No one really knows

Posted on: September 1, 2020 at 15:31:15 CT

Covid 19 escaped or was released from the Chinese medical lab late last year. While it is similar to other viruses and a member of particular virus family, it is also essentially a new disease and studies of it, its behavior, effect and how it is transmitted, etc. have been underway for less than nine months. Thus no one really knows how dangerous it may be.

It seems fairly clear the only proven way to dampen down, perhaps stop, its spread is stringent quarantines. Those quarantines impose substantial costs on society in addition to the suffering and death caused by the virus.

Thus, while it can be argued that the health effect of covid19 is not all that serious, if one considers the total effect, the fact that thus far quarantine is the only truly proven way to control it and the side effects of quarantines, particularly the economic effects, covid 19 becomes substantially more serious.

A lot of different effects flow from and ripple out from the quarantines. We don't yet know what all the effects are or how serious they may be. But if you consider the possibilities in addition to the direct effect of covid19, it is not a virus to be trifled with.