Rep. Don Young tells Alaska seniors fears are overblown, skips vote on Covid-19
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For the vast majority of people, this is not a direct health crisis. It's an optimizations problem where governments have to balance the total death rate, total life years lost, the capacity of the healthcare system and the future consequences of the economic downturn containment actions will affect.
Fear works better than that kind of complex, uncertain calculus as a public motivator.
Without strong mitigation you can get more than million dead in the US. Majority of them 70+.
It seems like the kind of place people can isolate trivially. He might end up being right.
there is a lot of travel in and out and only two major cites anchorage and fairbanks. A ^lot^ of people here are seniors.
most alaskans are not actually self sufficient if you look at the difference between anchorage lets say and somewhere like barrow or north pole. its a stretch to just suddenly be self sufficient here, there is some lead time required.
oh and about the national dependence thing its US goods that ship in and sell in the costco's and walmarts etc.
id estimate about a third of alaskans hunt fish and garden for at least part of the groceries
three or several people living in close quarters for 6 or 7 months of winter is a usual household, and then every body eventually mingles in a central location at about the same time for grocereries and gov services
my neighbour built hs wife a loom out of birch it looks really snazzy, and there are a lot of ego cases that dont want medicines they want to go when its time not drag it out.
a lot of people here are rough cut and fiercely independent.
outside the railbelt is about 400,000 that live extremely rural lives in villages that you cant get to or leave unless you fly or wait till winter freezes it. people in alaska just live that way if theyre not in the city.