[hilbert42]

"Where is that point? This is a public conversation that hasn't happened."

Very true, there hasn't been any debate despite the efforts of many who foresaw this crisis happening. Right, we've had many warnings that that day would arrive and it's arrived right on cue.

However, it's not surprising there's been no debate for several reasons. The first is that in the absence of an imminent threat, apathy and hedonism reign over sense and prudence; and second, in western post-WWII societies, individualism has trounced on the older once-accepted notion of the collective good being more important than any one single individual is. Gone too are frightening fire-and-brimstone edicts from pulpits that damned those who failed to do the right thing.

That said, I'd contend that the debate is hardly necessary (at least among thinking people) given the upheaval—chaos, deaths, etc.—that COVID has brought to the whole globe. Its effects are easily an order of magnitude greater than that of influenza.

I accept that this isn't enough for some. What their threshold would be is hard to say. However we do know from history that by the time one in three are dying and bodies litter the streets as with medieval plagues then everyone is terrified into submission.