[pmoriarty]

There's likely to be massive job loss either way. At least this way there's a chance to keep our health care system from being overwhelmed as well.

Either way, we may be looking at an economic depression the likes of which hasn't been seen for a hundred years.

Unfortunately, the current government is very unlikely to offer a New Deal to get us out of it, and it remains to be seen what the voters who survive this pandemic will do about it.

[solidasparagus]

I'm doubtful about your first statement. People are resilient - I find it hard to imagine a maybe 2x increase in annual US deaths causing such widespread and complete shutdown of economic activity.

[pmoriarty]

The estimates that I've seen have ranged from 330k to 10 million deaths in the US.. and that's just directly from COVID-19 alone.

An overwhelmed health care system and lack of medicines and medical supplies is likely to cause even more deaths.

That's not to mention other possible deaths due to the ensuing chaos and social and economic disruption brought about by the above deaths, global political instability, and reduced supply and demand from the rest of the world as it battles this pandemic.

[carom]

400k people die from smoking related illnesses every year. Can we ban tobacco? How about sugar to prevent obesity related illnesses? I think these measure are reasonable, I think allowing other such stupid things is unreasonable.

How many people will die from climate change? It really feels like unless it is an uncontrolled threat to baby boomers we will not take action on it.

[arcticbull]

> 400k people die from smoking related illnesses every year. Can we ban tobacco?

400K people die from smoking related illnesses, as a result of consuming something they knew would do that to them. What we outlawed was second-hand smoke, where we prevented innumerable deaths of people who didn't get to choose whether they smoked: at bars, at restaurants, at casinos, on airplanes. That is a fair place to draw the line. If you want to kill yourself smoking, you know the risks, and so long as you're not impacting anyone else, have at it.

> How about sugar to prevent obesity related illnesses?

As in this case a debate should be had: personal liberty vs. companies who know they're selling a harmful product. The right place to draw the line could easily be to outlaw advertising of sugar-added products to children.

> I think these measure are reasonable, I think allowing other such stupid things is unreasonable.

Not going out to the detriment of others is far closer to second-hand smoking than to first-hand smoking so I'd wager an entire couple of decades of case law and precedent exists.

> How many people will die from climate change? It really feels like unless it is an uncontrolled threat to baby boomers we will not take action on it.

Boomers represent 22% of the US population as of 2018, and obviously, falling. If I remember my math right, democracy gives the youth a pretty big edge so they can't really pin this one on the boomers anymore.