Don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say here. I think some form of slow down / quarantine / stay at home / social distancing rule was right and necessary (even though probably unconstitutional). The medical experts say this is a very contagious and deadly virus, and without a pause of some kind, the death toll could have been very bad.
Having said that, the after-action review is going to be interesting. (If it’s honest.)
There are a lot of strange components to this story.
People who are dying from other causes, who are also infected with coronavirus, are being counted as having died from coronavirus. Is that right?
I’ve also heard that suicides are way up. Losing your job can push some people over the edge, and lots of people have lost their jobs. So it’s not just “the economy vs. saving lives,” as some people have said. It’s one kind of harm vs. another kind of harm.
And then there are the models. The models were used to scare us into hibernation, and now that they’ve turned out to be very wrong, they’re spinning it as “that’s how bad it would have been if we hadn’t taken measures.”
Yeah. I don’t believe it. I think the models took mitigation measures into account.
So will someone review the models to see what went wrong?
Once this whole thing clears up, we’re going to need a multi-disciplinary, non-partisan panel of experts to look over it all and figure out what really happened.
And re: my comment above about the various government orders being unconstitutional, I think it’s possible to say that some of them were both necessary and unconstitutional. Which means we need to clarify how to handle such emergencies in the future.
Somewhat along these lines, this is an interesting read: The Stress Pandemic.
In the case of the Coronavirus, more people will die from the ‘cure’ than from the ‘disease’. In addition to stress and suicides, there are many other ‘side-effects’. For example, food shortages will cause starvation among the world’s very poorest people. Other supply-chain disruptions will affect the production and procurement of life-saving medicines and medical equipment. Cutbacks in ‘non-essential’ services, for example law enforcement and timely medical prophylactic treatments will also lead to loss of life. Finally, closing churches and other places of worship should not be taken lightly, and the ‘spiritual’ consequences of doing so may turn out to be nothing less than catastrophic.
QUOTE: In the case of the Coronavirus, more people will die from the ‘cure’ than from the ‘disease’.
How do you know this is accurate? If a “cure” hadn’t been implemented, we have no idea how many lives may have been lost. Any way you go…cure, no-cure or different cure…it is speculative.
ISTM, at this point, the best thing that can be done is to do what Crowhill suggested…get a multi-disciplinary, non-partisan panel to conduct an in-depth review and develop recommendations for planning and managing future pandemics. I’m sure there are MANY lessons to be learned.
You have to give attention primarily to the more urgent problem. The pandemic is at present more urgent than economic repercussions, though the latter are certainly important.
For more arguments against the lockdown, and that it is causing unnecessary deaths, see Ron Paul’s article:
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/april/20/what-if-the-lockdown-was-all-a-big-mistake/
The biggest problem I see in the coronavirus debates is the classic either / or mentality.
Either you believe everything Fauci says and almost everybody must lock themselves in their houses for two months, or you believe coronavirus is no worse than the flu and we should go back to regular life.
Obviously, there are sensible positions between those extremes.
@Scott, the lockdown indeed may be the cause of unnecessary deaths. That still doesn’t justify not having a lockdown because unnecessary deaths could have occurred through not having a lockdown. Can you can verify that the number of unnecessary lockdown deaths would be greater than the death rate from not having a lockdown? If not, then it’s still an argument based on speculation per one’s preference.
On a positive note, the Fifth Circuit Court has ruled in favor of the Texas governor’s executive order banning abortions during the ‘pandemic’. That should save lives.
Another unnecessary death…https://www.foxnews.com/health/ohio-man-dies-from-coronavirus-after-online-posts-calling-it-bulls-and-political-ploy
Maybe the virus reads social media posts.
Good point, Greg. A guy bad-mouths the virus, then the next thing you know he dies from it. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.
No coincidence. The badmouthing of the virus indicates indifference to precautionary measures against it. If someone says that he is not afraid of busy traffic, it is no coincidence that he gets run over by a car. Speech and behavior happen to be closely related.
Touche! Typically someone who expresses that type of sentiment isn’t likely to take precautionary measures. Of course, they could be a hypocrite, which there’s AMPLE examples these days. Yet, for the sake of argument, let’s take him at his word. His opinion was that it wasn’t so bad and now he’s dead from the thing he said wasn’t so bad.
I guess being dead isn’t so bad for some, like Dan Patrick. He said, “there are more important things than living…”. So, I’d like to see him lead by example. Let’s see how that works out for him.
Precisely. After reading the guy’s flippant post, the virus would have known that he was an easy mark.
He was an easy mark because he careless. That’s all there is to it.
@Robin, good point. It’s like being told that running into traffic is dangerous, likely deadly. Yet, you say it’s BS, ignore that guidance and killed. It’s not a coincidence…it carelessness.