The comparison to road deaths is flawed logic. We are not all forced to travel against our will - we travel because it adds massive economic benefits to our GDP.
What benefit does the Covid-19 epidemic confer that you can compare it to road travel?
What benefit does the Covid-19 epidemic confer that you can compare it to road travel?
Road deaths involve humans undertaking an action (driving) for a particular benefit (transport) that involves risk (accidents).
You cannot compare driving to the 'covid-19 epidemic', because driving is an action, and the covid 19 epidemic is not. You can't compare the epidemic to driving. You must compare action to action.
A more apt comparison is that humans go out of their home (the action) to work and be productive (the benefit) while understanding they may catch disease when with other humans (the risk).
You are not forced to leave your house against your will -- that is slavery, and is illegal. Anyone can stay home. Leaving your home has the benefit of both enriching you and your neighbor, and collectively, the country. Thus it is a very apt comparison.
The fact of the matter is we don't close roads because we judge them too important to merit doing so, and we decide to accept the risk (deaths). We have decided now against leaving homes because some states judge it too dangerous to do so and is unwilling to accept the risk (deaths), but that is not constant, and will likely change quite fast. I would not be surprised if many of those who called for a lockdown, start calling for it to end quite soon. Most people are only principled up until it starts actually affecting them.
roads are a bad analogy because you don't spread crashes if you crash yourself or get crashed into. car crashes do not follow an exponential curve and aren't contagious. you always know you've been in a crash (except if you die). somebody's always at fault if there's a crash. pretty much none of these are true in case of a plague. we close roads and quarantine people because diseases are contagious and kill people or leave them disabled more or less randomly.
Your argument is that, yes, road travel means we choose more deaths (thus implicitly validating the argument you're trying to critique), but that because the deaths don't spread exponentially, this is okay. That is a fine viewpoint, but it relies on the premise you're trying to disprove (that we are in fact okay choosing more death in order to facilitate unnecessary human interaction).
And frankly, Thatcher has nothing to do with this, so you should probably stop bringing her up.
Lets go with it. Now is going out of your home and being productive the only way to catch Covid-19? What about going for a walk, a meal, shopping, hanging out in the park, a theater, concert......I think you are setting up a strawman here.
All these things have been deemed non-essentials in large parts of the world, and the government is enforcing it. Clearly if preservation of life is goal #1, the government can certainly shut down most life to pursue that goal. In reality, the government -- and by extension the people -- make the decision to value life in quality of life terms -- in other words, money. Thus, while I don't think people who say we should open the economy up right now are correct, I don't fundamentally disagree with their premise that human life is valued monetarily by governments all the time when deciding what policies to enact. And that is okay.
Well, going out and working has rather large economic benefits.
Look, driving kills people, and we accept it because it brings huge benefits. Going to work as normal in the current environment would ALSO bring huge benefits, and kill people. We don't know how many, but we think it's a few million in the US. This is probably not worth it, but if it were a few thousand people instead it WOULD be worth it.
That's the comparison here.
We accept the deaths that travel and activity cause