Ideas on coronavirus 'war'

I just read a fence post comment about the risk to our mail carriers. Why not have the carriers deliver to half their route on Monday-Wednesday-Friday and the other half on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday? This would cut their potential exposure by 50%.

We keep hearing that this is a "war" against the coronavirus. Maybe we should reintroduce war bonds. There are a lot of people unemployed and many others living paycheck to paycheck, but there are still many that have disposable income. Why not put that money into bonds that could be used to rebuild infrastructure and put people back to work when the time is right? This money has to be paid back, with interest, but bonds mature in 30 years and the infrastructure should last 40.

The latest request that we bring manufacturing back to the U.S. is due in part to lack of PPE. As a retired manufacturing engineer, I applaud those efforts. However, consider that the average wage in Mexico is $2.60/HR, the average wage in China is $3.60/HR, the minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25/HR and the average wage is over $24/HR. If manufacturing returns, we can expect product cost increases based on labor content. We will all be complaining about inflation. The long-term ramification is that automation will be easier to justify. Do our children and grandchildren have the necessary skill sets to compete in this new world?

Hopefully, these comments cause you to think, agree, contradict, extrapolate or expand upon. It would be great to go back to when we discussed and respectfully argued issues with facts. When the conversation was over, we asked each other where we were going to eat together. We not have agreed but we had respect. Oh, yeah, the restaurants will have to be open.

Greg Stumpo

Schaumburg