 Will it take food shortages to end support for the shutdown? By Jeff Deist, an audio-mesis wire narrated by Million Quinteros. Americans are uniquely privileged, to the point of simply imagining they can stay home for months and months, without suffering severe economic hardship as a result. Our unique privilege is delusion, the mentality that America is rich and will remain rich without particular effort on our part. Abundance simply materializes around us, regardless of incentives, and the job of politicians is to rearrange this abundance more equitably. Polls such as the ones showing widespread American support for quarantines and business shutdowns are evidence of this American privilege. 80% of respondents think shutdowns by various state governors are justified as a response to the COVID-19 virus, and one-third support extending closure for another six months. This reflexive and unthinking complicity from the American public is partially explained by media hype, of course, over an illness which at this writing has killed fewer than 60,000 Americans. Fear and hysteria always sell. The press clearly wants the coronavirus to be a major event, one that unsearch Trump in the fall. For its part, the administration is doing a terrible job, starting with the awful Dr. Fauci, whom the president should have sacked months ago. And clearly, the various governor's responses are wildly out of proportion to the actual public health threat, even if initially well-intentioned due to sheer uncertainty of the virus's lethality. But something far more fundamental is at work here. Americans simply fail to understand, or even much think about, the fragility of distribution chains and the goods and services we rely on. Over this week, the chairman of King Glamour at Tyson Foods warned that disruptions at processing plants could create very serious shortages of beef, chicken, and pork in U.S. grocery stores, and decimate livestock farmers. And of course, this was bound to happen as the dominos fell. The shutdowns would not only impact non-essential goods, but everything. Who didn't see this? Will it take outright food shortages to make Americans change their minds about whether the shutdown is worth it? We only need to look at India for an example of what business and work shutdowns create in a country without as much existing wealth to consume, where far more people live close to the bone. The National Work Moratorium ordered by Prime Minister Modi has sent millions of migrant workers and unskilled laborers into very real danger of starvation. Already living hand-to-mouth and penniless, their jobs essentially banned. Many have taken to walking hundreds of miles in 100-degree heat to their home villages in hopes of being fed by their families. In a country with widespread poverty and depressingly little per capita capital investment, the shutdown is a death sentence for many. Without much capital accumulation, Indians have little savings and few investments to consume when income grinds to a halt. And India is hardly the only poor country at risk in needing food relief. One NGO official warns of Biblical famines across 30 underdeveloped nations if supply chains continue to be disrupted and charitable economic aid dries up. We're not talking about people going to bed hungry, he being David Beasley of the World Food Program told The Guardian in an interview. We are talking about extreme conditions, emergency status, people literally marching to the brink of starvation. If we don't get food to people, people will die. This is what poverty really means, having little or no cushion of wealth for an emergency. Poverty is best defined as a lack of savings and resulting capital, leaving people totally dependent on new and consistent income to survive. It is a condition only capital accumulation can improve. And yet capitalism is blamed for the unfolding tragedy before us. Will stories like this finally make Americans understand the severity of the situation? BBC images from India show the heartbreaking human toll of the unprecedented decision simply to stop human work activity due to an infectious disease. Americans should take note and soon. For more content like this, visit Mises.org.