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In addition to the tragedy of losing 100k people to #COVID19 in ~2mo, what's deeply frustrating is the intellectual fraud currently being perpetuated that suggests slowing epidemic is a natural progression of the disease. Just the flu or some other virus of the past...
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That, somehow the disease has run its course & we don't have much to worry about. This flies in the face of seroprevalence surveys showing low incidence (most impacted NYC w/ the highest at ~20%). Also ignores the carnage & tragedy seen even at such low infection prevalence.
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Worse yet, this fraud discounts drastic behavior changes that minimized gatherings, interactions, & contacts. One may debate SIP measures' effectiveness, but no denying the fact that these actions curtailed transmission chains. It's been proven the world over.
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A weird cognitive dissonance in play here. They argue, on the one hand, mitigation didn't do anything to affect disease spread/outcomes. On the other, mitigation measures have caused economic depression. No doubt the virus caused economic calamity but can't have it both ways.
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If consumer behavior change affected economic activity, it's that very change that also minimized risk of virus spread. As noted before, it's tragic that we had to resort to shutting down industries/economies to save lives. No denying leaders, institutions & govts failed us.
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Thousands of lives & trillions of dollars could have been saved if we had acted earlier. Here we are now, some questioning fatality reports (despite ample evidence of excess deaths). Debating the 100k milestone as if fewer people dying would have made it any less tragic.
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At this crucial juncture, we can't take wrong lessons from apparent success in slowing the epidemic. Significant part of the population remains susceptible to infection. Not taking the virus seriously will only cause more harm & bring forth preventable devastation.
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This doesn't mean we don't think about trade offs & be sensitive to economic impact on lives and livelihoods. Many countries have shown that the sooner we get on the program of controlling the virus, the sooner we can have our lives back.
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