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I'm pretty confused by the European government's responses. While the UK is the most brazen, all others are essentially also saying that there's no other way ot
by oggy 7y ago
I'm pretty confused by the European government's responses. While the UK is the most brazen, all others are essentially also saying that there's no other way other than letting a non-negligible percentage of the population die, and that the best they can do is try to ensure that everyone who needs an ICU gets one. And all the while incurring a massive economic cost. Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria have effectively halted most of the economic activity, initially for 2 weeks to a month, but it's likely that it's either going to be longer, or that they'll have to repeat the process. That's 100s of billions of dollars gone just there, not counting for the long-term impact and all the social problems that'll follow. I'm puzzled that the idle workforce and the lost money isn't diverted to urgent and massive scaling of testing and protection equipment.
Of course, all it takes is a UK to screw everyone over by not playing along and providing a population pool for the virus to mutate. And then a ton of poor countries who probably can't do anything even if they wanted, where it's just starting.
- marvin 7y agoAdd Norway and Denmark to the list of countries that have halted large part of their economic activity. Honestly, I think the UK, Sweden et al. will be "voted out" here. Commerce can't continue between countries that follow the China/South Korea model of keeping R0 < 1, because frequent large outbreaks are bound to follow. Britain can't economically dominate its neighbors like that today. Sweden, forget about it. This is a spectacular high-stakes experiment. But if Boris Johnson isn't persuaded by public opinion and a high death toll, his trading partners will. Both approaches put strong selection pressure on the virus to mutate to a milder form, so even in the absence of a vaccine, we'll win in the long term.
- Angostura 7y ago> there's no other way other than letting a non-negligible percentage of the population die. That's not what is being said. What is being said is that specifically to avoid people dying, you need to stop ICUs being overwhelmed, but that in their judgement and modelling an immediate hard clamp down is not the best way.
- lozenge 7y agoWho are you comparing Europe to? Trump just announced advice not to gather for 2 weeks. A 2 week restriction is a drop in the sea. China is celebrating lifting of many restrictions. But the virus will come back in those areas and the restrictions will come back too.