| RolStoppable said: I don't think it's necessary that the people of any country have to care about what happens to jobs in other countries. Keeping their eyes on their own country is enough to recognize that unemployment numbers are rising at a much faster pace than confirmed corona cases. In Austria we have reached five digit figures for corona infections this week while the number of newly recorded unemployed people over the course of the last two weeks has comfortably exceeded 100,000. The likelihood to be someone or know someone who lost their job is far higher than to be someone or know someone who is infected by corona. I think that's going to hold true in every country and that's why the perception of what is important and what should be done will change rather quickly. The currently prevalent solidarity to save lives will change to an expected payback, such as those risk groups who are now being supported being asked to show solidarity in return by opting to isolate themselves while the majority can begin to return to their normal lives. Easter Monday being a deadline in quite a few countries is bound to be a catalyst too. When people can't spend time with relatives and/or friends during Easter, then the demand among the population to lift/change the measures will be amplified, because enough is enough. |
This is a big part of the reason why it got to this point and will get much worse. The only way to stop it is to stop it early. However then everyone would have been crying that it is/was not necessary so that path was not taken. Plus most people couldn't imagine what exponential growth actually entails, most still can't.
Currently we're in the hammer phase, it can still be slowed like Italy shows. If everyone actually does their part it will be stopped dead in its tracks in a couple weeks, it doesn't have to take longer than the max incubation time. However the numbers are still too low for a lot of people to think of it as anything more than a nasty flu. Perhaps instead of numbers the news should show what's going in Italy in the hospitals. But that would cause other people to panic more again and do stupid things at the other end of the spectrum. Humanity sucks, we can't get together to execute a solution that will work.
Easter Monday is 16 days from now, with current growth rates in Europe and the USA, Easter Sunday will be adding 320K new cases to Europe that day and 21K deaths that day, 286K new cases for the USA and 5300 deaths. It should be much less than that since social distancing is having some effect already but it's only been a few days since France extended the lock down to the rest of the country while many places are still not all that serious about enforcing/encouraging social distancing. It's going to grow until Easter at least.
If everyone does their part, stuff can go back to relatively normal in a month. However we may already be too late to have a normal left to go back to. The health care system in Italy and Spain are already suffering major losses.
Yet if people keep at the notion that it's not necessary, worse for the economy, and keep going on about as usual, it will only take longer and do exponentially more damage, both to the people and to the economy.
And how well is your economy going to do when other countries isolate you to save themselves from re-infection?
Essay Pro