The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

(05-04-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-04-2020, 02:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-04-2020, 02:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Maybe, we will have significantly advanced in our overall capabilities by the time the 2nd wave hits and it won't be that big of a deal. Hint. The crisis shouldn't be a time for trial and error these days. In the past yes but not today.

The crisis should be a time of trial and error.  It should not be a time for idle hope or wishful thinking.  It should not be a time of hoping we will return to the unraveling which will last forever.  

There is part of the population that wants to pretend no problem exists, and the problem will just go away with no dire changes.  They have believed in small government, low taxes, low domestic spending, and that if you believe hard enough that problems don’t exist they will magically disappear.  I have been saying for decades that such world views and values will not change until there is some major disaster.  I commonly give Atlanta in the Civil War or Hiroshima in World War II as examples.  How many deaths will COVID 19 have to cause before it will have the required effect?  How much will it take to open eyes determinedly closed?

Determine a plan to go back to your job or any job safely.  Apply to your governor to put that plan in place.  See if he will let you.  Don't just gripe and wish.  To sit and do nothing is to have people die.

I don’t anticipate a return to the past.  There are problems that will in time bite you in the rear if you don’t solve them.  These problems have been proven to exist.  Wishful thinking won’t make them go away.

Are you looking at as the culmination or the beginning/trigger? Bob, did American life stop after Pearl Harbor or did Americans still have social gatherings, sports events, go to movies, go out to diner, celebrate Christmas together, watch parades on 4th July, go to bars and so forth during the entire war that followed. COVID19 is a short term problem that's already in the process of ending and we are going through the worst of it right now. The first wave will be the worst and we will be ready and fully prepared for the 2nd come fall. The trial and error is underway and will produce a variety of treatments based on and eventually a vaccine. We want our lives back. I anticipate a return to the past and I expect to be able to be eating at a restaurant with the family or a bar with friends again. The economic aftermath/fallout will be what the crisis will be mainly about in my opinion.

COVID-19 compels many of us to do much that defines us as human. Religious services, rites of passage, holidays... it takes the fun and meaning out of much. It would certainly mess up the traditional wedding and honeymoon even if a pair were able to date... virtually, of course. If the disease does not kill us it can do lasting damage.

What you say about COVID-19 is at best a guess. This respiratory infection has broken the rules by being both unusually severe and unusually easy to spread. Yes, what Americans are being asked to give up is much more extensive than the list of things that Americans had to give up (like pleasure travel and constraints on food and motor fuels) during WWII. As for your description of 'short-term problems' -- is death short-term? People can get life-compromising ailments that hobble their careers, and that is somethng to contemplate for economic impact as well.

I would like to believe that this infernal disease will make one short-term pass over Humanity and die out because it runs out of people to infect. But we must make choices between a 1930's economy and mass death on the scale of the influenza pandemic of a century ago. One difference between the influenza pandemic of a century ago and this one is that the older one happened during the early phase of a 3T and that this one happens when a large majority of Americans are in a 4T mode. In a 4T more people are well-disciplined enough to not do something stupid. In a 3T, hedonism prevails.

When this infernal epidemic is over, certain aspects of life will be back to normal. If we be lucky we will have an safe and effective vaccine to inoculate those who never got the first wave of COVID-19. We will be able again to travel in mass conveyances that make economic life in our giant cities possible again. We will again attend religious services, celebrate weddings in style, and do funerals with dignity possible with dozens instead than with fewer than ten (including the minister and the funeral director). 

This year we cannot celebrate the 75th anniversary of the defeat of the Devil's Reich as is usual in London, Paris, an Moscow -- or in plenty of locations in America. 

I look at some of the anti-shutdown rallies (and yes, the participants typically have the ideological shtick associated with the Tea Party, gun-rights, and MAGA crowds) and see behavior that makes people vulnerable to COVID-19. The schmucks! Our very President has urged people to challenge Democratic politicians who have issued state lockdowns. It may be paradoxical that the limits of size of meetings makes anti-Trump protests difficult. Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is more important to me, as someone in the near-old category, than is going out to protest the sick policies of the President on this and other issues.

We will discover what is safe and what isn't. If we can go for walks we should be able to go for hikes. If we can go out on boats, then we should be able to fish -- and hunt. That includes, for those who most appreciate gun rights for allowing one of their favorite activities... hunting!

70,000 deaths in America alone (which is higher on average than our usual toll in vehicle-related deaths) and people still contacting a disease that kills (so far) about 5% of those who contract it and is fiendishly expensive to treat (there goes the deficit!) for those with slow recoveries. Ideally the adults are in charge -- but Donald Trump is no adult.