Originally Posted by
Frank_B
This is a cute analogy, but the presumption you make is that you know the true nature of the reality of the situation, and the opposition is just a bunch of schizophrenics. While I admit it's true that there are some on here who are in flat out denial that there is even a virus, the real underpinnings of this argument are rooted in something far less psychotic. In fact, depending on how one views the situation, you might argue that "our" side is more compassionate, despite perhaps being less tangible.
I've brought this up in the other thread before, but I'll bring it up again to make my point:
We know that a 20 year lockdown would simply not be worth it. We intuitively understand that 20 years being locked down would create enormous economic and social effects that would outweigh the total damage of the virus. This would probably hold true even of a virus that was three times as deadly as some of the worst COVID-19 predictions. People who are pro-lockdown argue, though, that 2-3 months (or wherever we're at right now) is too short. So, somewhere between 3 months and 20 years of lockdown, there is a line in which we all intuitively understand that the socio-economic damage from a lockdown is too great. Why has no one advocating for a lockdown even examined where this line is? If they have, I would love to know where the line is approximated at. You all have accepted every statistic about the spread of COVID-19, the infection rate, the fatality rate, etc., but have not asked a single question about the back end cost. That cost is in lives, too, and quite frankly, it'll be much younger lives.
Three years from now, when a 40 year old husband father of three who opened his new restaurant in January of 2020 blows his brains out because he was forced to shut down his restaurant, the business went under, the unemployment websites were down, his family is hungry, and all he's got is a life insurance policy with his name on it, then that should be considered a "lockdown death." The problem: You people won't track that statistic. You won't even give it the time of day, because it is completely out of sight and out of mind for you.
Four years from now, when the 45 year old chronic pain patient who couldn't go to their chiropractor, massage therapist, gym, yoga class, etc.., and has instead turned to opioids to treat their pain, sticks the fentanyl-laden needle in their arm and dies, you won't attribute that to the lockdown. Why? It's just a stinky, dead fucking addict in the streets. You don't know their backstory, so how could we possibly call that a COVID-19 death? Yet, a guy who shows up at the hospital with trouble breathing and dies? That's an automatic +1 for your treasured body count.
The 36 year old man who finally sees his doctor in September because he's had a lump on his right testicle, but couldn't get it checked when he noticed it in March, finds out he's got an aggressive form of testicular cancer. Maybe in March it was Stage I or II. In August, the diagnosis is grim: He'll be dead by 2021.
I could go on and on and on for days about these little corner cases and niche scenarios. The reality is that they are going to rapidly start growing. They will not be instantaneous deaths. The shock value will not be nearly as sensational as today's COVID-19 death toll we get to salivate over when we wake up and drink our coffee. You'll just see half of them on an episode of LivePD a few years from now and go, "What the fuck is wrong with people?"
Furthermore, might I remind you that the lockdown was designed to "flatten the curve." We widely understood that the infectious nature of the disease meant MOST people were going to get the virus. We just didn't want to overwhelm the health care system. That was the line most people bought into. So, the reality is that the people who will likely contract the virus and die from it, will probably do so anyway. We just don't want them clogging shit up at the hospitals because that's messy.
If you take the above and then couple it with the ability of people to seemingly blindly accept that this lockdown business is the best thing for us, you're also giving up your freedoms without so much as a fight. Now, I know some people are passive about this. I'm guilty of this in the past. After 9/11, I thought, "Well, hell yeah, we gotta stop those terrorists." 20 years later and the Senate has just voted to allow the FBI to look at your browser history without a warrant... In what America does that even remotely seem Constitutional? But, in the name of fear, we all accepted this, and barely even bat an eyelash any longer when the government decides to do something to take away our freedoms. Sure, they have to put the word "terrorism" somewhere in the bill, but that's all it takes. The same will go for the words "pandemic," "COVID-19," etc... As long as they preface their bills with these buzzwords, you all will let them do anything.
There is a cost to this lockdown. You have not even begun to ask what that cost is. You are so blindly following the line that the virus must be stopped at all costs. The problem with stopping things at all costs is that we often go into debt to pay those costs. That debt is going to come in the form of tragic, isolated deaths that you people will not even begin to acknowledge as being related to your precious lockdown. And all for what? So that we can all celebrate flattening the curve, putting tens of millions out of work, and still having the same basic outcome?
Perhaps you're the schizophrenic unable to clearly see a reality outside of what's been fed to you.