Quote Originally Posted by Craic View Post
As to the second sentence that I've quoted. I have to wonder if that is at the heart of your argument? Is that really why you're so concerned about everything going on as far as the response goes?

Because, in truth, it concerns me as well. It's very concerning. Especially if travel between the states by automobile or bike or even walking is banned. In truth, the govt. has the right to shut down federal highways as they were built for the federal govt. to transport military/use in civil defense to clear cities targeted by nuclear weapons (hindsight being 20/20, that would have been a mess). But outside of that... I do NOT like the precedent set. However, I'm also not sure I like the results if something isn't done. CDC's worst case scenario is 214 million infected and 1.7 million deaths in the United states without anything done to stop this from spreading.
Answering the second part first - yes, that has been the absolute core of what I've argued from the beginning: The cure is worse than the disease. Quite literally, in this case.

What's going on now is basically the equivalent of wartime brownouts or hurricane curfews, only uniquely to this time, it's not because of a disaster, it's because a disaster might happen. But guess what, there are a lot of times when a disaster might happen. It is a terrible precedent to set that we should shut down the economy and go halfway to martial law for that, especially when it is based on pretty flimsy evidence. Particularly with infectious diseases, when there is a scare about the worst-case scenario, most of those disasters actually do not happen, or even come close. And there is not a lot that would suggest this one is comparatively much different.

Please everyone, take a moment to unwad your panties before going on to the next part.


Quote Originally Posted by Craic View Post
According to the video I posted, the entire problem is that by the time it starts to look as though it is, it is way to late. The infection rate will double every four days until it hits a ceiling. By shutting down travel and other things, one of the big advantages is that it spreads that time out. So, you still get the infections, but it's over a longer period of time, which means it can be adsorbed by the medical community much easier and there isn't such a heavy strain for the same resources at the same time.

Secondly, again according to the expert on the video (and I saw CDC stats that back it up), another very big issue is the length of the pandemic. It will not be a month, or three months. Experts are thinking it will be six or seven months, and, after the initial wave peters out, there will be a second even bigger wave.
As far as viral epidemics in the past generation, the granddaddy of them all was the H1N1 virus with something like 280,000 dead worldwide, or about the number of people that would ordinarily die of other causes in any 8-hour period, over the course of more than a year. That, to me, is not a significant overall public danger, and sure enough, schools stayed open, events went on, and everything was more or less normal. In the US, it was something like 12,000 dead. And that was the biggest viral outbreak in modern history. Yet this is somehow going to be 150 times worse, based on ... ? Everything being presented until recently was that its contagion vector was lower than that of H1N1 and it was not particularly deadly either.

Based on doomsday projections, that's what. You follow the worst worst case every time, you'll be doing nothing but cowering from imagined disaster after imagined disaster. I will tell you exactly how long this will last, and that is until media fatigue sets in after about a month. You will have steady "living under the virus - is this the new normal?" stories for the next three weeks, which seems to be the determined freakout period ... then a week or so of "quarantine lifted, are things returning to normal?" and by then everyone will have realized that nothing much really happened and shuffle back off to being mad about Trump or something, which has become comparatively more interesting again.

The whole panic started out of public ignorance born out of an attention span insufficient for anything longer than a headline or a 15-second soundbite. And it will end due to public disinterest born out of an attention span insufficient for anything longer than a headline or a 15-second soundbite. But in the meantime, how dangerously irresponsible, and what a horrible precedent to set.