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At this point, it is hard if not impossible to deny that the global covid 19 response has been a grotesque over-reaction.
It may have been reasonable to ask people to stay at home for some short period, like the original 2 week edict, however continuing the shut down and in fact increasing the scope of the shutdown has proven utterly disastrous to not only the U.S. economy, but to the world economy in general.
And at some point, you have to ask quite possibly the 2 most important questions we can possibly consider. (both, btw, supplied by other posters in the Corona thread.)
1) The question is why, when we as a global community have faced worse viruses....did we do THIS?
This is really the key question. The most important thing we can possibly understand about the global response to covid-19. Ultimately, there can really only be 2 "main" reasons that the world at large would subject itself to the kind of social and economic suicide we have all been subjected to by our leadership.
A) The virus is much much worse than we've been told. We are truly being ordered to stay at home and hide because honestly, the reality is covid-19 can and will eradicate a tremendous percentage of the world's population. However we are not being informed of the true direness of the situation because doing so would induce a global panic.
Ok. That seems extreme, but we have to understand that the ENTIRE WORLD has been forced to essentially shut down all its economies, all its production and the peoples of all those countries have been ordered in to a waiting pattern whose end is utterly undefined. There are people suggesting this lockdown could and should remain THROUGH 2021 (see the Governor of N.J.). This is unprecedented in history. While we have had epidemics and pandemics, the world has NEVER completely shut down like this. There must be some very significant reason or explanation and even a 4.5% death rate simply doesn't justify what we've done.
B) The goal of this economic and social shutdown is something far different than the containment of a virus that may kill as many as 4 to 6 percent of the people who get it, and largely focus on the elderly and immune-deficient. If this economic shut-down was limited to a continent or a hemisphere, it may be something we could write off as a major power-grab by some nefarious, powerful force. But the fact that this is essentially a world-wide phenomenon suggests that such a power grab is much much more ubiquitous and sinister than we can realistically imagine.
Uh... that's a bit more out there, but consider - If covid-19 is NOT very nearly a global-extinction event, why on earth is Earth reacting so ridiculously against its self interest? The most likely scenario we are facing here is that the economy is horribly, even critically damaged for decades. Just because an "open up" order is given in the next few weeks does not mean that ALL the businesses that closed down will be able to reopen. And those that do will likely NOT hire back all the people they let go. We will have purposefully and irreparably cut the throat of our own economy as have nearly every country in the world. And we ADDED to that self-harm by borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars against a lightly regulated entity that balances this and most other countries budgets and accounts. We have willingly, even frantically sold our souls to the Federal Reserve for a handful of money we can't even properly use.
So, let's consider where that takes us, logically. You're a reasonable person with a relatively decent sense of fiscal responsibility.
- Your gross national product has just been slashed by as much as 25%. And that's probably generous.
- Your social services load has increased literally exponentially with millions and millions of people going on assistance AND you've decided to dramatically increase benefits to ALL recipients.
- You've accumulated trillions of dollars in debt to fund the above programs and others whose only goal is to essentially shore up failing economic reserves both privately and publicly
How do you solve that problem? How do you even begin to balance that equation?
There is no other choice. There is no possible remedy except to increase taxes and normalize the world economy. You MUST (and we love this expression now) flatten the economic curve by developing and maintaining a global economy. And the ONLY thing in such an economy that has value is the work of the citizenry. This is what the U.S. entire economic structure is already built on. We pay taxes, based on our work and production and that revenue is used (laughably) to pay some small fraction of the interest owed on "money" (read electronic numbers) loaned to us and other countries of the world by the Federal Reserve.
Coming up, the REAL question you need to consider in light of the above...
It may have been reasonable to ask people to stay at home for some short period, like the original 2 week edict, however continuing the shut down and in fact increasing the scope of the shutdown has proven utterly disastrous to not only the U.S. economy, but to the world economy in general.
And at some point, you have to ask quite possibly the 2 most important questions we can possibly consider. (both, btw, supplied by other posters in the Corona thread.)
1) The question is why, when we as a global community have faced worse viruses....did we do THIS?
This is really the key question. The most important thing we can possibly understand about the global response to covid-19. Ultimately, there can really only be 2 "main" reasons that the world at large would subject itself to the kind of social and economic suicide we have all been subjected to by our leadership.
A) The virus is much much worse than we've been told. We are truly being ordered to stay at home and hide because honestly, the reality is covid-19 can and will eradicate a tremendous percentage of the world's population. However we are not being informed of the true direness of the situation because doing so would induce a global panic.
Ok. That seems extreme, but we have to understand that the ENTIRE WORLD has been forced to essentially shut down all its economies, all its production and the peoples of all those countries have been ordered in to a waiting pattern whose end is utterly undefined. There are people suggesting this lockdown could and should remain THROUGH 2021 (see the Governor of N.J.). This is unprecedented in history. While we have had epidemics and pandemics, the world has NEVER completely shut down like this. There must be some very significant reason or explanation and even a 4.5% death rate simply doesn't justify what we've done.
B) The goal of this economic and social shutdown is something far different than the containment of a virus that may kill as many as 4 to 6 percent of the people who get it, and largely focus on the elderly and immune-deficient. If this economic shut-down was limited to a continent or a hemisphere, it may be something we could write off as a major power-grab by some nefarious, powerful force. But the fact that this is essentially a world-wide phenomenon suggests that such a power grab is much much more ubiquitous and sinister than we can realistically imagine.
Uh... that's a bit more out there, but consider - If covid-19 is NOT very nearly a global-extinction event, why on earth is Earth reacting so ridiculously against its self interest? The most likely scenario we are facing here is that the economy is horribly, even critically damaged for decades. Just because an "open up" order is given in the next few weeks does not mean that ALL the businesses that closed down will be able to reopen. And those that do will likely NOT hire back all the people they let go. We will have purposefully and irreparably cut the throat of our own economy as have nearly every country in the world. And we ADDED to that self-harm by borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars against a lightly regulated entity that balances this and most other countries budgets and accounts. We have willingly, even frantically sold our souls to the Federal Reserve for a handful of money we can't even properly use.
So, let's consider where that takes us, logically. You're a reasonable person with a relatively decent sense of fiscal responsibility.
- Your gross national product has just been slashed by as much as 25%. And that's probably generous.
- Your social services load has increased literally exponentially with millions and millions of people going on assistance AND you've decided to dramatically increase benefits to ALL recipients.
- You've accumulated trillions of dollars in debt to fund the above programs and others whose only goal is to essentially shore up failing economic reserves both privately and publicly
How do you solve that problem? How do you even begin to balance that equation?
There is no other choice. There is no possible remedy except to increase taxes and normalize the world economy. You MUST (and we love this expression now) flatten the economic curve by developing and maintaining a global economy. And the ONLY thing in such an economy that has value is the work of the citizenry. This is what the U.S. entire economic structure is already built on. We pay taxes, based on our work and production and that revenue is used (laughably) to pay some small fraction of the interest owed on "money" (read electronic numbers) loaned to us and other countries of the world by the Federal Reserve.
Coming up, the REAL question you need to consider in light of the above...
