Originally Posted by Richard Davis
Any answer at all to that?
You have now posted three lengthy and rambling replies to a single one of my posts. Is that a record? The answer to many of your questions is in the graphs I have posted. The Covid-19 death rate is shocking
with social mitigation in place. I am confident, based upon a lot of reading of real science, that it would be much worse absent mitigation.
I will try to answer most of your questions reasonably succinctly. It is a challenge to do so, and we will see if I am up to the task. I do not intend to answer piecemeal. You have laced dozens of repetitive questions in your three long posts.
I know in advance that you will accept none of this. I am writing for myself, and for others. I do not want anyone to question my sanity, given that replying to you is well known to be pointless.
With that preamble:
(A) Of course I am bothered by the rise in suicides, violence, economic hardship, lost jobs, permanent business closures and so on. All of this bad stuff arises because of the business closures and stay at home orders. But, those business closures and stay at home orders are
also the difference between exponential growth of the pandemic over a much longer time frame resulting in countless more deaths, plus collapse of the healthcare system, and much direct social hardship. You like to compare the current social and economic hardships to the modest death rate we are seeing
after successful mitigation.
That is the wrong comparison. If we had allowed nature to run it's course, the death rate would currently be skyrocketing, the health care system would be overburdened to the point of collapse,
and we would be looking at suicides, economic hardship, lost jobs, shuttered business and social unraveling because of the unchecked disease.
I believe that the rate of suicides, economic hardship, lost jobs, permanent business closures and so on would have been
much worse if we had let nature run it's course. So, I think the closures and so on cause by our social response are of net benefit to society compared to the alternative - in short "worth it."
This is a balancing act though. If we were to stay closed as a nation for the rest of the year, I think that the suicides, economic hardship, lost jobs, permanent business closures and so on might not be worth it. That is why I am glad smart people are thinking about how to best emerge from the current situation.
(B) Florida has more recently implemented the mitigation steps earlier implemented by New York. Timing is everything. We would have to look at the extent of the infection in NYC
at the time the government clamped down vs. the extent of the infection in FL
at the time the government clamped down to have any meaningful comparison. It may turn out that in effect, FL was "early enough" while NYC was "too late", even though NYC clamped down earlier. I have my eye on Sweden too, they have avoided business and school closures too, but are now reconsidering. We'll revisit this in several weeks.
Jim