As much as it seems silly, I’m coming to appreciate the role of the Walter Cronkite / nightly network news thing. Normal people are just not smart enough to navigate the tidal wave of bullshit flooding their brains every day. Throw in the fact that the bullshit is targeted to play on their absolute worst impulses, and the truth doesn’t have a chance.
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Preemptive schadenfreude
Also Redfield from CDC.
Rigorous thinking in this piece
I was doing so well all day then watched the 10pm news. All stories about slowly re-opening. All I can think about is that we were presented the false choice of savings lives or saving jerbs. We didn’t end up doing either and we are going to end up with the highest national death toll this side of the civil war and the worst jerbs market in history.
It was so effin simple. All in it together. Save lives flatten and crush the virus. Reopen and keep the economy from total collapse.
But nooooo cause we are terminally stupid and fall for the same bullshit over and over again.
Please FSM give it to Newt. He started and championed this complete poisoning of society.
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The people who would turn around never see the signs, DUCY?
This is partially a devil’s advocate question and partially a serious one:
We had the choice between letting things rip and flattening the curve. We chose to shut things down in an effort to flatten the curve and buy time for [something, either testing capacity or vaccine development or just a better understanding of the virus], and now it seems we’re going to let things rip. But there’s been no meaningful buildup of testing capacity or other plans to deal with the virus, so it’s not entirely clear what the shutdown has accomplished. Is it fair to say that we’ve chosen the worst path of all, which is to partially shut down the economy, at great cost to a bunch of employees and businesses, only to experience exactly the same outcomes that we would have experienced if we hadn’t shut down in the first place?
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I fucking told you guys lol. This country… Lacks the courage to admit the consequences of tanking this, the willpower to endure the economic consequences of doing the right thing, or the competence to take the European route.
The absolute worst line is the one we are taking.
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Yup. Lots of us called this way back in mid-March. Letting it rip from day 1 would have been better than this.
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Pretty appropriate way for boomers to go out.
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Maybe because I live in a Blue State, but I’m not as doom and gloom. We’re still locked down pretty hard, I’m guessing we’re at least 2 months from opening restaurants.
You just saw every other country doing something agreed upon by healthcare experts and followed. America is basically the person who bought a gym membership on Jan 1 and stopped going by February.
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All your willpower is going to get wasted. This is a situation where the weakest link determines the results.
You know. I was about to post.
… surely the fact that every other country will do a better job of addressing this will be too obvious to ignore the 10s of thousands of deaths…
… And then I remembered gun laws.
You all have a model to borrow from. Somehow there will be reasons why the US was different and couldn’t have done the same as everywhere else in the civilised world.
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I’m in a blue state and went out today… it was madness. I needed something from Home Depot so I did their online purchase then come pick up curbside. Lines through the parking lot for people to get in to the store and curbside pick up area almost empty. Curbside pick up is really legit I dropped tailgate and they loaded it up I shut and on my way. I’ll hand it to Home Depot as It looks like they are at least trying with counting people coming in and sectioning off areas for curbside pick up.
Other smaller local home garden type places the parking lots packed. Roads as busy as I have seen in months. Neighbors across street had bbq, neighbors down the street having some sort of party. It makes me think I’m the crazy one hiding out for no reason.
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Lol even if we get a vaccine we don’t have enough syringes to vaccinate everyone.
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Sadly if we just let er rip we would have NYC all over the country. There would be so much death that fear would have shut down most everything. Like bring out your dead level death. Rotting bodies in houses and. Nursing homes everywhere.
We were tripling every week. We slowed that to quadrupling every month to a more or less flat curve now.
It’s just so effed up it’s not clear there is a solution anymore. There is exactly ZERO reason to not see it accelerate with reopening.
Somewhere likely about 1% of people are contagious right now (assuming we detecting 1/4-1/3 of active infections).
It will take many many months to drive the numbers down to safely reopen and contact tracing. And they would have to be highly productive months in terms of testing, setting up contact tracing, temperature checks etc. really good financial support with rules that allow everyone to eat and keep there living situations without the risk of financial doom.
Yeah we are totally fucked. But no way should we have let it rip. You cannot imagine the death. I’ve seen that death (admittedly of bacteria) but it’s devastating for society. It’s also putting an awful lot of eggs into the basket of functional Immunity.
Dead is dead. Imagine an effective treatment being found 4 months in but already a million dead. The economy is a completely rigged game. There is absolutely no reason to not rig in in the favor of the little guy, at least for now. (And no reason overall but we would take what we could get at this point).
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Please tell me open-carrying bazookas isn’t legal anywhere yet.
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They’re fake. Because of course. We’ve got a live one in the gun thread if you’re bored.
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Aren’t we just headed for a delayed version of “let it rip” now anyways?
No one here is advocating for let it rip as the best option or even a good option. It is a better option than do a half assed lockdown with no plan and then let it rip though.