Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

if only there were some way to pay people to stay home, while paying businesses to remain in business

 

You frequently toss something like that out there. Gettin' handed a check is only a nice thing if there's something to buy with it.

 

I'm not sure that's as true on a short-term - say one-month - lockdown basis.

Think of it as a state of suspended animation. It's a Manhattan Project fantasy for sure.

But everybody in America - including landlords - gets a check sufficient to their needs to stay the fuck home for four weeks. Or eight weeks.

Whatever it takes to keep the greatest number of people whole.

I think the truth of our half-measures this year guaranteed lots of unnecessary hardship.

 

I can't think of anything that I wanted to buy which has not been available other than things that there was a run on, like toilet paper and bleach wipes - and I found those, it simply took a little effort.

More than that, there are a lot of people who have been thrown out of work and need money for food, rent, and utility bills.

 

I don't tend to have to scare up particular inventory/consumption numbers, but a New York Times article in mid-March (dealing with grocers' empty shelves) made mention of there being around 950 million pounds of chicken in cold storage (i.e., inventory). Which sounds like a helluva lot, but that's a bit more than a week's worth of supply (based on 2017 consumption numbers, which are surely higher now).

I doubt chicken is all that special in the leanness of its supply chain, but let's say it is. Let's say that in general, the U.S. has about two weeks worth of calories in inventory. Hell, let's make it three. We still run into the niggling detail that that inventory isn't going to magically appear on grocery store shelves. Lots of grimy little paws will have to handle it along the way.

The reality is that you can write all the checks you want, but if everybody (or nearly everybody) in America is staying the fuck home, home is gonna quickly turn into an awfully hungry place.

 

I agree that Clapton is overrated. As a mechanic, first-rate. But the thing that comes out of the oven isn't all that special.

 

291,000 US combat deaths in WWII by Germany and Japan 1941-45 (45 months)
260,000 US COVID deaths by Republicans 9 months. March-December 2020

 

Who killed the 675,000 Americans in the 1918-19 pandemic?

 

God

 

Your boy’s death toll is going to blow that number away.

 

Absolutely right.

Which is why you'd have to keep some sort of essential supply chain intact, and quarantine those workers in some sort of local/regional/national essential-service barracks. For a month. Two months.

Or have the military do it. Since that's the largest, most elaborate pre-existing supply chain in the world.

We needed to weigh the cost of doing something like that against the cost of not doing something like that.

In the end we made no real choices at all, so we'll kill too many people and still hobble the economy for years.