I was listening to the television today. The Governor of New York made the following statement. (I paraphrase). "If it takes us shutting down our entire economy to save 5,000 lives, we will do it. Life is invaluable. We will do whatever it takes to save a life."
This is so wrong.
In fact, no society has the economic capability to save all lives. The world we live in has limits. If you have ever studied power curves you know that it takes more and more resources to achieve smaller and smaller results as you approach trying to attain 100% results. All systems that work understand this. One simply does not have the resources to achieve perfection. You will use up all your resources in the attempt.
Our society has been on this "avoid all pain and all loss no matter the cost" for a long time now. There is no way we can afford to do this. Now I will and do accept that this pandemic is one that may call for extraordinary efforts. But believe me, on this, the pain and loss from shutting down our entire world economy will be much greater and devastating to people than our leaders are calculating or acknowledging. They glibly say we should all be in this together for the greater good. But they will not be the ones who will see massive losses of their incomes as all the hourly and gig economy workers will. They will not be the ones on the margins of society who see the equation of their well-being tip to unstainable. They will make sure that the elite are made whole but the ordinary people will be the ones who will take years upon years to recover as they always do.
A healthy biosphere as to cull itself. Not all can or should survive. (And believe me, I know I am in the high-risk group that this disease is targeting and may well be the one culled!) Fight this yes. But understand that there is should be an acceptable level of loss. That is reality.
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