Al serious question, whats better saving lives in the short term or creating more deaths via the economic fallout?
This is a mess no matter how you look at it.
I get why we want/need to slow this thing down but the reality is this is a freight train with no breaks: every one is going to be infected, we have limited supplies for those infected, we have media/leadership induced panic and fear with no clear, or even truthful, answers, and we kept hearing about a new celebrity/athlete/politician testing positive but the death toll keeps climbing while they recover.
It is a mess. I agree with that. I think the reaction of political leaders has been unbelievable- in the sense that 3 months ago, I would never have imagined widespread, international lockdowns would even be considered a possibility. At the same time, I'm not sure what I would do if I was leading. I don't think it's accurate to say that there's nothing to worry about because the death toll hasn't been that extreme (yet) or because it's disproportionately affecting olds. I think when people say that, it obscures what the entire picture is. There are a lot of moving parts and the logistics of what COULD happen are sort of a nightmare.
Elizabeth has been touting a conspiracy theory in several different threads, and on its face, I actually don't think it's that crazy compared to some of the conspiracy theories people have come up with. I think the major flaw with it is that there's not a realistic upside... there's no reason any economy would choose to reset in this way. Definitely not every economy in the world. There's no getting around the fact that even if this thing only goes on for 3 weeks (which is super-optimistic) ,the economy is going to be worse off for
everyone, all the way around. When I point out that there are legitimate reasons (even though they may not be the best reasons) for this course of action, it isn't so much that I'm trying to defend it, but more that I'm trying to understand it, too. This is a frustrating time for me on a personal level and on a business level. I was working on a few time sensitive projects that are either up in the air or scrapped entirely.
On a personal level, I live in NYC, my mother lives in another part of the country. Where she lives, there's far less population density, but none of her kids are there with her. She is in an age group that is more vulnerable and has a pre-existing medical condition. I keep thinking to myself "What is the best option?" On one hand, I wish she was with one of us, but all of her kids live in large cities. We probably don't have much to worry about, but she'd be more at risk in a place that is a covid hotspot. I could go there, but on the same hand,if I'm carrying the virus or pick it up on my way there, that could be creating unnecessary risk for her. So, yeah, I see both sides of it. I can't believe that gov is basically trying to shut the economy down for an undisclosed period of time, but I also understand that there are a lot of unknowns and I don't think taking precautions is completely baseless.
