[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by DaFace

I think this states my opinion about it well:

A school Superintendent said something profound in his address cancelling school for the next 3 weeks. “In the end, it will be impossible to know if we overreacted or did too much, but it will be QUITE apparent if we under reacted or did too little.”

Hear those words my friends.

— Douglas Massengill, Ed.D. (@drmassen) March 14, 2020

My worry is how quickly this overton window is shifting and how obviously that kind of thinking yields an even faster shift.

We have people in this very thread advocating martial law. Literal boots on the ground and ordering people back into their homes (and folks, the implication in that is gunpoint because how else does one compel adherence in a situation that dire?)

And it's worse on social media. People requesting genuinely authoritarian measures. And the problem with that is you have maybe 4-6 weeks of runway before this population (which is absolutely more defiant of...everyone...than pretty much any population in the world) looks around and says "y'know what, 80% of us aren't going to be impacted by this at all and we suddenly have troops in the streets ordering us into our homes? ****. This."

We can't just say "there's no such things as 'too much'" because it ignores the relatively near-term consequences. People will burn out on it. At that point you have one of 2 outcomes - people start ignoring directives outright or those directives becomes more and more harshly enforced (the former being more likely than the latter, which could easily serve to do more harm than good and simply push your 'spike' out a month or so).

Yes, you CAN do too much here. And to sit there and say "oh well, if it turns out we overreacted I guess we'll never know..." is to preemptively insulate yourself from ANY criticisms for decisions made that absolutely could've been hugely damaging to this nation. When concede that type of thinking, it gives decision-makers a pass and again, leads to the decision-lens ratcheting in only a single direction, towards ever increasing draconian measures. The overton window just continues to slide and slide and slide until 'normal' is "well at least they aren't making us execute our pets like Chernobyl. This is fine...."

I'm not saying that we shouldn't err on the side of caution, but we damn sure shouldn't just accept leaders going out there and saying "if we overreact...oh well...."

That's not acceptable either.