Thing Are Going To Get REALLY Bad Before They Get Better....

[TxMedic]

the models have been spot on so far. Not sure what the future holds. If we just open back up like business as usual, that virus will burn through the country like a wildfire. Probably kill a quarter million folks. Many of whom will be our doctors and nurses who then won’t be around to take care of those left. You saved your small business but you lost a spouse, a child, a parent, or a friend?? America will recover at some point. Probably a lot faster than anyone expected.



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This is spot on...while I’m absolutely as concerned about the economic fallout of this virus, I’m ALOT more concerned about the potential loss of life...amazing how many are flippant about people dying...must not be in public safety or healthcare...

[manwitaplan]

Everybody answered a different question than I asked. Again would you be willing to sacrifice your life or your relative’s life if it would save the global economy?

Because that’s what you’re all asking a percentage of the population to do. It’s a certainty that without significant government intervention, many many more mom, dads, husbands and wives, grandmas and grandpas will die because of other people’s negligence.

It’s UNCERTAIN how many might die from inherent health risks that cannot be mitigated by others, like what can be done with this virus.

My wife has benign neutropenia, son has asthma, and 1 y.o. daughter had RSV last year and will likely have complications when she gets another respiratory infection. Should I sacrifice them to save your small business or the global economy?

Living through a ****ty depression is better than not living at all, I don’t care if it’s 1 life or 1 million lives saved. Just read the Bible for inspiration for turning to Jesus to get through ****ty times. Chock full of much worse times than what our country has ever endured. I grew up on hand me downs, fix my own 15 year old vehicle and can tear my house down and build it back completely by myself. If I have to do without in a bad economy, so be it. One day all this hay and stubble will burn up and it will only matter to God how we stood for life FIRST. Jesus didn’t preach economics, he came to save lives.

And this argument to me is no different than those who choose to abort a baby because the doctor says you must or the mother will die. It’s a CERTAINTY that a life will be lost. How many times have they been wrong? Happens every single day.

Trust me, I get it. It’s a messy situation. It’s a lose/lose. It just comes down to how much we value just ONE single life. To God, every life is sacred. We need to preserve the lives that we CAN direct affect, and trust Him with the future for al things uncertain. It’s really that simple to me.

I fully expect many to bash my opinion, that’s fine, I’ve learned over the years that there are fewer and fewer guys here that will stand up for God’s values when it hits their pocket books. That’s not a dig on anyone, that’s just the reality of our culture.

“For what good will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”

I agree that your question is dumb. It is not even a reality! Any one of your family members could die of the flu, car wreck, etc......

You as a concerned dad have the right to stay home and lock yourself inside for the long haul. The issue is WE as a nation had no choice to stay home or work. Your govt who you obviously think did a wonderful job MADE us stay home.

What’s your plan if there is a next wave?

What do you propose if the recession is so bad that you have nowhere to live?

Do you fully grasp that 50,000 people a year die from the Flu?


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[manwitaplan]

This is spot on...while I’m absolutely as concerned about the economic fallout of this virus, I’m ALOT more concerned about the potential loss of life...amazing how many are flippant about people dying...must not be in public safety or healthcare...

Flippant? Really........

Once again please in detail explain how me or anyone else is flippant about loss of life. PEOPLE die everyday. The numbers are not Jiving.


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[MASTERS]

Think of all the elderly who will die because they can't afford anything after the economy crashes. Meds, food, utilities. They'll die in droves then because unlike my parents today's kids stick them in a home. You know, one they won't be able to afford.

Gary

People will have to learn to get by living till the die. The ones that were raised right will take as good of care of their elderly as they can till they bury them. How the hell did my parents make it on $25-30 worth of groceries a week in the late 80's early 90's with 3 young kids to feed? I don't know but we didn't know any different as the kids. You just ate a lot of fish that were caught in traps and red beans that were bought in 50# toesacks....

When I tell my wife about it she finds it hard to believe. Some of the few pictures we have help illustrate it.


One thing many Americans take for granted is that every meal they eat is a blessing. It dont have to be that way

[Shane]

Everybody answered a different question than I asked. Again would you be willing to sacrifice your life or your relative’s life if it would save the global economy?

Because that’s what you’re all asking a percentage of the population to do. It’s a certainty that without significant government intervention, many many more mom, dads, husbands and wives, grandmas and grandpas will die because of other people’s negligence.

It’s UNCERTAIN how many might die from inherent health risks that cannot be mitigated by others, like what can be done with this virus.

My wife has benign neutropenia, son has asthma, and 1 y.o. daughter had RSV last year and will likely have complications when she gets another respiratory infection. Should I sacrifice them to save your small business or the global economy?

Living through a ****ty depression is better than not living at all, I don’t care if it’s 1 life or 1 million lives saved. Just read the Bible for inspiration for turning to Jesus to get through ****ty times. Chock full of much worse times than what our country has ever endured. I grew up on hand me downs, fix my own 15 year old vehicle and can tear my house down and build it back completely by myself. If I have to do without in a bad economy, so be it. One day all this hay and stubble will burn up and it will only matter to God how we stood for life FIRST. Jesus didn’t preach economics, he came to save lives.

And this argument to me is no different than those who choose to abort a baby because the doctor says you must or the mother will die. It’s a CERTAINTY that a life will be lost. How many times have they been wrong? Happens every single day.

Trust me, I get it. It’s a messy situation. It’s a lose/lose. It just comes down to how much we value just ONE single life. To God, every life is sacred. We need to preserve the lives that we CAN direct affect, and trust Him with the future for al things uncertain. It’s really that simple to me.

I fully expect many to bash my opinion, that’s fine, I’ve learned over the years that there are fewer and fewer guys here that will stand up for God’s values when it hits their pocket books. That’s not a dig on anyone, that’s just the reality of our culture.

“For what good will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”

I agree with and appreciate your compassion for human life. I'm a Christian too, and I don't take the sanctity of life lightly either. But I do see some flaws in this line of thinking that is so prevalent right now (it's not just you - it's a lot of people). I'm not bashing you here. I'm just pointing out the flaws in the line of thinking, as I see them.

The biggest flaw is that the entire argument is based on the assumption that we are facing a choice between money and human lives. That is not the choice we're facing - at all. We're facing a choice between human lives and human lives. It's easy to focus on the immediate risk of losing lives to a virus. However big or small that risk may actually be in reality, we can all see and understand that risk. In the minds of many people, that immediate risk of losing lives to a virus has become the only thing endangering their lives. And, so, they are willing to sacrifice anything to save their own lives and/or the lives of their loved ones. Perfectly natural response to such a risk, and nothing wrong with feeling that way.

But the problem is that the virus is NOT the only thing that is a danger to your life. It's NOT the only thing that is endangering the lives of your loved ones. An economic depression is actually a bigger risk to our lives. It's not just an inconvenient financial thing. And being rational and honest about that is not being "flippant" about the loss of human lives. There are tons of ways an economic depression would kill millions of people. Small businesses going out of business causes the loss of income for the business owners as well as all the employees. That leads to larger businesses and corporations going out of business, which leads to millions more people losing their incomes. The government can't just print money and send $1,200 checks to everyone every week. And even if they could, what could we buy with it if lots of businesses didn't exist anymore?

Do you think our healthcare system would be the same if most of the businesses and people that pay health insurance premiums and deductibles and co-pays suddenly didn't have any money to pay for healthcare anymore? It wouldn't. It would collapse. A virus might overwhelm the healthcare system for a few weeks, and that would be horrible. But a depression would ruin our healthcare system, and it would take years to rebuild, not just weeks. How many of our elderly family members would die in that scenario? How many younger people who have health issues would die if they couldn't get adequate care or medication? A lot more than a virus would kill - and over a much longer period of time.

And what about deaths associated with crime and violence? Our police chief yesterday said that we're already seeing a big increase in domestic violence in Abilene, particularly people choking each other. Being stuck at home, can't work, can't get through to the unemployment office, can't buy what you need at the store even if you do have a little money.....people are already getting pretty dang frustrated and mad. Pretty soon, if this keeps up, we'll start to see a big increase in robberies and murders. The more desperate people become, the more people will be willing to kill somebody to get what they need for themselves. Do you want your parents or grandparents to be the victims of that kind of violence? I don't.

This is NOT a choice between sacrificing our money in order to save lives that might be lost to a virus. It is a choice between a short-sighted goal of sacrificing everything for years, if not decades, in order to avoid deaths caused by a virus versus preserving the long term safety that prosperity provides while doing the best we can to minimize the terrible effects of a virus. We have more options that simply holing up indefinitely at home versus doing nothing to defend against a virus. There are lots of common sense protective measures that we can and should be taking to minimize the spread of the virus, but we need to be doing all of that while we are simultaneously keeping businesses and the economy running. Killing the economy will kill a lot more people than the virus will.

There are no courses of action that we could choose in this deal that are without some really negative results. We don't have the luxury of choosing between "bad" and "good". Whatever course of action we adopt will be bad and some lives will be lost. That really stinks, but it's the reality. So, rather than getting tunnel vision on the virus and taking a short-sighted approach, we need to be thinking about what course of action is least bad in the long term.

In my opinion, the least bad course of action would be to keep the people most at risk from the virus as sheltered and protected as possible while the rest of us get back to work in earnest as soon as possible in order to repair the damage that's already been done to the economic engine that runs our nation and to prevent the damage from getting worse. Those of us that need to get back to work also need to take every precaution we can to keep from getting and/or spreading the virus too. We don't need to pretend that the virus doesn't exist or that it isn't a risk at all. But we still need to get back to work.

Government needs to get out of the freaking way. They need to remove roadblocks to the development and production and use of effective medical treatments for the virus. They need to remove roadblocks to the development and distribution of a vaccine for the virus. They need to remove roadblocks that currently exist in every single industry that make doing business more difficult and more expensive. Government needs to quit trying to be the solution, because it's not. It's the problem. We're the solution, and we can fix things a lot easier and faster if government would get out of the dang way. Government has a role, but they need to stay in their lane and quit trying to take over every aspect of everything. They're just making things worse by assuming more control over everything.

None of that can happen as long as large portions of our population remain convinced that we're facing a choice between human lives and money though. If that were truly our choice, then we'd obviously pick lives over money. But that is NOT the choice we're facing.

[woodsman]

Disagreeing isnt bashing. I like the back and forth as it gives a different perspective. I say protect those that are the most vulnerable and let the rest go about their way. I told my wife, Im much more likely to die from an accident than I am this. That may not be the case with others. It doesnt have to be be all one way or the other.

I’m with ya, and I don’t take that as bashing. That comment was more regarding the hypersensitivity that some take when God’s Word is invokes in the discussion.

[friscopaint]

Issue the malaria pills, have those susceptible quarantine, everyone else practice social distancing and go back to work. For sure see what happens in Sweden. Before you get angry at me I am in the high risk group, but I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a prosperous country.

Agreed

[Shane]

Well, it didn't take long to prove my point. My wife was just placing a grocery order online. Today is the 4th. The EARLIEST available date she can get an order filled at any store in town with an appointment for her to go and pick it up is April 13th at HEB. The earliest date to get an order delivered is past that. All because Wal-Mart and others are now only letting 5 people at a time into their stores, starting today. INSANE.

We're killing the economy and shutting down the supply chain for food - ON PURPOSE. The law enforcement system is about to get a lot more overwhelmed than the healthcare system ever thought about being.

It's time for people to start saying NO to this ridiculousness.

[manwitaplan]

I agree with and appreciate your compassion for human life. I'm a Christian too, and I don't take the sanctity of life lightly either. But I do see some flaws in this line of thinking that is so prevalent right now (it's not just you - it's a lot of people). I'm not bashing you here. I'm just pointing out the flaws in the line of thinking, as I see them.

The biggest flaw is that the entire argument is based on the assumption that we are facing a choice between money and human lives. That is not the choice we're facing - at all. We're facing a choice between human lives and human lives. It's easy to focus on the immediate risk of losing lives to a virus. However big or small that risk may actually be in reality, we can all see and understand that risk. In the minds of many people, that immediate risk of losing lives to a virus has become the only thing endangering their lives. And, so, they are willing to sacrifice anything to save their own lives and/or the lives of their loved ones. Perfectly natural response to such a risk, and nothing wrong with feeling that way.

But the problem is that the virus is NOT the only thing that is a danger to your life. It's NOT the only thing that is endangering the lives of your loved ones. An economic depression is actually a bigger risk to our lives. It's not just an inconvenient financial thing. And being rational and honest about that is not being "flippant" about the loss of human lives. There are tons of ways an economic depression would kill millions of people. Small businesses going out of business causes the loss of income for the business owners as well as all the employees. That leads to larger businesses and corporations going out of business, which leads to millions more people losing their incomes. The government can't just print money and send $1,200 checks to everyone every week. And even if they could, what could we buy with it if lots of businesses didn't exist anymore?

Do you think our healthcare system would be the same if most of the businesses and people that pay health insurance premiums and deductibles and co-pays suddenly didn't have any money to pay for healthcare anymore? It wouldn't. It would collapse. A virus might overwhelm the healthcare system for a few weeks, and that would be horrible. But a depression would ruin our healthcare system, and it would take years to rebuild, not just weeks. How many of our elderly family members would die in that scenario? How many younger people who have health issues would die if they couldn't get adequate care or medication? A lot more than a virus would kill - and over a much longer period of time.

And what about deaths associated with crime and violence? Our police chief yesterday said that we're already seeing a big increase in domestic violence in Abilene, particularly people choking each other. Being stuck at home, can't work, can't get through to the unemployment office, can't buy what you need at the store even if you do have a little money.....people are already getting pretty dang frustrated and mad. Pretty soon, if this keeps up, we'll start to see a big increase in robberies and murders. The more desperate people become, the more people will be willing to kill somebody to get what they need for themselves. Do you want your parents or grandparents to be the victims of that kind of violence? I don't.

This is NOT a choice between sacrificing our money in order to save lives that might be lost to a virus. It is a choice between a short-sighted goal of sacrificing everything for years, if not decades, in order to avoid deaths caused by a virus versus preserving the long term safety that prosperity provides while doing the best we can to minimize the terrible effects of a virus. We have more options that simply holing up indefinitely at home versus doing nothing to defend against a virus. There are lots of common sense protective measures that we can and should be taking to minimize the spread of the virus, but we need to be doing all of that while we are simultaneously keeping businesses and the economy running. Killing the economy will kill a lot more people than the virus will.

There are no courses of action that we could choose in this deal that are without some really negative results. We don't have the luxury of choosing between "bad" and "good". Whatever course of action we adopt will be bad and some lives will be lost. That really stinks, but it's the reality. So, rather than getting tunnel vision on the virus and taking a short-sighted approach, we need to be thinking about what course of action is least bad in the long term.

In my opinion, the least bad course of action would be to keep the people most at risk from the virus as sheltered and protected as possible while the rest of us get back to work in earnest as soon as possible in order to repair the damage that's already been done to the economic engine that runs our nation and to prevent the damage from getting worse. Those of us that need to get back to work also need to take every precaution we can to keep from getting and/or spreading the virus too. We don't need to pretend that the virus doesn't exist or that it isn't a risk at all. But we still need to get back to work.

Government needs to get out of the freaking way. They need to remove roadblocks to the development and production and use of effective medical treatments for the virus. They need to remove roadblocks to the development and distribution of a vaccine for the virus. They need to remove roadblocks that currently exist in every single industry that make doing business more difficult and more expensive. Government needs to quit trying to be the solution, because it's not. It's the problem. We're the solution, and we can fix things a lot easier and faster if government would get out of the dang way. Government has a role, but they need to stay in their lane and quit trying to take over every aspect of everything. They're just making things worse by assuming more control over everything.

None of that can happen as long as large portions of our population remain convinced that we're facing a choice between human lives and money though. If that were truly our choice, then we'd obviously pick lives over money. But that is NOT the choice we're facing.

Very well stated! My fear is that people that have already accepted their path will not read nor understand what you stated.

[woodsman]

I agree with and appreciate your compassion for human life. I'm a Christian too, and I don't take the sanctity of life lightly either. But I do see some flaws in this line of thinking that is so prevalent right now (it's not just you - it's a lot of people). I'm not bashing you here. I'm just pointing out the flaws in the line of thinking, as I see them.

The biggest flaw is that the entire argument is based on the assumption that we are facing a choice between money and human lives. That is not the choice we're facing - at all. We're facing a choice between human lives and human lives. It's easy to focus on the immediate risk of losing lives to a virus. However big or small that risk may actually be in reality, we can all see and understand that risk. In the minds of many people, that immediate risk of losing lives to a virus has become the only thing endangering their lives. And, so, they are willing to sacrifice anything to save their own lives and/or the lives of their loved ones. Perfectly natural response to such a risk, and nothing wrong with feeling that way.

But the problem is that the virus is NOT the only thing that is a danger to your life. It's NOT the only thing that is endangering the lives of your loved ones. An economic depression is actually a bigger risk to our lives. It's not just an inconvenient financial thing. And being rational and honest about that is not being "flippant" about the loss of human lives. There are tons of ways an economic depression would kill millions of people. Small businesses going out of business causes the loss of income for the business owners as well as all the employees. That leads to larger businesses and corporations going out of business, which leads to millions more people losing their incomes. The government can't just print money and send $1,200 checks to everyone every week. And even if they could, what could we buy with it if lots of businesses didn't exist anymore?

Do you think our healthcare system would be the same if most of the businesses and people that pay health insurance premiums and deductibles and co-pays suddenly didn't have any money to pay for healthcare anymore? It wouldn't. It would collapse. A virus might overwhelm the healthcare system for a few weeks, and that would be horrible. But a depression would ruin our healthcare system, and it would take years to rebuild, not just weeks. How many of our elderly family members would die in that scenario? How many younger people who have health issues would die if they couldn't get adequate care or medication? A lot more than a virus would kill - and over a much longer period of time.

And what about deaths associated with crime and violence? Our police chief yesterday said that we're already seeing a big increase in domestic violence in Abilene, particularly people choking each other. Being stuck at home, can't work, can't get through to the unemployment office, can't buy what you need at the store even if you do have a little money.....people are already getting pretty dang frustrated and mad. Pretty soon, if this keeps up, we'll start to see a big increase in robberies and murders. The more desperate people become, the more people will be willing to kill somebody to get what they need for themselves. Do you want your parents or grandparents to be the victims of that kind of violence? I don't.

This is NOT a choice between sacrificing our money in order to save lives that might be lost to a virus. It is a choice between a short-sighted goal of sacrificing everything for years, if not decades, in order to avoid deaths caused by a virus versus preserving the long term safety that prosperity provides while doing the best we can to minimize the terrible effects of a virus. We have more options that simply holing up indefinitely at home versus doing nothing to defend against a virus. There are lots of common sense protective measures that we can and should be taking to minimize the spread of the virus, but we need to be doing all of that while we are simultaneously keeping businesses and the economy running. Killing the economy will kill a lot more people than the virus will.

There are no courses of action that we could choose in this deal that are without some really negative results. We don't have the luxury of choosing between "bad" and "good". Whatever course of action we adopt will be bad and some lives will be lost. That really stinks, but it's the reality. So, rather than getting tunnel vision on the virus and taking a short-sighted approach, we need to be thinking about what course of action is least bad in the long term.

In my opinion, the least bad course of action would be to keep the people most at risk from the virus as sheltered and protected as possible while the rest of us get back to work in earnest as soon as possible in order to repair the damage that's already been done to the economic engine that runs our nation and to prevent the damage from getting worse. Those of us that need to get back to work also need to take every precaution we can to keep from getting and/or spreading the virus too. We don't need to pretend that the virus doesn't exist or that it isn't a risk at all. But we still need to get back to work.

Government needs to get out of the freaking way. They need to remove roadblocks to the development and production and use of effective medical treatments for the virus. They need to remove roadblocks to the development and distribution of a vaccine for the virus. They need to remove roadblocks that currently exist in every single industry that make doing business more difficult and more expensive. Government needs to quit trying to be the solution, because it's not. It's the problem. We're the solution, and we can fix things a lot easier and faster if government would get out of the dang way. Government has a role, but they need to stay in their lane and quit trying to take over every aspect of everything. They're just making things worse by assuming more control over everything.

None of that can happen as long as large portions of our population remain convinced that we're facing a choice between human lives and money though. If that were truly our choice, then we'd obviously pick lives over money. But that is NOT the choice we're facing.

Excellent post Shane. I’m with you on probably 70% of your points. I disagree on the magnitude of the healthcare collapse/fallout, and the justification of the fear of lawlessness to just roll over for the weak in our society.

I too, don’t agree at all that we should hole up forever, that’s not living. But this isn’t the flu, and temporary isolation is a very strong approach to flattening the curve. But just accepting the negative impacts hits EXTREMELY close to home for some of us, and I think that’s lost on those who are not in those shoes. Who’s ready to give up the love of their life if it would guarantee that the economy would prevail. This question hits my where I live, and it doesn’t for most people. I’m just being honest that I’m not willing to roll the dice with my wife’s life.

[Rcole1310]

Look at the National financial situation and tell me how this was in any way sustainable. It was going to all come down anyway. The math catches up at some point. We have spent and borrowed the country into bankruptcy already. What does it matter if it happens now or 5 years from now. I know...it sounds crazy, and it’s just my opinion, but God blesses this country for His glory. And he will chastise it to refocus us.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/2000.html

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[camoclad]

When did cancer and heart disease become communicable diseases?


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Smart aleck

Elgato, right there with you, point well made. I'm looking for a "disruption" in the positive sense from this thing as well. Might come with some pain, but iron sharpens iron...

[sjaaaz]

Smart aleck

Elgato, right there with you, point well made. I'm looking for a "disruption" in the positive sense from this thing as well. Might come with some pain, but iron sharpens iron...

Nah. Just smart [emoji3]


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[M16]

I guess we're seeing the results of the "if it saves one life" mentality. Always has been a flawed concept.

[Shane]

Excellent post Shane. I’m with you on probably 70% of your points. I disagree on the magnitude of the healthcare collapse/fallout, and the justification of the fear of lawlessness to just roll over for the weak in our society.

I too, don’t agree at all that we should hole up forever, that’s not living. But this isn’t the flu, and temporary isolation is a very strong approach to flattening the curve. But just accepting the negative impacts hits EXTREMELY close to home for some of us, and I think that’s lost on those who are not in those shoes. Who’s ready to give up the love of their life if it would guarantee that the economy would prevail. This question hits my where I live, and it doesn’t for most people. I’m just being honest that I’m not willing to roll the dice with my wife’s life.

My daughter had the virus a couple weeks ago. My parents are in their 70s. My dad has an autoimmune disease and is pretty weak. He's also at HIGH risk of catching every virus that comes along. My mom just had breast cancer and radiation a few months ago. She's pretty high risk for things like this too. They're also at high risk of being the victims of all of the negative effects of an economic depression. I love my family more than life itself. I'm not willing to sacrifice their lives to preserve my money or anyone else's money. And, frankly, it's it's an insult to continue to hear that is what is being advocated by those of us who recognize the real risks of financial collapse. I know you're not trying to be insulting - at ALL. And I'm not mad at you. It's just frustrating to keep seeing that response in these conversations everywhere.

"Temporary isolation" was acceptable when it meant "2 weeks and we can flatten the curve". But every day, "temporary isolation" is morphing into "indefinite isolation". It's now meaning something closer to 2 months. What will it mean tomorrow? Every week we keep things shut down, the other risks to our loved ones lives go up. That curve will grow exponentially too, if we allow it to.