"We can't do everything, therefore, we shouldn't do this thing" is a bad argument.
Epidemics and pandemics have well-understood and very carefully studied impacts and mitigation strategies. We know how to drastically reduce the lasting harms done by them, and we know how to increase those harms. You're advocating the strategy that maximizes the harms (except for actual intentional harm-creation strategies, like explicitly trying to spread a plague), on the grounds that you want the harm minimized.
If you are trying to make a point about not taking pollution seriously enough, you might consider that the state we're in now is the result of decades of massive shifts towards reducing pollution compared to what it used to be like, and there's still a good argument to be made that we can and should do more.
But right now, there are things we can do easily and cheaply that massively reduce the cost of an immediate problem, and you're arguing specifically for not doing even those things.
"Business as usual" is an awful idea. Simple steps like "encourage people to work remotely if they can", "wash hands often", and "avoid touching your face" have very close to zero economic cost, and yet, offer huge benefits in this circumstance. (Heck, remote work even helps fight pollution. Yay.)
(Disclaimer: I'm biased, I last commuted regularly in 1997.)
Epidemics and pandemics have well-understood and very carefully studied impacts and mitigation strategies. We know how to drastically reduce the lasting harms done by them, and we know how to increase those harms. You're advocating the strategy that maximizes the harms (except for actual intentional harm-creation strategies, like explicitly trying to spread a plague), on the grounds that you want the harm minimized.
If you are trying to make a point about not taking pollution seriously enough, you might consider that the state we're in now is the result of decades of massive shifts towards reducing pollution compared to what it used to be like, and there's still a good argument to be made that we can and should do more.
But right now, there are things we can do easily and cheaply that massively reduce the cost of an immediate problem, and you're arguing specifically for not doing even those things.
"Business as usual" is an awful idea. Simple steps like "encourage people to work remotely if they can", "wash hands often", and "avoid touching your face" have very close to zero economic cost, and yet, offer huge benefits in this circumstance. (Heck, remote work even helps fight pollution. Yay.)
(Disclaimer: I'm biased, I last commuted regularly in 1997.)