On some level, it is a shame that the human population can’t just kick up its feet for three weeks, stay put and let it all play out. I mean that from a general level of wealth, well-being and preparedness.
What would it take to have a planet where this was possible? Given that disease affects rich and poor alike, would this be a worthy aspiration? We seem to have hit a frenetic and fragile economic “equilibrium” prone to these setbacks. What’s odd to me, is that low inflation and interest rates imply a low time value of money and, in return, a low money value of time. If time is indeed so low in value, where’s the harm in a bit of time off?
Interesting thought exercise. I already work from home and have a pantry-worth of food, so I could do it. But for everyone to be able to, all on-going health care would need to be automated. What would a nursing home look like?
And that’s aside from the point you raise about not living hand to mouth.
It may seem quaint today (or maybe not, given today’s delivery culture) but when I was a kid the Corona man would do his delivery rounds weekly, delivering door-to-door, just like the old milkman, and Corona bottles were a real currency among kids - there was a deposit returned for every empty bottle so finding empty bottles was like finding real treasure.
But perhaps we don’t need coronavirus door-to-door deliveries, I guess - and if everyone self-isolates … well, how do you know where that take-away you just had delivered has been and who has touched it?
Not just ongoing care but all emergency services. Plus someone has to monitor and maintain utilities. Also in three weeks plenty of food will spoil, and in the following weeks there could be shortages because production has to ramp back up. Basically in order for the whole world to take three weeks off all essential services need to be fully automated.
What a privileged line of thinking. In America, arguably the richest nation on the planet, 40% of adults can’t afford to cover a $400 emergency. How do you expect people to afford just stopping for a few weeks while everything blows over?
Yup. No argument there. I was being intentionally a touch provocative.
Having seen large populations do this for a couple of days (2003 blackout in the Eastern U.S. and Canada comes to mind) we are now faced with something that looks like large-scale “self-isolation” for 3 weeks as a near-ideal counter-measure, where the other solutions lead to thousands if not millions of deaths.
At what point does society decide that the current mode of operation is not worth the fragility and loss of life, and move to a mode of operation (to be determined) that is more robust? Some sectors of our economy indicate that the value of time is so low that this should be in some way a low-cost exercise, valuable in human terms. I suggest there is a contradiction there driven by an unstable state that we’ve put ourselves into through lack of investment in the base levels of our economy (that would be your excellent example of the 40% of Americans who aren’t paid a living wage/benefit).
China seems to have more or less pulled off the trick, but elements of their economy would not be welcome in the west and seem to bring their own level of fragility.
Hubs flew into Sea-Tac on Sunday for a conference. Landed and conference was canceled before he could even get his luggage off the carousel. Still had to spend 24 hours holed up in his hotel room before return flight was arranged. And they still aren’t monitoring domestic flights for patients with symptoms.
I’d been saying for 2-3 days before he left that they should/would cancel it but who listens to a SAHM?! Nobody. So, good luck out there everyone!
I think durable goods could pause for three weeks, and software work of almost all kinds could as well (and honestly most of that can be done “at home”).
Doctors pausing for three weeks would not be good for people that failed to properly schedule illnesses and life threatening accidents.
Police on pause could also cause some issues.
Trash collection could definitely pause for a week, but I’m iffy about two or three.
I think people that work at the water plants, and keep the electric running would also cause problems.
Farmers not farming for three weeks could put a big dent in food supply down the line. Livestock handlers not feeding animals for three weeks would be a disaster.
For a lot of other things, restaurant workers and so on the services we could get away with missing for three weeks, but the people that provide them generally don’t have the money to survive 3 weeks of no pay. If we covered that with a real unemployment insurance that could be deal-able.
So we are pretty far off from being able to do this I think.
Riding the NYC subway is definitely cancelled for me. I mean, I’m privileged to live a 30 min. ride from my office with good bike lanes (and an indoor bike room at my building!). I wore a rubber glove for two days on the train then said “no more Corona in a can for me” and hit the pedals.
If you can convince the 1% to pay folks enough to make rent, convince business not to fire folks, and buy three weeks of groceries, sure. May also largely eliminate colds and other viruses.
And we’d have to eliminate homelessness for those three weeks. So it’s all doable, and maybe the rich folk having some skin in the game might make interest some.
They don’t exhibit symptoms nearly as serious as adults-so, good for survival.
But, since the virus spreads well before symptoms emerge, they make ideal vectors to spread the bug. A ban on gatherings of a thousand or more, sounds pretty sensible to me.
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