All “at risk” and any scared people should be self-isolating, and the rest of us should be voluntarily holding raves and getting this civilization to “herd immunity” level by 2-3 weeks from now.
For healthy <55 year olds, the probability of catastrophic failure and death is low enough that 100m people getting sick over 2-3 weeks should be manageable.
The alternative — a year of social distancing and partial quarantine — stands a good chance of seriously damaging or destroying our civilization.
Put on some big-boy pants, and lets get this done.
So at the end of the day we have the following:
4.5M dead. 500k with long term health issues
And this ignores the fact that we wouldn't be able to keep at risk "and any scared people" in a safe isolation. Inevitably, a decent percentage of them would get infected and have worse results.
The arguments given apply exactly to the presently executed plan, just over a year’s duration. During which time, 75% of businesses will be extinguished.
Good luck with that plan, hinging on keeping the elderly and those with health issues isolated for a year. I’m sort of sickened to imagine the horrific outcomes of the current plan to isolate millions of unprepared city-dwellers....
But, I guess that’s not our problem?
Video the other day from a doctor said they were wearing PPE full time now because they were seeing patients with no complaints except GI issues and they saw lung fluid in the X-rays and tested them.
Because, that’s what you’re betting on.
> Van Horn only has a small clinic and hospital, and Hinojos says most patients are sent to El Paso or Odessa if they need serious care.
It's not about the <55 year old employees getting sick. It's about putting an entire rural town at risk of infection from a state with severe infection rates - a town that has no infrastructure to accommodate for critical cases of this virus.
At best, they’ll get it but just at a rate where they die at an acceptable rate.
By “taking one for the team”, instead, we young, healthy majority can achieve herd immunity quickly — actually helping ensure the elderly are protected.
Cowardice and ignorance is actually preventing us all from protecting our loved ones.
Do the math — healthy/young people don’t generally die or require advanced care. If .1% of 100m (us volunteers) do it in 3 weeks, that is an investment of 100,000 of us — to protect 200m at-risk from future infection and death at 1-10% mortality rates.
If you're deliberately getting people infected for herd immunity, you actually speed up the spread to all manner of people, including the most vulnerable. And you make the burden on the limited health system all the more acute causing additional unnecessary loss of life. Remember you need something like 50-80% of people infected to achieve herd immunity. Just doing the math on that and the burden to the medical system - it's not pretty.
I've given this some thought, but I think it's a horrible idea.
I think, when we finally see any statistcally significant sampling including antibody tests, we may be pleasantly surprised at our progress toward herd immunity.
We have no good information presently.
That’s the plan.
That’s a bad plan.
Now, it's possible that you do have the maturity but you're misinformed. Herd immunity the way you are suggesting does not get us through in two to three weeks. It's a full year of new waves sweeping through the population and millions dead in the USA, hundreds of millions around the world. And that assumes it doesn't mutate enough to bypass the immunity of those who have had it. Vaccination is the only way out, just like it with flu. We have been spared a flu pandemic by a combination of luck and massive monitoring and vaccination.
> stands a good chance of seriously damaging or destroying our civilization.
Where do people get this idea? The fastest path out with the least damage is full isolation and quarantine. There's a great line from epidemiologists: "If we could wave a magic wand and freeze everyone on Earth six feet apart for two weeks, this would be over." China is resuming operations. It's places that aren't responding well, like Iran or the USA, that are going to drive the world's suffering in this.
And let us be clear, the response in the USA has been utterly appalling. Speaking as someone who did his graduate work in infectious disease, the only question about Donald Trump's legacy is whether he will be remembered as the worst president the USA has ever had, or the second worse. It depends on whether you feel that intentional genocide (Andrew Jackson) or willful incompetence is worse.
Your plan is simply immoral. The facts show that it would lead to immense loss of life, while we can simultaneously help business stay afloat. And most economists agree that the economy should be a secondary consideration to the health battle.
And a vaccine won't be ready in 6 months. 12-18 is more like it, though we might be lucky and stumble upon a treatment to the disease itself.
They’ll save lives by ensuring medical staff can attend to people who would otherwise die of problems that are wholly treatable with modern medicine.
> herd immunity
Let’s do the math. Based on what I have read, it would take infecting 70 percent of the population to reach herd immunity with this virus based on the R0 value of roughly 3. If we let that happen, 0.35-0.7 percent of the population will die. In the U.S., that’s 11,445,000 people in the best case. 10 percent of all infections need to be hospitalized. That’s 32.7 million people requiring medical care at an unpredictable rate. It sounds like you’re suggesting 3 weeks, so let’s roll with that. Here’s the problem: young or old, we can’t handle that. The number of hospital beds is nowhere near close. How do you feel about those numbers?
My thought is people that think herd immunity would be a couple of week long thing have no idea what they are talking about and are working from a place of denial. Consider MERS, MERS is still around and they're playing whack a mole with it. Let COVID19 run free and it'll become endemic.
After thinking about it for a moment, I really hope you’re right, because the alternatives just make me sad.