Quote (zarkadon @ Mar 10 2020 10:32am)
Yes, I'm aware of that, but it's not a big deal of a virus for the vast majority of the population anyway. Just isolate the vulnerable ones, and let the rest go on with their lives, if they want to.
I think we all have loved ones in the vulnerable age, and we don't want to put them under any risk. But the thing is, the economic consequences will be more damaging to the country than the deaths of some people that already had a short life exptancy left. The government needs to protect them by all the reasonable means possible, but not at the expense of ruining the economy or threatening our society's standard of life.
Millions of jobs destroyed, thousands of people losing their homes, health care and education budget cuts, etc.... that's a lot scarier than a virus that kills a tiny fraction of the population.
Again, think about it in war terms... we have no trouble sending dozens of thousands of our youths (the country's future) to danger zones when our national interests are seriously threatened, but we lose our shit when the lives of the elderly are at stake. It's irrational. Of course the government should do what it can to protect them, and instruct the citizens to take precautions in regards to the health of the elderly... but if they start introducing restrictions to economic activity, then the consequences are going to be terrible for everyone, and they will last years.
Honestly, I don't want to go back to 10 years ago, with a 28% unemployment, crazy budget cuts in health and education and public transport, streets full of windows with an "out of business sign" labeled on them, families not being able to pay their mortgages, etc. It has take my country a huge effort to get out of that, and our situation wasn't even comparable to that of Greece for example, that it would be irresponsible on the government's side to throw it all away over this fearmongering.
1. By not containing the virus and continuing with business as usual, millions of healthy younger people could be infected and would be out of work for 2 weeks each. Many would still be admitted to hospital and take up valuable resources
2. You can catch the virus again after recovering the first time. This makes it really important to stop the spread instead of 'letting' it fester among the population as the incidence of death AND economic consequences would be huge
3. We don't know the true mortality rate of the virus, it could be as high as 3 or 4%
You can't just separate the economic and health consequences on the population so casually. They are intrinsically related.