re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

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We have a new set of skeptics in this thread; those who implicitly trust medical bureaucrats to run the country while denying or minimizing the economic risk of what is occuring here and around the world. They believe, apparently, that you can shut down massive economies for months on end, then crank it back up if we see any signs of real trouble. Honestly, this is much more disturbing than those who denied the virus' impact altogether.

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I don't mean to pick on you, because this isn't that bad of a post, but there's this idea that's common here that most of the economic devastation is being caused by the government. No, the economic devastation is being caused by the virus, and the deaths that it's causing.

Our government didn't shut down the airlines, did it? How are they doing? Are Americans going to visit friends and family for Easter and spring break? No, air travel has dropped over 96% due to the virus. People could fly right now, but they are not flying, because they don't feel safe. The government, at either the state or federal level, can't wave a magic want and make people feel safe when they see a deadly epidemic all around them.

If the government were to open restaurants and retail right now, you know what would happen? You'd get no economic recovery and still have very high levels of people dying of COVID-19.

The only way to make people 100% safe is to get rid of the virus. Since we can't do that, we have to get the virus down the point that people feel "mostly safe." That is, most people have to feel safe doing the things that they would normally do in order for economy to function, with the understanding that cruises and large concerts and sporting events still aren't going to happen.

In order to get people to feel mostly safe, our nation has to spend until the end of this month getting the virus down to a very low level, with some places (likely Louisiana and New York) taking another week or two. Then, we'll have the virus at a low enough level so that high levels of testing and contact tracing can enable us to keep the virus in check, with some help from warmer weather.

That will enable us to get the economy to rebound, AND it keeps the death toll low. We still run into trouble in the fall in this scenario, but maybe we have a good therapeutic drug available by then -- we have to hope.

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This has been my point. We’ve reached the point of diminishing returns

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Shhh, just trust the medical experts, they know what’s best for the country

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Yeah, they’d have a lot of business

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I would go immediately.

I am dying to eat somewhere else.

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Can’t exactly fly to Disney World. I can guarantee they’d still be crowded if they were open

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The government didn't shut down Disney World. You're making my point.

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The government didn't shut down Disney World. You're making my point.

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Weird, I didn’t know that local, county, and state governments are no longer considered government entities. Just federal for your purposes

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You think people would get on cruise ships right now, if they were open? And that they would fly across country to get on them?

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Yes, they would. People were getting on them up until the day they were shut down

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Over half of travel is for business. How many business executives do you thing are about to travel across the country and meet with someone about a business deal?

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That has nothing to do with your point.

Can I fly out to California and go to a national park?

Can I go to the beach?

The airlines never had to be shutdown. They created an environment where there was no need to.

And just because a business closed before the official shutdown occurred has no bearing on the fact that it is all government controlled now.

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You think people would get on cruise ships right now, if they were open? And that they would fly across country to get on them?

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Cruise lines are not the sole destination for flying.

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Insanity is thinking that the government could simply give its blessing right now to do business and that people would just shut their eyes to all the infection and death and go back to the lives that they had.

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Insanity is thinking that we can continue to survive a shutdown economy without increasingly worsening repercussions.

Have you paid any attention to the food banks that are being overrun?

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We have created an environment where hospitals won’t be overrun.

We have completed our goal. Time to move on.

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Not if we reopen things right now! Then the virus grows right back to where it was and we end up in the same spot in a couple month, with our hospitals on the brink of collapse.

We have to get virus levels low enough to control with test-and-trace. It's the only way, and even if you do it right, it's still not always enough. Singapore did a great job of it and lasted a long time, but they just had to shut down restaurants, because it wasn't enough.

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I’m assuming you will have your “I’m immune card” too, huh?

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Not sure what you mean by this? I'm not immune.

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People like you are insane.

I’m sorry, but this stance of getting numbers down to almost zero isn’t realistic

We have created an environment where hospitals won’t be overrun.

We have completed our goal. Time to move on.

We are starting to do more harm than good. What number of unemployment is no longer acceptable to you?

20 million? 30 million?

We are increasing by 6 million+ a week!

I also love how quickly people have bought into contact tracing.

I’m assuming you will have your “I’m immune card” too, huh?

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there's this idea that's common here that most of the economic devastation is being caused by the government. No, the economic devastation is being caused by the virus, and the deaths that it's causing.

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I don't agree. Sure, the economy was going to take a hit either way, but when government temporarily distorts reality by giving handouts via printing money, forces people to stay home and forces some businesses to shut down, then individuals have no ability to choose what's economically important.

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Our government didn't shut down the airlines, did it? How are they doing?

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No, but governments have shut down lots of businesses that would be using the airlines otherwise. And they issued stay at home orders that affected travel in general.

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People could fly right now, but they are not flying, because they don't feel safe.

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Maybe, but if they had to weigh the true risk vs reward of flying to keep the economy and their family functional, more and more of them would be making a real life decision to fly again. As opposed to an artificial decision to stay home and fund their lives via government handouts and printing press. That, despite your implications otherwise, is not an informed decision making process and it doesn't consider true cost of maintaining the shutdown.

You seem believe that economies only work when people feel "mostly safe", and that government can accurately determine when that is the case. I believe that economies only work when people are allowed to act on their individual assessment of risk and reward, based on real life economics, instead of being lulled into a false sense of security due to govt oversight and a paycheck for services not rendered.

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If the government were to open restaurants and retail right now, you know what would happen? You'd get no economic recovery and still have very high levels of people dying of COVID-19.

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If governments opened up their economies tomorrow, people might make different spending decisions, but they would start looking for ways to survive instead of "sheltering in place". They would begin repairing pieces of our economy that have broken, adding production to replace lost or vulnerable critical supply chains, selling goods and services to help people adapt to whatever needs have changed. The longer we "shelter in place" the more difficult that process becomes.

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and still have very high levels of people dying of COVID-19.

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We initially believed that ventilator capacity was the big bottleneck and difference maker to lower casualties. It certainly is one of most taxing for the health care system because maintaining patients on a ventilator is incredibly intensive in terms of skilled labor and medical supplies.

Now we're finding out that a very high percentage (80 plus perceent, from what I've seen) of ventilated Covid patients end up dying. That statistic makes it less clear how many lives "flattening the curve" is saving, because we could tolerate a steeper curve if we can predict with reasonable accuracy which patients actually benefit from artificial ventilation and associated support. That new information changes the decision tree and if we ignore it, then we back into a different set of bad outcomes without ever making an informed choice.