There was a ferry boat loaded with passengers and cars approaching its destination. The channel was too narrow to turn around. The captain gave the orders to shut off the engines and nothing happened. As the crew raced to shut off the engines manually it became apparent there would be a crash. The captain had a choice. If he hit the dock there would be a sudden stop and the people would likely be thrown to the deck. All the cars would lurch forward and likely crush anyone unlucky enough to be between them. If the boat aimed next to the dock it would gradually stop on the sloped harbor bottom, but all the little boats would be rammed and anyone on them might be hurt, or worse.
The captain chose to ram the boats.
He blew the horn, radioed ahead and changed course. With the advanced warning the boats were cleared and there were no injuries. All this to illustrate that sometimes there are no good or perfect answers and hard decisions have to be made that will negatively impact one group of people instead of another.
This comes home to me in regard to the Chinese Flu shutdowns. I’m a dentist in the Phoenix area. I’ve had six weeks of unpaid vacation without the bills stopping. With one exception, all my employees got laid off. Last time the economy retracted severely I lost two patients (that I know of) to suicide. That’s out of about 2,000 people. We are going to reopen 5/1, and the business looks like it will only be about 50%.
I’m not sure how long this slowdown will last. If I hadn’t had a good-sized savings account I don’t know where this would go. As it is, not all the employees will be coming back and I don’t know how long it will be until I can take a paycheck. They are good people, and I’m sorry to see them go. If I didn’t do that, we’d all be out of a job and my savings would be depleted. I didn’t get any relief money, it all disappeared too early.
Anyhow, how many other businesses are like mine? How many will fold? How many people are we going to lose to suicide? How many families turned upside-down by alcohol problems or domestic violence? How many untreated medical problems are going to cause problems for people that could have been prevented with timely treatment? All this to stop the spread of a virus that is likely only as bad as the flu, probably less so. With all the inflation of the numbers, nobody can know for sure.
It’s time for difficult decisions to be made. A vulnerable population will potentially be at risk if we open up. A different vulnerable population will be at risk if we don’t. The probability is that the second group is a numerically bigger group. We won’t be risking the elderly with no cost if we stay shut. The decision to open is sobering, but it must be made. Too many people are at risk to too many problems, many unforeseen or unpredicted, if we don’t.
Sincerely,
Cynic.
Great illustration, Cynic! The ripple effect of this insanity is going to be more costly than it needed to be! I am so sorry that your practice has suffered such an impact. Yours will be replicated by many small businesses throughout our country and its such a shame. It’s time to get back to work and put an end to this unconstitutional travesty! God bless you and U.S.A.
I love it when a plan comes together!
” We are going to reopen 5/1, and the business looks like it will only be about 50%.”
So double your prices, the 50% that can afford them can get apporintments and treatments and the ones that can’t will just keep doing without the same way they are now.
Your income will be the same that way, and your workload half of what is was.
You don’t get hurt that way and your now current clientele will receive their needed dental care.
I guess sometimes it is advisable to remain anonymous. Either parody or stupidity!
Well said. It’s a travesty what you, and others, are going through. The only thing I would disagree on is the severity of the virus, as far as death rate. All the data we have gathered in the last few weeks shows, indicates, proves, suggests, however you want to put it, it will be less than the flu.
And we knew this at the start. Fauci knew this and it’s proven in a paper he wrote in March, stating “All the evidence suggests this will be no worse than the seasonal flu.” In MARCH!
Not to mention he knew, again knew, in 2005 hydroxychloriquine treats corona…FIFTEEN years ago!
The biggest shame is that nobody will be held accountable.
Curious thought, how many Federal and/or State employees have been laid off?? I’m not talking about part timers, I’m asking about full time??? The taxpayer will end up footing that cost.
@Anon — That is a very stupid suggestion. You don’t understand the supply/demand curve, plus your math skills suck.
This is a major escalation in the undeclared asymmetrical war that’s been going on for decades. There will be no reopening for a good chunk of the blue parts of the country — there are too many globalists in power who are possessed by the idea of destroying Trump. To do it they’re glad to sacrifice the economy of their cities and states, and the lives and fortunes of tens of millions of Americans. THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT PRESERVING GLOBALISM, NOT THE U.S., and Trump is obstacle #1.
Destroy the economy, destroy Trump in November. That’s the plan and hope.
Trump meant well, but he’s caught in a trap. So are we all.
Like the Democommies care about the plight of small businesses. Most of them are one a foreign power’s payroll in one way or another, mostly Chi-Com.
It’s the Cloward–Piven strategy folks.
Trump could have exposed fauci for the evil he is. Instead Trump doubled down on the lie. The data that the deaths are a fraction of what medical malpractice deaths are. He could have compared this to other flu years. Instead he gave credance to that demon’s lies. This is beyond the pale.
I’m never good at knowing what to say, but I’m sorry to hear about your situation and I’m wishing you the best, Cynic.
Good rant Cynic. I just may send this to Gov. Janet Mills here in Maine. She can’t make a decision. She actually has an online suggestion box for the public and for the Legislature.
I know small business owners who are on the verge of losing everything.
If my husband wasn’t able to work from home we’d be up a creek. The unemployment bureau here is so messed up I haven’t received one check. The stimulus checks haven’t come either.
It seems to me that most everyone who is on tv insisting we stay shut down is still employed, retired, wealthy, on welfare or part of the Democrat Party machine.
Do we destroy an entire country on “what if’s”?
Excellent rant. We need to acknowledge there was never a pandemic. If trump cant bring himself to say it, then just encourage states to reopen asap and say were back in business. He needs to stop listening to the idiots brix and fauxi. Thank them and tell them theyre done. Complete fail by these experts what a disaster they have been
But in America’s case the engine didn’t malfunction.
China, the Deep State, the Media, and the DNC sabotaged it – along with the steering – didn’t have to be a decision, at all.
There are NO Coincidences in politics.
NO Paradoxes.
NO Unintended Consequences.
There are only Causes and Effects.
Politics are of human design – not the effects of the stars and constellations.
izlamo delenda est …
@Anon -Paul Krugman, is that you?
I’m older and therefore more at risk. I stay home and will be happy to keep doing so while those who are healthy, younger and willing step on the gas and get things moving.
Go for it! We are a Nation of risk takers. Don’t stop now.
Anon, just like a liberal, thinks only of how self is affected.
Problem’s not so much how you process information as it is the character flaws.
If this artificially inflated crisis doesn’t prove just how little value the Left places on human life and dignity, it’s going to take them attempting genocide again before some people get it.
Yes, I said “again.” Every genocide of the 20th century was at the hands of leftists.
Liberals have no choice now but to double down on the lie, they are fully invested in this path that they can not let go.
Anticipate those state governors suffering from TDS to ratchet up the lockdown and the consequences for violations.
AND – I am pleasantly surprised that they haven’t loosed the flying monkeys (Wizard of Oz reference) yet. Once the Antifa, BLM, Occupy, & Bernie Bois groups are given their marching orders businesses will be lucky to have a building left.
The coronavirus and the shutdown are cause and reaction. Not cause and effect.
The deep state medical ‘experts’ none of whom see patients clinically or manage a practice all decided that the only solution to a viral epidemic was the 100 percent one like they would in a lab test. Problem is society is not a lab and you do not have control over things like the spread of the virus nor did they have any factual information as to how the virus affected the body and how to fight it.
No bother, just shut down society. Then they had time to ‘think’ about a response. Meanwhile our unemployment numbers are catastrophic.
Sometimes in life we are presented with a scenario where due to our own circumstances we have the luxury that we can stop and wait and then make a choice as to what to do. In the case of coronavirus, we were ordered to shutdown without respect to our personal circumstances or the impact such an order would have. The negative fruit of this decision by the feds will take years to calculate.
Fact is the virus cannot be contained. There is no cure. There is no preventative. Even several months into this, we are no closer to any of these as far as having answers. The shut down may have delayed the spread but it will spread nonetheless.
There are other ways to slow the spread that would have had a much smaller impact on the economy. Remember the 70’s and the gas crisis. Alternate days for gas spread people out and reduced the demand per day which is akin to reducing the spread of a virus.
Imagine if we went to a 3 day and 3 day work schedule. Split your employees into two groups. Half work one day, the other the next and they alternate. The work week will be 6 days instead of 5. Change the length of the work day to 12 hours and all of them are earning close to their normal 40 hours a week and while productivity would suffer it should still be close to what it was beforehand.
It follows that with half at work and half at home, the number of people shopping at any given time is about half of normal. Further schools could have done something similar splitting classes in two and extend the school day to maybe 9 hours a day instead of 12.
There were ways to slow the spread without pulling the plug on the economy. Too bad Trump listened to the scientists and did not demand factual data analysis before acting. It could have saved a lot of businesses that will not survive this epidemic.
Why are people that post as “Anonymous” always morons?
…I know this is just meant as a metaphor, but there actually IS a different solution to the “Ferryboat” problem.
…one time I got called to a job site where a guy had been using an open cab front end loader, back when it was still legal to do so. The problem he had was that he had dumped a ton of dirt back on himself somehow IN that open cab, and the dirt had pinned his arms down and away from the controls, and also buried the controls so they could not be accessed by rescuers such as we.
This was a pretty signficant hazard in the rescue because the engine was still running. Vibrations could shift dirt and cause control inputs that would be very negative depending on who was where, the operator was mostly out of it and unable to move his arms to help us in any case, none of his rescuers that day had any experience on front end loaders and we didn’t want to dig in random locations for the controls because it would be BAD if, due to our unfamiliarity, we pushed dirt into something and caused it to move, as we CLEARLY would not be able to undo that action.
Then someone came up with a fire extinguisher. Even though there was no fire.
Because they had a DIFFERENT idea.
…They shot it into the engine air intake, and instant shutdown. The rescue was able to proceed with a sigifnicant risk of sudden death for everyone involved removed.
Didn’t do the engine any favors, but engines can be replaced, people can’t.
By the same token, the runaway ferry boat undoubtably had a fire extinguisher and an intake. Granted a boat will still drift in on its momentum if the engine stops, but going in dead stick instead of full throttle would DEFININTELY ameliorate or perhaps even eliminate the impact, further reducing the risk not only to life, but to the secondary consideration of property.
Perhaps it’s not so far from the point, however. Perhaps there was some third way, without full-on quarentine or full-on exposure that could have mitigated the damage to Cynic’s practice and to so many others.
Perhaps there was a fire extinguisher, but no one thought to use it.
The problem with this to me is that, even if they WERE sincere about addressing a “health” issue (and they are NOT), we had ENTIRELY the WRONG peoole in charge of it. You can NEVER elimiate politics from medical decisions, as Dr. Fauchi and Amy Acton hansomely prove, but you CAN remove the blatant political appointees from the mix.
Perhaps a doctor with a CURRENT practice with ACTUAL patients and ACTUALLY entering infectouos environments every day would have been a better choice. Perhaps one drawn from each field would be able to contribute suggestions based on what THEY do to stay safe EVERY DAY. A dentist like Cynic probably sees some preeeety swampy, septic mouths in his daily routine practice (maybe part of WHY he’s a cynic?), and I’m VERY confident HE has some firm ideas on how to protect himself and his staff from such dangers…and they WORK, he’s STILL ALIVE…
…could they do better? I think so. I think it would be HARD to do WORSE.
You could let the Amy Actons and the Fauchis continue to be the mouthpices for the committee, but make the committee’s actions BINDING on them.
…at least we could have SOME confidence it was being driven by, you know, MEDICINE and SCIENCE and NOT by people with a vested interest to rule us ALL for their OWN benefit.
At least it would be people with SKIN in the game.
…bear in mind that medicine is a PRACTICE, and the skills are volatile and degrade with unuse. I don’t know that Cynic has anything to worry about REAL soon, but I bet he’ll be a bit rusty the next time he pulls a tooth or does a root canal. Longer term, it WOULD become a signficant risk. It’s just the way humans are with learned skills that “if you don’t USE it, you LOSE it”. We have a SERIOUS interest in not letting the hard-won skills of our medical professionals degrade and put the national patient population at risk, just because a Governor hates Trump.
…anyway, that’s MY fire extinguisher. What’s YOURS?
Just TRIPLE your prices and then you’ll be rich!
Very well put, Cynic. And the time for hard decisions is now.
…bad dental care because of Socialist, heh?
…Make America British Again?
https://miro.medium.com/max/4000/1*9_PWQzcMj0yVp-KurghzSA.jpeg
Either way there was damage, so a win-win for the bad guys.
burner APRIL 28, 2020 AT 1:36 PM
“Either way there was damage, so a win-win for the bad guys.”
…Indeed there IS damage, but you do what you can to mitigate it and try to produce a better outcome.
…you CAN’T do anything about a person who’s been shot, but you CAN stop the bleeding…