Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
Unacceptable to whom exactly?? To the elderly, maybe. For a couple of teenagers or children I would doubt it. But that's OK we'll blown up the economy, bankrupt the state, indebted the younger generation, take away their freedoms just so you can 'feel safe'.
If it's unacceptable to you personally that's fine you can stay home, but we shouldn't be destroying the country just because some 60 year old+ folks are a bit rattled. It is complete madness.
Last week NSW had 51 cases out of a population of 5 million people. And we have gone and blown the whole country up.
I'm not agreeing with Sunfish here, don't see this response as an endorsement of his approach or post, but given how infectious coronavirus is, without prompt action it could rapidly spread. Or we could take the US approach, let everyone decide individually what they are prepared to do or not do, and watch while coronavirus spreads. Then we get to see things average out a bit more across the community.
In Australia we have had policies and actions that have led to a couple of severe outbreaks spread between nursing homes, so the vast majority of deaths have been in the 70+ age group in those nursing homes. As the disease spreads more widely through the community we will get to see the toll when there is broad community spread. In the US, that has meant that approximately 1 in 6 of their recorded deaths have been in the 50-64 age bracket (not that if you are in that age bracket, you have a one in 6 chance of dying), with only(!) approximately 48,000 deaths in the 50-64 age bracket. Give or take a couple of thousand. So this idea that states are only acting to stop a bunch of frail elderly people who would likely die in the next strong breeze is a bit misleading - and that is only looking at the deaths, whereas we know a certain proportion of covid sufferers will go on to experience long term side effects.