Blog

I believe that when this is all over and the number of sad deaths and infected is tallied, we will discover that it was created largely by massive crowd-panic created mostly by ourselves, and this, partly because we have no means to ascertain the truth; by a media establishment greedy for market share; by honest medical experts vying for the correct view of inadequate data while protecting their own reputations (better for them to state worst case than be caught under-estimating); by politicians vying to maintain power and over-promising from bottomless public coffers (no skin off their behinds, except if they underpromise); and originally by the uncertainties associated with the Chinese Communist party that has been trading in draconian and cruel manipulation of the Chinese people and manipulative and strategic deception of the West for almost a century now; 
We just don’t know enough about it yet.
But one thing seems certain: this is the first time for many Western nations since WWII that the cost of life has had to be weighed against the value of national economic success or certain complete collapse. 
I would venture that if this lockdown continues for much longer – say at the outside, three more months – economic collapse will be certain because too many enterprises will lose employees, customers, tenants, market share, stock value, investors, reliable supply chains, etc, for good. You can’t get customers back who have no money left, are on the dole, who may have died of hunger or some other illness because drugs and goods and food are not available; or who can’t work anyway because they are looking after other family members.
Badly frightened publics everywhere, social unrest, anger, street riots initiated at first by the young, and terrified politicians fearing for their lives, will be common.
There will be a total melt-down, as if we dropped an economic Hydrogen bomb on our entire way of life. 
In order to prevent that, we will need to follow Trump’s lead and open up again by Easter, or thereabout, understanding that some folks are going to die as a result, just as they died in the past (at the rate of 250,000 to 500,000 per year worldwide) when we stayed open everywhere despite the seasonal flu. 
No one thought that was a reason to drop a bomb.