[guygurari]

We don’t know enough so let’s stop the economy while we find out? That is not typically how we do things, because it’s not a rational response. For example, we didn’t know whether holding a mobile phone close to our ear for extended periods of time leads to serious health issues, and there was suspicion that it does. But we didn’t prohibit it — we let people decide for themselves, and it does seem the risk was lower than suspected.

What’s happening now seems more like a knee-jerk reaction than the result of a cost-benefit analysis.

[rajup]

+1. This argument about not knowing long term effects of COVID-19, and hence we have to keep the economy shut down indefinitely makes no sense at all. Making masks mandatory in public, keeping people at risk at home and starting to open up the economy sounds like a more sound strategy.

[gridspy]

People are not showing up in the ER unable to breathe because they know someone who holds their Cellphone to their ear.

Covid-19 is not a theoretical threat.

[guygurari]

Many people die in traffic accidents every day, but we don’t ban cars. Everything we do involves some risk. There needs to be a rational discussion on how much lock down is appropriate. We need to look at other countries like Sweden and Austria and learn from them. We need to look at the real costs of a depression. What we have now is “People are dying so let’s lock down everything”.

[tptacek]

You can mitigate the risk of dying in a traffic accident unilaterally in ways you can't with a virus, and C19 is probably already killing more people than car accidents by a significant margin.

[rajup]

Sure you don't wear seatbelts and install airbags to mitigate the risk of COVID-19, but the point is that you can take measures to reduce the risk of contracting the virus to a socially acceptable level and not have to destroy people's livelihoods. We have after all not waited for the perfectly safe car before allowing millions of cars on the road. The lockdown in its current form seems more like waiting for the perfectly safe car.

[tptacek]

I think the most important thing we're waiting for is adequate testing levels.

[yibg]

Like most things it’s a spectrum. Rationally if something posses a non trivial risk, we should try to mitigate it until we can quantify the risk.

If some single digit percentage of cell phone users end up in the ICU I would certainly hope we ban the use of them until we can understand it better.