Coronavirus: Germany's states make face masks compulsory
bbc.com
bbc.com
As of tomorrow I can get my child baptized, buy a new bed, go to the mall. With some weird standards for other thigns: I can't attend a funeral if I'm not in the closest circle of 10-10 ppl and my boss could force me to give up on our totally working remote office.
Oh and in Berlin they are only compulsory in the train, not when going shopping. And the train company says they won't enforce it.
I'm seeing us rowing back in 2 weeks and hope we can get away without a catastrophe once more...
I understand we need to help especially small businesses, but this will manifest a tiny compromise at the cost of lengthening the lock-down indefinitely (unless there is cure, vaccine or testing everyone often.
Oh and of course we don't know if putting just any cloth in front of your face does much anyways...
Back to Corona: Anecdotally in Jena where the mask order is in place since >2 , there have been no new reported cases.
People get weird when they come to grips with their mortality. Yes ideally we don't want people to die en masse but have we gotten so cozy that we forget it's still a fact of life? People die, tragically and often.
This shutdown is going to have larger long term ramifications to our system than if we just let it spread like normal. Those numbers reported, do we know if they're even accurate? What if a doctor was like "welp it sounds like Corona, so I'm just gonna say it is."
Cholera and polio are transmitted by unhygienic food and water supply, you don't catch it by breathing in someone's cough or spit, we try to (and largely successful in developed well) by improving access to clean water and cooking food thoroughly. While they can be deadly, they are not highly transmissible between people.
Transmission method of leprosy was not well understood (even now, and especially when its effect was devastating), and nowadays it can be treated and even cured, plus it's effects are slow and rarely result in death.
TB is the closest in your examples - but it has some key difference, for one, it is not transmissible while it's still latent, so you are not going to think you are in perfect health while actually transmitting it. We also have vaccine for it, that is in wide use in areas where TB is commonplace, we also have treatment for it. It rarely results in death in places with adequate medical facilities.
In short, this virus is different from "any other major outbreaks", at least in recent centuries. And we currently do not have vaccine nor treatment for it.
I'm no economist, so I cannot tell you if "less than 10% of the population" dies or become severely ill would result in bigger economical impact, but I find it highly responsible to basically say "sorry, but these dozen companies' survive is more important than your grandpa's life" to the society at large.
Remember that the black death cause such population decline among the peasants that the equivalent of wages increased dramatically. Artisans as well as they were skilled. Leftists always claim they want higher wages, well a dramatic death toll and innumerable job openings will put a massive premium on labor. Even bad labor.