Enough is enough

[aadler]

Re: coronavirus lockdown

I’m getting kind of tired of this stuff.

In my case, it’s very much a “first-world problems” matter. I haven’t taken any financial hits, haven’t had to do without food or necessary supplies, haven’t had to deal with personal illness in myself or anyone close to me (anyone at all that I know, for that matter). Susan and I both have been able to work from home with minimal disruption, so I haven’t actually lost anything. Even compared to other Americans, we’re doing quite well and have been quite lucky.

I’m tired of it, though. I’m ready for it to be over.

Susan has been a top-level nurse for her entire professional life, and my own Masters is in healthcare information systems, so we have a certain familiarity with the overall principles involved in the present situation. From the beginning we wondered if the measures being taken were an overreaction, and both wound up going with the perspective that, when there are enough unknowns, you aren’t going far enough unless you’re going too far (i.e., take drastically more precautions than you anticipate needing, until you have enough information to know more certainly how much you DO need). Then, when more and more measures were instituted, we continued going with it, because the data were still coming in and the cost of not taking action was still potentially much greater than the costs of the actions being taken …

It’s gone past that, though.

We’re not talking about the Black Death here; even the most pessimistic statistics show 95% survival in those hospitalized with coronavirus. In 1918, the so-called Spanish flu killed anywhere from 500,000 to 850,000 Americans, at fatality rates up to 10% of all infected cases. Our nation has been all but completely shut down — with highly placed people calling for the immobilization to continue for anywhere from three more months to another year — over something that has caused about as many deaths as a particularly severe flu season.

The virulence of the pandemic is not especially high. The response, however, is unprecedented. It’s almost as if, every time things fail to turn out as disastrously as predicted, elites somewhere start screaming, No, we have to clamp down harder! The failure of their projections doesn’t deter them. The increasingly higher survival rates doesn’t deter them. The cost to the nation’s economy doesn’t deter them. They’re getting power out of this, and they want more of it.

Me, I just want to get back something like my normal life.

I want to go inside fast-food places instead of always having to do drive-through. I want to be able to sit in a bar and drink a beer. I want the library to not be closed. I want events scheduled months in advance to stop being canceled. I want to have dinner with friends, instead of Skype time.

And, yeah, along the line I’d like to see people whose situation isn’t as fortunate as mine — and these are people I do know, whereas I don’t know any actual coronavirus cases — not lose their jobs, and not be put on leave-without-income for months at a time, and not be bankrupted in small businesses they spent years building up with their own income and labor and personal risk.

The cost is too high, and it isn’t being paid by the leaders issuing the decrees, and it needs to be brought to an end.

Comments

[opalescence.livejournal.com]

We are in much the same position, at this point, and I feel the same way. Although I will not be going into public places for a good bit (high risk), I think others should be able. We need to reopen the country.

[aadler]

I’m still maintaining a more-than-minor degree of caution. I just don’t believe the need is as great nationwide — and certainly not in every place in the nation — as those in power try to keep insisting.