When you look at it in those terms then it looks a massive overreaction. However all the countries involved are actually putting people before money here which I never thought I'd ever see. I think we've probably got this just about right at the moment, would be thousands more deaths if most of the population caught this around the same time.
Got any spare bog roll?
'Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing
But different than the day before'
'Met a dwarf that was no good, dressed like Little Red Riding Hood'
'Now you're unemployed, all non-void
Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd'
:sigh: No, p. No deaths are 'OK'. But the fact is that profoundly distasteful calculations have to be made in situations like this. And one of those calculations is what the long-term cost in lives and livelihoods will be of bringing the global economy to a virtual standstill for an indefinite period. We have to make a judgement about which is the lesser of two evils here.
That's all very touching, b, but the fact is that you can't separate people and money as if one had nothing to do with the other. It's like trying to separate blood and organs.
Deprioritising money will have a savage negative effect on people as they lose jobs, homes, businesses, etc. That means less tax income and less effective public services, which means - you guessed it - more dead people.
To be honest, my more cynical view is that in these days of instant communications, social media, cameraphones, etc, it's not politically possible for a government to be seen to preside over large numbers of deaths in the short term without being seen to do apparently radical things to try and prevent them - even if it what they do is massively harmful in the longer term.
Last edited by Burney; 03-19-2020 at 01:29 PM.
You are most definitely not the first person I personally know that has said this. I did see a response to one that yes, you may have had a virus in December, yes you may have even had a coronavirus in December, but it is more probable that it wasn't the Covid 19 strain that is taking over the world now. Let's not forget coronavirus has been around for a long time, it is the special characteristics of this strain that are causing the reactions we are seeing.