It is not a question of lives versus the GDP! The economy of this country IS people! A dead national economy means a lot more...a LOT MORE dead people!

For over 20 years I have used two external hard drives--Western Digital 500 MBs and 1000 MBs. They have served five or six different computers over the years. They come on whenever the computer is turned on. On occasion over the years one or the other stops working, doesn't show up as a drive.

The first time that happened I panicked thinking I had lost innumerable files and photos. Happily when I unplugged the power cord, re-plugged the cord and pressed the little button on the back, the dead drive came to life again, with no loss of files. My 500 MB drive did the same death act yesterday... the same fix worked: 30 seconds later it was back in action. Maybe you could try that.
jhkfly

For over 20 years I have used two external hard drives--Western Digital 500 MBs and 1000 MBs. They have served five or six different computers over the years. They come on whenever the computer is turned on. On occasion over the years one or the other stops working, doesn't show up as a drive.

The first time that happened I panicked thinking I had lost innumerable files and photos. Happily when I unplugged the power cord, re-plugged the cord and pressed the little button on the back, the dead drive came to life again, with no loss of files. My 500 MB drive did the same death act yesterday... the same fix worked: 30 seconds later it was back in action. Maybe you could try that.

Sadly, Paladin48 may well be right. Evidence is mounting that the real pandemic is panic itself. Not to understate the danger of the disease, but to point out that certain politicos in this country and around the world believe in Saul Alinsky's maxim never to miss the opportunity to take advantage of a crisis to push for policy change.

That alarmist fraud of a "climate scientist" in England who carefully doctored research to push a political agenda of "accelerated global warming" that would disrupt economies in "first world" countries and impoverish millions in "third world" countries is now promulgating the pandemic alarm to effect the same result with Covid-19. Unfortunately, though proven to have deliberately misled the world on climate vagaries, he still has sway with the British government in terms of policy decisions.

Consider too that the entities clamoring for extended shutdown of our economy are the ones clamoring for more of the nation's money--the medical establishment. Consider too that Bill Gates and cohorts are pushing for mandatory vaccination and implantation of identity/tracking chips empowered with 5G technology for EVERYONE, with harsh penalties for those who resist.

No "conspiracy theory" here: these plans are published in Gates' own papers and public statements and in published United Nations documents. The misuse of proven wrong computer models to promote drastic worldwide economic and social change, i.e., the New World Order, via global warming panic hasn't worked, so now the same people are trying to use the pandemic panic to accomplish the same end. It is definitely about control!

The "joke" about the birds.

We need our country back in business! We need our people back to work! If that requires lives to be sacrificed to save our way of life, isn't that what we did when we sent thousands upon thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen to their deaths with the draft in our wars, and destroyed the livelihoods of thousands Japanese-American citizens in the 1940s?

Contraction of and death from the coronovirus is far more random than the military draft. We can do our best individually to avoid it, and treat it. But there's no neighboring country to go to to evade it. We need to see the big picture...and that's the future welfare of the whole country.

I have been asked "Would jhk feel the same..." and "if you go down the street..."

I lost two uncles in World War I, my mother, father and older brother in World War II. My feelings are not the issue here.

We live a life infinitely more palatable than did our forebears who suffered terrible familial losses through wars and depression because we have traditional freedoms and the impetus to create and sustain a vibrant economy. Would you have this country return to the social disruption and desperation of the Great Depression for 320 million people? How many deaths, how many families fractured from starvation, suicide and crime might that entail?

History shows us that freedoms ceded are rarely recovered without bloodshed. Do we want or need even more civil discord than we've been through in the last three years? I sure don't!

Sorry, I don't get it...that flew right over my head!

For me, the problem is not so much the disease, as the way it is being used to create panic on a ridiculous scale so people will give up their liberties for presumed (not necessarily actual) safety.
To get realistic numbers one has to determine first the difference between reported CV-19 deaths and the percentage decline of reported cancer, heart disease, stroke, obesity, etc. deaths in the same time period (since many such cases are lumped in as CV-19 fatalities), and subtract that percentage from the reported CV-19 deaths.

If this is indeed a "war", then we should expect casualties. I am 80 years old: I am on the front lines. Yet I believe 16-17 million jobless is much worse than 16-17 thousand deaths--many of which would occur anyway--for our country. There were millions of casualties in WW II, 50 thousand plus deaths (and countless wounded survivors) from Vietnam, tens of thousands wounded from Iraq & Afghanistan in three decades of warfare, yet we're running scared after only three months of a cresting wave of an infectious disease??? What has happened to this country? Where are the "grin and bear it" survivors (winners, by the way) of two world wars, the Spanish and Swine flu epidemics, the Great Depression and years of Middle East conflict? Are we really ready to give up our freedoms because a miniscule percentage of our population succumbed to a foreign virus?

But he's not OUT any money because he did NOT provide a $100 service to the tourist.

But hundreds of millions are!

"...climate change is rather settled and approximately 98% of climate scientists agree, both from the right and the left."

Maybe so, but a large percentage of reputable climate scientists disagree that it's mainly human caused. The degree to which human activity contributes to world temperatures is miniscule compared to solar and geothermal input. To those ignoramuses who claim carbon dioxide is a "toxic" gas and must be legislated out of existence, a reminder: every living creature on the face of the earth exhales CO2, and without CO2 all plant life would die. More CO2 in the atmosphere means greater crop yields for our increasing populations.

Of all the "global warming" computer-modelled predictions produced in countries around the world, only one prediction has fairly closely matched what actually happened: the Russian model. All the other models grossly over-estimated temperature increases and resultant weather phenomena supposedly due to "man-made" activity.

Sadly, policy makers are still using the the overblown models to create laws and regulations designed to control people's activities and productivity.

A great funny nonetheless!

Omigod, Nimbushopper! The social justice warriors will be out to get you now! Terrible, terrible ethnic stereotyping, racism, anti-LGBTQRSism, anti-foreigners, overt white nationalism, etc., etc., or something.