Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

My school district is saying we're coming back on Monday, as scheduled.  We're on spring break this week.
.
I expect that message to change in the next couple of days.

This isn't some guessing game where the consequence of being wrong is equal, whether you're wrong above or below the line. 
If we're too cautious, zero additional deaths will occur and it would have wasted some money.
If we're wrong the other way, it would cause unknown numbers of deaths and would cost more money in the long run.
So in this situation of the great unknown, it's an easy choice of which way to be wrong on - we must be cautious.  

I see your point, but "it would have wasted some money" is a little bit of a bigger issue than perhaps is being understood.  

It's always a balancing act. We have thousands of highway deaths, but we don't set speed limits at 5 mph to counteract this. That would be an overreaction, and the damaged caused in commute, shipping, etc times would destroy the chance of having an economy. 

We've basically voluntarily shut down a huge portion of our economy for the next month. We WILL see business fail over this. We WILL see people out of work, possibly unable to make their rent/car/utility payments. The pain point is going to be significant. It's not just "wall street". It'll be seen on main street too. 

Maybe the death toll if we didn't would be SO huge that it was more than worth it. But we don't know what the death toll would be, and so you can't simply say that no reaction is an overreaction if it saves lives. 

The optimal balance point is not zero deaths. That sounds rude as $&#@ to say, but it simply isn't. Just as we don't shut down our entire economy every year for the flu, which kills tens of thousands a year in this country alone. 

I'm hoping we're making the right decision here. The downside is if we are successful in staving this off, the death toll will be low, and then a bunch of people will be saying "well we obviously overreacted because the death toll was so low" while others will say "if we hadn't done this the death toll would have been huge" and the problem is that we don't know which group is right.  

I see your point, but "it would have wasted some money" is a little bit of a bigger issue than perhaps is being understood. 

It's always a balancing act. We have thousands of highway deaths, but we don't set speed limits at 5 mph to counteract this. That would be an overreaction, and the damaged caused in commute, shipping, etc times would destroy the chance of having an economy.

We've basically voluntarily shut down a huge portion of our economy for the next month. We WILL see business fail over this. We WILL see people out of work, possibly unable to make their rent/car/utility payments. The pain point is going to be significant. It's not just "wall street". It'll be seen on main street too.

Maybe the death toll if we didn't would be SO huge that it was more than worth it. But we don't know what the death toll would be, and so you can't simply say that no reaction is an overreaction if it saves lives.

The optimal balance point is not zero deaths. That sounds rude as $&#@ to say, but it simply isn't. Just as we don't shut down our entire economy every year for the flu, which kills tens of thousands a year in this country alone.

I'm hoping we're making the right decision here. The downside is if we are successful in staving this off, the death toll will be low, and then a bunch of people will be saying "well we obviously overreacted because the death toll was so low" while others will say "if we hadn't done this the death toll would have been huge" and the problem is that we don't know which group is right. 

Very well stated. While I hope we are doing everything we can to prevent people from dying, destroying our economy to do so is NOT the answer. A good economy saves countless lives and helps to extend both life expediencies and the quality of life in general. As you say, there has to be balance in whatever we do. If we are not cognoscente of how our actions or the government actions negatively affect the economy, it could make the situation considerably worse.   

Yes. But I think that some folks (like my kids' school) are going well beyond what our medical professionals and epidemiologists are saying.

I don't believe their saying that all of modern life needs to come to a halt and the entire country should shelter-in-place for 2 weeks. They're saying that we should avoid very large crowds and gatherings to reduce spread, wash our hands, and otherwise just follow good practices.

Ehhh, what would you call a large school???

I'm looking forward to all of this proactive thinking working, then the naysayers saying, "see, told you it was no big deal." 
That'll be my favoirte.

The wife needed a prescription at Kroger so I figured I'd pick up a few items, the essentials like a big foam cowboy hat.  The parking lot was full, first sign.  There were no carts.  The store is about half empty  I did get some milk.  There were large sections completely bare, often of odd things like meat (almost bare).  No TP at all, we were there yesterday and they were fully stocked except TP.

I think this is a serious situation, but "we" are going to feel foolish with a year's supply of TP in our houses.  I'm surprised there hasn't been a run on gasoline, I guess that is next.  Supposedly there is only enough gasoline at the stations to fill up ten percent of the cars on the road.  I was here in 2004 when the metro area was OUT of gasoline, not lines, not high prices, OUT, 6 million people (5 million back then) and no gas this side of Tennessee.