I see a lot of rumbling in this thread about how we need to ask ourselves if the costs of a shutdown is worth it, or what happens after a shutdown?

My question is this: what would you propose we do? If we don’t lock everything down, we’ll overwhelm the hospitals and the death rate will skyrocket. And then the deaths will be less skewed towards the elderly, because virtually all causes of mortality will shoot up when we no longer have a functioning medical system to treat anyone for anything except this.

Are you really proposing we just let hundreds of millions of people all over the world die over the next 6-12 months? So we’ll all just go back to work and to restaurants and on vacation while 5% of the population is gasping their last breaths in a hospital somewhere? We’ll just say goodbye to a huge chunk of our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and coworkers? Because the economic cost is just too high?

It’s easy to complain about this course of action. It sucks. But unless you can lay out a plausible alternative, this still seems like the best one to me.