Is Social Distancing Saving Lives Or Ruining Them?
Perhaps the overwhelming majority would happily endure indefinite isolation and sacrifices of freedom to prevent a fairly bad pandemic from getting somewhat worse. But I doubt it.

By Jonathan Ashbach, March 23, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/is-social-distancing-saving-lives-or-ruining-them/

Americans have been complaining about an unhealthy lack of bipartisanship on the political scene for years. In the last week or so, they got bipartisanship, but maybe not the kind they were hoping for.

In their first terrified response to the Wuhan coronavirus, Republicans and Democrats seemingly united in favor of social distancing, quarantine of the infected, and prevention of large gatherings. But as the first fog of panic wears off, another bipartisan phenomenon is beginning to sweep the nation: People are beginning to wonder whether the whole thing is doing more harm than good.

Why Social Distancing?

The case for social distancing is straightforward: The American health-care system has the capacity to treat only so many people at a time. If the virus spreads quickly, the number of people in need of treatment will exceed that capacity. People will need ventilators or other intensive treatment, and there will not be any for them to use. The number of deaths will rise, and the unpleasantness of the disease will increase significantly even for many who survive.

To the argument that Americans endure the flu with little or no stress, despite the fact that the flu kills about 50,000 people each year and coronavirus has killed a mere 200 or so as this goes to press, advocates of social distancing again have a straightforward answer: This is only the beginning. The Wuhan virus appears to be taking the lives of approximately 1.5 percent of those who become infected, while the flu kills only about 0.1 percent. Coronavirus therefore could kill hundreds of thousands or millions before it is finished.

Advocates of the extreme bipartisan measures make a solid and logically coherent case. On the other hand, there is a serious problem with that case.

Why Not Social Distancing?

The extreme reactionary measures to the pandemic focus only on the benefits of those actions, entirely ignoring the costs. And the costs will likely be massive.

Of course, it sounds very callous to talk about considering the costs. It seems harsh to ask whether the nation might be better off letting a few hundred thousand people die. Probably for that reason, few have been willing to do so publicly thus far. Yet honestly facing reality is not callous, and refusing even to consider whether the present response constitutes an even greater evil than the one it intends to mitigate would be cowardly.

First, consider the massive sacrifice of life Americans are making in their social distancing campaign. True, nearly all are not literally dying, but they are giving up a good deal of what makes life worth living — work, classes, travel, hugs, time with friends, conferences, quiet nights out, and so forth. Probably almost everyone would be willing to live a somewhat shorter normal life rather than a somewhat longer life under current conditions. The abandonment of normalcy, therefore, is in many ways equivalent to shortening the lives of the entire nation.


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Quote: Tinker wrote in post #3

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For many decades now I have been telling folks that individual liberty and personal responsibility are inextricably linked together. You simply cannot have one without the other. The current situation is not exempt!

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