I have not heard anything in the media about stopping this illnesses cold in its tracks. Politicians are not making this claim; the experts are not making this claim.

Rather, it is about “flattening the curve” so the health system can handle the overload. Lives will be saved for sure because some of the really sick can be treated properly. But at what cost?

My furnace may not be your concern. But what about the furnaces of apartment buildings, where a lot of working poor live? These furnaces break down too. The first 100 breakdowns will be handled with the proper parts, but when the parts run out, too bad for those people.

At this point, nobody is predicting how long we have to stay in quarantine. It could be a year. Our global economy cannot run a year with 50% of its working people not working. We don’t have enough parts to repair furnaces for a year. Social unrest is a strong possibility if we have to stay cooped up for two months. Is that worth reducing a death rate from 2% to 1.5% by Covid-19?

I’m not sure where the right balance is. There could have been things done earlier that might not have resulted in the level of quarantine we are not seeing. And I understand the difficulty of any government to make this kind of decision at the right time. Or maybe our politicians are subject to the same media forces that want to keep us glued to the TVs to generate advertising dollars? Who knows?

I will obey as best my family can. Maybe the authorities are right. But the confidence is not there.

But I would like a better system of governance so that we are better prepared next time.

There is a good Spanish flu article on Medium that has some parallels with today’s Covid-19.

Quarantines did help back then, but they did not stop.

My furnace gets fixed tomorrow. I hope it needs no more repairs for at least a year. But even my furnace tech is not sure of why it is not working well. I might need more parts!