OK fine. We have to keep everything shut down, and keep the kids home from school, and keep wrecking the economy so that people don't die. It's heartless to let people die. Makes sense. Except that it kind of doesn't. Because we as a society have always been fine with people dying in order for society to continue to function. In the time that most of us have been alive, close to a million people in this country have died from influenza. In the time that most of us have been alive, nearly 1.5 million people in this country have died in automobile accidents. So sit back and consider this for a minute. IN YOUR LIFETIME, AROUND 2.5 MILLION AMERICANS HAVE DIED JUST FROM INFLUENZA AND AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS ALONE (plus or minus depending on your age). Millions of lives gone that could have been easily prevented simply by shutting everything down every year from October to April, and shutting down all of the roads.
Now wait, you say. Covid is deadlier than the flu (true). It's killed more people in the US already than will be killed on the roads this year (true). But if this is your argument for continuing a full shutdown over Covid and not over flu and traffic deaths, then what you're saying is that that you're OK with 65,000 or so senseless American deaths every year to keep your standard of living. But just not with more than that.
And so I would turn around and ask, why are you fine with my grandma dying of influenza so that you can keep your job, but not with yours dying of Covid so I can keep mine? Why are you fine with my friend dying on the road so that you can keep your standard of living, but not with your friend dying of Covid so I can keep mine?
Herein lies the ultimate problem. If feels like no one wants to sit down and do the hard job of saying: "OK, no one wants people to die. But at some point we have to accept some sort of trade-off, which in fact we've already been doing for years. And now we need to decide what that trade-off is for Covid. We continue to keep just the roads open at the expense of 40,000 lives yearly. What is the cost we are we willing to pay, not necessarily to get the economy roaring like it was again, but to avoid falling into a full-on depression?"
Of course god forbid someone does try to raise this topic, the great humanists (most of whom still have their jobs), come screeching out of the woodwork yelling "HOW LITERALLY DARE YOU! IF EVEN ONE LIFE IS SAVED THIS IS ALL WORTH IT". And you know what? They're a bunch of ****ing hypocrites. Because where have they been as people die on the roads? Where have they been as people die from the flu? Why do those lives not matter?
If only we weren't stuck with the nutjobs on one side screaming "We can't lose a single life!", and the nutjobs on the other side screaming "Everything has to go instantly back to what it was 3 months ago!", maybe we could actually sit down as adults and have this hard conversation, and figure out what we have to do and accept as a society to balance all of the considerations out.
