We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Experts predict 70-90,000 sucides in the US due to economic disasters, crushed dreams. Hope that is not true, but I no longer believe anything, especially from experts. Wrong about everything thus far.
I agree. Scott: "Do you want the f-ing government to decide when you live or die?" Scott is aware the experts are flying in the dark.
Scott's main blind spot is that he has become a wealthy guy with no need to ever work, and seems to assume that everybody has the money to live comfortably for a year or two without income. That's wrong. Good disctinctions between the childrens' table and the adult table.
We laid off 8 of our most effective employees last week. We are not sure we can remain a "going concern" after another month of this shutdown. No money coming in, no activity. We had about 40 employees in December, now down to 14. Painful to us partners, because we love these people and have relied on them for years. Like them, though, I just worry about my mortgage. That's my report from NYC today. A ghost town. Sad. I won't say what biz we are in, but it's neither finance nor real estate. We make useful things that businesses usually want.
Assuming lockdowns do not prevent deaths but only slow the rate (still unknown whether that works very well, but maybe), who decides what number is acceptable?
Protecting the most vulnerable (nursing homes and the like) has not worked very well thus far, with up to 50% of corona deaths occurring in such places. Those places require lots of staff.
Really? That could take a year or more. Possibly never. Of course, everybody wants a vaccine today, but no vaccine has ever been made for any viruses in the corona family despite many efforts.
By the end of March, most of the United States had been locked down. Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs. More than $6 trillion has been spent to save society from complete collapse. Relentless warnings have whipped the populace into frenzies of fear. All of this to contain a disease that, as far as we can tell at this point, is not significantly more fatal than the flu. Moreover, given how rapidly the coronavirus spreads, it seems likely that the radical and untested method of lockdown does little to control it.
In other words, the science increasingly shows that the measures we have taken in the last few weeks have been both harmful—with freedoms lost, money spent, livelihoods destroyed—and pointless.
Maybe not more fatal, but more infectious. It is unavoidable. Like death and taxes.
