My point was far more nuanced than that.

Anyway, what you (and many others) dont realize is that we're not just talking about some economic damage, a handful of jobs lost here and there - we're talking about apocalyptic damage. Here in Germany, each day of a hard lockdown causes around €5 billion in lost economic activity. So a 4-week hard lockdown would come with a price tag of up to $150bn. If, say, 30k lives are saved this way (difference in death toll between the scenario where the current mild restrictions are kept up, vs scenario with a proper, hard lockdown), it boils down to a cost of €5 million per life saved. Lives with a median age of over 80 years, and skewed towards those with preexisting conditions/below-average remaining life expectancy.

Call me callous, selfish, immoral, whatever you want - but this kind of price is too high.


A "rich" soul doesnt put food on the table or keep the welfare state and the healthcare system funded in the future.

It's just that pensioners, government employees and those who can work from home are largely shielded from the immediate economic fallout of the pandemic. The extremely uneven distribution of the burden is the key reason why covid has become such a polarizing issue. It's easy to consider the prevention of deaths paramount when all the "cost" you yourself experience are minor inconveniences like closed gyms and having to shop on amazon instead of the department store.




Like I said: path dependency. We'd be fine if the current, mild restriction had been enacted in timely fashion. Once our politicians failed to do that, they indirectly chose the "American" approach. Pussying out now, because they only now realize the actual scope of the decision they made (or didnt make) back in October (and realize that they are too weak to put up with higher death numbers) combines the worst aspects of both approaches.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 12 2020 02:22pm

I honestly cant wait for gun violence to shoot back up. It had a nice little reprieve because of trumps virus didnt it?

I cant tell what your opinions are

What hospitals where? I mean, hospitals in the US are a for-profit industry. They NEED to work at 80%+ capacity for everyone to stay employed. For a while they were nearly empty, then started back into doing elective procedures again and capacity went back up.

Some hospitals in some areas have shut down entirely, as they couldn't deal with the loss in business the lockdowns and an unwillingness by people to continue their routine treatments, surgeries, checkups, etc. caused.

You'll have to be far more specific about which hospitals and which areas you're referring to before I can even justify your question with an answer.

Regarding medical staff, that's also highly dependent on the area, and the regulations associated. What's been seen for a lot of staff is temporary furloughs due to catching covid, and waiting out the contagious period. In other areas, a lot of staff have simply quit. In still other areas, 1 covid case requires like 7 support staff and two doctors, which is absolutely insane, an appendectomy requires less.

And it's all about lockdowns. You don't quarantine the healthy to protect the sick. Remove the media scare factor, and be honest about the age groups that need to worry, and a lot of the fervor will die down. Regarding hospitals, the vast majority are either under capacity, or working everything else as best they can to try to increase to near capacity, to make ends meet. All the temporary hospitals were torn down without ever being used. Nobody has asked for more hospitals, be they permanent or temporary, because nobody has needed them. When they need them, that can be addressed. Meantime, millions of businesses closed 8+ months, hundreds of thousands of which will never be able to reopen. Supply chains that've completely foundered which is predicted to lead to the largest mass starvation event seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.

All for a cold that is virtually harmless to the working age population. Great.



Don't worry mate. The fact that you lack consistency and self-awareness is well known. No need to be embarassed.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Dec 12 2020 02:18pm

There isn’t a question that the lockdown initially was mis timed for the majority of the country. AKA that for some time hospital systems were furloughing employees. That point is not up for dispute at the moment. It’s unfortunate the data wasn’t there to make accurate decisions

“What hospitals” - major cities all across the Midwest for certain including major hospital systems in Minneapolis, Detroit, Omaha, Lincoln, Cleveland, Chicago, Des Moines. Do you want me to name a specific hospital lmao, as if that changes the conversation how. I cannot comment specifically on different regions but in the mid west there is no dispute for the volume of patients being seen. This week has been better than last, and even with that nursing ratios are 1:7 1:8, not to mention we will be seeing the thanks giving wave soon likely.

“Hospitals need to operate at 80% to keep everyone employed” - what Lol, hospitals are operating at that capacity for less than 15% of the year. Basically just Flu season are hospitals filled to that degree

“The healthy” aka people with 0-2 comorbidities make up the vast majority of hospitalizations and are responsible for the majority of the spread in the country.

So, hospitals in urban areas that are always hard pressed during the flu season are hard pressed... During the flu season. Okay. I'm not sure I see anything different than most other years.

And you're correct. When adjusted for slow periods, the average occupancy of a US hospital varies from 72% to 78%. And if you do some quick searches, you can find a bunch of articles from all the usual suspects from March claiming the system would be overwhelmed when the Pandemic grew too widespread, specifically due to the fact that occupancy rates were so high, and some hospitals were already full, even without covid patients. Turns out not so much, they just stopped performing a lot of elective surgeries and routine work during the tail end of the 2019 flu season. Now that we're well into the 2020 flu/covid season, one would assume they'd minimize the elective and other work yet again, and focus more on flu and covid cases. US hospitals are much MUCH better at keeping beds occupied than say the NHS, which currently has a slew of articles up bemoaning how bloated and underused their system is, driving up costs.

And Healthy working age population. Fact is some 92% of all current covid hospitalizations are age 65+. NOT working age. Elderly. AKA at risk group.

Alot of bullets wasted these days isnt it ?



Sacrifices can be done, and it's not easy to gauge them. But ask yourself One question and One question only: is it possible to evaluate the damage done in the long run when citizen start to accept, to resolve themselves, into the sacrifice of the weakest ones ?
It's a long shot, and if you do it wrong you may end up with a fascist pack of idiots who will destroy themselves and others.

“Hard pressed during the flu season are hard pressed” - Err, lol. Hospitals are rarely operating over capacity, no need to muddle the waters with vague terminology. It is rare for an individual hospital to be operating at or over capacity and certainly a novelty for that to become a systemic problem, to the point states are transferring patients to other states for otherwise routine care. Even if it happened to a random hospital, there was always another system that could pick up the slack, within an hour drive. If you aren’t certain this is different than the norm you are: not listening, not capable of understanding, or lying to yourself? I am open to other options here if you feel you are not one of these 3

I know I’m correct about average hospital occupancy. I am part of a hospital admin team actively involved with this. In no year are routine surgical cases systemically canceled/postponed due to “typical stressors, as you eluded to. For the record Flu has been at an all time low, across the country. Whether it’s just a late flu, or mask mitigation efforts preventing our typical flu season, time will tell.

A lot of words but minimal substance in this post tbh. I have already stated it is clear in hindsight that the lockdown was premature. Unfortunately American pocket books and mentality cannot survive another lockdown which is why that will not happen. There are no significant interventions that can change the path we are on anymore. Summer was the time to drop the plateau and the country failed as a whole to accomplish this.



Oh I missed this gem. Again, for about the 20th time at least, when hospital systems are full, care for EVERYONE is decreased. Nursing ratios at 1:8 are not sustainable and you will see excess mortality spike this month and into January likely as a result. Not necessarily directly from corona but via proxy in the form of flooded medical systems

This post was edited by Bazi on Dec 12 2020 03:19pm

Fair point, but I'm afraid that there will be de-solidarization either way. All those small business owners whose livelihood was ruined, or the average taxpayer who will be plundered and squeezed in the coming years to pay for all of the lockdowns - do you seriously think they will become more generous and big-hearted because of this experience? And let's not even talk about what happens if we get massive inflation and the savings of the middle class are evaporated. We have historical evidence to know what happens when the masses are impoverished - Stalin and Hitler.




Europe started from a significantly lower level of infections than the US, and look where we're now. Once summer ended, it took about one month before the situation was so dire again that crippling restrictions of public life became necessary. The higher plateau in the US compounds the scope of the problem, but the structural challenges would have been the same either way.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 12 2020 03:32pm