Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn’t the metric incorporate the risk each activity entails? A good example is gardeners. Gardeners work alone or in teams of two, can obey social distancing, and generally don’t even talk to their clients on a regular basis. What is the threat here? What is so magical about the word essential? On the flip side large alcohol stores like Bevmo can stay open and serve hundreds of customers a day because they sell c…
1) Liquor stores are kept open because a (surprisingly high) percentage of the population are severe alcoholics and sudden withdrawal can kill them. 2) No public health professional has time to list and quantify all of the routine processes of every profession to create a complex matrix of risk. And 99% of the public would ignore that matrix if it was created and published. The simpler and more effective public healt…
As to your point about selectively closing businesses being hard, isn’t that a good thing? We shouldn’t put tens of millions of people out of jobs because it’s easier than enumerating what can and can’t stay open. The burden should be on the experts to make their case; after all they have had more than a month now to figure out a plan of attack.
How many deaths due to coronavirus are too many? Right now it seems like public health experts are taking the view that any death is one too many. And they’re willing to present or skew the facts to get that point across. I would rather them be upfront about the benefits and risks, rather than take a paternalistic viewpoint. There are real costs to keeping the country closed, and we shouldn’t discount them.