Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of May 8 the death toll is 76,938. May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
Unlimited power. Unlimited stupidity.
Cost-benefit analysis? They don’t need no stinking cost/benefit analysis.
If they saved one 87 year-old obese male with late-stage cancer, critical heart disease, type-one diabetes, etc., killing 33 million jobs and 100,000 small businesses was worth it. You’re welcome!
Not Human Costs: additional suicides, more child/spousal abuse, more emotional/psychological depression and desperation, tens of millions of destroyed jobs, a hundred thousand failed small businesses, huge drops in tax receipts, massive unemployment at higher-than-Great Depression levels, tens of millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills and feed their children. They don’t care who is hurt by their suppressions of economic activity.
“You get the government you deserve – good and hard.” H. L. Mencken
While we’re at it, an institution chock-a-bloc with departments which haven’t hired a Republican since 1985 managed to find space for this guy:
https://campusreform.org/?ID=14840
NB, the same institution hired Bandy X Lee.
Your tuition dollars (and billions in public subsidies) at work.
T. Shaw,
I actually have heard shutdown advocates talk about domestic abuse, as well as an increased suicide rate for people like those with transgendered delusions. They’ll reluctantly admit to some cost for the shutdown if the cost is hitting the right victim groups. They don’t admit it enough to really consider ending the shutdown (instead they usually propose things like having police check up on people) but they at least occasionally admit that there could be problems.
But all the small business owners who have lost everything, or all the blue collar workers out of a job? Yeah, they’ll never talk about that even if the shutdown continues for a century.
Art, Wikipedia even calls him an activist. He’s a homosexual activist who, not surprisingly, has Trump derangement syndrome. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Gonsalves
I dare not do an image search on the fellow…