Covid-19 and the madness of crowds

Yes and let me make an argument here from a pure business perspective.  Even if people don't die of it, if they are infected, they are out of action for a minimum two weeks.  Now what would you prefer?  To implement social distancing, impose WFH and cut down productivity by 20-30% tops and keep things chugging along?  Or to risk one person getting infected and force the entire floor into a lockdown?  This happened in our company's UAE office by the way.  The top management still refused to learn the right lessons from it but luckily Mumbai's municipal corporation took the decision out of corporates' hands by forcing minimum 50% work from home to be implemented.  It's a huge loss for the nation's financial capital but with a population of over 20 million, we cannot afford a large proportion of it getting infected.  Our healthcare 'system', such as it is, wouldn't possibly be able to handle it.

This is not fear, this is just being careful.  Yes, the economic impact is bad but it would be much, much worse if the virus was allowed to spread unmitigated with zero precautions.  It has worked in China and it will work elsewhere if people were less resistant to adjusting their lives for a temporary period.  I understand that this is easier said than done for those who are at the lower end of the economic stratum or those who work in outdoor experience based jobs like restaurants or amusement parks which are the worst hit.  But there are many of us who are in fact able to take these precautions and we should.  Not because we are going to get it and it would be awful but because we shouldn't be carriers of the disease.

I don't know anyone who thinks this is a civilisational apocalypse come in the form of a virus.  The singular aspect of it though that has govts advocating drastic measures is how quickly it spreads/has spread. It will be impossible for healthcare systems anywhere to handle (outside of small and prosperous nations like Korea) if it is allowed to spread unrestricted.  Everybody realises they are behind the curve but all that is being done is to limit the damage as far as possible.  I do not buy your view that it is probably already too late to contain the damage.  Not all countries have the same people-to-people contact with China that, say, Italy has.  Trump was criticised for blocking travel from China but it was the correct step to take while not enough by itself by any means.  

I READ the news and since I don't live in UK and don't have to read tabloids, nothing I have read makes me ALARMED but certainly cautious and careful.  I have long since stopped WATCHING news because in my country, as in the US, TV 'news' is just an excuse for the anchors and debate participants to yell at the screen and whip up hysteria.  It may be a virus now but it was Muslims/KKK/SJWs/incels depending on the specific network bias earlier.  OK, I will amend it a little, I only watch a morning news segment on the news channel NDTV which still tries to keep some reporting format programs alive while having to conform to the debate fetish of its competitors.  Likewise I may watch the channel's 8 PM bulletin because it is again a pure NEWS bulletin. I do not want to know what 'opinion makers' think about covid.  I form opinions based on the news, I don't need others telling me what to think through a TV screen.

Well, news channels whip up hysteria on all sorts of things.  My only concern is we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.  There are legitimate reasons why the world has imposed an economic contraction on itself in the face of this virus.  Stocking up toilet paper or guns, however, are clearly panic driven responses to the situation.

We hit Sainsbury's at 7:30 today and managed to get most stuff we needed, I think it'll be a bigger problem if they have staff shortages due to illness.

 

What was I supposed to forget? I forget.