There's a concept called the hierarchy of needs....after you've got food and clothing you start to worry about things like love and finding a partner, check that box off and you start to want to acquire things to express who you are....after that you might worry about what they call self actualization.
But before any of that , in my opinion (I differ with Maslow here) is
safety.....a person will run naked into the snow from a warm home full of food to escape danger. Fear is a primary motivator.....and this virus has people scared...very very scared. And its my view that for some, considerations about concepts like individual liberties and freedom have been abandoned because this primary need for safety has been threatened.
This kind of reporting can be used many ways.....imagine if deaths from the flu were reported in this manner every year.
Or how about the 600,000 people who die in the United States from cancer in a year. Don't take my word for it:
In 2018, an estimated 1,735,350 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 609,640 people will die from the disease.
600,000 comes to
1,643 deaths per day on average. People are already scared of contracting this very lethal disease....imagine if every night the evening news started with....."CANCER, THE CARNAGE CONTINUES, ALMOST 1,800 DEATHS TODAY".
Ahhh ahhh I hear some saying,
BUT CANCER ISN'T CONTAGIOUS!!! True.....its not contagious, just deadly, and more people die of Cancer in the United States than any other disease except one, Heart Disease, also not contagious.
Right now everything possible is being done to stop the Coronavirus in order to save lives. Even if it destroys the economy....it doesn't matter, this is a crisis. 100+ thousand Americans could die, maybe even 200K+.
But what about those people who are dying from Cancer? Could nothing be done? Nothing at all?
I can think of a way....and you wouldn't have to destroy the economy and risk driving people to suicide to do it. It wouldn't cause spikes in domestic violence and homicides that coincide with economic hardship.
Just ban smoking....make the consumption, possession, selling and distribution of tobacco products punishable with at least the same fines that some jurisdictions are enforcing for people who opt to have a back yard party with the lockdown rules. It wouldn't save everyone from cancer of course.....but check out what the CDC says:
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.Nov 28, 2018
If this is really about saving lives....then why has this never been done, or even seriously debated. If governments around the world are willing to sacrifice their national economies to save lives, why not sacrifice one small industry and reap a huge benefit...I bet you'd save more lives by banning tobacco products than lockdown measures will with lockdowns.
And I say this as a smoker....and guess what, cigarettes are still being sold during these extreme measures, which means they're somehow essential.
