CDAGRIZ said:
Lol. Well, some people don't like what they don't understand. That said, the initial 65+ order was big news here, but I doubt it made any headlines in places that weren't even aware of COVID being an issue back then, so I can understand his confusion.
To clarify to the board, I was just wondering if we be better/worse/same off if we were able to legally order those at risk to stay home. Sure, some would disobey the order, but I'd like to think the majority would abide by it. Heck, you can get nearly anything in the world delivered to your door within like 4 hours. Amazon Fresh is under 2 hours, and your local grocery store is probably even faster. Further, whenever there is a heat wave in the desert or extreme cold wherever, you always hear: "If you are elderly or infirm, stay indoors." Wildfires? "If you have respiratory issues, stay indoors." I know it's not a legal order, but the similarities are there.
I'm guessing we wouldn't have as many hospitalizations and deaths. We might have more asymptomatic/light symptomatic cases. I think the economy, small businesses, employment would have taken less of a hit because those who drive the economy would have been allowed to work/stay open. Who knows?
Have you never lived in a small town?? I live in a town of 1200 people and we have no local grocery store - only a Family Dollar. No grocery delivery here! This means we need to travel 30 miles to the closest Wal-Mart to get groceries.
Even before the pandemic, we were using their grocery pickup service and while it works fairly well, when there is a large demand things can go quite wrong. Our governor last Friday announced a new public health order starting Monday that would close down all non-essential businesses for two weeks. Over the weekend, people panicked and ran to the stores and cleared the shelves. This caused the pick up order I had already placed for Saturday to be short a number of items that I needed. So that meant that we then had to go into Smith's to try to locate the missing items. While Smith's had the majority of the missing items, they were cleaned out of paper products. That necessitated a trip to our local Family Dollar to get what they had. So the governor's order, which was supposed to keep people at home, meant that we visited 2 stores in person that we had no intention of going into.
Oh, and her new stay at home order resulted in the largest daily number of new cases ever yesterday. Probably because everyone was shoulder to shoulder in the stores all weekend.
I would never say the virus isn't real or that we shouldn't be concerned, (especially for the elderly) but I do not see how the current policies are helping.