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Comment by dudul | Hacker News Reader

And this post is why I get so infuriated when I see all the blue-checkmarks on Twitter, calling people who want to go back to work "Selfish, stupid, idiot, etc".

People don't want lockdown to stop because they need to go to their hairdresser, or because they need to go hangout at the pub, or whatever idiotic reason these privilege a-holes put in their tweets. People want to get back to work, because they need money, to have a roof above their head. To feed their kids.

Edit: Just to clarify because I see a lot of misunderstanding in the replies: I am not advocating to end the lockdown. I am criticizing the tone deaf, patronizing, rude, caricatural comments attacking people who want to end it to get their paycheck back.

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The essential motivation for people to want to feed their families/pay bills is completely logical, but it's important to keep in perspective that the virus doesn't care about any of these things. We don't need to look too far back in history to see that ending isolation in a pandemic too early can have huge consequences (much bigger than an economic slowdown/unemployment).

This is not the fault of the citizens. This is the fault of government who did not provide enough economic assistance, creating the desperation you're witnessing. This was unnecessary; other governments provided the support their citizens needed (the UK, for example).

Either pay people a decent wage to stay home to flatten the curve, or accept the death rate resulting from people who need to eat and have shelter having to go to their jobs.

This so much. The narrative seems to pitch an either/or situation, why not both or some of both

I am against ending the lockdown early as well and disagree in no uncertain terms with those who are trying to minimize the pandemic. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to start wondering whether the economic and political damage may ultimately outweigh the lives saved. If anyone thinks populism spawning extremists and getting them into public office was bad now, imagine the tsunami of public anger and populism that will occur caused by immense (even, dare I say it, pandemic) unemployment and poverty, which is where we're headed full steam. When things get tough, people shift into a "me first" mentality that is incompatible with the philosophies of many HNers.

The economic damage at least was always going to happen. It's a direct consequence of the pandemic itself (and people's natural fear-based reactions to isolate themselves to reduce their risk).

It's not like you can relax social distancing and have the economy do well, especially not when the death toll really starts ramping up and people fear for their lives every time they leave home. There isn't any choice available in which there isn't a bad recession.

One piece of anecdotal evidence:

I live in NYC but currently reside in rural upstate NY. We have very few cases up here and it's impossible to NOT socially distance because that the way of life up here.

As of last week, Cuomo is applying the same rules in NYC to all of NY state, which is ridiculous. My family friend has a furniture factory up here that employs 220 people with a backlog of $2M+ pieces worth of furniture. All of his employees were socially distancing before and everyone had an N95 because of what they were building. Cuomo shut down the state and this guys business is about to go under (competition is legally opening up in Ohio and other states) because he's weekly payroll is 125 and at some point he doesn't want to risk $500-1MM of his own money out of pocket to weather the storm. That is 220 jobs that do not need to disappear.

The same rules that apply to NYC should apply to other areas. Some of these problems were are seeing are policy problems.

I don't have an opinion one way or the other on your friend's situation. It definitely sucks, and you may well be right that it's unduly harmful to their situation. But don't underestimate this disease. Even upstate New York isn't immune, take a look at this interactive map[1]. Almost all counties in upstate New York are north of 50 confirmed cases per 100,000 people, and all of those are neighboring counties with hundreds of confirmed cases. Given our rate of testing is abysmal, it's very likely there are several times that many actual cases in each county. Drastic action is absolutely needed, even in your county.

This is an awkward and difficult situation. If we underreact, we will have hundreds of thousands or millions more deaths (not joblessness, actual dead people) than we could have if we reacted appropriately. I think that's worse than the alternative of a massive recession, but I definitely sympathize with people who are most affected, like your friend and his employees. It's tough; there's no clear right answer; mistakes will be made. We just need to do the best with the information we have, and trust the experts to do the same. I'm sorry :(

[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

My impression from living up here for a month or so is that most people are taking it seriously, though some are not. I do not think people are going to stay inside as soon as the spring weather arrives.

I do agree mistakes will be made, but i also think there there are leaders on both sides of the political aisle that should resign at this point for errors they have made.

*The same rules that apply to NYC SHOULDN'T apply to other areas.

It's not clear how bad things would actually be without the lockdown. There is a continuum, and I'm sure there is a much happier medium than what we currently have.

My question then is what half-measures would be preferred here that would've still flattened the curve? When you're in the middle of a pandemic, I think it makes sense to err on the side of doing too much to stem the tide versus burning time and energy trying to feather the dial to get that needle perfectly balanced between physical and economic health. Perhaps more bluntly put, I'd rather people be alive and on unemployment than gainfully employed and dead. (And yes, there's a whole other discussion to be had about the efficiency or lack therof of getting money out to people. We could and should do a lot better.)

Economic downturn can kill people, too. It is not as simple as dead people on one side and no dead people on the other.

Right, but one kills directly and in much larger numbers. I think it's clear which is the bigger mortal threat.

I disagree the situation is clear.

To take the logical extreme, if we were to avoid all possible immediate threat to life, no one should leave the house, let alone drive to work. Obviously, our society would immediately collapse, and many millions would die. So we have to balance possible immediate threats against likely longer term consequences. Something we do not seem to be doing very well in the case of covid-19.

> I disagree the situation is clear

I'm confused, do you actually think the mortality rate of a down economy will be anywhere near that of a pandemic? Let me know if I'm misinterpreting you here but it sure seems like this is what you're arguing.

> lostapathy: If said "down economy" led to a long-term depression or a year or two of lost crops due to any number of possible disruptions, we could easily see more death (both directly and due to social unrest, suicide, etc).

History doesn't bear this out. The Great Depression resulted in an uptick in suicide, yes, but a decline in practically every other cause of mortality.

https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290.full

> yters: Yes, I do think we could have a more reasonable approach that will result in less aggregate deaths than our current approach.

You could look at any societal attempt to deal with a large scale threat and say "well that could've been done better", but as I said in my other comment, perfection takes time, and, with time of the essence, I think we were smart to move forward with an imperfect but obviously impactful solution rather than burn time and lives trying to find some mythical perfect balance.

Yes, I do think we could have a more reasonable approach that will result in less aggregate deaths than our current approach.

If said "down economy" led to a long-term depression or a year or two of lost crops due to any number of possible disruptions, we could easily see more death (both directly and due to social unrest, suicide, etc).

We can print more money right. Money isn't real. Death and this virus are.

How about we just take care of those who need taking care of during this disaster. How about we put all national efforts to keep the lights on, providing safe housing and keeping the food supply chains intact.

Instead we are worried about corporate quarterly profits and when the Ruby Tuesday can reopen, because somehow serving burgers for $3/hr plus tips is going to secure that person's financial situation.

We can print more money, but we cannot print the things the money will buy. When the factories shut their doors and busineses small and large collapse and the food supply chain implodes, you can't eat money or shelter from the rain under money - and all that turning the printing presses up will do is to make it clear to everyone just how unreal money actually is. We know from other countries that's really hard to undo.

And if those people are dying in droves? What then, who makes these things?

This isn't the Black Death. People aren't dying in numbers that would affect the overall workforce size. It's more like an unusually bad flu epidemic - the main differences being that the deaths are more biased away from people who aren't working anyway, and that we don't shut down the planet over the flu. There might be good reasons to lock down heavily, but that's not one of them.

> Instead we are worried about corporate quarterly profits and when the Ruby Tuesday can reopen, because somehow serving burgers for $3/hr plus tips is going to secure that person's financial situation.

Man, fuck off. This is so god damn entitled. Writing off someone's income as negligible because it's already in the realm of poverty anyway is so callous. Taking care of people's needs is hard. You can't just hand wave it with band-aid money. No matter how much money you allocate, people, especially the poor, are going to suffer if their livelihoods are destroyed. And it's even worse for people in poor countries that depend on exporting to the US for money for things like food. I don't give a shit about Ruby Tuesday's bottom line. I care that Ruby Tuesday's being closed means long term economic harm. The real world is complicated. The existing system is horribly far from perfect. But keeping it turned off is going to make things so much worse. Asserting that people who recognize this are thinking only of the corporate profits is incredibly disingenuous. We have printed astonishing amounts of money to ease this situation. It's not a viable solution.

My local restaurants are down to: McDonalds, Burger King, and Panera Bread. Everything else is shuttered. It will take years to recover from this, and in many locations, just won't, as wealth concentrates further into fewer areas.

In many parts of the world, what the original comment describes is simply a normal day; the only reason Americans typically do better than that is our strong economy. We know what economies without strong quarterly profits and Ruby Tuesday look like, and they don't support the modern American standard of living.

Now try to imagine an economy that values human capital over never end growth. We can do better, but it requires a different kind thinking.

We value neverending growth because it represents an increase in the amount and quality of goods and services people want. Most people I've seen talk about valuing human capital over neverending growth tend to believe everyone should live as well as the American middle class - I agree with that, but we won't be able to make it happen without more economic growth.

Most people who don't have money don't want to go back to work. They feel like the have to go back to work even though it's a terrible idea, because the rest of the country is refusing to support them while they can't.

The biggest contributor to this economic downturn is the pandemic. Demand and market valuations plummeted in February, long before any stay-at-home orders.

On the flip-side, putting all businesses in this situation means most of us are in the same situation; and every market/industry needs to work together to get out of this crisis.

If no one can pay their mortgage, loan holders HAVE to make exceptions.

That shared spirit of sacrifice isn't a reason to institute lock down orders, but my opinion is that it will allow us to lesson the economic damage long term.

Why do they have to make exceptions? Absent a government mandate there is no requirement and, unfortunately, the mortgage is secured by the underlying property.

I fully expect, and you should too, foreclosures to skyrocket and people to be on the street. The banking sector is not in the business of shares sacrifice and the US government isn’t in the business of letting the banks collapse.

This lockdown will kill people. Let’s not be blind to that fact out of some sense of moral righteousness or some hope of humanity being found by faceless corporations.

If you paid attention during the last recession while foreclosures did skyrocket, those people did not end up out on the street. Many found other places to live or just stayed in that house until someone forced them to leave. Some people stayed in a house without paying a mortgage for years.

If it goes that direction again I see even more people just staying without paying anything. The banks don't have the resources to force everyone out and no one wants to buy that many properties in a lot of areas.

> I fully expect, and you should too, foreclosures to skyrocket and people to be on the street.

Why, in the worlds wealthiest nation is that something I should expect?

Because those who write the rules are going to use the massive number of foreclosures to buy up property dirt cheap like they did in '08 and beyond.

It's a feature, not a bug. We're seeing one of the largest transfers of wealth from the poor to the wealthy ever and it's only getting worse. The cruelty is the point.

Oh also don't forget the number of people who are, or will shortly be, underwater with their car payments too. That's another ticking time bomb.

Ahh, I didn't read that parent comment with a sense of sarcasm.

As long as I have breath in my lungs, I will do whatever I can for the least of my brothers.

Think for a second the absolute nightmare the economy would be going through if we _hadn't_ locked down.

We will never know the answer to that.

I guess I don't understand why more people aren't asking for a solution that allows them to sustain themselves and their families and also doesn't elevate the risk of spreading COVID-19. I don't get how "end the lockdown and let a bunch of people get sick" or "possibly starve homeless in the streets" became the only two possible options, and I don't get how anyone becomes a staunch advocate for either.

I understand their thinking because not working is causing a massive amount of collateral damage, but the virus doesn't care about any of that. If everyone goes back to normal too early, this all just starts over, and folks are forced to be inside even longer, there's just no way around it.

This is wrong. We are not forced to be inside because of the virus. It would have been totally possible to have this pandemic going on with zero lockdowns, which would have probably led to worse health effects, and less-bad economic effects.

It's a pet peeve of mine when people claim that we must lock down or that the virus is forcing us to do this or that, as opposed to it being a political choice based on tradeoffs.

In fact, I predict that after things open up, they will not shut back down, no matter how bad the second wave of the outbreak gets. People simply won't accept it.

It’s a false choice between the economy and people’s lives. The problem is that while labor economy was shut down, the financial system was not, so that rents and debts had to flow out of people that could not generate income, and the government has been ignoring the issue with nominal support.

Not freezing debts/rents across the entire economy is how this whole thing spins into a depression

Every expense is someone else's income. Freezing debts/rents doesn't solve anything. It just shifts the burden.

Ultimately we are losing the wealth that we otherwise would have generated. We are poorer and there's no way around that.

Yes, it shifts the burden from people who work for a living, to people who's living is worked for by other people.

The former are far more important, and numerous than the latter. I eat butter, I don't eat dividends.

If you're a renter you live in a home that a landlord built or paid someone else to build. And if people stop paying rent then they stop paying people to build. Construction workers lose their jobs and our housing problems are made worse.

And don't have any illusions about the rich losing here. Most units are owned by small time landlords who will be wiped out by a rent freeze. Those units will be gobbled up on the cheap by rich people that can borrow money at cheap rates.

> And if people stop paying rent then they stop paying people to build. Construction workers lose their jobs and our housing problems are made worse.

So what? They've already stopped paying people to build. Construction workers have lost their jobs already. While having to keep paying their rent, or mortgage.

This is a temporary disruption, and needs temporary, stop-gap measures to stop the bleeding. Nobody's advocating to stop all rents forever.

> And don't have any illusions about the rich losing here. Most units are owned by small time landlords who will be wiped out by a rent freeze.

1. No, they aren't. Most units are owned by real estate companies.

2. Couple it with a mortgage freeze, and none of them will be wiped out. You can, in fact, kick this can up the hill until it hits the capital markets...

The “lockdown” is a Fabian strategy; one of the goals is to preserve our ability to stage an economic comeback after the health crisis has been resolved. In the near term, the economy is toast no matter what we do (short of a well oiled contact tracing and isolating machine).

This paper seems to suggest there isn’t really a tension between protecting people’s health and saving the economy: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560

You are correct that the lockdown measures are a choice and not a natural consequence of the virus though.

Even if widespread shelter-in-place orders were not in effect, if the virus spread through a lot of the people in a town, you can bet that people wouldn't be going out as usual. Nobody* will be eating at restaurants if they hear dozens of people in town got sick while eating out and died because local hospitals are over capacity.

*there's always somebody

Sure, we can let a million folks in the USA die because we love our capitalism, but 80%+ of the USA disagrees with that false dichotomy.

I don't think that's true. The mindset I've consistently seen is that people do agree with the dichotomy, and are just willing to sacrifice the economy because they don't think it's very important. How many times has the line been trotted out that we can't sacrifice human lives for the sake of the economy?

First of all, that number is clearly exaggerated. No current evidence supports the claim that a million people in the USA dying of covid is remotely plausible.

Now to the substance of your argument: this has little to do with capitalism. If most people are not working for a long period of time, in any society, even a non-capitalist one, then that society will rapidly become dramatically materially poorer.

We make choices to improve material conditions at possibly increased health risks all the time. Longevity is not the only metric for overall quality of life.

I would happily accept some increased risk of my own death for the lockdown to be over. Correctly navigating the tradeoff requires figuring out how much increased risk of death is acceptable, not asserting that it’s zero.

It's not just Covid. If the hospitals are overwhelmed, that car accident you get into means you might not be able to get medical care, causing a small issue to become deadly. You may not be able to get treated for a heart attack.

Further, we are seeing people still testing positive and having health problems over a month after first symptoms. If your entire supply chain is taken out, essential or not, you can end up with larger problems than when you started. If you think it's a problem that the meat packing plant has to close after a single case, wait until 75% of the plant is symptomatic.

Finally, the solution is to have enough tests and contact tracing so that people can confidently open up, knowing that we can stop the rate of transmission. This shutdown should be used to prepare for a way we can safely reopen, a la South Korea.

Without a lockdown, most of the country will eventually be infected. NYC currently has 21000 excess deaths, so extrapolating that to the rest of the country would mean 21000*328M / 10M = 690,000 excess deaths. That's assuming that nobody else in NYC is going to die of Covid 19, even after lifting the lockdown, so this is an extremely conservative projection, and it's already close to 1M deaths.

What's implausible about this? Is Covid 19 less lethal outside NYC? Can R remain below 1 anywhere in the country, without a lockdown?

Sorry, you're right. I did the arithmetic wrong, thinking that 1M deaths would represent 3% of the population, instead of 0.3%. My mistake!

The rest of my point still stands.

I mean I agree it's plausible, but it also seems likely that it's more lethal in NYC because of population density.

More infectious, sure? But more lethal? Why?

Lots of current evidence supports the claim. COVID is clearly more contagious than the flu, and herd immunity (without a vaccine) will require between 60-70% of the population to become infected. That's 229M people. COVID is also more fatal than the flu. Its IFR is roughly 1%. So 1% of 229M is 2.3M fatalities, and roughly 20M additional hospitalizations.

If you believe the IFR is lower, say .5% (still over 5x the flu), then you still have the same number of hospitalizations, but just 1.15M fatalities.

If you believe the IFR is the same as the flu (0.1%), then you'll still have 20M hospitalizations and 230K fatalities.

Say we're really lucky, and the IFR is the same as the flu, and we find a therapeutic drug to help treat it, dropping the IFR to half of the flu (0.05%), you have 114800 fatalities, but still the 20M hospitalizations.

The math is just brutal. What will the impact be of 20M hospitalizations, to say nothing of the deaths?

80-90% of people who catch this disease would survive without treatment. If America won't support people who might die of starvation when stuck at home, then the individually smartest response becomes to take their chance with the virus.

I don't need to explain what a 10-20% death rate would do to society, however.

There's also some very concerning long-term effects for those who have recovered. There's a trend of seeing lung-scarring or other things that I'm sure will come up again int 10 or 15 years. Imagine that happening to a large portion of society.

Even recovered people who feel fine can have chronic issues due to the virus. Young, healthy people may come away with serious lung issues without realizing it[1].

[1] https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1253437512401301505

I'm sure it would have more than a 4.8% impact.

> I don't need to explain what a 10-20% death rate would do to society, however.

Not much if 80% of them are very old and sick.

Keep in mind death is not the only negative outcome of this. My wife's uncle is relatively young (50s), completely healthy, gainfully employed, and has contracted Covid. He's been in the hospital for over a month, has been on a ventilator for weeks, is currently off but has been in and out of the ICU, his lung has collapsed, he can't feed himself, he can't walk, and he's currently re-learning how to swallow. If he makes it out of the hospital (that's a question mark right now), he's not going to be able to support himself. He won't be able to walk without getting winded so he will need a wheel chair, which will prevent him from doing the job he had before he went in. His experience, which has a decidedly negative economic impact and which is not uncommon for those who have needed to be hospitalized by covid, is completely missing from the "covid only impacts old people who were unproductive and probably would have died anyway" narrative.

This is absolutely true and this would get a lot worse if people decide to end the lockdown early. If one needs money to feed their family now, the chance of them either passing or being incapacitated are not to be taken lightly.

I had hoped the government would freeze all the mortgages, bills and offered real assistance to people in need. The stimulus check for the hoi polloi is a joke. I personally don't need it, why did I get it? I know I could donate it to the poor but that's not the point I'm trying to make. That stimulus seems to be a way of saying "but we already helped you".

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not arguing that covid only impacts old people, I'm saying 4 things (in general, maybe not the one particular quote above):

a ) covid won't destroy society in any case

b ) we cannot endure a lockdown until the disease is eradicated or a vaccine is produced

c ) a lockdown ended before the disease is eradicated or a vaccine is produced will just lead to a second wave of the disease

d ) the economic burden of the lockdown will increase exponentially as more businesses run dry

I don't want your uncle to be sick. But I'd rather your uncle get sick than have you, your wife, and your uncle lose your jobs; and then have your uncle get sick anyway.

You're getting downvotes but it's true. There are other considerations that are completely being ignored by the ivory tower types. It's shocking to some, but jobs are how people afford to live their lives (buy food, pay rent, pay tax which funds government, etc).

I'm more concerned about social and political unrest that often results from mass unemployment, people losing their homes, not enough to eat, etc than losing people to the virus (which still stucks). 22 million unemployed and growing is enough to swing elections in dark directions...

If 20% die but 8 out of 10 are very old and sick, then globally 4% die who are healthy or not very old.

4% of an (healthy not very old) population dying still means overall the economy would contract by 4% (because product/service demand is down 4%), which would still be the greatest recession in the last 8 decades.

Your comment ("not much") is thus completely false.

Sure, but the idea that this virus kills 20% of all people is stupid. You just made that number up. We don't have much we can do to treat this disease. Nobody believes it would ever go that high. If somehow it does, even more than 80% will be old and sick.

4% of a population dying also does not mean the economy contracts by 4%. You just... made that up too.

Lastly, you've assumed that a 4% annualized economy contraction from one month in a quarter means that we'll see 4% by just keeping this going. That's... wrong. The negative impact of lockdowns will compound. I don't give a shit if the economy shrinks by 4%. It's absolutely fine if we have a bit of a shitty economic time. Prolonged wide scale poverty for millions of people is an entirely different beast.

«kills 20% of all people is stupid. You just made that number up»

I did not claim that. I just took this percentage from the hypothetical situation you used to build an argument (you yourself said if 10-20% die then it wouldn't mean much to the economy.)

«4% of a population dying also does not mean the economy contracts by 4%.»

Yes it does. Basic economics. With everything being equal, the size of an economy is linearly proportional to the number of persons. A population half the size of another one will buy half the number of cars, half the food, will spend half on entertainment, etc. So if 4% of average individuals die worldwide, consumption (thus the economy worldwide) is down 4%. Like I said, it's basic economics.

«Lastly, you've assumed that a 4% annualized economy contraction from one month in a quarter means that we'll see 4% by just keeping this going»

No I don't assume that. Read again what I wrote. I am only talking about the impact of a certain percentage dying, not about the impact of the lockdown.

You sound like Dennis from Always Sunny talking about how girls need to sleep with him if they're alone on a boat because of the implication of what would happen if they refuse, but denying that he actually said anything threatening.

> "I don't need to explain what a 10-20% death rate would do to society, however."

Yes, you didn't claim anything. But the implication is clear. When I responded I assumed you meant 20% CFR.

> Yes it does. Basic economics. With everything being equal, the size of an economy is linearly proportional to the number of persons.

I don't know what else I can say other than this is a dumb statement that you just made up.

* It's not a basic tenant of economics

* All things aren't equal, ever

* It's not a linear relationship, nor even always positively correlated over time depending on context

And lastly if you actually believe your math, then its clear that for any realistic death rate the economic impact is negligible.

Note that you are confusing me with another user (Filligree) who started the thread and initially threw these "10-20%" figures. Personally I do not believe 10-20% of the world population will die.

«I don't know what else I can say other than this is a dumb statement»

Not dumb. It's a good approximation, especially because post-pandemic times (after people have regained their jobs, which might take months/years) will be identical to pre-pandemic times with the ONLY difference being that a certain percentage of Americans will have died prematurely. That percentage will directly translate to an economic loss.

Look, the fact your post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23019875) was severely downvoted indicates most HN users disagree with you. I tried to take the time to explain to you why. You don't get it. I don't have any more energy to spend on this discussion.

You're right, that was another user, rendering most of this moot. I got 3 downvotes, and I don't particularly care if three people disagree with me. Similar opinions expressed elsewhere have gotten more upvotes. Shitty appeal to the people fallacy.

> Not dumb. It's a good approximation, especially because post-pandemic times (after people have regained their jobs, which might take months/years) will be identical to pre-pandemic times with the ONLY difference being that a certain percentage of Americans will have died prematurely. That percentage will directly translate to an economic loss.

This is simply not true. The world does not click back to the state it was with fewer people. Millions of people are now unemployed. Thousands of companies will no longer exist. The lockdown is killing small businesses disproportionately fast and that gap is going to be filled by larger businesses. Larger businesses have fewer local employees. The wealth gap is going to be greatly exacerbated, and this will affect everyone. Supply chains will change, inflation will change, consumer spending habits will change. The economy is going to feel different, and in a large part driven by how long everything takes to restart. x% of people dead meaning x% worse economy is just an irrelevant, naive comment.

I don't really care to debate this further either because... it's not interesting

> If everyone goes back to normal too early, this all just starts over, and folks are forced to be inside even longer, there's just no way around it.

This whole thing just starts over if we EVER go back to normal unless a vaccine is invented. Herd immunity is impossible to achieve during an effective lockdown. It's not like we're any closer to being able to safely resume activities than one month ago. A highly infectious disease with asymptomatic carriers cannot be eradicated.

I hate people saying generic statements like "we have to stay inside until its safe" with no reason to believe its getting safer.

This is true. People need to realize this is a 2 year minimum thing we're just in the beginning of dealing with. Anything else is fantasy.

> This whole thing just starts over if we EVER go back to normal unless a vaccine is invented.

We can get to normal faster if effective pharmacological treatments come out from the ongoing trials. If we can treat it, or at least prevent it from being severe, it is not a problem of public health anymore.

Technically true, just as hopeless for any practical time scale. The economic problems of being on lockdown will compound over time. We cannot wait until we have treatments or a vaccine.

Not a single sane person is arguing going from isolation to business as usual overnight.

blaming "Blue Checkmarks" for the fact that people are being victimized by capitalism during a pandemic makes me sick to my stomach. What a hopeless year this has been.

I totally agree with you. In the richest country in human histroy, people shouldn't be forced to live paycheck to paycheck.

People victimized by capitalism (and I totally agree that this is the current situation btw) don't need to be called names or selfish, or idiots, by people who are not victimized.

I'm blaming privileged people for lecturing and gaslighting people who are not as privileged.

I totally agree with you.

It seems like no one is understanding your point... yes, it's an absolutely terrible idea for people to go back to work right now, but if it's literally between that and going hungry (because you know your government won't do shit to help you), then it's no surprise that some people will want to go back to work out of sheer necessity. In fact I'd be shocked if most of these Silicon Valley tools would come to any different conclusion if they were actually in the same boat.

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> monopoly of force

We The People

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Yeah, those meatpackers really want to go back to their essential jobs right now.

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