[big_chungus]

For this not to bankrupt the nation and retard our growth for the next twenty-five years, we need to all go back to work, today. Even if coronavirus kills a million people, the rest will probably be fine in the long term. If we shut down the economy, three hundred million will be affected. This "flattening the curve" business is clearly not worth it.

You cannot shut the economy. There is only so much we can borrow. The fed is buying debt right and left, and the government surely doesn't want to borrow money and remove that liquidity. So, the fed will buy t-bills instead and probably have to inflate the currency to pay for it all. We could end up spending orders of magnitude than 2 trillion on more hand-outs, so we could end up with another period of stagflation. Unless we want to retard our growth and prosperity for the next 25 years, we all have to go back, consequences aside. Vulnerable people need to stay home for months until this blows over; it's not the responsibility of the rest of us to lose our jobs for the sake of a few others. Doctors say we have to stay home, but as doctors, they naturally want to prioritize health. As the saying goes, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Like many other problems, there are diminishing returns as we approach either extreme of opening the economy or shutting it down. This extreme clearly isn't working. The at-risk million stay home; everyone else goes to work.

[Slartie]

How do you expect to "motivate" people to just go to work, spend money in restaurants, fly around, take cruises...as if there was nothing going on, while at the same time millions of people are dying? Everyone is going to have someone in their family who dies because of this virus. And they're not going to die silently - you'll have crazy imagery of emergency rooms spilling over with patients circulating among the public. And I'm not speaking about "media hype" - since this will hit all hospitals, people will just have to look left and right in their hometown to see the catastrophe evolving.

Are you going to plan to force people to take vacations, eat out, do their "normal" stuff, while this is unfolding? Because without excessive force, nobody will do that. You'll have open businesses, but they won't have any customers for months while the above-described pans out. And probably for quite a while to come, because this event will rip a gaping wound into the conscience of the American people, probably larger than 9/11 did.

[big_chungus]

The worst-case projection is 1.7 million: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-est....

If the media hadn't spent weeks fearmongering and spinning this as some killer exotic plague (rather than something that hits at-risk populations much harder but is survivable for most others). Only a few percent of younger people have needed intensive care. It won't make too much of a difference anyway; we'll still hit a peak and have a colossal shortage of everything. The doctors will have to make a choice: do we save the young person with more years and more productivity ahead of him, or do we save the eighty-year-old? Guess which will be chosen?

There is no pretty solution to this problem. A lot of people will get hurt. I wish everyone would stop staring like a hungry child at the government, begging it to "do something". The government cannot solve this problem. Stealing more money from those who remain in work won't solve anything. This is precisely the time to reduce taxes massively, completely gut every entitlement program, and strangle the bureaucracy that caused this mess until the nation has a chance to prosper.

EDIT: Replying to Slartie comment here, as HN is rate-limiting.

What is "navigating through"? The government can't arrest those who violate its un-constitutional orders, lest it risk spreading disease further. Why can the precious bureaucracy solve this? How? It'll do something, that's for sure, but that's because everyone keeps screaming to "do something".

You're looking at this absolutely the wrong way. This is the time to massively cut taxes, promote supply-side growth, and remove almost all entitlements. It is the job of each American to be responsible for his own welfare, not for Big Daddy Government to swoop in and save him. The Nanny State strikes again. Twelve-hundred-dollar hand-outs to everyone? Disgraceful. We're turning into a nation of lazy mooching welfare queens.

> Now tell me again that the "government cannot solve this problem".

> Even the anti-government Republicans currently seem to look to the government as the only instance potentially capable of solving this problem.

Who said I was a Republican, or agreed with the party, or approved of its actions? I don't. It's a disgrace.

EDIT: Replying to ss2003 here, as HN is rate-limiting.

Yes, but entitlements too. They make up most of our expenses, not military.

EDIT: Replying to jahaja here, as HN is rate-limiting.

Why do you say that? You'd really saddle the next generation with debt to pay for a shutdown that saves mostly older people? That's no more fair than a million people being killed by a virus. If you could choose that everyone looses his job or one person dies, what would you choose? Why? What about a hundred people dying? Thousand? Where's you're bright line?

[ss2003]

We should be cutting the bloated military budget not entitlements.

[lgleason]

So far, if the 3rd bill makes it into law, we will be at well over 2 trillion dollars trying to keep the economy from imploding. Many say that it won't be enough and we will be looking at more bills and A LOT more spending. Yearly military expenditures are at 700 billion a year.

[Slartie]

> The government cannot solve this problem.

The government is precisely the only instance that is able to solve this problem, with "solution" not being "make it go away instantly", but "navigating through the time until a vaccine is available in the best way possible".

> reduce taxes massively

This ideology partially got you into the problem. 1.5 trillions in taxes have just been reduced while everything was fine, just "because the people in power could" - and because it benefitted their purses. It's an ironic twist of fate that Congress just passed a deal of almost-identical "historic" proportions with the goal of pushing a similar sum of money into the hands of the people that are NOT in power, because if the people in power don't do this, the entire country is going to blow up around them, reducing the previously-inflated contents of their purses (stocks, real estate) to shreds.

Now tell me again that the "government cannot solve this problem". Even the anti-government Republicans currently seem to look to the government as the only instance potentially capable of solving this problem.

[newhotelowner]

> The fed is buying debt right and left, and the government surely doesn't want to borrow money and remove that liquidity.

That's why the tax cut was a bad idea. It should have been a tax increase. We should be saving more in good times so that we have enough for the downturn.

If we had a safety net - like UBI, we wouldn't be spending 2 trillion.

Its time for UBI & some wealth distribution for proper prosperity and growth.

I paid $14 in federal taxes for every $100 I made in 2019. I am in top 1% earners in my state and nationwide. That is just ridiculous.

[Kaze404]

One thing I don't understand about this line of thinking is how do you expect sick people from working? Sure, not everyone will die but a significant portion of the population will get infected and need at the very least to stay home for a week or two. How is that situation better than where we're at now?

[lonelappde]

2 weeks is less than 3 months, obviously.

[big_chungus]

3.28 million people are already out of work, likely a good deal more than that. One million are most at risk. There won't be zero impact, but that's less than a third, right out of the gate. Long-term we'll see significant increases in unemployment on the "shut-it-down" path.

To clarify based on your reply to this comment, my point was that we've already seen more people out of work than the estimated worst-case 1.2 million death toll. This is the first data point, and we'll see more huge increases as we gather more. You mentioned that sick people won't work, but we're already seeing what is possibly more unemployment than we'd have with people sick. 1.2 million < 3.28 million.

While some people may not work in the short term, this "flattening the curve" business prolongs that time greatly. We'd all be back much sooner if we just ripped off the band-aid and got it over with.

EDIT: Replying to circumvent123 here, as HN is rate-limiting.

Yes, death is worse than unemployment, but for how many? Death for one vs unemployment for everyone, which would you pick? If so, is this simply a question of the ratio of the two? Regardless, that's not the choice of bureaucrats to make. At-risk populations are responsible for staying home and keeping themselves safe.

[Kaze404]

I don't understand what this has to do with the question I asked. Feels like a non sequitur

[circumvent123]

Death is worse than unemployment. That's a sick comparison you are making.