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Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
Thought experiment (and I'm not making an argument, just trying to think this through logically - feel free to fire away...in fact, I think that's the whole point: for someone to tell me I'm not thinking about this correctly*):
We are all more likely than not to become infected, right?
And the goal of social distancing is flattening the curve, right?
And the goal of flattening the curve is easing the stress on health care facilities, i.e., slowing down the infection rate to keep it within the U.S. health care system's capacity, right?
And the goal of keeping things within the U.S. health care system's capacity is to limit/prevent deaths from COVID-19, right? In other words, if the health care system's capacity is exceeded, certain people who have COVID-19 will not get medical attention and will die, and certain of these people's deaths could have been prevented had they been able to obtain medical care. Right?
Are we prioritizing preventable deaths from COVID-19 over other easily preventable deaths? We could easily ban tobacco/smoking - that would prevent (exponentially) more deaths than what we are doing for COVID-19. And it wouldn't be nearly as costly. So, are we saying that people who may die from COVID-19 are more important than people who may die from smoking?
*and I'm not necessarily thinking this way - it's just one thought that has crossed my mind.
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We don't ban tobacco because we know it doesn't work - my wife worked on tobacco policy for 10 years - prohibition will just lead to an active black market. We know other policies, like higher tobacco taxes, do work and help save lives. These days, they're working on raising the smoking age to 21, on the theory that it will make it harder for teenagers to get them and delaying when kids try them prevents people from becoming new smokers.
The wife has left tobacco policy but was/is skeptical that the science was there do back up this theory, but it's what her old org is doing.
But there are lots of things around cars and guns we could do that wouldn't cost that much (ban SUVs, lower speed limits, repurpose street space to other modes to narrow lanes, background checks, etc) and prevent lots of deaths. In many cases, the political will isn't there.
And then there are the side effects of not preventing a lot of deaths in a crisis, like economic panic and uncertainty.
But let's not forget that what's going on now is out of desperation, after having spent month not doing anything. We should have the capacity for widespread testing, and might have with a competent administration. We should have been doing temperature checks on arriving passengers for months. Our leadership completely dropped the ball.
Speaking of which, some friend were in Spain when Trump announced the European travel ban. 48 hours of chaos but they came home early from their trip. No one asked them where in Spain they had been or did anything to check their health. Until the Uber driving taking them home.
They're on day four, I think, of voluntary self-quarantine.
