Yeah it really is unprecedented. In the short term lots of testing is going to be vital, so we don't need to keep flying blind. And in the mid to long term, there will very likely be a vaccin.... and more knowledge, better measures and infrastructure in case of new outbreaks.

There is good news on the testing front. According to Dr. Birx at the CDC, the US has done more tests in 8 days than South Korea has done in 8 weeks. According to Birx, the US is now doing 50,000 to 70,000 tests a day. So hopefully we’ll get some reliable data out of the deal.

One really sad thing about this is that if you have a loved one in the hospital, you wont be able to see them. If they're close to death a small number will be allowed (2 per day where I am).

Makes you pause when you contact people to know you may never see them again.

Gotta love Gov. Cuomo. He just stated that he would like you to "voluntarily" not go out to parks and play any contact sports, but if you don't voluntarily do that, then he will make it mandatory. WTF? Typical "libertarian" socialist-speak. "You can do what you want, but if you don't do what we say, then we'll force you to do what we say."

Gotta love those democratic-socialist New Yorkers who are acting like Libertarians in not following orders handed down from the state.

The WH says if you recently were in NY then you should self-quarantine. How about not leaving NY at all and self-quarantining yourself in NY if you are already in NY. NY is already under a mandatory lock-down, so how it it that people are leaving NY?

This is the typical, illogical, reactionary, emotional responses you get from a govt elected by idiots (both democrat and republican).

Even the framing of this question is open - or ought to be open - to radical revision: what is traditionally called 'the economy' is largely an abstraction that excludes large swathes of society as among the 'extra-economic', even as it relies on those areas for its very lifeblood. It's only when set against this abstraction does individual life become potentially set in conflict with this chimera. The issue is that the chimera is as real as it is illusory: it is real insofar as it is created, forged by power and political will, one happy to countenance the literal deaths of millions in order to sustain it for the benefit of a few. — StreetlightX

Reminds me of something I read just a few minutes ago:

“I would rather have my children stay home and have all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working,” Beck said. “Even if we all get sick, I’d rather die than kill the country. Because it’s not the economy that’s dying, it’s the country.” — Glenn Beck

The country (essentially our culture?) is the economy? How fucked-up is that.

The country (essentially our culture?) is the economy? — praxis

Yep. It's the fitting of a toy model of the economy onto the reality of social relations; anyone that doesn't fit the model can die; is not even acknowledged as having any true existence ('the country is the economy - and there's nothing left over... and even if there is, (which there isn't!) it can be safely ignored').

Worth noting that this will fail even by 'sound' economic standards. When your hospitals are overflowing and even .05% of your population dies, that's economic disaster. So worth calling it like it is: the concern for the the rich, nothing more. It's a lie both ways. Those who swallow it are willing dupes for the monied classes.

there is - now - a legitimate question as to how long and how far we can and should go in closing down everything. — ChatteringMonkey

No, there isn't. Until the virus is under complete control, there is no question. It's that simple. Anything else is dissimulation and the effective murder of populations - primarily the poor, the old, and the already sick - in the interests of the rich. If you think differently you're either objectively wrong or OK with that.

As my ideology links a positive outcome only to the extent humankind benefits — Hanover

Your ideology is dumb. Humankind doesn't exist independently of the ecologies that sustain it. The destruction of that ecology is responsible for the crisis we're in today.

No, there isn't. Until the virus is under complete control, there is no question. It's that simple. Anything else is dissimulation and the effective murder of populations - primarily the poor, the old, and the sick. If you think differently you're objectively wrong. — StreetlightX

There is always that question when you are thinking about precautionary measures. Let's face it: curbing the corona virus infections spike is an anticipatory measure. With precautions you always have to make some decisions on what is enough. And if we leave one Trump aside, in fact there is quite an uniform response to the pandemic. The US isn't going a different way from other countries when you look at the US as a combination of 50 states and what they are doing and compare that to for example EU countries.

There is always that question — ssu

Nope. This is the easiest moral calculus anyone could be possibly faced with.

It seems you didn't even read further.

No, there isn't. Until the virus is under complete control, there is no question. It's that simple. Anything else is dissimulation and the effective murder of populations - primarily the poor, the old, and the sick. If you think differently you're objectively wrong. — StreetlightX

Nah, I'm not objectively wrong, I know I'm not. Because there is no complete control. Or at least the definition of complete controle is under discussion. At some point people will have to make a decision when to relax measures. Do we do that at 1%, 0,1% or 0,01 % risk? There will allways be some amount of risk, however miniscule, and so whether you like it or not human life is not a absolute. It never was, otherwise we wouldn't allow traffic, because we know there will be traffic deaths every day. And it seems relatively uncontroversial that we shouldn't ban all traffic. Maybe you could make the case that traffic deaths is different than this one, and that would be fine, but at least it needs to be argued. That is what philosophy should be about it seems to me.... otherwise it's just blind dogma.

Correct.

How about this then, if you would mind to glance over before you answer.

First, I'm not remarking anything about Trump here:

And if we leave one Trump aside, in fact there is quite an uniform response to the pandemic. The US isn't going a different way from other countries when you look at the US as a combination of 50 states and what they are doing and compare that to for example EU countries. — ssu

Hence, we are making decisions about the future. The worst of a pandemic can last either 4-6 months or then come around next fall and winter 2020/2021. We are trying to anticipate the future here.

You can make up whatever fantasy thought experiments you like. I'm talking about what's happening now, and what will actually happen. The virus is controllable, as Wuhan proves, along with other countries which have kept infection rates low, and deaths lower. This in contrast the the exponentially rising numbers of the US, Australia, Spain, and others. You can faff around the point all you like with made up, unrelated daydreams - I'm not going to replace talk of real lives with your armchair imaginaries.

I've barely mentioned Trump at all so I don't know why you think that qualification matters in the slightest. I agree that the American response has been largely in keeping with the European one - the point is that this is what some would like to alter, and have been actively encouraging. And not to beat around the bush with that - because people seem unwilling, unable or too embarrassed to spell it out - I mean actively encourage the death of the poor, sick, and old.

Thank you for reading my response.

Well, as I and someone else already said, the governors are the de facto leaders in this case. And once the infection rate and the death start going up, everyone of them will go to the same kind of response. The medical community is quite clear on what to do here (and the pandemic came up so quickly that the lobby groups haven't been able to come with their own doctors and specialist spindoctors, literally).

Yet in every country they do have to think if they have gone to a lockdown and have quarantined areas (as they doing with the Capitol area here), then when to lift them? China gives an example already, but there's always the fear of new infections. Then the question will be (if the outcome is similar to China) when will those restaurants open and gatherings of people be allowed when there's no new deaths and tiny amount of infections?

Perhaps a real fear in my view will be if the numbers of deaths are simply withheld or marked as 'deaths to other causes'. Not now when the pandemic is spreading, but when the pandemic has passed. As ugly it may sound, it could happen especially in the US. So perhaps a decade from now a medical historian tells that actually far more were killed in the corona-virus pandemic.

Via Jodi Dean, whose running commentary on CV is one of the few things worth paying attention to among the media scrum:

"The sheer magnitude of the population difference between China and Spain should preclude the possibility of there being more coronavirus deaths in Spain than there are in China. But it's not. China's material, institutional, cultural, and political infrastructure give it a capacity to respond that is far more effective than what we see in Spain and Italy -- and the United States.

I'm not worried about increasing authoritarianism in the US. That concern is animated by an underlying anti-communism that either mistakenly thinks that public interest is simply self-interest generalized or that takes "give me freedom or give me death" as the final word on liberty (and of course the subtext here is give My liberty is more valuable than YOUR death).

The danger is not authoritarianism -- it's capitalism, both in the way that bailouts prioritize corporations over people (Boeing? really?) and in the concomitant focus on economic recovery even as the epidemic is still in its early phase. So the subtext here is profits are not just more important than death. Profits are death, a truth of capitalism and imperialism that the pandemic displays in all its horror."

More berating remarks, great!

I'm not faffing around the point. It's a decision every government across the globe will have to make in the coming months. If this is not a moral issue that is relevant for real world decisions than I don't know what would be.

Yeah sure OK lets spend half a paragraph talking about cars "not faffing around the point". Trains next? Legos?

No, there isn't. Until the virus is under complete control, there is no question. It's that simple. Anything else is dissimulation and the effective murder of populations - primarily the poor, the old, and the already sick - in the interests of the rich. If you think differently you're either objectively wrong or OK with that.

In Italy utilitarian principles are applied to the triage,
and the elderly are given low priority because they are less likely to survive. That’s an unfair hand to be dealt, especially since the elderly have spent much of their lives paying into the system that has promised to care for them. So though you can speciously blame others for theoretical and future deaths of hundreds of thousands, you have said nothing of actual deaths and the decisions that have led to their demise.

There are no hands being delt here, only political decisions to be made over actively preventing entirely preventable deaths or actively encouraging entirely preventable deaths. You stand for the latter, like the corporations and heads of state you barrack for.

Prioritising healthcare allocation when it's so scarce is motivated by the same risk and efficiency principles that should have been guiding government responses in the US and the UK.

Say death is the outcome. You want to minimise the deaths of people in your care. If you give treatment to someone who is likely to die even with the treatment vs someone who is comparatively much less likely to die with the same treatment, you minimise the amount of deaths.

Say collapse of the healthcare system is the outcome. You want to minimise the risk of the collapse of the healthcare system. If you take measures to reduce the load on it, vs if you don't take measures to reduce the load on it, you minimise the risk of collapse.

Say getting measles, mumps or rubella is the outcome. You want to minimise the risk of people getting that, if you vaccinate vs not vaccinating, you reduce the amount of people that get measles, mumps and rubella.

Say global economic collapse due to a pandemic is the outcome. You want to take measures that minimise the risk. On the one hand, maybe you think that taking measures against the pandemic increases the risk of global economic collapse; and it might, instantaneously. But as we've seen, and as was predicted, if you don't do that, the risk is even greater.

Nurses, doctors and epidemiologists understand that better than politicians, apparently.

The problem is you cannot predict the future.

So you think that in no circumstance when deciding policy, human live can be measured against other values? There was a point to the example. If it can be done in other cases, what's different here? I'm not arguing against lock-down right now, to be clear, I agree that there shouldn't be any doubt. I'm just saying that at some point the question will come... and that could be a question where philosophy could actually be informative. If you don't want to go there, that's fine.

No actually the modelling is pretty clear. In fact you don't even need modeling, just follow the trend lines with your index finger.

Love all these 'its so uncertain' responses. No it's not. Objectively wrong.

I cannot disagree with that.

So you think that in no circumstance when deciding policy, human live can be measured against other values? — ChatteringMonkey

I'm gonna say this one more time then never again because you're wasting my time: I don't care for your hypotheticals.

Perhaps you can provide an example of a model that has gotten it right, given that it is so objective.

Putin the utter Cunt

Vaccination has the same logic.

The same shit that makes people angry at anti-vaccers killing their kids should make us angry at our countries' responses killing the elderly, the sick, the poor. If "killing" seems like an overstatement, call it "exacerbating the risk of severe long term health outcomes with substantial risk of mortality".