Yea, Trophy is making a decision they feel is best for them and I actually agree with what they are doing. Go read Meeker’s latest tweet, I think it’s spot on . The point is, he has a choice to open (2 of his locations) and people will have the choice to go or not once they do open.
I just think it’s a very big problem to give Trophy that choice but not Person St., or Burial, or Slims, or Wilco etc. And what about the Cardnal? Bc they serve hotdogs can they open? I just feel like it was a poor leadership decision to roll out something this incomplete and full of grey areas, and inconsistencies. (Yes, I voted for Cooper but I disagree with what he’s doing right now. It is possible for people to be in both of those camps.)
As for the fear of a second wave, Its certainly there, but as of now it’s a prediction and possibility. We have states who opened and while they aren’t seeing the virus dissapear they are seeing deaths and hospitalizations continue to decline. Testing way up and % positive falling. Nowhere in the US has seenif any major surges YET. JPMorgans latest data explains the same thing in great detail. So instead of politicizing everything why can’t we just say we really don’t know, and with our local economy on life support and losing more small businesses everyday, why can’t we allow all companies to ease into reopening, all with STRICT guidelines?
Again, I just strongly feel that we need to give all of the people who took the ultimate risk of opening a small business in our city the opportunity to stay afloat. If it’s a certain failure we’ll have to shut it down and they’ll collapse anyway. But if it’s not then we’ll have saved them.
Another 3 to 5 weeks of shut down is not going to kill this virus. I really hope we can come together and find an answer that keeps us safe and also allows businesses to have a fighting chance to survive
I know many will disagree, and I completely understand. None of us know what the right move is, but I hope this forum can be a place where real discussion (not poisoned by partisanship) can take place.
The middle path is what we actually have taken, and it’s almost been the worst of both worlds. The economy has been wrecked but thousands and thousands have died but the virus has not been eradicated.
Except the virus was never going to be eradicated because half the country was always going to have to work so that the other half could stay home and play it safe. People were always going to die and staying home was always meant to slow it down and spread it out over time so that the hospitals would not be overwhelmed. Your expectations are completely unattainable.
Joe, no one here is saying we shouldn’t have locked down (at least I’m not). No one is saying we should just go full-Sweden and open up with no guidelines or social distancing measures in place. See this is where logical debates go awry. Just because someone disagrees with restaurants opening and not bars, or pools opening and not playgrounds, doesn’t mean we are COVID truthers who believe herd immunity was the answer instead of lockdown.
I guess we will just disagree. You believe the raw data we have gotten back doesn’t show you enough to warrant anything being open. The hard result of that (if continued much longer) will be a loss of most small businesses in our city. Empty store fronts. Empty apt building and office buildings. A loss of most of the progress we’ve made. People will be forced to leave. That means a shrinking tax base. It comes at a very significant cost.
Maybe that cost is unavoidable. But there are some that want to take a calculated risk to see if it’s not. The real data suggest that we may be able to open up GRADUALLY and save some of our local economy. It’s a risk. We take risk everyday and we are taking a larger one than usual now, because the cost of not taking that risk isn’t hypothetical. It’s real and it’s large.
Multiple countries have had their covid cases go almost down to zero because they put the right kinds of procedures in place. Their economies are now open AND they haven’t had the death toll we’ve had — because they did the right things. Yes, people were always going to die but the kind of death toll we’ve seen and will continue to see was avoidable.
Relaxing restrictions will increase the death toll. People will die who wouldn’t otherwise die. Anyone who advocates for reopening should be clear about that.
Sweden has had guidelines and restrictions. At risk populations have been told to stay home. Social distancing is encouraged. People are working from home. Here’s a rundown:
And yet, as I’ve said, they’ve had 10 times the deaths of their neighbors and the highest death tolls per capita in Europe.
I feel terribly for businesses and their employees. But the solution is government help in this time of crisis until the crisis is over. No business needs to close. No one needs to go without the money they need to survive. We absolutely can do what is necessary to not needlessly kill people AND not cause businesses to face the crisis alone. We just need to decide as a society to do it.
I really don’t want to take this political (nanny state vs right to work) but it will be interesting to see how restaurants employees respond to coming back to work. Many folks are making more on unemployment than they normally would make working (I know several people that have told me this from their experience). Restaurants and bars will have a hard time enticing their lower wage workers to give up that UE benefit to come back to work… And that is actually a pretty scary long term ramification of how our response will shape the new normal.
Personally I’ve coined the term “Coronavirus Exceptionalism” to describe the acute fear and armchair experts this virus has caused
Thanks Joe. I apologize. In that entire post I made, with the point being risk/reward or cost/benefit analysis of opening, you decided pointing out an inconsistency in my remark about Sweden actually having A FEW guidelines and some measures in place. The point is, Sweden was more relaxed than us by a long-shot. You’re making that point yourself by voicing the fact that they have 10x more dead than their neighbors.
I’d like you to address the main point. Your answer is close it all down until we have a vaccine and give everyone universal basic income. And actually, I’m for UBI. But unfortunately, Gov. Cooper can’t issue everyone UBI.
So there is a world of opinion out there and hypotheticals and then there is a world of hard truths and realities. Given our current circumstances, you seem to be willing to sacrifice the economy, no? In return you are hoping for no loss of life.
I’m not judging you for that, that is your opinion. However, I am disagreeing with it because I think we are faced with a reality where there are no good choices. We have the data. We do know the average age of death for COVID is around 80 years old. We also know average age of death in the US is around 80 years old. That doesn’t mean young people aren’t affected or dying. They are. But IMO we have to look at it as a risk/reward situation. How SURE are we that a 2nd wave hits us? How SURE are we that if we keep businesses closed they will shut down? How SURE are we that unemployment or financial ruin will lead to negative outcomes (drugs, mental health problems, even death)?
This is a very complicated situation and honestly I"m a little disappointed that I’m not hearing that type of hard honesty in the national conversation. It’s like if you want to take that calculated risk, you are labeled as someone with blood on your hands or a right wing nut. What about those of us who are liberal, but feel the way our gov’t is handling this situation may not be correct. Do we shut up bc it might hurt them in November? Or do we speak out because we literally want to work on finding a solution that minimizes death as much as possible but also minimizes financial ruin as much as possible and believe that isn’t happening in a fair way?
Pointing out the reality of what Sweden is doing was important to do because these Phased reopenings here and throughout the US are moving toward what Sweden has been doing all along. As a result, we should expect a similar outcome.
Of course Cooper can’t institute universal basic income anymore than he can enforce social distancing. But it must be pointed out that the so-called choice between people’s lives and the economy is a false one. There is another way. People aren’t being asked to risk their lives for the economy. They’re being asked to risk their lives because politicians would rather not spend the money to save their lives.
Ok yeah, this has gotten way off topic. @dtraleigh, you can move this (or remove this). I thought the restaurant/bar thing was a healthy discussion to have. I still think it is, but obviously its over-running this thread.
It’s all good. I do think some of the points made are relevant. However, my quality assurance team () is starting to get upset so maybe you guys make your final points and move on.
Sweden’s numbers are average for Europe. Any government decision taken towards the coronavirus, regardless of strictness, has been in an effort to flatten the curve not end the pandemic cold. It is an open question if now is the best time to open up, but we are talking on a timeline of weeks. We can’t really entertain the notion that we should remain shutdown for months or years waiting for a cure. That’s neither good public policy, nor good scientifically sound advice.
Big thing for me is that the hospitals here didn’t get creamed like NYC or Lombardy. So, we have capacity if people take simple precautions - handwashing, masking, eating alfresco - to minimize exposure while reopening.
I just gotta be extra careful as a doc to protect myself, though.
My final point:
Joe, I am also an idealist. I also hope for an omni-beneficial outcome. My initial opinion of COVID was that it was terrifying and the US was not going to take it seriously enough. I was one of the first people wearing masks to grocery stores, which I still do. However, after digging into it the issue has become more and more fuzzy. The virus isn’t spreading as bad here as it initially did in Wuhan, Milan, NYC, etc. (for obvious reasons). Our hospitals have not even come close to hitting their worst-case projections from late March/early April. There is strong evidence that there have been many officially counted COVID deaths that were never confirmed to actually be COVID fatalities. And of course the death rate is hardly credible considering the lack of testing…
The most interesting thing I’ve found on this journey however is this study from Harvard (namedrop lol) that estimated 260k additional cancer deaths from the 2008-2011 recession. That is in addition to the known suicides, increased heart disease, and substance abuse resulting from economic recessions.
When we say “choose between the economy and human lives”, we need to remember that “the economy” is human life. Without the fruits of the economic engine, we are all homeless naked monkeys wandering through an overpopulated earth fighting over rabbits and fresh drinking water. This unemployment is insane and will likely lead to economic issues for years…decades… We also need to remember that COVID is a public health crises, but so is heart disease. So is cancer. So is alcoholism. So is type II diabetes. Many of these comorbidities that complicate COVID patients and cause death, they are products of poor economics and a broken food system! My wife is a cancer nurse, and 95% of her patients have either 1) hypertension 2) heart disease or 3) diabetes.
I don’t claim to know anything about anything. But I believe what we are dealing with is a large, immensely complicated, intertwined and interconnected system, and we are trying to compartmentalize it and argue over this and that (the Gift of the West). It’s all the same thing. A death from suicide is a death from COVID is a death from cancer is a death from a drunk driver that turned to alcohol during unemployment. Who knows how the virus and shutdown will affect things that are not even in the discussion yet… Birth Rates? Excessive use of artificial fertilizer to jump start agriculture once farm labor returns? A Mortgage crises once unemployment benefits are lifted and there are less jobs for people to return to?
The initial goal was to flatten the curve and help hospitals, and we accomplished that. Now we need to tend to the other parts of the system that are damaged and heal them… Possibly forget about the virus for a week or two.
This is going off-topic, and I’ll throw it out and shut up. All-cause mortality is going to be up for this year. Just a stroll through the ICU is telling. Ventilator-Ventilator-Ventilator-Empty-Empty-Ventilator-Empty…
You get the pattern. Either it was quiet, or it was another catastrophic presentation. But, the ER numbers are starting to creep up to some degree of normalcy. So, folks are less fearful of coming out of isolation.
There will be volumes written about this experience in the professional journals - and squeezing out reports from non-COVID conditions.
Any way, I’m ready to go out for more than just Char-Grill on Friday nights.
I’ll take my chances. Time to open up. The average age of people who die from this thing is just about the average age at which people die. This is getting absurd. Its clear now that the death rate is not anywhere close to the early estimates. There are no shortages of ventilators, the curve has been flattened, 1 in 5 doctors of been furloughed for gods sake! We can’t afford to be shut down any longer. I’m about sick of the hard line far left solutions to this - i.e. stay home and give me money.
If you are at risk - stay home.
If you are sick - stay home.
If you are scared - stay home.
If you are lazy and don’t want to go back to work - kiss my ass.
) is starting to get upset so maybe you guys make your final points and move on.