Crystal Ball Time - What do you think is going to come of all this?
In a few weeks, most places will start to come out of this lockdown event and there is an expectation that there will be some new kind of normal, much like there was a new normal after the 9-11 Event almost 2 decades ago.
What do you think the 'New Normal Post COVID-19) is going to be like? I will post my thoughts in the comments below and hope to hear others perspective too.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.The current mortality rates for the US overall appear to be about 3.5%. That is dividing the deaths by the number of confirmed cases. That's a lot more than 1%, but it is a lot lower than other causes of death.
TomMcGiverin
Level 8
Apr 20, 2020
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My personal takeaway from how this pandemic has manifested is that it is a horrible disease that kills a small percentage of the population in a horrible way, essentially death by slow suffocation. What we haven't seen yet is a massive death toll in percentages of the total population, fairly large numbers to be sure and tens of thousands of deaths is a horrible result but we could just as well count the tens of thousands of automobile related deaths or suicides or prescription drug overdoses and find a horrible death toll. What we haven't seen is an overwhelming and massively disproportionate government reaction to something like this pandemic COVID-19.
I am starting to twig to the idea that the erosion of civil liberties, the economic upheaval and the reset of the global financial markets will be the real outcomes of this pandemic. Full disclosure, I have been one of the earliest adopters of aseptic protocols to limit contagion, my education background is in microbiology so I took this virus seriously back in February. That said I have seen very few deaths, relatively speaking, from this virus but I have seen The FED expand its balance sheet multiple times and governments around the world turn up the money printing presses to maximum in an effort to 'combat the virus'. This is something that I haven't seen done for automobile safety, nobody shut down the highways until 99% safe vehicle were developed, nobody shutdown all the fast food restaurants until new and healthful menus were installed, and nobody locked people in their homes until it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was safe to go outside.
People are going to die from this disease, something on the order of a very bad flu season, they will die in a horrible manner and that is scary to me personally but it is looking like a 1% death rate which is a big number when considered on a global scale but not so high that you would notice it in the course of your everyday life. The restrictions that will be put on the general population in order to fight the virus and the economic impacts of the great depression that is already here but not noticeable yet will kill far more people. That's my opinion, love to hear yours.
Surfpirate
Level 9
Apr 20, 2020
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@ToolGuy In general I would agree with your rebuttal and I took personal measures based upon those projections but the numbers have not added up, not even close to original projects that have been downgraded and revised even so far as the metrics used to calculate the death toll. I am happy that the death toll is lower than projected but the scientist in me wants to know why the models were so far off the mark. My concern is that the death toll resulting from the economic upheaval will be far greater than what was avoided by flattening the curve. The virus is real but is it the viral threat that the media and government have led us to believe? Was the cure worse than the disease and did powerful, minority players use this event for their own benefit and to the detriment of the majority? I don't know and I won't know until this thing plays out of the next year to 18 months but I would like to know what others think, even if I don't agree with them.
1of5:
I'm not even going to try to guess what a new normal will be until another wave of this hits and the causes of that wave (opening society back up to soon, people breaking quarantine, whatever) is determined.
One quibble I do have is that your using automobile deaths and fast food menus as equivilant is misleading - if the car crash up the street could be tied to the car crash on the other side of town you bet auto fatalities would be treated differently. Just look the continuing expanse of safety features autos are now required to have as standard as an example of the government's response/responsibilities to reduce auto fatalities. Different issues require different means of combating them - picking the right one is the tricky part. You can't handle accidents the same way you handle poor diet or diseases.
@1of5 Granted, each accident is different and unique in its own way, however, taken as a whole the design of the highways, safety features in vehicles and driver error are quite consistent when viewed as a greater whole. Look at how long safety features were delayed by automaker lobby groups, plenty of deaths could have been prevented had steps been taken sooner. One of the underlying conditions that determines COVID death rates is morbid obesity and diabetes, both of which have been linked to the fast food industry. The fast food industry has slowly changed their menus to more healthy options but only because of the profits to be made by meeting those demands and this took decades, many more preventable deaths.
I definitely agree that there will most likely be more waves of contagion and resultant deaths as the people are let out of confinement, probably 2 more waves this year if I had to guess. What I do wonder about is how great the death toll will be based upon the actual lethality of this virus compared to what we have been told so far by the media, compared to the resultant death toll from the economic impacts of the shutdowns. I am all for quarantines if that is what is required but if only a small segment of the population needs to be quarantined to protect them from the virus and flatten the curve then why have a general quarantine and the resulting economic impact on the average person? The big corporations can be damned, they can weather this economic storm but they are also the first ones in line for compensation from the taxpayer, the little guy who loses his job or his small business does not have that luxury and will be the last one to get compensation.
1of5:
@Surfpirate the point of my quibble is that each has to be addressed in the best possible manor unique to each ones means of lethality - which the government tries to do. In your examples it's the corporations holding back the government from trying to help us - a problem that proceeds both of our births for centuries. Solving that is a much different animal but no less vital.
We only have a vauge idea how widespread it actually is, so all numbers are just best guesses at this point. We don't even know who should be quarantined at this point so a general quarantine is about the only option until we know more.
The one thing I will predict is that socialism will be viewed in a more favorable light as capitalism continues to fail people, but no idea to what extent.
@1of5 One of the questions I keep asking myself is why is there not more wide spread testing so it can be determined just who is safe to go back to work and who is still under threat? This does not seem to be a priority.
Enjoy being online again!
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