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

 

I won’t go into what different motives each group has, like media for example, because that seems self evident. 

Their motive would be non-financial in your mind? Interesting. 

Their motive would be non-financial in your mind? Interesting.

I would wager a strong majority would easily agree with that.  In fact, do you think the media’s motivations as to how they cover this are financial?

I would wager a strong majority would easily agree with that.  In fact, do you think the media’s motivations as to how they cover this are financial?

Certianly not financial. Those companies are taking a bath. 

It took me a second to read what you were getting at. Morning has been hectic. 

I think their motivation for the most part has been to respond to the interest of their consumers. But "the media" is such a vast and overarching thing, it accounts for a multitude of outlets whose motivations are both varied by outlet and even varied within an outlet itself. 

I'm hearing through the medical/epidemiologist channels that South Korea's efforts at opening up their economy, on a limited basis, have resulted in an almost instantaneous x10 increase in COVID-19 cases. I can't be sure that's right, but that's what I've heard through semi-official channels. Will be interesting to see if that hits the news soon.

The distrust in this country is stunning (and intentionally cultivated). As noted, the medical community speaks with near unanimity about this thing, but our discourse has degraded so much that if a D or and R says something, the other side automatically assumes it is untrue and that it is politically motivated. And yet, we have to have a government and we generally agree that a democracy is the best way to implement said government, which guarantees that the people at its top will have political interests. I find this very sad. I have my own biases and strongly blame the "other" side, but...wow. It makes an effective response to a very real medical emergency extremely challenging.

The whole world does?  I can randomly turn on the tv or go to the web to “ educate myself” in where we stand.
I assure you- the OVERWHELMING sources I find
in the “ normal “ media channels and social media DO NOT WANT TO and in fact will carve up anyone who suggests otherwise. They HARSHLY criticize any officials that do move in that direction, lambaste any medical opinions on that and even censor them out of view.

Do you really think that the world's leaders want to have their economies crash? Don't you think that the intense scrutiny on Sweden is in the hopes that their model actually provides a POSITIVE example for how we can start to reopen? 

Literally if this wasn't serious, any country which remained fully open in a "let 'er rip" manner would have huge advantages over their peers as far as economic performance over the next few months... Yet nobody is doing so. 

Again, the easiest explanation for why the world's governments have taken such strong steps is that they actually believe this virus is that dangerous.

If you want to reopen now, given the fact that even our own POTUS' administration created clear guidelines for the conditions necessary and the phases of reopening to do so safely, and those conditions haven't been met, you have to believe one of two things:

• The virus isn't as serious as stated, and all of the world's epidemiologists who believed these significant controls were necessary to prevent enormous loss of life are wrong.
• That enormous loss of life isn't a big deal and people should just suck it up and deal with it so we don't have any economic slowdown.

there are absolutely financial incentives to call cases COVID versus something else, and for some people there are financial incentives to stay on unemployment. 

I'm not saying there aren't financial incentives to call cases COVID-19 vs something else--at least in the US. But do you think those incentives are so incredible, and the moral fiber of the nation's coroners so weak, that this is a major problem? I.e. that we now have 60K deaths in this country attributed to COVID-19, but that the real number is FAR lower, i.e. 15K or 30K? Because unless the effect is massive, it doesn't change anything about the argument. 

I do agree there are financial incentives to remain on unemployment. For many of the poorest workers, they're actually earning more on unemployment than they were earning from their jobs. For many others, they're earning an income close enough to what they were earning to justify trying to stay home instead of going back to work. And if we reopen the economy, obviously we need to phase out the special federal unemployment benefits to force those people to return to their old jobs or look for new ones. But what does that statement have to do with the argument of whether it's SAFE to reopen the economy?

You know what would be bad? Bad would be if this topic made it to 2000 pages. 

God, I hope it doesn't.

The wife has a close friend who lives in Sweden, and I chat with her on FB from time to time.  It is NOT TRUE that Sweden is doing "almost nothing", at all.  They are doing relatively little by fiat, but the Swedes are doing MOST of what we're doing here.  The general plan is not much different in reality, it's just more voluntary.

They are experiencing higher rates than Finland and Denmark and they do have more social interactions that could spread this S.