Quote Originally Posted by Don Julio View Post
I’m not sure that’s entirely rational (although nor am I saying we should bury our heads in the sand).

Like it or not life has an economic value. We don’t set the speed limit to 10mph on all roads just because it would save lives. As a society we try to strike a balance.

The point about this situation is we don’t know what’s the right balance as we have highly imperfect information. So we’re taking a safety first approach. We’ll not know till afterwards (if ever) whether that was the right thing to do. So we can argue about that till the cows come home.

But it would be a very brave government that just said carry on as normal and didn’t try to limit this. Hard to argue with the approach that’s being taken in broad terms.
I agree with what you are saying although I might argue we are taking a science led approach rather than a safety first approach. I am probably splitting hairs but the science based approach is in my mind akin to a "just in time" approach, which for sure is being cautious but many might argue if we were truly safety first then we would have moved to the draconian stages much quicker than we have done. However as you say it is tough to be overly critical on the broad thrust of the approach we are taking based on what we know.

However I fear (for my American friends and colleagues) that we are about to see what the completely different approach looks like. Trump has been threatening to send people back to work/school by Easter (even though it is the State Governers rather than him that has that power) and after today's horrendous US unemployment figures he will no doubt ratchet up the rhetoric to try to bully people into going back to normal given his re-election chances are so tied to the economy. We will see whether he and the right wing FOX/radio stations or the health/science advisors win the day as that would almost certainly just be carnage across the pond