Have I Been Wrong All Along

There have been so many questions about how the coronavirus has been handled and I thought we had it right by shutting down businesses and parks but I listened to a California doctor today that made me rethink it all.

We've all questioned why liquor stores have been allowed to remain open when almost all similar sized businesses were forced to close their doors and possibly lose their business.  I've certainly looked down upon the groups of people who defied the stay home order and thronged to beaches and parks...but have we heard whether any of these people caught the virus?  We've known all along that the elderly and people in poor health were the most at risk of dying from the virus but those people are the vast minority.  

I don't believe the virus was deliberately released and I find it ludicrous for anyone to believe this all happened in order to get rid of Trump.  I do believe more and more that most businesses could have been allowed to stay open if they limited the crowds on their premises.  I was fully impressed that no country, let alone every country, would destroy their economy unless it was absolutely necessary in order to preserve humanity.  Now I'm wondering if it really was necessary to shut down every business except Walmart and Costco.  True, we can't survive without groceries but it seems more than groceries were being sold to the public.

Were we already in the middle of an economical meltdown and the virus gave government leaders the grounds to obliterate small businesses?  Is it only co-incidence that the elderly in nursing homes died like flies?  The elderly are not cost efficient when it comes to needing round the clock care.

We definitely are going to recreate a new economy now and that will take years but, if certain people had the funds to invest in the present market, they will soar when the economy starts to build up once again.  Is this whole fiasco more about restarting a brand new economy over the dead bodies of mainly seniors?  Could we have had the same health consequences with businesses open as we have with them closed?  I'm not questioning the deadly outbreak but in how it's been handled.

Surgeons are still operating on emergency cases but I can't see my family doctor, dentist, or dermatologist for routine care.  People are putting their lives in danger because they dare not go to the hospital unless they're near death and their health is not being monitored by their own doctors.  But they can ease their worries with trips to the liquor stores.

I've taken a real step back from my previous beliefs that our government is acting responsibly and wondering if we've ruined our economy needlessly.  

We hear on the news every day how many new cases of coronavirus are in our country, province, or city but we aren't always told how many of these cases are mild ones.   In Canada we've had about 80,000+ people infected and just over 6,000 people die but the most deaths by far are seniors in nursing home or with existing medical problems.  This is in a population of 38 million people.  We have 500-1500 cases of flu in Canada every year and approximately 3,500 deaths.  The coronavirus is quite serious but is it serious enough to shut down almost every business in the country?

We have never had a virus shut down a country since 1918 and we've weathered many different viruses since then and people do die from these other viruses.

I think my biggest question is why liquor stores have been allowed to remain open and not other businesses.  There has to be a reason.