Didn't know that Trump or coronavirus was a topic for the front page of VCT, but, here goes....
The Black Death represented four years of the Bubonic Plague. "A third of the people died" if you want to summarize what happened just during those four years. The Bubonic Plague itself was not stamped out and came and went over the next 800 years. Yes, let's hope what we have here with coronavirus is nothing like that!
I recall someone posted something about "It's the flu bro" about coronavirus early on at this forum. Don't need to know who it was, but I hope that someone doesn't lose a family member or friend to have to understand how wrong he was/is. At a minimum, it spreads a lot easier than the flu and once you get it a 4% death rate across the board is pretty grim compared to the flu. There are people who are relatively young dying from it with no preexisting health conditions. We also don't know how the lifespan of those who catch it but recover will be affected - it could end up being something like TB, or worse, that weakens you for life.
And if the coronavirus goes on for four years unchecked, while it won't kill a third of us, it will look a lot worse than anyone gives it credit for right now. We've had to deal with it in the U.S. so far for only four months, not four years.
The purpose of the lockdown was merely to clear enough hospital beds so that hospitals could handle the influx of patients. Also, we would hope that social distancing, wearing masks and better hand washing hygiene are being practiced now to slow the spread of the virus.
But otherwise, nothing has changed and if people are not careful we'll be right back where we were in March again, with hospitals overwhelmed. While patients who end up in the hospital aren't surviving as well as would be hoped, percentage wise, still, it's worth having a hospital bed open because many with coronavirus who react badly enough to require hospitalization still do recover.
As far as Trump, it's relatively pointless to argue about what he says or does because everyone here already has his mind made up, but betting man wise, not even commenting about whether I support him or not, I'd say that he is finished and has little or no chance of re-election --- at the very least: certainly if it were a straight 1:1 payoff I'd bet on the other guy.
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