It's also resetting our global warming clock. Something youth were keen about getting the world to do. If they can't handle staying at home for an extended time then global warming might not be that important after all.
Either shutting down all Chinese factories for a period of time reduced CO2. Or they made no difference and we can run those factories without fear.
Wouldn't a global recession/depression reduce production?
Increased funding for scientific output or more climate models isn't going to make a difference. People have to buy and use less. You can't have it both ways here either.
> Increased funding for scientific output or more climate models isn't going to make a difference. People have to buy and use less. You can't have it both ways here either.
The science I'm most interested in isn't climate models. It's better solar panels, or better wind turbines, or better batteries, or better fission reactors, or (useful) fusion reactors, or space based solar shades, or ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and so on.
People buying and using enough less unfortunately does not seem to be a realistic solution to the problem. People buying less might be able to delay us hitting disastrous amounts of warming by a few years, but that only buys us time for the above kinds of research.
Close to half of COVID infections result not even in a cough. Going by the mostly elderly population on the Diamond Princess, mortality with proper treatment is going to be significantly lower than 1%. Flatten the curve? Sure, but we can't be locking down the entire country indefinitely.
The youth already begrudge the elderly, locking them down for months will make them wish they were dead. Remember how a year felt like an eternity when you were 16?
Also, most youth don't care about global warming either. They're just virtue signaling. It really isn't that important, if they understood what they would have to give up on to stop it, they would embrace it and look forward to spring break in North Dakota.
Possibly?
> Going by the mostly elderly population on the Diamond Princess, mortality with proper treatment is going to be significantly lower than 1%.
If we're all sick at once can we all get proper treatment?
We're all making assumptions and treating our ideas like they have to be true. We still don't actually know, we will only know in retrospective, and that's important to keep in mind. We can't know what's going to happen, and I think we need to be more cautious than optimistic. Where's the line between that an insanity? I don't know, but we can't act like we know the math, especially when we're getting equal and opposite information every day.
I am not saying everyone should get sick at once, a certain period of isolation is acceptable - for now.
In the long term, it is not reasonable to isolate everyone. Covid-19 will stay with us for years.