Re: COVID-19 - Part 2
What’s you’re favorite part ? Locking down the country? Why let small business owners survive ? Some old people mite die. Am I right? What a great idea. Everyone hide inside. 12500 people died. .0000375 of the us have died. Omg hide.
Part II of My Response --
Here’s the next portion of post #726 I want too address:
“But for how long? Is that something you have considered? For argument sake, let’s say we shut down and social distance for two months and the numbers stay similar. Let’s say for 8 months. Can we resume normalcy? Do we have to continue shutting down the country? Are u really willing to give up 240k deaths in 8 months for 20 million people unemployed, broke and starving to death? Staying at home is not a long term solution. Heck, it isn’t even a short term solution. People willing to work should not be hampered by the govt. if you yourself feel the need for isolation and distancing, go right ahead. But to demand 35yr old healthy people to stay in place for 12 months without any income or ability to sustain life is just ludicrous and against their right for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You have to understand at some point there is a point where our freedoms outweigh this Chinese virus. When the founders wrote the constitution, it didn’t say, “except if there is a Chinese virus”.”
All I can say is…WOW, just wow… First, let’s make one thing clear. All of your “social distancing” concerns are directly affected by our current deficit in testing. Yes, we are now testing more people but, it sure as heck isn’t the “5 million by the end of next week” that your president said would occur 4 weeks ago. If you compare how many people we’ve tested per million and compare it to other countries, we are near the bottom. And that is the ONLY WAY to accurately compare how we're doing to what other countries have done regarding testing. For us to be able to loosen our social distancing policy and truly have accurate info on who has or hasn’t been infected, to the degree necessary to ensure we will still drastically limit the spread, we would literally need to test at least half, if not 2/3 of the population within a two week span in order to have the level of accuracy/certainty to safely try to "open things up". Unfortunately, your president’s inexcusable lack of response to this impending crisis, despite the administration having been first informed about what was going on in China on January 3rd – that’s right, January 3rd! -- has put us so far behind the 8-ball that we'll probably never have a chance to get back in the game. That’s even earlier than the memo that Navarro supposedly sent around the White House in mid-January warning of the possible pandemic. Here’s a link to an article covering Trump and his administration’s response and, quite frankly, how badly they dropped the ball on this crisis:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...ronavirus-government-dysfunction/?arc404=true
Yes, it’s the Washington Post. And yes, I realize you think it’s a “Lefty Rag”. So, I’m just curious, name me specific news outlets that YOU consider trustworthy? I’m genuinely interested to hear your opinion. To continue, as for how many months we might have to do significant “social distancing”? Well, as I stated above, some of those other countries on the graph I linked for you have already been at it for as long as 60 days and, some aren’t close to coming out of it yet. In fact, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore recently relaxed their social distancing policies and, Hong Kong and Singapore have already seen a fairly dramatic increase in new cases in just the first week or two. Here’s a link to a BBC article about it:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51955931
And, if you listen to experts like Fauci, Brix, and Michael Olsterholm from the University of Minnesota, they are all saying that we’ll probably have at least two or three rounds of social distancing until we get a vaccine. Because, every time you loosen the social distancing, within a month or even less, you’ll have a spike in new cases again. Here’s a link to a Joe Rogan podcast where he interviews Michael Olsterholm for over an hour regarding Covid and other things as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw
Obviously, as more and more people become infected and recover, it builds up more and more “herd immunity” and, as a society we will hopefully get better at doing social distancing with each round we have. Still, having said all of that, let’s get back to the paragraph I quoted above. Let’s especially examine this statement:
“Are u really willing to give up 240k deaths in 8 months for 20 million people unemployed, broke and starving to death?”.
I think what you meant to say was, “Are you really willing to SAVE 240K deaths in exchange for 20 million unemployed, broke, and starving to death?” If that wasn’t what you meant, please correct me. My answer to the question the way I believe you meant to ask it in is…IF that was truly the either or, AND, we had a proven way we could provably reduce that 240K number significantly? Then YES, YES, and YES I would be willing to risk the “20 million unemployed, broke, and starving” to significantly reduce the 240K that might die. Why you ask? Because you have ZERO proof that that’s what the result would be if we social distanced for 8+ months. Between the vast majority of banks giving 90-120 day loan re-payment breaks on most loans, as well as the Federal government handing out significant monies in either extra unemployment benefits or, cash payments for the next 4 months, as well as requiring any corporations that accept “bailouts” to guarantee they won’t lay off/fire any employees, I highly doubt very few people who’ve been furloughed due to Covid-19 are going to starve or go broke. And, we both know that if it looks like we need to extend longer than the first four months, then Congress will pass more legislation to help out after that.
Next -- and this might be the most selfish, lack of self-awareness I have ever seen in these forums – you say this;
“People willing to work should not be hampered by the govt. if you yourself feel the need for isolation and distancing, go right ahead. But to demand 35yr old healthy people to stay in place for 12 months without any income or ability to sustain life is just ludicrous and against their right for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You have to understand at some point there is a point where our freedoms outweigh this Chinese virus. When the founders wrote the constitution, it didn’t say, “except if there is a Chinese virus”.”
Question “dontstayathome”, are you a religious person? I’m genuinely interested in your answer. Obviously, you have no obligation to answer. Still, why does YOUR “right to life, liberty, and happiness” supersede someone else’s who has an underlying health condition or, is over the age of 60 and, without significant social distancing, is significantly increasing their chances to become infected and possibly die? Seriously, you really need to answer that question and with some sort of detailed reasoning/rationale. And, the reason I ask if you’re religious or not is, if you do claim to be religious, then there’s no way you can make the statement you made and still go to heaven as you certainly aren’t advocating for “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. And, to close on this section of my response, when you say, “at some point there is a point where our freedoms outweigh the China virus. When the founders wrote the constitution, it didn’t say, “except if there is a Chinese virus." It’s obvious what you’re really saying is, “at some point there is a point where MY freedoms outweigh the Chines virus”. Let me clue you in on something “dontstayathome”, not only did the framers not include that we have a “right” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, except if there’s a Chinese virus, BUT – and you’ll probably be surprised to learn this – the framers also didn’t say that the “right” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/maximize my profit/wealth superseded the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens that could possibly be saved if the greater citizenry would simply “sacrifice” those liberties for a whole calendar year. Who do you think you are, Thanos? Finally, in regards to Post #726, you state that, “I’m astonished at the people so happily giving up their rights because of false models and predictions of our panic stricken media.” Please provide links that show that the “models and predictions” are “false”. You do realize that the reason the White House adjusted it’s potential number of deaths downward today is because of how well the country is buying into doing the shelter in place. Still, that doesn't mean we hit 100K plus deaths over the next 6-8 months.
Anyways, back to business. I want to respond to your two posts last night prior to midnight. The first, Post 726 was sent around 9:50 CST and is as follows:
