Look, I really really really hope the data coming out of NY, LA, and San Mateo County (Bay Area) is correct. If it is, then Covid is far less deadly than first feared. Problem though is that the damn thing is still contagious when you're asymptomatic, and it still does kill plenty of people. So it's not like we can just flip a switch and go back to 2019. Because people are too damn scared.

The biggest problem though is that the entire concepts of 'truth' and 'facts' have been under attack for quite some time. From Fox to MSNBC, from Jerry Falwell Jr to AOC, most of us now spend our time in our own echo chambers, rather than listening to each other and working together on a problem that is biological, not political.

I get why Trump supporters are more likely to dismiss this whole thing as a dramatic overreaction. His support maps inversely to population density; there are plenty of impartial, factual surveys that show how this country has divided along lines of population density. Looking deeper than the state level (look at county-level density and voter preference mapping) it's easily shown that one's attitude towards Trump is heavily influenced not just by educational attainment, but by the density of your community. Rural areas, mostly, have seen far fewer deaths than urban areas (although that is slowly changing). If you're in rural Montana, your hospitals are empty; you're far less likely to know of someone who died of Covid; and you're far more likely to dismiss it as a 'liberal media overreaction.' That's not surprising; that's your perception, informed by what you see around you. Whereas if you live in Queens, you're seeing an entirely different reality.

Problem is, you now have the entire country now believing that whatever the 'other side' says is false. I can't say I have a solution. What I can say is that this president has done more than almost any American to erode public trust in the news media, in science, in reality itself. Denials, obfuscations, baldfaced lies -- all because he thinks it wins him support. He may be right about that. But the seeds he and his supporters have sown, will come back to haunt this country in a real crisis. Like this one.

 

I pretty much agree with most of what you said here. However, this new data is just that -- new. If I were a governor, and I saw what happened in Wuhan, Italy, and Spain, I can't imagine just telling my citizens, 'Hey, we'll be fine. Ignore those scenes you see of overwhelmed hospitals and people dying in corridors." Now, of course, as more studies are done and more data shows that Covid isn't as lethal as feared, I think we're all hopeful that things will improve sooner rather than later.

I myself run a 45-person business when I'm not out flying jets around. We're now down to 35 people and I don't have much faith of us being around in a few more months. So I hate these lockdowns as much as anyone. By the way, though, that small business Payroll Protection Program is an absurd joke that has mostly benefited large businesses who had no need for it. I've spent the past 3 weeks trying to secure an loan -- we have a 7 year history and a long track record of more than eight figures in annual revenue (not 7 figures... far into the 8 figures every year). You know what we got? Nothing. It's a disastrous program designed by people who have precisely zero care for any business that didn't directly support their political campaigns.

 

Thank you for your response, I am TERRIBLY sorry to hear that. Thank you for your insight as a quasi small business owner....I feared as much was happening regarding big businesses squashing the little ones.
. I can't imagine watching all your sweat equity being diminished like this.

 

Thanks very much, that's very kind. It is indeed incredibly discouraging; what keeps me going is the fact that we have an amazing team of very talented people who have been nothing but supportive even though they see their jobs either disappearing or under serious threat. As the founder of the business it's my job to bring in business to keep them all employed, and it really hurts every time a client cancels a project or slashes a budget, because it means I have to look people in the eye, many of whom I consider friends, and tell them we don't have any work for them.

We're doing everything possible to keep as many people employed as we can. I'm not taking a salary (oh and I'm on unpaid leave from my airline, plus my wife got laid off from her job), but we will be fine -- we've been extremely fortunate these past few years, and we're in a better position than the vast, vast majority of Americans. It's not us I'm worried about. It's people like my friend
​who just opened his own coffee shop on March 1 -- a longtime dream, dashed to pieces. Another friend who's about to lose both his restaurants. And then the tens of millions out of work who won't be able to pay rent this month. And so on.

You know, it's funny (well, not actually funny, but...)... My wife and I spent most of February on vacation in Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. When we stepped off the Cathay flight in SFO in late February after our 3 week trip, I breathed a sigh of relief because now we were back in America, the world's superpower, where certainly we'd be far better prepared to deal with this virus. How wrong I was. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have turned our response into an utter calamity, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing, as the quote goes. Ah well...

 

 

A) the economic damage is not over, it's going to get worse exponentially as each month goes by. Lost GDP, manufacturing, small businesses closing, unemployment, consumers hoarding discretionary money, and eventually foreclosures and repos in a population that's in more debt and has less savings than the one that caused the 2008 crash. I think the shutdowns were necessary, but I know the economic cost. I'm sure the Dow hasn't seen its lows yet.


B) What works for MN doesn't necessarily work for NYC or CA. Not personally defending any governor, just saying that every state needs a different response and up until now, the states with the most aggressive responses have been viewed more positively. For a cautionary tale, just look at Louisiana. However, as more concrete information becomes available, responses need to change.

 

I agree, responses do need to change. Remember how 250K people in the US were supposed to be dead from this by now? And...they're not. Any and all the stats out there are showing a decline in mortality rate. We can't hold everyone hostage because a minute percentage of the population falls ill. These regional openings are hopefully a good step as far as response change and we can all get back to work.

 

No, I remember that it was 100-200K, possibly higher, but I don't remember only 250K:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/trum...estimates.html

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/1/2120298...c-trump-deaths

That said, at 53K we are more than halfway to the low end...but hopefully the numbers were overestimated and things are getting better...

 

My point being that the numbers have been overblown from the beginning (2.2 mill) and as time passes, its coming out that this is not the deadly awful thing for all of us theyre hyping it to be.
This is a quote from an article last month where I got the 250 from:

538 Article, 23 Mar 20, by Jay Boice
As a group, they think hospitalizations won’t peak for several more weeks or months, and they expect around 246,000 deaths related to COVID-19 in 2020. “The situation this week is no more clear due to the diversity of responses across states, and uncertainty about the impact of those responses,” said Justin Lessler, one of the respondents and an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University.

 

I'm not sure why you think 250k dead in 2020 is out of reach. 50k+ dead in 5 weeks so far, and it's only April.