That's the plan?!
This is the plan for dealing with this virus? Stay in our homes, don't gather in groups larger than 10...don't have events larger than 250? Wait and hope it passes...re-assess the situation in two months?
So, to hell with anyone who has a job in the restaurant industry then? The wait staff, the cooks, the management, the dishwashers? To hell with everyone who earns their living producing supplies to them or delivers those supplies?
To hell with anyone who works in a theater or provides supplies or performs routine maintenance?
To hell with concert venues, the staff, the ushers, the janitors? To hell with the vendors? To hell with the bartenders? To hell with the bands, the speakers, the comedians? To hell with their crew, their roadies, the sound engineers, the electricians?
To hell with all of them and their ability to feed themselves? To hell with each and every last one of them in every city in the U.S.?
All these people, some low income, some living paycheck to paycheck, they can all...each and everyone one of the in the entire U.S.... just sit and not earn a living for the next two months?
To hell also with the travel industry? To hell with the airlines? The TSA crew? the baggage handlers? the people who run the ticket counters? The flight staff? The mechanics?
What, please ask yourself, will be left in two months?
In most cases the employees would have had to find new work. Just as an example, the TSA would need a new workforce, trained from the beginning in most cases, how does that idea grab you?
Are you under the impression that these businesses and individuals will survive and just come back to provide those services after you are all satisfied that this virus has gone away? You think those venues will survive? Those restaurants? The airlines? You think they can just not generate revenue for two full months and reopen their doors like nothing happened? For the sake of argument, imagine if you can that they do not have a bank vault full of gold to out last this plan, and never re-open.
Imagine the concert halls don't re-open and the bands do not reform, imagine those comedians and speakers are never again in the financial position to go out performing, imagine the theaters also stay closed. It may seem trivial now, but you'll remember very soon that human joy is precious.
If that is too abstract for you...not necessary enough then include in that list all the local restaurants, and thee impact they have on the economy in the city in which you live.
and...Imagine only two airlines left, or maybe only one, or maybe only one government run airline set up for whatever is deemed "required travel" until whatever is left of the last one can rehire/train enough new employees to resume flights, as the majority of their workforce would have had to move onto other jobs in order to continue to eat.
The workforces of all the businesses and industries that would be crippled or done in by two months of inactivity, would have to go find other jobs. Maybe yours. But to hell with you too.
To hell with political rallies, and the constitutionally protected right of peaceful assembly?
To hell with all of it, the death toll after two full months is 69...In a country of 330 million. Why, if that's not cause for shutting the whole thing down than what is, right?
That's the plan. I assume that will be the plan next year to when a new flu virus makes itself known. Every year, right? That's what we're doing? or just every few years when a virus with a scary name hits the news that's killing people with compromised immune systems in some third world country, with third world hospitals.
There's a new one every three years or so for the last couple decades. Sars, Mers, H1N1, bird flu, ebola.
This seems like a poorly thought out plan. This seems like a plan conceived under the delusion that the only cause of human misery is this new virus.
We could just do what we did when H1N1 (swine flu) hit. Remember what we did? You don't, do you. Say that out loud to yourself "I don't remember what we did about swine flu"...and now look at the plan you're going along with to deal with this virus. Seems like there would be a mid range between measures so invisible you don't even remember them and SHUTTING DOWN AN ENTIRE COUNTRY FOR TWO MONTHS.
If I could only choose between the two, I'd choose between how we handled H1N1. It hardly caused anyone to get evicted and or starve or destroy entire industries.