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Why End the Shutdown?
I can think of four pretty straightforward arguments in favor of ending the mandated shutdown. The first three will fall on deaf ears for those of the “even one death is too many” way of thinking: it’s fundamentally un-American to take away the people’s rights without an overwhelming and existential justification; the US economy and critical infrastructure are being wrecked, with serious long-term consequences that will likely exceed the cost of the disease itself; and the shutdown is likely shifting unavoidable illness a bit into the future at an enormous and largely avoidable cost.
A fourth argument for ending the shutdown might gain some traction with our friends on the left. At the very least, it’s likely to be harder to answer with the usual you’re-putting-money-before-lives accusation.
The shutdown, in the US and globally, is going to doom literally millions of the world’s poorest to suffering and death. Millions are going without essential medical treatment for diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, and a host of normally manageable conditions. Scores of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, are being pushed from marginal situations into serious malnutrition; scores or hundreds of millions more, already malnourished, will be pushed into literal starvation. However frightening, inconvenient, and sometimes tragic this disease is here in the west, it is a horrific humanitarian disaster for the billion or so who, until a couple of months ago, were on a long slow climb from crushing poverty. More people will die because of the shutdown than will be saved by it but, because they are far away and have no voice, their suffering is easy to ignore: they get no memes on Facebook.
Published in General
Because the media has scared them to death. There are probably some others, but I think that’s the major reason.
Which is why federalism is going to make it so hard to keep that up through the summer. It’s one thing if everyone in every state is cowering in place. But if states start to reopen and people, especially those 50-and-under in those states, start venturing out again little by little and do not drop like flies in the streets from COVID, the ones still staying hold up because the media and their home-state pols scared them into doing so are going to start feeling more and more like fools. Those people are going to also start to come out, even if they’re wearing masks, while only a handful are going to write off their whole summers angrily thinking to themselves, “All you fools are going to be dead soon and I’ll still be alive!“
The Wuhan virus is an item that, in extremely rare cases has an extremely big consequence.
My perception is that a major differentiator between those who are willing to go out and those who are staying put is whether:
Where we put our focus matters for our outlook. Unfortunately the media (and to a large extent the politicians) direct our focus primarily on the extremely big consequence, and generally fail to note (or in some cases outright dismiss) the extremely low probability. Since most people just see the media headlines, most people are therefor going to focus primarily on the worst case possibility and not even think about the extremely low probability that such worst case possibility may arise.