- 4,513
- 3,241
- 113
So what is the alternative? Keep the economy half closed and allow businesses to keep failing and unemployment to keep rising and keep vulnerable people isolated for however long as it takes for the virus to mutate itself away, or a vaccine is developed, and just hope that one of those things happens sooner rather than later?An aspect of COVID that gets relatively little publicity is disability. I haven't been able to find any studies -- too soon, I guess -- but I've read dozens of reports of ongoing disability secondary to the disease. I doubt such outcomes were considered by the President when he claimed 99% of cases are "totally harmless" (and I doubt most symptomatic COVID sufferers would describe their experiences as harmless).
Looking at COVID outcomes merely as binary -- i.e., alive or dead -- and thinking of herd immunity as a largely inconsequential process are mistakes, I believe.
I've never heard a single person suggest that the process of achieving herd immunity is inconsequential, yet I also have very rarely heard any of the alarmists acknowledge the many consequences of higher rates of unemployment and significant contraction of the economy.