We do NOT need to HEAR HIM LIVE. Let him make a recorded speech and then let his entourage take out the crazy parts and leave in the credible and helpful parts. That ought to nullify it.

As we have known, President Murder is KILLING PEOPLE who think he actually knows what the fuck he's talking about. Stopping his speeches from coming out live has to help.

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Where do you think people get the money to pay their rent?  To buy food?  Experts are predicting that 75% of restaurants are not going to survive this quarantine in the US.  Who works at those restaurants, the wealthy?  Millions of people...millions...have already lost their jobs.  Economists are predicting that by the end of quarantine if it goes on more than two months, we'll be at 30% unemployment.  For reference, the Great Depression had a 23% unemployment rate.  Weimar Germany had a 30% unemployment rate.  How many people do you think are going to die or have their lives shortened by poverty, civil unrest, and violence if that happens?  The US is 15% of the world's GDP.  How many people worldwide will suffer for a global economic depression?

The lives of our senior citizens and chronically ill are valuable.  They're not more valuable than the lives of everyone else.  When you're in a leadership position, you often don't get the option of making everyone happy or protecting everyone.  You have to make decisions.  And hopefully, you make decisions based on the common good.  Shutting things down for a short time to protect a small segment of the population may be for the common good.  Collapsing society in a quixotic quest to grant elderly baby boomers immortality is not.

Respect and understand the power of exponential growth. You give this free reign to spread and it will cover a major segment of the entire population in a matter of weeks.

And then? Then you have your hospitals entirely maxed out. You endanger the health of your healthcare staff. You endanger the life of anyone requiring any medical help of any kind. 

Every single ventilator in the US will not be close enough to cover the need for just coronavirus cases alone, forget about any other medical care that might be required.

Have a read of this article: LINK

Trump wants to 'reopen' the country by Easter. Really??

What a great idea - encourage millions to congregate in multi-generational groups to celebrate the holiday. By May 1st, hospitals will be over-run and churches will be busy with funerals.

AMAZING.

-C!

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The economy is human lives.  The economy is how I have a home and food for myself and my family. 

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How are you defining the at-risk population?

The medical literature suggests that a significant percentage of infected people require hospitalisation (we are not just talking about old people). Maybe 20% require hospitalisation and 5% intensive care. There are 8 million people in the NYC metro area alone. You send half of them back to work. 60% of them catch it (a guess). Now you have 2.4 million people infected (another guess). You have 480,000 hospitalisation cases (yes, a guess, but I don't think it's an overly pessimistic one). 

Current estimates are they'll need 140,000 beds in two weeks. That is already going to be a disaster. The sensible response cannot be to ramp up this disaster to even more catastrophic levels. Buying more time is crucial. Delaying infections by a couple of months gives more time to understand the risks of the virus, to find better treatments, to build more ventilators, to convert buildings to hospitals. In short, to save lives.

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I think the misunderstanding here is that I'm not denying any of that. I'm adding additional facts.  In two months, we'll have a 30% unemployment rate.  The country will have lost millions of jobs that it won't get back.  Unless the government freezes evictions, we'll have millions upon millions of homeless.  Even if they do freeze evictions, by June the US postal service will go bankrupt and close so quarantined people won't have any way to receive the things they need to live (LINK).  

For awhile, the government can just keep printing and handing out money, but with no economy behind it, mass inflation will kick in and that money will become worthless.

I agree with everything you say medically.  But that has to be balanced against the reality of the desolation of this country, and much of the world, that would be brought about by an economic depression.

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I'm not a Republican.  I'm a socialist.  I was against those tax cuts.  I've called Trump a human stain multiple times on this board. The reality is that the United States is not a socialist country.  As everyone on this board has been explaining to me in our election discussions, that's pie in the sky and the US isn't ready for it yet.

I think the US should guarantee everyone a job that pays a living wage, housing, healthcare, food, and clothing.  But only a handful of other people on this board do.  The groundwork for this wasn't laid over the last three years.  It was laid when FDR's project was repudiated.  The reason the US doesn't have excess beds and medical equipment is that we have a for-profit healthcare system.  If you tried to maintain excess capacity for an epidemic like this, your stockholders could sue you for not maximizing profits.

So since we're capitalists, the only way to do that is by working and working under exploitative conditions to boot.  What you're talking about is not letting poor and working people work to provide for themselves and their families.  Meaning they will end up homeless, hungry, and ultimately dead.

I don't want 2 million people (the CDC worst case estimate) to end up dead because the healthcare system is overwhelmed.  But how many people will end up dead with 100 million Americans are unemployed with no way to provide for themselves and their families and no prospects?  I don't want that to happen either.

We need to do whatever we can to mitigate both of those worst case scenarios at the same time.

  

So I'll discuss general economy. On the assumption that everyone gets $1000 dollars* - that IS the economy. People will get the money, and use it to go out and buy items - what they buy is somewhat incidental**. They buy stuff; businesses need people to work to manufacture it; jobs are created or re-filled, and those employees get paid; and then they plow that money back into the economy*** by buying more stuff.

Obviously, that's a bit simplistic view of the matter - but that's how I see it working. Mind you, all of this will be affected somewhat by accessibility, so the quarantine will affect it. But not completely; online services and delivery will keep it rolling. So I think that a cash infusion could "kick start" the economy, or at least allow it to continue at some functional degree before depression and collapse set in.

* That's not enough to purchase a car or furniture, or other items - but it's enough to keep buying the basics, and even a little more into entertainment.

** It has been proposed that these remitted funds could be a credit card type item, rather than a check to be cashed for money. That's a pretty good idea to me; if one has to purchase, rather than storing the cash, that will get things moving economically. And 'most everyone takes credit cards these days. Again, not a perfect solution; but perhaps a workable one.

*** The key to this is that Americans MUST buy; they cannot take this money and save it or invest it. Yes, that makes financial sense in normal times; hardly where we are today.