Rush pointed out yesterday that Disney is losing $30 million a day during the shut down...
The key is looking at who benefit from the shutdown and who don't.
The more you complain the faster the draconian part is over.
There is no such thing as perfect safety. That was true before this mess started and remains true now. I am going to make a suggestion: public health can be protected with reasonable measures. Gradual lifting makes sense.
There is absolutely no reason why outdoor economic activities, such as construction, cannot happen immediately (if it ok for government construction to happen, it is ok for private construction to happen). There are many other businesses that could open right away with reasonable social distancing.
We imposed social distancing to avoid overwhelming health care. The worst predictions (two million dead and hospitals overwhelmed) never happened. The initial models were flawed. Coronavirus is a real risk to some people, but not one that justifies driving the world econony into a depression.
Waiting for a vaccine, which is more than a year down the road and which may never come, is not an viable solution for now. By then, the majority of American will probably have had coronavirus. Many of you have already had it and don't even know it (many people experience no symptoms). We have to do a balancing of public health concerns with economic impacts. Both are critically important.
There are definitely vulnerable people who should stay inside and avoid coronavirus. Those are the people who should be self isolating.
As for big public events like theme parks and sporting events, there are ways to open those up as things move forward. But the suggestion we will keep them shut down for a year and a half while a vaccine is developed seems problematic.
Daily Caller: G7 Leaders Join Trump In Calling For World Health Organization Crackdown and Coronavirus is waking up the world about Communist China
I was kind of surprised that all sportsball was cancelled, worldwide. I would think they could play it in empty arenas and stadiums, keeping the players under quarantine from the public. That way the circus would keep going. Those, as we are learning, get the bread out in a timely manner is proving to be more challenging than they hoped.
ReplyDeleteThe economics of not playing are probably less painful than playing to empty stadiums (even with higher tv revenue possible). Plus they had to see how bad this problem is. I suspect we will see something happen with baseball and football, but probably not with stadiums at full capacity (at least right away).
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