You have decided where the line is for yourself as well. The difference is, if
@jspilot is wrong and we're locked down too much... Well, nobody dies. If you're wrong and we're not locked down enough... A LOT of people die.
Here in Wisconsin, we're doing pretty well. Been locked down for a week already, and we're now seeing 18% daily growth - Out of the 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico that's the 5th-lowest. It looks like our peak is currently projected to be in about the 3rd week of May.
Even so, here's the situation from a local nurse (emphasis mine):
"Picked up an extra shift last night to help because my friends needed it. Something like 55 hours worked this week and it’s just the beginning. My ICU is the COVID ICU.
Every single bed is full... we move one out and there’s immediately another one there. These people are so, so, so sick. As we say in the ICU, every one of them is trying to die constantly... all night long. It’s not predictable either. Your patient seems to be just chugging along and then suddenly without warning their heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation’s tank for literally no explainable reason. Problem is, you can’t go running into the room to fix it... you have to take your time to properly don your PPE equipment to protect yourself and others. The crashing patient has to wait. It’s a sometimes overwhelming feeling to know you’re just “lettting” them crash while you’re carefully and painstakingly getting on your protective gear, but it’s what we HAVE to do. With out our gear we are risking our safety, our families safety, our colleagues safety and our other patient’s safety. Most importantly, if we rush in and get sick, as our intensivist said before, every patient in that ICU will die with no one to care for them. Nurses are crying from feeling overwhelmed and everyone is walking around looking stressed, bewildered and concerned. Everyone has grooves on their noses and cheeks from masks- some already have skin breakdown on their faces and noses... and it’s just the beginning. Every shift we are swamped... it will never feel like you have enough help no matter how many nurses you have working because everyone is just so,so,so sick. It’s hard to not feel defeated and we haven’t even had any deaths yet. But our
ICU is full already and these patients aren’t going anywhere anytime soon... we are hearing
10-14 days on a ventilator on average. Where will all the other patients that are going to get sick going to go? We have another ICU but they have all the other patients that would generally be in our ICUs... cardiac patients, traumas,strokes,etc. People don’t stop having other medical emergencies because of COVID. We have a 3rd ICU but not enough staff to man it... at least not with ICU trained nurses.
We have critically ill positive COVID patients in all age groups young to old- some without any medical histories. He have patients that have tested negative but have all the hallmark symptoms and labs. It doesn’t discriminate and it’s not going away anytime soon... it’s picking up steam here in WI and it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. It already feels like it’s too much, but every single one of us keeps marching on, one foot in front of the other, extinguishing one fire before the next crops up. What other choice do we have? We won’t be defeated and we will give it our all with every single patient we care for, but it’s daunting. Updated a family member before I left this morning via phone and they were sobbing because they could not visit. It’s excruciating and I’ll carry that with me until I work my next shift. They already asked me to work again tonight because there’s just not enough nurses. I think I need a mental health break, but there will come a time where that won’t be an option. Say a prayer or whatever it is you do, because it’s getting very difficult on everyone- especially your front line healthcare workers. Thank you!"
What's your definition of "panicking" in this context? Staying at home?
I hope you and everyone you've had contact with gets through the beer flu unscathed.
And in doing so, give us the best chance of having the least preventable deaths. If these "draconian measures" are lifted, everyone's gonna be hitting the hospital at about the same time and it's going to be a lot more hellish and those health care workers we're all applauding right now are going to be faced with the additional pressure of deciding who gets to live (on a ventilator) and who has to die. Let's not do that.
I haven't sacrificed any autonomy. I can go out and do whatever I want, and I'm not likely to be punished for it. However, it puts my family and anyone I come into contact with at an increased risk of dying. Sorry, that takes a real @$$hole to not care whether you kill someone.
Nobody has sacrificed "freedom of public worship". You can go to the great outdoors (public) and worship all you want. Please just don't do it in groups of 1,000.
Freedom of the press? Are you kidding me? They're on every essential business list I've seen. Every last one. Freedom of the press is important and everyone knows that. I wish they'd do better fact-checking sometimes, but that's what you get when nearly all of your "free press" is free because it's driven by advertising, and in turn mindshare.
Freedom "from" the press? No such thing... Though I don't know why the power button suddenly stopped working on your TV.
I won't bother continuing here.
Yes... If you "flatten the curve" it becomes much longer in the time axis. The area under the curve stays the same, the peak is much lower, but the time is much longer. It also means we have a lot less dead people.