[earthtourist]

"the containment effort for individual cases is now over"

Most countries didn't even attempt containment, as far as I can tell. Leaders seem to have surrendered to mass infection at the opening of the battle.

It seems pathetic and criminally negligent. It's an intentional trade of hundreds of thousands of lives (potentially millions) in exchange for some unpredictable economic gain. This could conceivably make sense if an uncontained financial crisis would lead to even more human suffering than an uncontained infection.

But it seems that we're likely to end up paying in a massive number of lives and a massive amount of money. When an aggressive containment strategy might have cost us primarily in terms of money.

[stefan_]

I had a tweet from Flightradar24 show up on my timeline earlier:

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238102765081186306...

It kinda hit me immediately why this whole containment thing wasn't really working out. And this was March 12! How on earth do we tell people to not go outside, but months after it all started there are still thousands of airplanes flying.

Honorary mention for the countries that sent military transport airplanes to rescue 100 citizens from China like an asteroid was about to hit it and kept them in barracks for weeks, but have this kind of air traffic streaming in.

[earthtourist]

Yeah, it explains why the testing isn't happening as well. Why bother doing surveillance testing if you've already surrendered to a 70% infection rate?

There's no point. Better to just let people come to the hospital if they absolutely need to, rather than risk people coming to the ER just because they tested positive.

It is possible that Italy has made a mistake in doing as many tests as they have. I'm not sure what the numbers are but it could be that the addition of infected-but-not-seriously-ill patients is a major problem.

So maybe this anti-surveillance testing approach does make sense once you've conceded the battle to contain the infection.

[jpster]

Following your line of thought, giving people easy ways to self-diagnose as quickly as possible is critical. Can we at least deliver flu & cold medicine to as many people as humanly possible? For free? So that they can, themselves, eliminate Covid19 as a possible cause.

That will help flatten the curve.

In concert, universal healthcare at point of service is a must.

As is propping up the people via direct material aid. Food. Rent money. Paid sick leave.

I thought I heard Trump say that interest on federal student loans would be “waived”. Did he mean forgive or defer? I don’t know if it’s at all true because he is a compulsive liar.

If it is true, great. But insufficient.

What we also need is a debt jubilee and infra & public investments that are truly net-positive for the neediest.

This will lead to inflation. Which by the way will be sorely needed. And by every affected country. I’m curious about the MMT community‘s point of view on this.

[s-]

Keep in mind a lot of those flights are flying empty due to use it or loose it rules.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-some-airlines-ar...