Who's Going to Pay the Bills?: Purpose-Driven Coronavirus Business Shutdowns Cause Economic Catastrophe

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No it doesn’t. Just using that as an example of how anonymous sources start and are ran with.

Then again there are quite a few non anonymous sources out there that are spewing what I consider nonsense and folks are running with it too.

When some fringe person comes up with a “cure” or “treatment” that is X percent effective in combating this virus, but it really isn’t an actual study that would hold up even in a middle school biology class, it is frustrating to see people who are normally logical buying into it right off the bat.

This pandemic has opened the crazy box and it is spewing everywhere.
 
Socrates92 said:
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Anrakyr:
If the economy dies we can resuscitate it.
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What is the basis of this claim?
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Past history. See the Great Depression.
 
When in history, other than for short periods of time have economies not gone up.

Yes there are periods, in our country, the depression, some recessions, where it has contracted, but then it has recovered.

In the world as a whole, since the beginning of recorded history, economies have expanded, other than during select periods of time. After all, we aren’t all still living in thatch huts, walking everywhere, and living a subsistence lifestyle.

If you think about it, the hardest hit are the most advanced economies. Those places in the country and the world who are less fortunate aren’t feeling the effects nearly as much as the people who have 3 cars, mortgage on a 250k or more house, and credit card debt that has been run up.

In our country, some folks are getting more unemployment than their paychecks were. They are receiving a check for what might be an extra months pay as well. I am in no way saying these people are better off, just that in real time economics they would be suffering less.
 
Anrakyr said:
What is the point of this comparison? We know. It’s by design. Stay home, let the virus die. If the economy dies we can resuscitate it. Why? Because it’s not a living thing and comparisons of such are merely linguistics poetry.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. This gets a bit too close to Mr. Trump’s “reassurance” about restaurants:
“I’ve heard 3 percent could be lost, and you could go as high as 10 or 11 percent, but they’ll all come back in one form of another. Might be a different restaurant. But it’s gonna be a great business for a lot of people. We’re making it easy for people — look, what we’re doing in terms of loans, what we’re doing in terms of salaries, they’ll all come back. It may not be the same restaurant, it may not be the same ownership, but they’ll all be back.”

That’s looking at the economy from the point of view of consumers. That isn’t looking at it from the point of view of people who will lose their jobs, their life savings and perhaps their marriages, not to mention their ability to buy food and fuel, to name a few. The economic repercussions of this pandemic really can’t be viewed in an “it’s only money” kind of way.

Life is risky. We go out and live our lives knowing that if we drive a car, we could kill someone, if we cook or produce food, we could kill someone, and so on. We have to be responsible, but people still have to earn a living and live their lives. The solution of cutting the activities of daily life to a minimum are immediately devastating to some and ultimately devastating to most. There are reports that there are already people in Southern Italy who are running away from grocery stores with stolen food and yelling as they leave that they have no money and they still have to eat. So no, “the economy” is not some luxury out there that we can just allow to die. It is how food is produced and supplied. It is how many essential things get done, including work that may not be essential to the buyer but is certainly essential to the livelihood of those who do the work.

There are no answers that come from all-or-nothing views about the trade-offs.
 
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So a little bit of diversion from the thread.

I see a lot of posts on this site about: I did such and such is it a sin, or do I need to go straight to confession. Others relating to how we are supposed to live each day with a clear conscience and not go to Communion without having been to confession. You name it. Most are trying to be the very best Catholics they can so they can get to heaven. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But I question how much time, effort and energy do people spend planning for things like this? I mean, we have no idea when it might be our time to face our own personal judgement, and we prepare. By the same token, we have no idea when an economic collapse me happen or even a pandemic.

How much actual effort do all of us put into preparing for this? By some of the responses, it seems very little as a society.
 
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PetraG said:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. This gets a bit too close to Mr. Trump’s “reassurance” about restaurants:
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A restaurant is not a person, nor is the economy. A human life has no value.
PetraG said:
So no, “the economy” is not some luxury out there that we can just allow to die.
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It’s a sacrifice.
PetraG said:
There are no answers that come from all-or-nothing views about the trade-offs.
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It’s not all or nothing. To quote Yatzee Cranshaw:
“I’m not worried, we been here before.”
The economy will hurt but it can heal.
 
Anrakyr said:
A restaurant is not a person, nor is the economy. A human life has no value.
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I think you mean a human life has value. No one here is saying otherwise. No one is saying that we don’t have to do anything to combat the pandemic.
Anrakyr said:
It’s a sacrifice.
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No one is suggesting that no sacrifices need to be made or that there was ever any way whatsoever to prevent this pandemic (once it became a pandemic) from having serious economic and human consequences. I am only saying that economic consequences are human consequences.

We have farmers who are having to dump perfectly good food because there is no way to get it to market or to someone who could eat it. The same goes with the restaurants owned by people who fully understood the need to close. The pandemic hit very hard and very unexpectedly.
Anrakyr said:
It’s not all or nothing. To quote Yatzee Cranshaw:
“I’m not worried, we been here before.”
The economy will hurt but it can heal.
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People actually suffer harm when the economy goes through a depression–and make no mistake, we are talking about at least a recession and very possibly a depression. Yes, people come out the other side, but people “come out the other side” of world wars, too. That doesn’t mean there is no suffering.

I’m not saying that stay-at-home orders are improper. I’m saying that the trade-offs on both sides involve real human suffering. This is not a matter of “when can we get back to piling up wealth”? It is a matter of being able to earn a living.

So no, while we have to drastically restrict what we can do in order to lower the transmission of the virus, we still have to pay attention to the supply chain of food, fuel, clothing, shelter, medical care, and a whole host of services. That is what the economy is, too–that is, if the economy were really to literally die, it would be no economy, no food. If you aren’t growing what you need yourself, you’re going to starve to death. There will be riots, there will be wars…
 
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Yes I saw that Sheriff doing an interview the other day and it gave some hope that not everyone at the top levels of government is anti-constitution and still have some modicum of common sense!

I forget if it was Michigan or some other state, but they banned people from gathering in groups of more than one. Groups of more than one. Makes your head spin. What’s next? You will not even be able to congregate with yourself.
 
Anrakyr said:
No there won’t be, wasn’t the last two times.
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The last two times…what? The last two times there was a global depression? You might want to read up on how people in different countries responded to that. As for this pandemic, there is already looting of stores in places where the poor can’t get work and yet still need food.

We’re in a very hard place. There isn’t a single best answer, but neither shutting everything down entirely or letting things open up entirely are sane options. (In the latter case, the virus itself will shut everything down, and catastrophically.)
 
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I keep seeing these “looking at the numbers it isn’t that bad” pieces. Somehow if you get all the deaths in a month that you’d expect from some other major cause in a year, and from something the doctors, nurses and medics themselves can catch and die from (and have caught and died from) the fact that the hospitals are getting far too many cases to keep the providers safe while treating the ill and dying is not a big deal.
That kind of thinking is so out of touch it beggars belief. Put that epidemic in your line of work and write that.
 
Slight clarification. It was someone discussing how one governor was contemplating doing what UK and Germany has already done, which is ban public gatherings of more than two people. So yes, outside with your wife. Shame on you for congregating with her! So you would not be able to go outside and play in your own front yard with your three kids.

Also, if you are outside with your thoughts, that probably counts as two, too.
 
phaster said:
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JoeFreedom:
The dominoes are continuing to fall. If our food supply chain and distribution succumbs to the “all or nothing” response we will see such severe levels of death and despair the likes of the Great Depression only winked at.
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sad but true that too few think about consequences AND too many essentially worship celebrities/money

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some real news to consider,…
Coronavirus at Smithfield pork plant: The untold story of America’s biggest outbreak
17 April 2020

…“Food is an essential part of all our lives, and our more than 40,000 US team members, thousands of American family farmers and our many other supply chain partners are a crucial part of our nation’s response to Covid-19,” Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in an online video statement released 19 March to explain the decision to keep factories open. “We are taking the utmost precautions to ensure the health and well-being of our employees and consumers.”

…when Smithfield finally closed under pressure from the South Dakota governor’s office, the plant had become the number one hotspot in the US, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among Smithfield employees and people who contracted it from them. In total, Smithfield-related infections account for 55% of the caseload in the state, which is far outpacing its far more populous Midwestern neighbour states in cases per capita. According to the New York Times, the Smithfield Foods case numbers have surpassed the USS Theodore Roosevelt naval ship and the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.

…The Smithfield pork plant, located in a Republican-led state that is one of five in the US that has not issued any kind of shelter-in-place order, has become a microcosm illustrating the socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the global pandemic. While many white-collar workers around the country are sheltering in place and working from home, food industry workers like the employees at Smithfield are deemed “essential” and must remain on the front lines.

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52311877
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until a covid-19 vaccine is available, there is a potential frozen meats from contaminated meat packing plants will be another infection vector???
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report – 32
21 February 2020

In general, coronaviruses are very stable in a frozen state according to studies of other coronaviruses, which have shown survival for up to two years at -20°C.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-so...ation-reports/20200221-sitrep-32-covid-19.pdf
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How do you guys feel about getting takeout during coronavirus? You think it’s safe? I just don’t see how restaurants are allowed to stay open at all. Those preparing your food might have the virus, those handling your money don’t change gloves between every customer (which makes the whole glove wearing law useless) - it just seems so unsafe to me. Do you guys still get takeout?
 
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