Well sporty, just because you lack the joie de vivre and the balls to keep on living for a year instead of shutting down and trembling in fear of something with a 97% survival rate doesn't mean everyone else in the country must stew in your misery with you.
Originally Posted by lustylad
The survival rate is around 99.5%. That's including people with antibodies who weren't tested in the denominator. If it were 97% we'd be screwed. However, if someone is over 70 years old, male, and has a pre-existing condition, his chances of dying are higher than 3% if infected. In which case shutting down and trembling in fear might be a good idea.
Sportfisherman has some good points. At the risk of sounding absurd, if he'd been an adviser to Trump, and Trump listened to him instead of his own instincts, he'd probably win the election.
What would have happened if Trump had aggressively used the bully pulpit to promote simple measures we can take that wouldn't harm the economy? Things like mask wearing, social distancing, staying home if you're sick. What if he'd made more public appearances while wearing masks. Better publicized how he used the Defense Production Act, and maybe pushed American companies more to manufacture more masks and testing chemicals and equipment. Hired a lot of new people at the CDC to help spearhead contact tracing. All this wouldn't have cost much money. You could argue this would have done three things,
1. Decreased the number of number of lives lost
2. Made people feel safer, so some weren't as afraid to go out and eat, go shopping, etc. This would have kept more businesses open, more people off the unemployment rolls, etc.
3. Given Trump a fighting chance of winning the election.
If Trump had done all this, I'm not sure how much difference it would have made for "1", and especially for "2" above. Certainly more than some of our esteemed posters like Why_Yes_I_Do and Levianon think. And certainly less than most on the left believe.
But as to #3, there's less room to argue. Trump would be the favorite to win come November 3 IMO.