That’s cold comfort for those who have lost family and friends.

It’s also a callous attitude because it considers death rate and death rate only as a measure of damage.

There are economic costs beyond saving the economy. There are long term health costs and their accompanying financial burdens. There is a real threat to the healthcare system and healthcare workers. What happens if the insurance industry exceeds financial capacity treating all the sick? What will happen to your claim for treating your child’s cystic fibrosis or broken leg? How will you finance cancer or diabetes treatment if heath insurance collapses/goes bankrupt?

20% of the population gets really sick with this.

12% of the population gets sick enough to require hospitalization. 1 in 10 is not insignificant when you look at costs of being seriously ill.

'Past the point of no return' can mean a lot of things. Pandemics change things and they change people. It’s foolish to think otherwise. We will not leave this pandemic being the same people who went into it. Our behavior during pandemics determine whether the changes are good or not, long term. I’m thinking single minded callousness and failure to consider ramifications beyond our own small likelihood of dying is not going to be good for us long term.

Overly polarized politics has led to overly polarized thinking across the board. Everything becomes an issue to bicker over. The result is stagnation and inability to solve problems. If your choices are only ever A or B, all the other letters are left on the table to collect dust as relics of obscurity. No problems ever get solved.

This pandemic is a catastrophe of our own making, largely because of that kind of polar thinking and the inability, desire, or will to move beyond it. Public health should never have been a political issue to demonize fellow Americans over.

Until and unless we acknowledge and come to terms with this shame, each challenge we face will continue to end in catastrophe because of our inability to problem solve. Because we’d rather get drunk off bickering with each other and picking the scabs of our nation than get to work and do what needs doing.

Shame on us for acting like lemmings.