Is the fear of Covid19  worth killing the lives of so many? Is it worth going in debt Trillions of dollars? Is it worth stomping on the Bill of rights? Is it worth depression era unepolyment? Is it worth the tens of thousands of companies that will go bankrupt. Is it worth the foreclosures and bankruptcies that will follow? Here are some facts for a little prospcetive from the CDC.  2018-2019 Flu season with a vacine  42.9 million got sick. 647000 hospitalized. 61200 dead. And the CDC projects for 2019-2020 80000 deaths. The country did not freak out.  2020 Covid19 stats so far 639055 got sick.82809 hospitalised. 30988 deaths. The country goes stark raving nuts from fear and kills the republic. So is the fear worth the cure? I say no time to suck it up and open this country bsck up and try to save whats left.                                                                       

It really makes you wonder doesn't it.  

Now take into consideration how much more communicable covid 19 is and figure out what the statistics would look like for a year without mitigation.  How do you think our health care system would be able to handle it?  

What price do you put in human life - especially the lives of your loved ones?  

I still can't get past thinking that there is some politics at play.  I still feel like the Dems are willing to do anything to ruin Trumps economy hoping that it would cause him to lose the election.  They talk about the deaths but don't ever mention the number of people that survive it.

Hard to tell on mitigation. I can only offer Sweden with hardly any mitigation compared to the surounding countrys strick mitigation when ajusted for population the stats are almost the same. So who was right. As the value of a life it is the same deaths by the flu and covid19 both are both bad. But no one asked that question when comes to the flu which kills more.

I'm 100 percent trump supporter but this is a whole different beast. I'm in CA and they said if we did NOTHInG , life as usual, 60 percent of the population would get it and nationally death rate would be about 300k. Flu has been around long enough we KNOW what it does , how to treat it , etc. with covid 19 we just do NOT know yet. It's so new it could do almost anything. 

They won't know the true statistics until they know how many people actually had it and got over it.  There is so much coming out now about what happened and when.  All along many people have said they had something that made them very sick in November and December of 2019. They were tested and it was NOT the flu. I happen to believe them. 

They have come out with a saliva test that will be able to tell if someone has had it and gotten over it, has it at the time they took the test or have not had it.  That will be a great tool for them to finally come up with numbers we can believe. No guessing. 

It's worth looking at Sweden's experience, for sure, but here are a few things to consider.  First, they did implement voluntary social distancing.  They didn't close much down, if anything.  If you used Sweden's death numbers and extrapolate those to the US, if we had a death rate the same as Sweden, we'd be looking at about 48,000 deaths, rather than 33,000.  That's roughly 50% more deaths than the US, per capita.  As far as the number of cases, you can't compare, because neither country has a good idea of the real numbers of people infected because testing has not been widespread enough in either case to give us a good idea of the denominator. 
Another thing to realize is that you can't really compare the two countries.  Sweden has no real pockets of densely populated areas.  The total population is about 10 million, compared to about 335 million for the US. The largest city in Sweden is Stockholm which is about the size of Austin, at about 900,000.  A better comparison would be to compare North Carolina to Sweden. Sweden has had over 1400 deaths from Covid19, versus about 130 for North Carolina.  That's a 10-fold difference.  For what it's worth, Sweden has had 2.5 times the number of cases.  Sweden doesn't have large, densely populated urban areas like the US...nothing like NY, LA, Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, Boston, DC, and Chicago.  In other words, you are comparing apples to oranges. 
If we would have done what Sweden did in these large, densely populated, urban areas, most of their hospitals would have been completely overwhelmed, and you don't have to be a genius to imagine the sheer panic, violence, pandemonium, and anarchy that would have ensued.  They would be burying bodies like they did in Auschwitz.  I shudder to imagine the end result.

Bottom line for me is this.  Even if you believe the numbers were fudged some, in terms of the reporting of deaths, I think we handled this just about right.  It's been brutal, in terms of the economy, and the national debt is impossible to even imagine, at least it looks like we stand a pretty good chance of bouncing back from this and emerging even better.....provided we really take note of the valuable lessons learned, and do something about it.

Think about things carefully, before reacting in response to your urge to display the natural tendency to base your opinion on confirmation bias......looking for something to back up your position....or confirm your bias.  Comparing Sweden's results to ours doesn't cut it.  

Trump's handling of this pandemic will go down in history.  He was masterful. 

Around 5-7 people in my office of 50, along with myself got very sick with coughing, fever, the whole bit back around Christmas (maybe a little before). We were all tested for the flu and were negative, this is before they were testing for Covid-19. Antibiotics, steroids, etc. nothing helped. Seriously, the cough was unlike anything else I've experienced... it was a horrible, cant catch your breath hacking cough! Then all this came out. We are all healthy now and working like normal as we are considered an essential business. I'm going to be very curious when the antibody test becomes readily available in our area whether it will show if we all already had it or not. I'd love to get tested, but also since I am already back healthy again do not want to deprive the sick of much needed testing just for my own curiosity. 

Right! If you consider bumbling thru it like he does with everything else it's been masterful. 

For the realist point of view he has been his usual useless self. Like since the day he's took over he's sat an done nothing but tweet. They have to have a press conference after every trump conference so his handlers can tell us what trump did or didn't say.

I don't know what the answer is nor whether we should have done differently. But neither does trump. The USA is a rudderless ship. No leadership at the top. Of course this thing has turned political because there is a void in leadership so politics fill the void. 

Our governor in Ky is doing a masterful job. If you want to see masteful just watch him. Just think how it would be here if he hadn't beaten mini trump last Nov. 

I was hoping my last remark would draw you out from beneath your rock.  That's exactly why I made my last post.

Yes, I do believe this deadly disaster has been very well handled.  Out of curiosity, as a self-described yellow dog Democrat, please explain how your candidate would have handled it differently, then provide the evidence to back it up.

I won't hold my breath.  I doubt you will come up with a cogent reply, other than your usual twisted blather.

So had Hilary or Biden been president, things would have been vastly different?  Things would not have been political during this time if one of them was leading us?   Honestly asking, not being facetious.  

Speaking of rudderless jd when Trump banned flights from China shortly after the first case of the virus showed up here in the U.S., Joe, Chuck and Nancy all screamed racist at the top of their liberal lungs.  Bernie Sanders also assured the world that he would never have pulled such a racist stunt.  Turned out Trump made a lifesaving decision there.  That favorite liberal word "racist".  They just can't help themselves.  It's all they've got.  Deplorable didn't work out very well.

I was one of those sick in November/December with a non-flu illness that kicked my tush. I finally went to the doctor - and I don't do that unless something is falling off or won't stop bleeding. But I recovered fine after antibiotics and predisone. I went to work every day. I fed the horses twice a day. I fed myself and hubby every night. I didn't die. My hubb caught the same thing and had two days where he couldn't get warm. He, too, went to work, did his chores, stayed hydrated and got better. 

The fear part of this Covid thing is the destructive part, imo. The fear that contracting Covid = death. You may get sick for a bit. It isn't the most fun. You have to force yourself to stay hydrated and eat. If you don't have any underlying condition you will recover! 

But no one is going to be able to NOT get exposed. If you are eating food gathered recently then you will get exposed no matter if you get to the store yourself or have it delivered. Covid WILL be present some time or other on some surface or other. 

We did this social distancing thing to flatten the curve, not stop the virus from spreading. There is no force on earth that is going to stop the virus. No amount of politics, money, isolation, panic or fear will stop Covid from making it's way around the world, probably forever. We humans will develop a partial immunity and Covid will become just another cold/flu. 

I hate hearing that people FEAR getting it. Unless you are compromised then get it over with and get on with your life! If you are compromised then do every thing you can to stay on top of your health and talk to your doctor about ways to aleviate the worst of the symptoms from getting you hospitalized. Now that fear I understand! 

I love that post^^^^^^

Hillary would have told u us DEPLORABLES  to go eat cake.

If you haven't already read it in the news, McDonald's in China began banning black people from their restaurants, because they believe foreigners are the ones that brought the virus to China (when their initial claim of US soldiers didn't fly). McDonald's in China has since issued an apology for the ban, but I don't trust the CCP or their numbers one bit. Talk about racist, but there is nothing coming from the left on this because they're all under the CCP's spell.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52274326

I lost an Uncle to it Friday---lose someone close to you and trust me, your whole perspective changes.

I watched a press conference with President Trump yesterday and it's disgusting how badly the liberal reporters talk to this man.  They blame him for the death and disease while never mentioning China as possibly being the culprit.  I'll say one thing......Trump has learned to handle them like a pro and takes no guff from these weasels.