So...that's the plan in the U.S. for dealing with Coronavirus?!
That's the plan?!
This is the plan for dealing with this virus? Stay in our homes, don't gather in groups larger than 10...don't have events larger than 250? Wait and hope it passes...re-assess the situation in two months?
So, to hell with anyone who has a job in the restaurant industry then? The wait staff, the cooks, the management, the dishwashers? To hell with everyone who earns their living producing supplies to them or delivers those supplies?
To hell with anyone who works in a theater or provides supplies or performs routine maintenance?
To hell with concert venues, the staff, the ushers, the janitors? To hell with the vendors? To hell with the bartenders? To hell with the bands, the speakers, the comedians? To hell with their crew, their roadies, the sound engineers, the electricians?
To hell with all of them and their ability to feed themselves? To hell with each and every last one of them in every city in the U.S.?
All these people, some low income, some living paycheck to paycheck, they can all...each and everyone one of the in the entire U.S.... just sit and not earn a living for the next two months?
To hell also with the travel industry? To hell with the airlines? The TSA crew? the baggage handlers? the people who run the ticket counters? The flight staff? The mechanics?
What, please ask yourself, will be left in two months?
In most cases the employees would have had to find new work. Just as an example, the TSA would need a new workforce, trained from the beginning in most cases, how does that idea grab you?
Are you under the impression that these businesses and individuals will survive and just come back to provide those services after you are all satisfied that this virus has gone away? You think those venues will survive? Those restaurants? The airlines? You think they can just not generate revenue for two full months and reopen their doors like nothing happened? For the sake of argument, imagine if you can that they do not have a bank vault full of gold to out last this plan, and never re-open.
Imagine the concert halls don't re-open and the bands do not reform, imagine those comedians and speakers are never again in the financial position to go out performing, imagine the theaters also stay closed. It may seem trivial now, but you'll remember very soon that human joy is precious.
If that is too abstract for you...not necessary enough then include in that list all the local restaurants, and thee impact they have on the economy in the city in which you live.
and...Imagine only two airlines left, or maybe only one, or maybe only one government run airline set up for whatever is deemed "required travel" until whatever is left of the last one can rehire/train enough new employees to resume flights, as the majority of their workforce would have had to move onto other jobs in order to continue to eat.
The workforces of all the businesses and industries that would be crippled or done in by two months of inactivity, would have to go find other jobs. Maybe yours. But to hell with you too.
To hell with political rallies, and the constitutionally protected right of peaceful assembly?
To hell with all of it, the death toll after two full months is 69...In a country of 330 million. Why, if that's not cause for shutting the whole thing down than what is, right?
That's the plan. I assume that will be the plan next year to when a new flu virus makes itself known. Every year, right? That's what we're doing? or just every few years when a virus with a scary name hits the news that's killing people with compromised immune systems in some third world country, with third world hospitals.
There's a new one every three years or so for the last couple decades. Sars, Mers, H1N1, bird flu, ebola.
This seems like a poorly thought out plan. This seems like a plan conceived under the delusion that the only cause of human misery is this new virus.
We could just do what we did when H1N1 (swine flu) hit. Remember what we did? You don't, do you. Say that out loud to yourself "I don't remember what we did about swine flu"...and now look at the plan you're going along with to deal with this virus. Seems like there would be a mid range between measures so invisible you don't even remember them and SHUTTING DOWN AN ENTIRE COUNTRY FOR TWO MONTHS.
If I could only choose between the two, I'd choose between how we handled H1N1. It hardly caused anyone to get evicted and or starve or destroy entire industries.
It's ALL about the banking collapse and the reset of the economic system.
Corona is just the excuse to keep people off the streets during the ensuing chaos.
(imo).
(in 2018 ,over 4000 people died in car accidents in the US, over the same 6 weeks period. But no car ban or anything. The whole thing is totally illogical, for those wishing to think)
whatever the reason...people wishing to do any "thinking" are even more rare than people in the U.S.who have actually died from this virus.
This is a perfect time to take the idea of a UBI seriously. As a viewer from abroad I see that the US is one of the countries which will be hardest hit due to its politians and rampent capitalism.
Part of me is kind of excited that this reset will make us realise what is really important. I just hope that at the other end it won't be back to business as usual.
...is this...Is this someone from IRELAND lecturing a different country on how to run an economy? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA wow, thanks. That's a laugh I needed
Yes, I know right. I should really be charging for my services. In all seriousness though I follow the science. The economy will have to wait till all this has passed
It's not capitalism if the government is shutting down everything. You can't just shut down the economy and then print free money for everyone. There won't be anything to spend it on.
The amount of money that was printed to bail out the banks and Wall Street would disagree with you. Giving money to the people would yes increase the national debt but it would have a positive effect for people in this time of crisis. Money is not the important thing at the moment it is survival.
Don't worry, the Federal Reserve will just print money to give to everybody out of job. What could go wrong?
Hahaha I was thinking the same thing
The cynic in me wants to point out that the mass media has been looking for an excuse, a way out, of talking about tremendous gains in the economy – so when the opportunity comes along to not only talk about inevitable corrections but create a sense of panic so that they forge a self-fulfilling prophecy about a true economic collapse, how could they possibly resist? Their political self identification was at risk. You don't even need a conspiracy, you just need a largely homogenous social group which inhabits a large chunk of the culture of mass media.
Of course, once panic has been unleashed in the population, the population doesn't act in sane, reasonable ways. They scoop up toilet paper by the truck load, even though toilet paper doesn't go off, will continue to get produced, there's millions of units in logistical storage along the way – and they will rapidly pick up all the fresh vegetables they can get their hands on, at least for a few days, even though they have no means of storing it long-term.
At a time when Uber should be blowing the top off of potential earnings and its stock skyrocketing, because it, GrubHub, and DoorDash are in a prime position to help keep what local restaurants and shopping locations can scratch by scratching by doing delivery – their stocks are crashing and staying low.
It's almost as if when you have dire warnings blaring 24/7 about how everyone is going to get a highly lethal virus, there is no protection, there's nothing you can do, except isolate your self from society and each other (incidentally making you more suggestible and controlled), people get a little antsy.
Four years. There's a new one every four years for the last couple of decades. I wish I could think of something else that happens every four years, something that might have political import. Something that could be used as a fear leverage against the populace in order to make them more amenable to certain modes of thought. I just can't put my finger on what it is.
It must be the Olympics. That's gotta be at. The Olympics. Absolutely no political events with significant import going on every four years.
And it's at this point I start sounding like one of those crazy conspiracy theorists that I deride so often, and I don't want to. I resent being put in the situation where I start sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I am not positing a conspiracy.
I am positing opportunism, and the best I can hope for right now is that the out and out economic panic that has been inspired comes back to bite those working in media who have hyped up threat at the cost of everyone else's jobs right in the ass.
I've said this about the lines coming out of politicians mouths over the last two months and it doesn't stop being true. They talk and what I hear is:
"I can make you safe, so safe. I can make you completely safe from everything. All you have to do is be my slave. Just be my slave. You'll be very, very safe."
Personally, I can take a little risk. I want to take a little risk. When the opposite of a little risk is slavery, I can take quite a bit of risk, indeed.