Originally Posted by e.j.:
I can't ever remember a time when soldiers went to war without having weapons to protect themselves and to fight against the enemy. I also can't remember a war when soldiers were asked to fight an invisible enemy and were victorious.
We have weapons, they are called masks, sanitization, our immune systems, testing, drugs that are showing promise, a healthcare system and a national effort to control this virus. If you are currently wearing a mask and going to the store to buy groceries, you are on the frontline combating the contraction of COVID-19. You can use the same protection to go anywhere else as you normally would with some exceptions. Staying in your home to keep yourself alive is extreme and can only last for so long. Would you consider never driving your car if you knew no one would die in car accidents ever again? I think the answer would be-no.
A destroyed economy means a destroyed America. That picture would produce civil unrest and unravel the fabric of society. That would create a type of devastation that no war has ever produced in American history.
Even with our best economy with a great GDP, we were still at our max debt of $23 trillion to GDP before this virus struck. We just added another two trillion and could well reach $6 trillion total by the end of the year. What makes this situation even worse is our GDP is now down 30% this quarter and getting worse. How do we pay down our debt? Answer—at this rate we never will.
If this current evaporation of our economy continues beyond six months, we will become a country controlled by a centralized government—meaning the government will own or control the private sector. Capitalism as we know it will cease to exist.
The federal reserve can not buy our economy. No one is saying that we should go back to doing things as before but we must adapt our economy to the challenges this virus creates.
Bottom line-big cities will economically collapse under quarantine. States and rural communities that are have natural distancing will survive or thrive.
The world was not prepared for this virus. The biggest error early on was with the government task force stating that face masks don’t work. We were left without protection for several weeks while the virus was able to spread. Face masks do work, sanitizing works and we should be going about our business now with these tools/weapons.
Now with testing, it appears that we have a somewhat better understanding of the mortality rate which may be much lower then previously feared. Many more seem to have already had this virus and were Asymptomatic and can now be counted. Finding and notifying those that are immune is an important metric to know. We must protect those that are vulnerable to this disease but that should not include stopping life for everyone else.