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Getting America Back to Work - Weigh In

'It's gone haywire': When COVID-19 arrived in rural America

As the world’s attention was fixated on the horrors in Italy and New York City, the per capita death rates in counties in the impoverished southwest corner of Georgia climbed to among the worst in the country. The devastation here is a cautionary tale of what happens when the virus seeps into communities that have for generations remained on the losing end of the nation’s most intractable inequalities: these counties are rural, mostly African American and poor.

More than a quarter of people in Terrell County live in poverty, the local hospital shuttered decades ago, and businesses have been closing for years, sending many young and able fleeing for cities. Those left behind are sicker and more vulnerable; even before the virus arrived, the life expectancy for men here was six years shorter than the American average.

Rural people, African Americans and the poor are more likely to work in jobs not conducive to social distancing, like the food processing plant in nearby Mitchell County where four employees died of COVID-19. They have less access to health care and so more often delay treatment for chronic conditions; in southwest Georgia, the diabetes rate of 16 percent is twice as high as in Atlanta. Transportation alone can be a challenge, so that by the time they make it to the hospital, they’re harder to save.

https://apnews.com/b2a2add19ce7f4f75f42b29331034706
 
So, what is the appropriate happy medium between protecting health and avoiding (further) economic calamity and Depression level unemployment?
 
So, what is the appropriate happy medium between protecting health and avoiding (further) economic calamity and Depression level unemployment?

There’s not really a “happy medium.” The economy is people. As long as people are being hospitalized and dying at crazy rates, there will be a depression.

The solution has always been to spend what ever it takes to increase capacity of the health care system, test people and conduct contact tracing, introduce enough personal stimulus so people can make ends meet without sacrificing their health and safety by going back to work in dangerous circumstances.

The latter is the obvious solution to high unemployment is to address the denominator. Make sure fewer people have to look for work.

Testing and contract tracing will identify people who have it, who have recovered, and who have come in contact. That will get us to the most likely next step in which people who have it or have come into contact are quarantined but everyone else can go out with masks in clean environments.
 
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There’s not really a “happy medium.” The economy is people. As long as people are being hospitalized and dying at crazy rates, there will be a depression.

The solution has always been to spend what ever it takes to increase capacity of the health care system, test people and conduct contact tracing, introduce enough personal stimulus so people can make ends meet without sacrificing their health and safety by going back to work in dangerous circumstances.

The latter is the obvious solution to high unemployment is to address the denominator. Make sure fewer people have to look for work.

Testing and contract tracing will identify people who have it, who have recovered, and who have come in contact. That will get us to the most likely next step in which people who have it or have come into contact are quarantined but everyone else can go out with masks in clean environments.

The other piece that doesn't seem to be getting enough discussion is that working class folks can't afford a stay in the ICU. If you're a part-time clerk at a sporting goods store, and you get a bill for 2 week stay in the ICU, you'll probably never recover from that financially. There are such significant risks for the people that the elites are demanding go back to work.
 
Yeah. Universal health care is an obvious part of the solution.
 
Yeah. Universal health care is an obvious part of the solution.

It shouldn't, but it blows my mind that we will come out of this crisis without agreeing that's an essential need for our society.
 
It shouldn't, but it blows my mind that we will come out of this crisis without agreeing that's an essential need for our society.

Come back in a year and I think there will be more agreement.
 
Come back in a year and I think there will be more agreement.

I’m skeptical. You’ll hear bullshit rhetoric fed to the rubes about rationed care. The pandemic will be used to argue against universal healthcare “remember the TP shortage? Do you want that for your healthcare?”
 
Come back in a year and I think there will be more agreement.

No chance, especially if Biden is president. We'll maybe "reform" the current system but nothing substantial will be done that would threaten the profits of the health insurance industry. They own Status Quo Joe.
 
No chance, especially if Biden is president. We'll maybe "reform" the current system but nothing substantial will be done that would threaten the profits of the health insurance industry. They own Status Quo Joe.

Sadly you are correct.
 
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Guns have made Americans so desensitized to death that 100K+ deaths from COVID are not going be more than a speedbump
 
This guns at protests/armed escort shit is going to end terribly. We are one trigger happy jobless redneck away...
 
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