3 ms·
>There are nuances when it comes to ICUs and ventilators, etc. But the bottom line is: Even in optimistic flattening the curve scenarios, the curve cannot flatt
by dirtyid 7y ago
>There are nuances when it comes to ICUs and ventilators, etc. But the bottom line is: Even in optimistic flattening the curve scenarios, the curve cannot flatten enough.
This always felt intuitively true given exponential growth - realistically flatten the curve was more platitude than practical, an desperate appeal by media in democratic countries to position a "civilized" solution in order to avoid mass panic and draconian measures. Now they're elevating Korea as the exemplar response model when the country is practically an island like Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong. It's simply not applicable to geographic realities of most countries where borders can't be simply shut and where a lack of infrastructure investment make the kind of techno-authoritarian solutions that made agile responses in those countries possible. Canada doesn't even have an official Corona dashboard, instead news media as to collate information from an updated table using data from archive.org, people paying in cash, nothing is getting wiped down, minimal mask use etc. If anything, countries without Asian Tiger advantages need to crack down harsher to make up for these deficiencies. No one is going to build enough triage hospitals and medical material to outpace any variant of this curve. No developed country is civilized enough to sacrifice this much for the greater good. This is a stick, not carrot and certainly not rhetoric situation. If Corona is as bad as the numbers project, flatten the curve is going to kill a lot of people in retrospect because politicians can't stomach "lock it down".
- SamReidHughes 7y agoIncrementally flattening the curve does save incrementally many lives. It’s taken hold over “lock it down” because it rings better and is factual. You can accomplish something individually by staying inside instead of being fatalistic because nobody else will do it, and it isn’t just a platitude .
- dirtyid 7y agoIncremental is not a proportional response to exponential. Compared to a lock down, you're not saving incrementally more lives but allowing for exponentially more death. The only rationale for it is to slowly acclimatize the population to embrace more drastic action, i.e. panic management. Even stringent, well organized quarantines in Chinese provinces with less infection is running 6+ weeks with full compliance. Partial compliance means those who adhere will be stuck inside for a long time, it's not tenable even assuming the curve can be flattened in a sensible time frame in first place, which I don't believe it is. Basically we're dragging past the point where shutdown is a viable option with half measures, which will only leave to excess fatalities. Obviously I'm not an expert and hope I'm wrong.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoIf the system is out of ventilators and you keep from infecting a person who’d need a ventilator, that’s one death prevented. If everybody is going to catch it, you want to maximize ventilator-hours, i.e. delay as much as possible or flatten the curve. This makes it beneficial conduct to avoid social contact whether other people are doing it or not.