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I am sure it has crossed many people's minds, but what if I want to get it before the medical systems are taxed? Like get it before the peak. I am sure it's ver

I am sure it has crossed many people's minds, but what if I want to get it before the medical systems are taxed? Like get it before the peak. I am sure it's very bad thinking, but what are some solid points against such thinking?

ktross 7y ago
There are some points in the article: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS > Don’t be that person. It might not be about you but it is everyone’s problem. Don’t be careless in the hopes you get sick when you can “avoid the rush.” There is zero benefit to individuals or the population to getting sick early in the pandemic. You would be putting the lives of others at risk. It is not just that people are dying, but how they are dying. To say nothing of the physical trauma, emotionally speaking this is the opposite of a “good death”. People are dying alone, quarantined from those they love. > Early reports are that people who recover develop antibodies that provide immunity if they are infected with the same strain again. However, this is great news for vaccine development, so flatten the curve and wait it out. > This can get very serious; one person described the pain as feeling like her lungs were being put through a pasta maker. 10% of cases require ICU care and mechanical ventilation. Even if autopsy reports from China have been misrepresented or overstated, there is a possibility of long term or permanent lung damage if you do get sick and recover. There are lot of gaps in the information about lung damage, mostly because everyone qualified to let the public know exactly what is going on is already very busy saving lives and putting their own at risk.
unilynx 7y ago
See section 2.8.2.11 of the article
bluGill 7y ago
I want to get it late - ideally I can hold off long enough for an effective vaccine and never get it. Lacking that, maybe at least someone will discover a better treatment. Maybe in a few months we will discover some existing rabies drug also helps this treatment, or some other such thing. There are also some other anti-virals in development, maybe one of them will turn out to be somewhat useful. However it will take time for doctors to figure that out. I'd rather they learn on someone else.
- tim333 7y ago
  Chloroquine is looking quite promising eg see the linked article here https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/ffztou/expert_chloroquine_phosphate_has_a_negative_time/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/ffztou/expert_chlo... Even with that there seem bureaucratic type delays till it gets used. I just took some as a prophylactic which is totally unproven but as a clinical treatment it seems to work well in trials.
nawitus 7y ago
The idea is explored here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/consider-controlled-infection.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/consider-controlled-in...
PureParadigm 7y ago
If everyone thought like you and tried to get it early, then the hospitals would be overrun and you'd be no better off. Also, it's possible for you to get it again after recovery [1], so it may not even help you at all. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-risk-of-reinfection-2020-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-risk-of-re...
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  > If everyone thought like you and tried to get it early, then the hospitals would be overrun and you'd be no better off. If the reality is that only a small fraction of people would think like that, the we don't need to worry about that line of reasoning. But I agree with your point that it's moot due to the potential for reinfection.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    The more people that think like that, the more that type of thinking increases. Like panic buying inducing more panic buying. So it might start small, but could easily balloon quite fast.
- hanche 7y ago
  According to top health officials in Norway (as seen on a TV program last night), reinfection is not likely, at least in the short run. And the Japanese case apparently is based on a misunderstanding, not an actual reinfection. Over the long haul, reinfection is quite possible, since immunity wears off with time. It is not considered unlikely that this disease will be with us forever. In that case, vaccination will perhaps be our best tool to manage it.
nostromo 7y ago
How old are you? If you're under 60 or so, it's quite likely you won't need any medical attention at all after contraction. This is why it's spreading -- most middle-aged and younger people feel like they have the common cold.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > This is why it's spreading -- most middle-aged and younger people feel like they have the common cold. Is that actually the case? Don't the details look like a low grade flu? It's not sore throat or sniffles, it's still a cough and a fever.
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    About half of exposures have no symptoms at all, about half of the remaining ones have mild cold symptoms (fever, sore throat, dry cough), and then a further 30% of the remainder might have nasty symptoms (deep cough, walking pneumonia) that don't require hospitalization. The remaining 20% of symptomatic cases (10% of total) get pneumonia that's bad enough to require hospitalization, and half of those require ventilators and ICU beds. With good medical care and no pre-existing conditions about 90% of those patients recover, without medical care virtually all of them die. Untreated, it's basically like playing Russian Roulette. 5 out of 6 times, nothing bad happens. 1 out of 6, you die. The disparity in outcomes is probably what makes this so insidious: a lot of folks look at the numeric outcomes for healthy people in the presence of ventilators and ICUs and reasonably think "Oh, I have a 1 in 500 chance of dying, it's no big deal". Medical professionals look at the exponential infection curve, the capacity to overwhelm health care systems, and the number of patients requiring hospitalization and think "this is the scariest disease I've ever seen".
    - matwood 7y ago
      One thing missing from your analysis is that the group you end up in is greatly impacted by age and current health.
aaron_m04 7y ago
OK so you think the early "slots" are better. Maybe they are. If you manage to get in slot n anyone you infect will be forced to take n+1 (perhaps not as good) and the exponentially increasing set of people _they_ infect will be forced to take n+2, n+3, ... Now there are a lot more people in those time slots all competing for the same doctors and hospital beds, etc. Congratulations, you made the curve a little less flat :(
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  If anything, experience from China has shown that the early slots are not better. The mortality % has gotten better over time as they've figured out what works, what doesn't, and how to properly manage the disease. For example, there's some retrovirals being given now that appear to be successful to some degree. That wasn't known in the early progression of the illness. Odds are decent an even more effective treatment will be found in the coming months, and if you can stave off your infection date till then you'll be better off (which of course presumes that you will get the virus at all, which is far from a given).
zentiggr 7y ago
If you get infected, you put others at risk of getting infected, no matter how perfectly you may think you've isolated yourself. Unless you have a clean room level setup somewhere, you're making yourself a reservoir of viral load for others to catch.
nostrademons 7y ago
It may be too late for that, in the same sense that all the folks who chase the hot startup idea that just appeared in the news are too late. There's about a 3-week lag time between contracting the virus and needing serious medical care. The folks in the ICU now generally contracted it in early February. With a doubling time of roughly 4 days, there'll be 5 doublings = 32x increase of cases in that time frame. It's very likely that if you contract it now, by the time you need ICU support so will everyone else, and you'll be left to fend for yourself in a hallway while in serious respiratory distress.
malandrew 7y ago
There are also two strains, one more aggressive than the other. I would imagine that getting the weaker strain out there ahead of the bad strain may be useful.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  I thought about that yesterday... It probably wont help you as an immunization. But it might help to reduce symptoms?
- baq 7y ago
  That wasn’t completely confirmed and may result from drawing conclusions from biased data. Also it doesn’t matter unless you can reliably get infected with the weaker strain.
dcolkitt 7y ago
Regardless of the merits from an individually selfish standpoint, this kind of behavior would be extremely anti-social. The overriding public health concern is slowing the spread as much as possible. Even if in the asymptote the same number of people are infected, spreading that burden out over a protracted time period minimizes overloading on the healthcare system. If even a small percent of the population became "bug-chasers", it would supercharge the rate of transmission. Especially because the incubation period is so long. The same unhygienic behavior of trying to acquire the disease, would very likely also spread the disease by the asymptomatic. If you put any ethical weight on the consideration of other human beings, then the very minor plausible individuals benefits are more than outweighed by the massive social harm.
ineedasername 7y ago
You're assuming you would get it no matter what: you might not, especially given the precautions that are being taken. And there's a non-zero chance of dying. Assuming you're in a low risk age group from 20-50, you have, at minimum, between a 1 in 500 to a 1 in 250 chance of dying. Sure, you're much less likely to die than not die, but those still aren't odds I'd play willingly.
ajross 7y ago
That's actually not a bad strategy in a selfish sense, assuming that the virus grows otherwise normally. Obviously, the problem is that if everyone did it we'd be looking at the apocalyptic worst case extreme! Everyone would be sick simultaneously and have to endure the virus with no health care resources at all. The more practical problem is that the growth is exponential, so the window between "no one has it, it's safe to get it now" and "everyone has it, mass quarantine" is just a few weeks. Add to that that the virus has a 5-6 day incubation period and it basically doesn't work. Statistically, by the time you know someone sick from whom you can infect yourself, the number of people with still-incubating cases (who are AHEAD of you in the "queue"!) is probably enough to overwhelm health care facilities anyway. Don't do this.

ktross 7y ago

There are some points in the article: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS > Don’t be that person. It might not be about you but it is everyone’s problem. Don’t be careless in the hopes you get sick when you can “avoid the rush.” There is zero benefit to individuals or the population to getting sick early in the pandemic. You would be putting the lives of others at risk. It is not just that people are dying, but how they are dying. To say nothing of the physical trauma, emotionally speaking this is the opposite of a “good death”. People are dying alone, quarantined from those they love. > Early reports are that people who recover develop antibodies that provide immunity if they are infected with the same strain again. However, this is great news for vaccine development, so flatten the curve and wait it out. > This can get very serious; one person described the pain as feeling like her lungs were being put through a pasta maker. 10% of cases require ICU care and mechanical ventilation. Even if autopsy reports from China have been misrepresented or overstated, there is a possibility of long term or permanent lung damage if you do get sick and recover. There are lot of gaps in the information about lung damage, mostly because everyone qualified to let the public know exactly what is going on is already very busy saving lives and putting their own at risk.

unilynx 7y ago

See section 2.8.2.11 of the article

bluGill 7y ago

I want to get it late - ideally I can hold off long enough for an effective vaccine and never get it. Lacking that, maybe at least someone will discover a better treatment. Maybe in a few months we will discover some existing rabies drug also helps this treatment, or some other such thing. There are also some other anti-virals in development, maybe one of them will turn out to be somewhat useful. However it will take time for doctors to figure that out. I'd rather they learn on someone else.

tim333 7y ago
Chloroquine is looking quite promising eg see the linked article here https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/ffztou/expert_chloroquine_phosphate_has_a_negative_time/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/ffztou/expert_chlo... Even with that there seem bureaucratic type delays till it gets used. I just took some as a prophylactic which is totally unproven but as a clinical treatment it seems to work well in trials.

nawitus 7y ago

The idea is explored here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/consider-controlled-infection.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/consider-controlled-in...

PureParadigm 7y ago

If everyone thought like you and tried to get it early, then the hospitals would be overrun and you'd be no better off. Also, it's possible for you to get it again after recovery [1], so it may not even help you at all. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-risk-of-reinfection-2020-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-risk-of-re...

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
> If everyone thought like you and tried to get it early, then the hospitals would be overrun and you'd be no better off. If the reality is that only a small fraction of people would think like that, the we don't need to worry about that line of reasoning. But I agree with your point that it's moot due to the potential for reinfection.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  The more people that think like that, the more that type of thinking increases. Like panic buying inducing more panic buying. So it might start small, but could easily balloon quite fast.
hanche 7y ago
According to top health officials in Norway (as seen on a TV program last night), reinfection is not likely, at least in the short run. And the Japanese case apparently is based on a misunderstanding, not an actual reinfection. Over the long haul, reinfection is quite possible, since immunity wears off with time. It is not considered unlikely that this disease will be with us forever. In that case, vaccination will perhaps be our best tool to manage it.

nostromo 7y ago

How old are you? If you're under 60 or so, it's quite likely you won't need any medical attention at all after contraction. This is why it's spreading -- most middle-aged and younger people feel like they have the common cold.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
> This is why it's spreading -- most middle-aged and younger people feel like they have the common cold. Is that actually the case? Don't the details look like a low grade flu? It's not sore throat or sniffles, it's still a cough and a fever.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  About half of exposures have no symptoms at all, about half of the remaining ones have mild cold symptoms (fever, sore throat, dry cough), and then a further 30% of the remainder might have nasty symptoms (deep cough, walking pneumonia) that don't require hospitalization. The remaining 20% of symptomatic cases (10% of total) get pneumonia that's bad enough to require hospitalization, and half of those require ventilators and ICU beds. With good medical care and no pre-existing conditions about 90% of those patients recover, without medical care virtually all of them die. Untreated, it's basically like playing Russian Roulette. 5 out of 6 times, nothing bad happens. 1 out of 6, you die. The disparity in outcomes is probably what makes this so insidious: a lot of folks look at the numeric outcomes for healthy people in the presence of ventilators and ICUs and reasonably think "Oh, I have a 1 in 500 chance of dying, it's no big deal". Medical professionals look at the exponential infection curve, the capacity to overwhelm health care systems, and the number of patients requiring hospitalization and think "this is the scariest disease I've ever seen".
  - matwood 7y ago
    One thing missing from your analysis is that the group you end up in is greatly impacted by age and current health.

aaron_m04 7y ago

OK so you think the early "slots" are better. Maybe they are. If you manage to get in slot n anyone you infect will be forced to take n+1 (perhaps not as good) and the exponentially increasing set of people _they_ infect will be forced to take n+2, n+3, ... Now there are a lot more people in those time slots all competing for the same doctors and hospital beds, etc. Congratulations, you made the curve a little less flat :(

CydeWeys 7y ago
If anything, experience from China has shown that the early slots are not better. The mortality % has gotten better over time as they've figured out what works, what doesn't, and how to properly manage the disease. For example, there's some retrovirals being given now that appear to be successful to some degree. That wasn't known in the early progression of the illness. Odds are decent an even more effective treatment will be found in the coming months, and if you can stave off your infection date till then you'll be better off (which of course presumes that you will get the virus at all, which is far from a given).

zentiggr 7y ago

If you get infected, you put others at risk of getting infected, no matter how perfectly you may think you've isolated yourself. Unless you have a clean room level setup somewhere, you're making yourself a reservoir of viral load for others to catch.

nostrademons 7y ago

It may be too late for that, in the same sense that all the folks who chase the hot startup idea that just appeared in the news are too late. There's about a 3-week lag time between contracting the virus and needing serious medical care. The folks in the ICU now generally contracted it in early February. With a doubling time of roughly 4 days, there'll be 5 doublings = 32x increase of cases in that time frame. It's very likely that if you contract it now, by the time you need ICU support so will everyone else, and you'll be left to fend for yourself in a hallway while in serious respiratory distress.

malandrew 7y ago

There are also two strains, one more aggressive than the other. I would imagine that getting the weaker strain out there ahead of the bad strain may be useful.

Bombthecat 7y ago
I thought about that yesterday... It probably wont help you as an immunization. But it might help to reduce symptoms?
baq 7y ago
That wasn’t completely confirmed and may result from drawing conclusions from biased data. Also it doesn’t matter unless you can reliably get infected with the weaker strain.

dcolkitt 7y ago

Regardless of the merits from an individually selfish standpoint, this kind of behavior would be extremely anti-social. The overriding public health concern is slowing the spread as much as possible. Even if in the asymptote the same number of people are infected, spreading that burden out over a protracted time period minimizes overloading on the healthcare system. If even a small percent of the population became "bug-chasers", it would supercharge the rate of transmission. Especially because the incubation period is so long. The same unhygienic behavior of trying to acquire the disease, would very likely also spread the disease by the asymptomatic. If you put any ethical weight on the consideration of other human beings, then the very minor plausible individuals benefits are more than outweighed by the massive social harm.

ineedasername 7y ago

You're assuming you would get it no matter what: you might not, especially given the precautions that are being taken. And there's a non-zero chance of dying. Assuming you're in a low risk age group from 20-50, you have, at minimum, between a 1 in 500 to a 1 in 250 chance of dying. Sure, you're much less likely to die than not die, but those still aren't odds I'd play willingly.

ajross 7y ago

That's actually not a bad strategy in a selfish sense, assuming that the virus grows otherwise normally. Obviously, the problem is that if everyone did it we'd be looking at the apocalyptic worst case extreme! Everyone would be sick simultaneously and have to endure the virus with no health care resources at all. The more practical problem is that the growth is exponential, so the window between "no one has it, it's safe to get it now" and "everyone has it, mass quarantine" is just a few weeks. Add to that that the virus has a 5-6 day incubation period and it basically doesn't work. Statistically, by the time you know someone sick from whom you can infect yourself, the number of people with still-incubating cases (who are AHEAD of you in the "queue"!) is probably enough to overwhelm health care facilities anyway. Don't do this.