Originally Posted by OpMidClimax

It's amazing how polarizing this has been. I try to stay out of politics, I'm not smart enough and I'm easily tricked and lured.

I'm a scientist by education and trade and a novice airline pilot. I've worked for both private industry and government in my past/present career and see my retirement job as pilot slipping away.

From a science, pragmatic perspective, yes, quarentine, social distancing, lockdown, etc, are the answer without a treatment and vaccine. Easy... here's the data.. here is our guess.. yada yada yada.. and the data is still being collected, parced and interpreted. Studies and data get leaked and data is cherry picked and confirmation bias runs a rampage. The impacts of which are terrible. Everything has become so polarized we are all suffering severe cognative dissonance.

Now that the public and much of the leadership for the most part does not accept what it takes to control the virus there most likely will be an increase in infection and deaths. Business will deal with employees being sick, insurance, lost time, lost workers etc. I don't know the implications but know many businesses have hired outside consultants to run allot of numbers for them.

I see allot of people on here talk about demographics, age race and sex here and applying data from the NY tri state area or other place and making broad statements and applying them nationwide. Worse, data from another country such as Sweden which is murky now at best. Data is so multivariate at the moment, incorrect conclusions are being made and spread.

I have never before seen such an army of researchers working on a common goal before. The belief that the virus runs its course like a wild fire and burns itself out, till herd immunity is acheived, may or may not be true. No data or limited data has been established on antibody immunity, reinfection/relapse, viral mutation, and IgM longevity.

From a business person and novice pilot, this sucks. There is no easy way out of this. Globally and nationally. Unfortunately I personally believe we are in the top of the first inning right now. History will parce who is right or wrong, and what the correct course of action should have been.

The good news now... Healthcare providers have learned allot about "better" ways to treat patients in various stages of covid infection. Some very promising clinical data is being reviewed now and treatment with various antivirals in conjunction with beta interferon and/or other monoclonal antibodies is very, very promising. The bad news.. there will be more infection, more deaths, more strain on the various healthcare systems and personnel in various hotspots throughout the country as they arise.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Originally Posted by ratcht9

What Duffman and OpMid said. Too many are drawing conclusions well before we have sufficient information.