hands everywhere and not touching one’s face in public. All test results should be available within hours, not days. Allow full access to beaches and parks. But above all, do not ban healthy people from attempting to make a living. That way lies the certain destruction of the economy beyond what the Fed and Congress can fix.
