Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early: study
FWIW, I will throw in my two cents.  This shutdown needs to end immediately.  This is absolutely crushing the middle class and the economy. I&#x27;d bet that many of the small shops and restaurants I used to go to will never reopen. These low-margin businesses cannot cope with a week long closure, let alone four. We are already looking at waves of rent&#x2F;debt defaults followed by massive layoffs and then a deep recession if not a depression. And if the government&#x27;s response is unlimited money creation (for the banks or for individuals, it does not matter) then we are looking at a potential monetary or dollar crisis.<p>This decision to shutdown the economy has been made on the misguided assumption that you can save the healthcare system in isolation from the rest of the system of production in which it resides.  It is also assuming that saving lives supersedes any other consideration, especially money or economics.  We are hearing this now from the media who already pre-attacking Trump for hinting he wants to end the shutdown -- that he is valuing billionaires or dollars over lives.  This is shear non-sense and ignores the fact that people are not ghosts, we need to work in order to stay alive and live. I am reading on many forums about people who are about to lose their business that they spent 20 years building or their homes if they cannot get back to work soon. This is not just narrowly about lives lost to the virus but living for everyone. Of course we will do everything reasonable to help the afflicted but shutting down the economy should not be one of them.<p>If you want to still hold to the assumption that only lives matter in this decision then think about this.  Think of how many alcoholics will be created or relapse from spending days on end with nothing to do, bored in their home. How many of those will eventually die of alcoholism or kill people with their car? What about anorexics who recover but under quarantine and the anxiety of virus scaremongering relapse and ultimately starve to death?  If the economy goes into a recession or depression (a fait accompli in my view) then how many people are going commit suicide which always goes up in bad times?  How many people will die in just these three examples 100K, 200K, 1M people?<p>These are not fantasy deaths, it will really happen but they will never be blamed on the shutdown. It is a real hidden cost, as real as those who die from CV19. There are real life-and-death altering consequences beyond just those unfortunate to get this virus.