[big_chungus]

The worst-case projection is 1.7 million: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-est....

If the media hadn't spent weeks fearmongering and spinning this as some killer exotic plague (rather than something that hits at-risk populations much harder but is survivable for most others). Only a few percent of younger people have needed intensive care. It won't make too much of a difference anyway; we'll still hit a peak and have a colossal shortage of everything. The doctors will have to make a choice: do we save the young person with more years and more productivity ahead of him, or do we save the eighty-year-old? Guess which will be chosen?

There is no pretty solution to this problem. A lot of people will get hurt. I wish everyone would stop staring like a hungry child at the government, begging it to "do something". The government cannot solve this problem. Stealing more money from those who remain in work won't solve anything. This is precisely the time to reduce taxes massively, completely gut every entitlement program, and strangle the bureaucracy that caused this mess until the nation has a chance to prosper.

EDIT: Replying to Slartie comment here, as HN is rate-limiting.

What is "navigating through"? The government can't arrest those who violate its un-constitutional orders, lest it risk spreading disease further. Why can the precious bureaucracy solve this? How? It'll do something, that's for sure, but that's because everyone keeps screaming to "do something".

You're looking at this absolutely the wrong way. This is the time to massively cut taxes, promote supply-side growth, and remove almost all entitlements. It is the job of each American to be responsible for his own welfare, not for Big Daddy Government to swoop in and save him. The Nanny State strikes again. Twelve-hundred-dollar hand-outs to everyone? Disgraceful. We're turning into a nation of lazy mooching welfare queens.

> Now tell me again that the "government cannot solve this problem".

> Even the anti-government Republicans currently seem to look to the government as the only instance potentially capable of solving this problem.

Who said I was a Republican, or agreed with the party, or approved of its actions? I don't. It's a disgrace.

EDIT: Replying to ss2003 here, as HN is rate-limiting.

Yes, but entitlements too. They make up most of our expenses, not military.

EDIT: Replying to jahaja here, as HN is rate-limiting.

Why do you say that? You'd really saddle the next generation with debt to pay for a shutdown that saves mostly older people? That's no more fair than a million people being killed by a virus. If you could choose that everyone looses his job or one person dies, what would you choose? Why? What about a hundred people dying? Thousand? Where's you're bright line?

[ss2003]

We should be cutting the bloated military budget not entitlements.

[lgleason]

So far, if the 3rd bill makes it into law, we will be at well over 2 trillion dollars trying to keep the economy from imploding. Many say that it won't be enough and we will be looking at more bills and A LOT more spending. Yearly military expenditures are at 700 billion a year.

[big_chungus]

Where do you get that conclusion? You think crashing the economy won't hurt people?

> Shame on you.

Seriously?

[Slartie]

> The government cannot solve this problem.

The government is precisely the only instance that is able to solve this problem, with "solution" not being "make it go away instantly", but "navigating through the time until a vaccine is available in the best way possible".

> reduce taxes massively

This ideology partially got you into the problem. 1.5 trillions in taxes have just been reduced while everything was fine, just "because the people in power could" - and because it benefitted their purses. It's an ironic twist of fate that Congress just passed a deal of almost-identical "historic" proportions with the goal of pushing a similar sum of money into the hands of the people that are NOT in power, because if the people in power don't do this, the entire country is going to blow up around them, reducing the previously-inflated contents of their purses (stocks, real estate) to shreds.

Now tell me again that the "government cannot solve this problem". Even the anti-government Republicans currently seem to look to the government as the only instance potentially capable of solving this problem.