You know, it’s not a dichotomy. It’s possible to implement temporary restrictions while providing support to help people remain employed.

Your attitude kind of glosses over the fact that the current unfolding catastrophe in the US is a result of a series of deliberate policy decisions and does not have to be like it is.

One in eight nursing home residents in Massachusetts has so far died of COVID-19.

Let’s be careful with flippant remarks about people dying when the measures we _have_ put in place have still left us with hundreds of thousands of people dead.

There are reasonable debates about how we handle the response to a pandemic in America. Let’s stick to those.

Norway (partial lockdown, schools still mostly open) compared to Sweden (little lockdown and talks of herd immunity): https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1327230581143465984

Note that Norway has seen less economic damage than Sweden.

Pre-pandemic the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line was the lowest it had been in decades. The rate for 2019 was 11.1% or 40.6 million people. Of course it has jumped significantly during the pandemic, but the question is how much and how quickly the number will return towards pre-pandemic numbers once the pandemic ends.

Nah.

The US has pursued a spectacularly inept constellation of policies that have killed granny and created an economic disaster.

The economy can't recover until the pandemic is controlled. Doing nothing about the pandemic to 'save the economy' will only make both the pandemic and the economy worse.

Making enough N95 masks, and forcing people to wear them, would have both kept granny safe and saved the economy. But, that didn't happen, so the US is stuck with the worst of both worlds.