COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

Brennan77 said
There was a terrible case in my elementary school either in 87 or 88.

The real question is how many people get deathly ill and of those people, are there underlying conditions and traits that allow us to predict who is most vulnerable. I believe we have more to learn but we mostly have that information available. Those people should not attend large gatherings like this.

1. I think we should aggressively support those who are diagnosed with conditions that put them at higher risk. If you are otherwise healthy and still do not want to work go to work, no one will be forced to do so. Someone else may take your job. It's a crumby problem to have but forcing everyone else to stay home indefinitely is not a just solution to it.

2. You are correct. I witness it every day. So unless we want a police state rounding up people to take them to jail (only to be released because jails aren't exactly good for the spread of the virus either), then we need to work with what we've got.

3. You're not going to 'stop' this virus. It's here and we need to make our peace with that. If we knew there were a vaccine coming in two months, this would be a different conversation. But there's no promise of one coming at all, much less one being produced soon. The lock down was only supposed to flatten the curve so as to enable our medical infrastructure to get in front of it and not be overwhelmed. That has largely happened in the hardest hit areas, particularly in New Orleans where nurses are getting laid off. If we don't open up soon, the hospitals will run out of the resources we need to respond effectively in the first place.

4. People are going to die. We can make reasonable accommodations to support and protect those most vulnerable without ruining lives and livelihoods for generations to come.

I'd like to share an article I read in the Atlantic yesterday. I think it does a good job of expressing concerns I've had with our current approach. By shifting our goals from facilitating the medical response to keeping everyone safe, I feel we've painted ourselves into a logical corner from which we cannot escape. It's quite possible that the 'new normal' isn't sheltering in place but learning to live with new risks that is no one's fault.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/take-shutdown-skeptics-seriously/611419/

As I have said before, I don't disagree that we don't need to stay in the level of lock down that we are in now. You are right that the virus can't be stopped without a vaccine. At the same point, I think given the number of people that are acting like everything is normal even before the Stay at Home Order is lifted does not bode well for the future. It seems to me that the likely result is that we will end up with a healthcare system at risk again in less than a month. Of course, I hope I'm wrong.

Also, I get that at some point we need to live with increased risk. But at the same point, some people are going to have to get used to the fact that some things need to be done to decease that risk to an acceptable level and that certain activities like Festivals, concerts, packed restaurants, large sporting events with fans, etc. are just too risky to go forward with at this point. I mean yes, we need to do what we can to make sure as many people as possible can make a living, but in the same way that we have to balance the number of deaths that are acceptable to allow people to make a living, we also have to balance how people choose to make a living with the number of deaths it will cause.