Do You Think It’s Time For Businesses To Reopen Even Though Coronavirus Is Not Obliterated?

by minimus 90 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  frozen2018

  It doesn't help that some media will be circling like vultures waiting for people to get infected and maybe (hopefully in their eyes) die. And while the media is bad, the public who choose to devour this tragedy-porn makes the situation worse. I understand why the decision makers are hesitating to move forward. Nobody wants to go first.

  I believe that the executives from mayors to governors to the President as well as everyone from CEO's of large corporations to the sole proprietor of a neighborhood store need to take ownership of the fact that to reopen means some will get sick and a few may indeed die to at least blunt the inevitable backlash that will come from a public that will be egged on by the press ("If it bleeds it leads," so they say). People need to be able to go back to work, to be productive, to have structure. Society does not have the luxury of waiting for a cure. Every week that passes, people's resources dwindle and eventually when their resources are gone, people will go from being depressed to being resentful to being angry to being enraged. But don't worry, the media will be there to report on that carnage also and, without noticing their hypocrisy, they'll blame the very same executives who could have reopened the economy but didn't.
• 

  slimboyfat

  As soon as everyone is wearing masks, because masks work in cutting the infection rates, as many countries from Austria to Vietnam have demonstrated beyond doubt. And as soon as governments have testing, tracing, and isolating, in place, we should be able to go about our lives as close to normal as possible. Because these methods have worked in South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Germany is making good progress and New Zealand has managed to eliminate the virus as of today. Even if it comes back, New Zealand is in a great position to keep the virus to very low levels without closing the economy down. All governments should be learning from those success stories: requiring and providing masks in public, and learning how to test, trace, and isolate effectively. As soon as governments have those in place, then it’s time to end the lockdown. Any talk of removing the lockdown before these measures is premature. It’s not about time, it’s about preparedness. Some countries were ahead of the curve and others (unfortunately the UK included) are catching up. We should pressure our government to put these measures in place as quickly as possible, not argue for removing lockdown without these effective measures in place.
• 

  cofty

  I agree SBF. With the additional proviso that transmission rates have to be low before testing and contact tracing can realistically be achieved. We are probably still a couple of weeks away from significant changes.

  But we don't need to 'pressure' the UK government to do these things. It is their stated policy.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Is it? Until very recently the UK government was saying masks are probably not effective, despite all the evidence that they are extremely effective in cutting community spread. (Because they neglected to to buy enough) Germany and Austria are requiring masks in public. Is that UK policy? I haven’t heard that. That’s where we need to be.

  The UK abandoned testing and tracing last month, and for weeks have emphasised antibody tests instead to measure the spread. I hope they have abandoned the idea that the best you can do is slow the spread, but I’m not sure that pursuing “herd immunity” has been abandoned entirely. It simply never was true that it is inevitable that upwards of 60% of the population will contract the virus. The rate of spread in South Korea and Singapore, I have seen calculated somewhere, it would take them thousands of years to reach so-called “herd immunity”. And New Zealand has stopped spread altogether at the moment. None of these countries have governments that promoted a controlled spread and “herd immunity” at any stage.

  Especially since it is not clear how long immunity lasts. Guesses range from a few months to a couple of years.

  Asymptomatic cases have reported lung damage, others with liver and kidney damage, there are even reports of children badly affected in London. The idea that this virus could be allowed to spread safely was dangerous nonsense.

  Sturgeon put a mark in the ground last week when she said, “it will never be the policy of our government, or form any part of our strategy that certain segments of society can safely contract the virus, to build up herd immunity”. Scotland will adopt test, trace and isolate.
  

  If the UK government has signed up to that too, that’s great. But I haven’t seen definitive statement to that effect so far. There have been reports that the health secretary wants to pursue suppression through testing and tracing, but others in the discussion are still promoting controlled spread. I hope those advocating testing and suppression win the day.
• 

  Simon

  So why the angry comeback. I'm with you on most of what you said.

  So no I don't agree with you on that one point. I live in the real world were hard working people are being screwed left and right and right now due to this virus they are between a rock and a hard place.

  Exactly, that's why it's important that we ease lockdowns as soon as possible rather than as late as possible when everything is guaranteed to be 100% safe. People are becoming too obsessed with it being safe, we need to decide what the acceptable risk level is and that was originally "how much health-care systems could manage". If we're now waiting for this thing to die out completely, we're going to be waiting a long, long, long time and I think that will be worse than some deaths with COVID (which is being over-counted anyway).

  The businesses locked down directly equate to people being unemployed and hurting. The longer it goes on, the more people will suffer, the more chance that the businesses being closed will become permanent which will then take much longer to have replacements startup.
• 

  Simon

  Maybe you live in a well to do place but where I live people are hurting

  We're doing OK personally, both still working, but Alberta and Calgary especially is in really bad shape. We were already in a mess after a period of NDP government that run up huge debts with no real investment in anything tangible (just pet nonsense projects) and wilful neglect by the federal government despite Alberta pretty much funding most of the country. We have a thing called "equalization payments" where the East decided that they get to take most of the money off the West to pay for their shit, lower their taxes etc... Expect the growing "WEXIT" movement to get very real, very fast, and Canada to split into two.

  Economic investment stalled with everything being cancelled before all of this happened (we can't build a pipeline anymore without endless indigenous consultations and now apparently need the approval of trans-people as well, I kid you not). Calgary has been mismanaged with a liberal mayor and crazy council who have bled it dry and spent all the emergency funds when times were good, a mirror of the economy of Canada as a whole.

  We were already fucked, economically, before this started because of all levels of government. So things are not great for the area right now. We're more hopeful and trusting that Trump will help lead North America out of this than we are that Trudeau and his minions will help the west.

  This is what happens when you let environmentalist nutters have power. They run things into the ground and that hurts people, it weakens countries ability to withstand stressful economic events such as this. There is sometimes a huge cost to pay for pandering to people's ill-conceived poorly-informed wonky beliefs.
• 

  millie210

  I agree with you Min.

  I do understand though that many elderly people and immune-compromised people may feel differently.

  I have been using a link that Simon posted on the Corona virus thread back on page 43

  https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
  

  On this link you can follow the peaks and valleys of each country. We know that Sweden decided to take its own path and handle things differently. They are cautious and using discretion but no business lockdowns.

  Interestingly, their rates are tracking the same path as the countries who have taken more extreme measures.
• 

  Simon

  Just because an approach works in one country or even in one area of one country, doesn't mean that other places would have the same results. They could have absolutely devastating consequences - there are so many environmental and societal factors at play.

  The only things that should be transferable across countries are what effective medical treatments can be used.
• 

  RubaDub

  Min ...

  I agree with you and other posters here.

  Rub a Dub
• 

  slimboyfat

  Yes Sweden is a peculiar place, which should be taken into account. I’ve read that over 50% of households consist of one person, more Swedish people are able to work from home if they need to, and they are already accustomed to keeping distance from one another in public. Even so they are still suffering by far the worst death rates in Scandinavia because they didn’t close down restaurants and schools for young children. If other countries that don’t share the peculiar characteristics of Sweden attempted to do the same then the results would likely be much worse.