A generation of children is growing up hungry and stunted in Venezuela, where the economic crisis and a lack of public resources have led to widespread shortages of food and a public health system unable to care for the malnourished.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-malnutrition/
Cutworm: Here in the land of plenty, Like Venezuela was 20 years ago we have a decision to make. Depend on Government handouts or go back to work.
On April 12, Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said the Sioux Falls plant's closure puts the country's meat supply at risk.
Example: Tyson and Smithfield plant closings
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/business/tyson-pork-plant-iowa-coronavirus/index.html
"It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," he said. "These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain."
Will we end up going the way of Venezuela? I dunno, but we have a growing segment of the population voting for just that.
Well said cutworm!
We must reopen based on clear risk reward factors. It's becoming a no brainer that's turned into a political battle based on fear/emotions, when it should be science, medicine, economics and common sense.
1. We have already done at least an order of magnitude if not 2 more damage to peoples lives from the shut downs than the coronavirus has done.
2. It accomplished the main objective..........prevent an apocalypse that would have occurred if we had more sick people than hospital beds for them. People forget that this was the main threat and the only reason to get as extreme as we did(it would be dumb, for instance to do this much, unprecedented damage to almost every life, to avoid the numbers of deaths in a bad flu season). It did NOT happen, likely thanks in a big part to the shut downs.
3. We are passed that in most places. WE ARE PAST THAT! But we aren't passed the fear of that if we reopen.
4. Fear is an emotion that makes it harder to see things objectively. Dial in the politics that have taken over and we are getting farther and farther from objectively.
5. Every day that goes by being shut down is adding to the historical damage to peoples lives and the added damage is rapidly getting to the point of no return for many businesses.
6. Every day that passes by being shut down, contributes............how much to lowering the chance of COVID-19 roaring back and becoming an apocolype?
7. We have widespread testing in place and even after reopening, massive changes to society to greatly lessen the spread of the virus.
8. We have a huge unknown about what % of the population has been exposed/infected. There are 2 ways to look at the much higher numbers in all the studies so far.
a. It's way more contagious than we thought. OMG! We need to stay shut down much longer because it will come back faster than we thought!
b. If that many people (10 to 50 times more than we thought) have been infected and didn't know about it...........then it's not as deadly as we thought. For sure not any worse than the flu for healthy people under 65. This looks increasingly likely.
9. Would we shut down everything because of a bad flu virus? Most old/sick people get the flu vaccine which is why more of them don't die from the flu every year. There is no doubt that COVID-19 is at least 5 times more deadly to these people than the flu. Shut down all of society to protect them??? How about taking EXTREME measures to protect them, while opening up society. Apply the science please. We know this virus kills mainly old and sick people, not young healthy people. We are way beyond the point of knowing this with absolute certainty.
10. We will never get the deaths to be close to 0(until there is a vaccine in widespread use)...........just like flu deaths, car accident deaths and so on. It's pure emotion to start rationalizing continued shutdowns with narratives like "even 1 extra//unnecessary COVID-19 death is too many! If one of those deaths is your dad, then yes, it was worth it to you but we must use the big picture, use risk/rewards to the 350+ million people and apply non emotional, non political principles with critical thinking, facts/science in to best manage this rapidly changing situation.
11. Not to be overlooked. Time is of the essence. It would be wonderful, if this science experiment were in the laboratory and we could let it play out for another year to have the final, conclusive results. It's in the real world and still very incomplete but we must act now before hitting the point of no return..............BEFORE the experiment is over.
12. What makes it a no brainer to me is that we can adjust to more stricter measures if COVID comes roaring back to a threat of potential health/medical apocalypse levels. Not opening up, is just making the FOR REAL economic apocalypse MUCH worse with 100% certainty. So the choice is not even: Open up and then be stuck with that decision for good. The choice is: Take a chance that it will probably not come roaring back and try to stop the current REAL WORLD apocalypse that is happening to all of us.
I would argue that any further stimulus bills will send us closer to socialism. I would argue only supporting food banks by gov't so we don't have hungry people is a gov't program we could all support
Beyond that?? Should we. let the system work as it did pre-corona virus. Stimulus bills can only lead to people wanting continued gov't support. Once started it is very hard to stop supporting the economy. Today the Fed said it would continue to support the economy. My question is how long do you support the economy. What metric do you use, to decide if we are sufficiently self supporting
Now as to forced labour, I haven't really decided if people should be forced to work. My arguement is, if we sanction forced labour, by our gov't, in meat packing plants, do we open the door to more forced labour. Do we force people to do stoop labour to harvest straw berries, or other manual labour such as harvesting crops or tending crops because we might need the food, which only hand labour is the system, that works best. One example is green house labour. Is that food really required?? Past experience in other countries has shown an aversion to forced labour, especially hard physical labour, such as picking bell peppers.. Questions arise such as who is fit enough to do hard physical labour. plus many other questions I am sure you can think of and no need to list in this post.
Does this lead to central planning or food security?? I dunno which is the greater need or fear. If the central planners decide which Corp will survive, what food is essential, is there an equal obligation to guard against over production of bulk commodity grains and continued or expanded price support for grain that is not wanted or needed.
I am against stimulas to save zombie Corp or farms that would eventually succumb to BK before corona arrived, but who decides who deserves a financial helping hand. Everybody, just so we are fair to everybody??
One thing I do know is the more we depend on gov't hand outs the more we demand these same hand outs. Would that lead to a situation such as venezuela. Chances are good that might happen if we succumb to central planners
Eventually we will print our way to disaster unless we stop printing fiat. Nobody knows where that tipping point might be until it is too late. I see the USD has lost value in recent days but think this is a normal market event and no need to panic over too much lost value.