At what point will people realize that the lockdown causes more harm than the virus?
that mean it has nothing to do with a lock-down at this point - even if everything were to open up you have to convince people to go and get infected at the restaurants.
If even half of the customers take the virus situation serious then they will stay away - and guess what half the restaurants will close.
What you’re saying is just like saying evacuation orders for a hurricane cause businesses to lose customers before and after the hurricane so never evacuate.
From the get-go, there were articles pointing out the numerical reality that it would take 10 years to reach herd immunity with a curve flattened to match ICU capacity. Those calculations were slightly too pessimistic due to a myopic focus on ventilators, and the therapeutics have evolved since then.
So we were flattening the curve to delay a mass spread until a vaccine? Doesn't add up. Masks are as effective as the candidate vaccines will be at 100% use. Not everyone will get vaccinated. Maybe we delay until masks+vaccine push R0<1. Also doesn't add up. The new infection numbers are steady NOW, R0 has averaged around unity for months.
Look, it's hard to summarize a strategy when there is no strategy. There's just been reaction.
If we want to say the lockdowns have been worse, let's start by answering:
1. What is the value of a human life, in dollars?
2. What is the cost of a preventable long-term injury? (In terms of diminished inherent value of life, diminished economic impact, whatever.)
3. What is the cost of a life spent without indoor restaurants for months to years?
Take 1 and 2, and weigh them against 3 + the economic losses due to lockdown.
https://www.rt.com/news/496482-study-covid-hunger-children-l...
The median life-span of an American is 78. The median age of death from Covid is 82. The more rational statistic is life-years lost than # of deaths. If a toddler dies, they have lost 70+ years of life. If an 80 year old dies, they might have lost just a couple years of life. Economic hardships for young adults will reduce their lifespans by several years, not counting drug and alcohol addiction, suicide, etc.
If I could trade a few of my years at 80+ to ensure a better quality of life for my child I would take that in a second. Practically every parent would.
The right path forward is to take appropriate precautions to protect the vulnerable while everyone else goes back to work. We may still have a lot to learn, but we know so much more about this disease than we did when we took "14 days to slow the spread." It's time to open up.
I'm glad you're willing to nobly sacrifice your life, but what if we could save those 10,000 kids per month without opening back up? What if we could save more lives by keeping essential services operational and non-essential businesses closed with targeted government interventions to keep people fed and housed? Would you be willing to do that?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/07/17/870483369/your...
https://bgr.com/2020/08/11/coronavirus-immunity-common-cold-...
If someone tells you that they have a plan to stop the coronavirus from being a public health issue at all, they're misinformed or untruthful.
The best evidence we have indicates that recovered patients will retain a high level of immunity for at least several years.
https://www.jimmunol.org/content/early/2020/09/03/jimmunol.2...
At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought it would be similar to a more deadly flu or something with long-lived immunity for a given strain once you got it. At this point, I am assuming less and less. We found it wasn't even a lung disease, but a disease of the angiotensin system. We assumed ventilators would help, but often they just mushed damaged lung tissue. There's been tons of snake-oil cures floating around too. People are starting to show evidence of long term damage. Let's measure things before we make irreversible decisions.
The fact that we've spent the past six months like this makes it too hard for many to accept that it might not have been the right choice.
The best thing for the economy would be a trusted vaccine and/or case counts going down.
Disagree. I think the best thing would be better therapeutics. If you get rid of the death sentence (or make it extremely unlikely) that will be enough for people to resume almost all activities.
I ask this as a New York resident: how many restaurants is one life worth? I was here back at the peak of the COVID outbreak when there were refrigerated trucks being loaded with bodies because the morgues had run out of space. It deeply, deeply sucks that a lot of restaurants are going to close. I hope that in time others will reopen in their place... it’s an underreported fact that a lot of restaurants close every year, I’ve had it happen to many favorites. New ones come.
To me personally, that loss is a price I’m willing to pay to stop the exponential increase of a pandemic. Maybe you’re right, though. Time will tell. Maybe the economic devastation will ruin NYC for years. Or maybe we’ll get the “v shaped recovery” we’ve been promised. Either way it’s too early to tell.
"how many restaurants is one life worth?"
It would take quite a few restaurants. However, you are ignoring the fact that letting all of the restaurants close will also kill people. I don't know how large this effect is, but we also don't know how many people will get COVID due to restaurants being open. It's complicated.
As a society we are okay with people driving cars, yet we know automobile accidents kill people.
I would ask you: How many car trips are worth one life?
The question before us is to find the least bad answer - how do we save as many lives and livelihoods as possible? Of course every possible answer (including "do nothing and attempt to disclaim moral responsibility," which several governments seem to prefer) has a terrible cost. Some of those options are relatively less terrible.
(Personally, I think the city should lock down aggressively and also aggressively provide monetary relief to people negatively impacted, through taking on debt if needed, and figure it out later. If we don't survive this, the city loses its tax base anyway.)