DadHammer said:

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Player, do you think it's time to start opening back up to save the economy or you think it's still too early?

At some point I think people will start to ignore the lock downs as outlined by their reasoning to stay open more. Not entirely just more. No big gatherings and such.

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I'd love to. I'd also like to have at least a modicum of confidence that our population could behave with a remote level of intelligence regarding safety while we do so.

What I'm sadly pretty sure of is that people will mostly go back to just acting like nothing is going on and we'll find ourselves in a pretty crappy situation.

IF we could get a large number of people to wear masks (greatly reducing spread from asymptomatic carriers), figure out a way for people to enjoy eating out while also distancing, etc.... then I'd feel a lot better about things. Sorry, but 18yrs as a patrol officer has pretty much jaded me concerning the basic intelligence of a lot of our society to behave with reason.

It's kinda like motorcycles..... I can ride just fine and safely..... but it's the other idiots out there who will get me killed, because, they're idiots. Most of these SIP orders are having to sadly be put in place because we have have to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator.

I don't know what the answer is. Hopefully someone can figure it out. But like anything else, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

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Sweden has socialized healthcare so they are able to deal with the onslaught by rationing care and "death panels." We don't have that in the US nor an appetite for it, so that is why we are doing what we are doing.

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I have no desire or intent to debate healthcare systems.

I would say, for better or worse, most healthcare systems in the western world look more like Sweden's than our's while most approaches to coronavirus look more like our's than Sweden's.

I'll just go ahead and dismiss all potential issues without facts. Full speed ahead

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/05/a-record-64-million-americans-live-in-multigenerational-households/

1st article found, 64m people living in multigenerational homes

Who do you think works at these nursing homes? People with kids and grandparents etc. Isolating the elderly is not possible. If.you want to argue that they can go **** themselves and they are on their own to fight off this virus go ahead, but let's stop pretending that you care about them or that the things you are proposing are possible

We might also find out that they are wrong, I don't know yet and neither do you.

I don't have a solution, I think in another week or two we do need to start having a conversation about opening up with continuing distancing and hopefully a CONFIRMED treatment along with actually being able to test. But we need to have intelligent conversation with FACTs and not feelings or opinions.

I find "completely destroy the country" to be a bit melodramatic. Can you better articulate what specifically would occur if we stayed as we are - completely unchanged - for 6 months? It would be ugly but I also don't think it would completely destroy America - I am curious what other people think specifically would occur and be most damaging. I already wonder what the long term impacts would be to employment in certain industries, whether online school and work will have a step change in adoption long term, and other social behaviors that may remain impacted. And I have those questions even if we get back to fairly normal May 1.

If we hit a 20-30% unemployment number that is what I mean. Obviously it can't go to 100%.

Here's the number one thing that needs to improve IMO before we seriously start opening everything up.

Right now, for the most part, people who most symptoms would point to having the virus are basically being told to go home and "good luck". They "might" get a test that takes a week, then they're past the possible (we still don't know) effectiveness of HCQ. Dr's offices won't see them, ERs just send them home, nobody will touch them.

Until that starts to change, it's really rolling the dice to just start opening everything up and we'll quite likely be right back in the same crap storm that we're in now, if not worse.

Nothing has improved in testing or really any early treatment, but we want to just start heading back to normal? That really doesn't make much logical sense.

It's your opinion and I respect your right to it, but you have continued to have it without any real support for it other than you think it's what we should do and are looking for people to agree with you without real data to back it up.

I work on O&G, thankfully still employed but it will be a very unfun few years. I also live well under my means so I can go without working for years if I have to without undue stress. I sympathize that not everyone is or even can be in that same boat, but people going through an economic hardship is less stressing to me than massive deaths.

DadHammer said:

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So what's your answer, completely destroy the country waiting on a vaccine?

Seriously we need to start opening up, protect the old and weak and move forward slowly now. Plus we may just find out that Sweden was right. Don't know yet. Plus places like ny need lockdowns maybe HOUSTON doesn't?

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Houston definitely needs a "lock down". The testing has been way behind in Houston and the number of confirmed cases has grown very quickly.

I honestly think the system is doing a very good job of handling this and if you're paying attention you can see the pathway out before we get a vaccine. The plan can be simplified to: 1) bring the virus under control by stopping the spread (we will not be able to eradicate the virus, but bringing it back down to low numbers is key), 2) provide liquidity so that businesses can survive this cash and credit crisis, 3) open up lower risk parts of society while maintaining a massive testing infrastructure, 4) identify new cases ASAP with a vigilant public, robust testing of any evidence of sysmptoms, isolation of the infected, contact tracing, etc. As the economy reopens, businesses will have to go on a hiring spree just to operate. Sure there will be economic damage - I am not pretending otherwise. But I do think it's possible to manage and start our recovery long before we have a vaccine. In the mean time, hope some sort of anti-viral works very successfully (we are testing many different anti-virals right now). The truth is that if this thing goes truly exponential and sickens 70-80% of the population in short order the economy will be in far worse shape than what I just described. Especially because it is looking less and less likely that will have permanent or even long lasting immunity to this virus. Even the fear that 70-80% of the population could get sick in a matter of weeks means the economy cannot just magically recover at this point. The economy isn't what it is because the government is shutting things down; it is what it is because of the prevalence of the virus.
We cannot just pretend nothing is happening and we are in 2019 still.

There's a very realistic out for us here, but we need the active case count to subside to a manageable level, which, in my opinion means we should plan on the current path through the end of May... Maybe earlier in areas without community spread, but in those instances, we still need the infrastructure to detect and respond to COVID-19 in those communities before we can return to normal.

DadHammer said:

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I said they might be right not that they are right. I just liked their approach better. It's just an opinion Hou.

I just think we need to open up faster than you do, that's all. Maybe you have a government job but I don't. We are getting slaughtered. Open up now slowly is just my opinion.

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"Government jobs" aren't exactly immune from pain either. A lot of officers work off duty jobs at banks, churches, etc and those are all obviously closed. I personally work 2 side jobs and am out a fair bit of money each month. Fortunately I use that as side money and don't budget for it. But cities are also going to be in the red a good bit of money from utilities money, sales taxes, etc and some of us may start seeing temp reductions in salary as a result.

All I'm saying is be careful about who you think isn't feeling pain financially. While I'm also looking at less money, I still want to make sure we do things right. Can't spend any $$$ if you don't have your health or are dead.

DadHammer said:

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I believe everyone is feeling pain or will. I just really believe a lot of people that live paycheck to pay check are going to be in real trouble soon. There has to be a way to open up some business and be smart about it.

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I don't think anyone would argue against that if we had a plan or a smart way of going about it. Problem is that so far all we hear is "Let's start opening it up" from people (not singling you out) but nobody is really putting any solid concrete plans or ideas forward.

Let's see what those plans or ideas are and then we can debate them on the merits.

What I personally would like to see..... masks being required to be in most public places for starters, a reliable test that can get an accurate result in a matter of a day or two, not a week or more, and some form or reliable therapies for those who do test positive. That will instill a lot more confidence in people that it's reasonably safe to start conducting business.

There's a LOT of people just banging the "we HAVE to get back to work" drum without offering any ideas whatsoever as to how that's done.

DadHammer said:

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So what's your answer, completely destroy the country waiting on a vaccine?

Seriously we need to start opening up, protect the old and weak and move forward slowly now. Plus we may just find out that Sweden was right. Don't know yet. Plus places like ny need lockdowns maybe HOUSTON doesn't?

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The United States is a strong country with vast resources and ingenuity. The country can economically survive 2-3 months of shelter-in-place restrictions in large sections of the country if that is how it plays out.

I'm not going to argue when and where the U.S. should specifically start opening back up, I don't have enough knowledge or done enough homework to even opine on that. Some people seem to make sense on both sides of that argument, but there also seems to be a lot of 'We don't know enough yet' aspects to the arguments.

But the U.S. is going to be fine long-term and get through this, regardless. That, I'm 100% CONFIDENT in. The country is not going to get 'destroyed' by either COVID-19 or any actions taken to defeat COVID-19.

Agreed. Right now we are in not much of a better position than we were 2 or 3 weeks ago. I get it, we need to get folks working again. I'm not callous to the hardships people are enduring. But we really need to have a better understanding of this virus, find a way to at least somewhat treat this thing, and go from there.

A ) Hope isn't a plan

B ) Saying, well people are just going to have to die because we can't figure this out, is a defeatist attitude when we haven't even really tried for very long yet.

Aren't we about to have to do what Sweden is doing now, i.e. open back up and let people make their own decisions regarding self protection? We can't stay locked down. That much is certain.

Pumpkinhead said:

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DadHammer said:

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So what's your answer, completely destroy the country waiting on a vaccine?

Seriously we need to start opening up, protect the old and weak and move forward slowly now. Plus we may just find out that Sweden was right. Don't know yet. Plus places like ny need lockdowns maybe HOUSTON doesn't?

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The United States is a strong country with vast resources and ingenuity. The country can economically survive 2-3 months of shelter-in-place restrictions in large sections of the country if that is how it plays out.

I'm not going to argue when and where the U.S. should specifically start opening back up, I don't have enough knowledge or done enough homework to even opine on that. Some people seem to make sense on both sides of that argument, but there also seems to be a lot of 'We don't know enough yet' aspects to the arguments.

But the U.S. is going to be fine long-term and get through this, regardless. That, I'm 100% CONFIDENT in. The country is not going to get 'destroyed' by either COVID-19 or any actions taken to defeat COVID-19.

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i basically agree up to the point where you are so confident we are going to be fine long-term even if we get through this no matter how long.

that is not remotely clear, and is no less 'hopeful' than statements we should open up and let the chips fall where they may.

our social infrastructure is far more fragile than salaried professionals who largely populate this board realize.