I’m a doctor and so my natural tendency is to “do no harm” and preserve life at virtually any cost.

From an ideal epidemiological point of view, to combat this virus no human would contact any other human, except to provide medical care, for many months until this virus runs out of hosts. And a slightly less extreme version of this has been pushed by the elite medical establishment. We are doing it now.

However, we would be reckless and foolish to not consider how destabilizing wrecking our national and world economy would be. I’m talking about months of economic destruction while waiting out this virus.

It will result in widespread human suffering.

It could easily result in wars.

It could easily result in extensive and widespread civil disobedience, conflict, and social breakdown as an increasing desperate public turns to any means to mitigate the damage they are experiencing and the economic collapse of everything they have worked for.

This step of just turning off the economy is unprecedented in our history. From the time of the early explorers to America, economics has driven our exploration, society, development, and progress.

The risk taken by halting this engine cannot be known. We are only a week in and already cracks are showing.

We tend to think of civilization as a powerful steady state force, but it is not. It requires a carefully balanced system to maintain, and a proper economy is a major pillar of modern civilization.

Kick that pillar out at great peril. The effect is unknown and potentially disastrous for every American. Not just in the pocketbook, but in our entire social order.

I support President Trump’s challenge to his advisors: find a solution to the medical side which allows for restarting the economy.

It has to be possible. It is unacceptable that we trash our economy and risk our civilization to slightly mitigate a natural if unwelcome infectious disease from harming a tiny subset of our sick elderly.

There are plenty of models for COVID-19. Has anybody modeled what happens in a nation of 320,000,000 people when the economy is abruptly shut off and almost nobody can work? What’s the worst case scenario for how that turns out months after people have grown desperate?