4 ms·
> The problem with that is, once you lift the lockdown it will simply start all over again. Well, no, because the world at the end of the lockdown is not the
by snowwrestler 7y ago
> The problem with that is, once you lift the lockdown it will simply start all over again.
Well, no, because the world at the end of the lockdown is not the same as the world before the disease started spreading. Some differences:
- People now know there is a dangerous disease and how to act and sanitize to mitigate its spread.
- Manufacturing and other logistics for medical providers have had the time of the lockdown to ramp up.
- Testing has had the time of the lockdown to ramp up.
- A vaccine is that much further along--which is the only viable long-term strategy.
- And most important, scientific understanding of the disease has had that much longer to develop.
Britain's "expose the youngsters" strategy has a terrible flaw, which is that we don't know if the disease is actually safe for young people! All we know are some basic statistics about messy data that was reported by overwhelmed medical systems with spotty testing.
There are reliable reports of a) some young people getting very sick from this disease, b) people who seem to have recovered going back into decline and in some cases death, and c) long-term lung damage among those who did not die.
The ideas that this disease is somehow safe for young people, and that contracting it once confers long-term immunity, are ideas that are yet to be scientifically proven. They are, for now, at best heuristics to aid triage.
- listsfrin 7y agoDo you have some links with reliable reports of young people getting sick and other cases you told?
- SyneRyder 7y agoSingapore has had a handful of cases of children getting it. A six-month old caught it and took nearly three weeks to recover: https://co.vid19.sg/cases/singapore-case-28-6-month-old-male-singapore-citizen https://co.vid19.sg/cases/singapore-case-28-6-month-old-male... A 5 year-old was in hospital for six days, but has been discharged today: https://co.vid19.sg/cases/singapore-case-160-5-year-old-male-singapore-citizen https://co.vid19.sg/cases/singapore-case-160-5-year-old-male... A 17-year old evacuated from Wuhan tested positive, but never showed any symptoms during the 3 weeks he was quarantined despite having the virus: https://co.vid19.sg/cases/singapore-case-23-17-year-old-male-singapore-citizen https://co.vid19.sg/cases/singapore-case-23-17-year-old-male... (There's more cases that can be explored on the Singaporean website.)
- listsfrin 7y agoThis is nothing like the parent implied.
- mshroyer 7y agoAlso, if an affected region locks down well enough and long enough (cf. Hubei: https://miro.medium.com/max/6812/1*pwPIo7U6pBahMZhopHYbMw.png https://miro.medium.com/max/6812/1*pwPIo7U6pBahMZhopHYbMw.pn...), the number of actual new cases per day may fall to the point where containment becomes feasible again.
- casparz 7y agoExactly this. I don’t have published numbers to back the following, but we expect them after the weekend. Over half of ICU admitted covid-19 patients in the Netherlands are <50 years old. I get this information from friends and colleagues working in several hospitals. If this turns out to not be a fluke, the young are much more affected by this corona virus vs normal flu.
- blablablerg 7y agoThe distribution of age of corona patients on the ICU is NOT the same as the age distribution of all corona patients vs. disease severity. It could be and quite possibly is the case that many people below the age of 50 are infected but never reach an ICU. Most get better without severe symptoms, so looking at ICU admission stats is misleading if you extrapolate the data to the whole population. I hate that this fact is spreading in the Netherlands without a proper explanation.