There is no trade-off between lives and livelihoods because it’s a trade-off between lives and lives A good topic for all-family dining table discussions is this: is the virus spreading faster than the panic over it?
My answer is that the virus is losing. Doomsayers and panic-mongers are still at it. Breaking news of additional deaths, devoid of context and perspective, drop into mailboxes regularly. “America is leading the global death tables," scream newspapers, having overtaken Italy.
Breathtaking is the unwillingness to put the numbers in the context of annual influenza related deaths. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US “estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million [and] 45 million illnesses, between