NSR: Coronavirus: A global Pandemic.

China had people dying the in the street. I don't know if they still do.

In case the linked article is behind a paywall (the covid-19 stuff is supposed to be freely accessible, though), the article leads with a photo of two men in hazmat suits near the body of a businessman on an urban sidewalk. The picture's too large to upload, but the caption is "Officials at the scene on Thursday where a man collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan. It was unclear whether he had contracted the coronavirus.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images"

 

I found the quote a couple of days ago.

"Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate." - Mike Leavitt, former governor of Utah, head of the Department of Health and Human Services during W's second term. Republican, and I'm usually one of those people who disregards what people say if they have an R after their name. He wrote an op-ed for Fox News a month ago which was quite sensible.

 

I think that as long as we are seeing thousands of daily deaths in the US as well as tens of thousands of new cases of coronavirus, and similar figures all over the world, we should continue to "suffer the inconvenience and the economic impact of social isolation", as you put it.

We also need to start planning how we will respond to the economic impact. We need leadership from the top, both from government and from our private sector. And we need to step up as individuals. Certainly lots of people will lose their jobs, their home, their businesses. But this is not the same as people losing their lives. There will be new jobs, new homes, new businesses, as we rebuild the economy the right way.

We will need to work on our safety net, but also it will be a great opportunity for small business owners and for the entrepreneurs among us. There will be new opportunities. I think in the US, this will be an opportunity for the private sector to bring back some of the manufacturing we've lost, and for the government to focus on rebuilding our infrastructure. We will need to support those who will suffer the worst of the economic struggles caused by coronavirus, but we also will need to create a positive business environment for entrepreneurs and companies, as well as productive public projects.

That is how we are going to rebuild the economy. That is the challenge that will face us. The message should be: Let's beat coronavirus, do what the doctors tell us, and we'll beat this thing. The government will help you during this crisis. Once it's over, we will help you rebuild the economy. That should be the message, and it should be consistent. We need to know that our leadership will support us, be on our side. Enough of the divisive bullshit we get from Trump and his right wingers, as well as from some on the left! This is certainly not the time for it.

 

The economy isn't going to survive if we're stuck like this until there's a vaccine, but just reopening without a plan (which is what Republicans seem to be pushing for) will just lead to another wave of hospitalizations and death.

Ezra Klein had an article (https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215...ing-economy-recession-depression-unemployment) where he discusses the options. They all suck, some more than others. The basic options are:

1. Just reopen and let people die.
2. Massive surveillance of people to track and contain outbreaks.
3. Massive testing to track and contain outbreaks.

The first one sucks, for obvious reasons. The other two are great big impositions on our civil liberties - they need teeth to be effective, you have to be able to quarantine people who test positive, and if the people are not willing to be quarantined, you end up using police power to keep them in line. Those solutions may work in places like Singapore or South Korea, but a lot of Americans are going to fight big police state structures, even those with good intentions to keep us safe, because our history shows that those structures tend to stay in place after the fact and get used for not such good purposes.