9 ms·

At some point we do have to consider that shutting down the majority of the economy will ruin more lives than letting the virus infect everyone. Keeping in min

At some point we do have to consider that shutting down the majority of the economy will ruin more lives than letting the virus infect everyone. Keeping in mind that most young people who get the virus will survive, this is a massive generational sacrifice by the same people who left college around the time of the 2008 crash to protect older people. Anyone who thinks this is only going to last 3 weeks is just not being realistic. Of course nobody wants to callously stand by while older Americans die of the virus. My own parents are at risk. I myself have asthma and I don't really know what my chances would be. However, the worst-case scenario in 20 years is that the older people we saved by sheltering in place will be gone, but the consequences of shutting down the economy will still haunt everyone living. There are long-term trade-offs to consider here, particularly ruining the lives of the young in order to save the old, and I don't think they are being considered properly. In an ideal world we would not need to make choices like this, but the choice is real and we can't fumble it. I feel like a bit of a dick for posting this, but after reflection I do think it's a valid point and we cannot escape the trade-offs I described.

tempestn 7y ago
There is an alternative: locking down until testing can be significantly ramped up. This wouldn't need to take more than a month or two. The cost to test even everyone in the population on a weekly basis is much, much lower than the cost of being locked down, and once that infrastructure was in place, other measures could be dropped, because we would know and could isolate only those who are infected (symptomatic or not). Edit: I should add that ramping up testing may take longer than that. I'm not an expert; just going by what I've read. Even so though, we should definitely aim to scale up testing as much as possible; the better our testing, the less restrictive and long-lasting isolation measures will need to be.
- enchiridion 7y ago
  This is a great idea. The first thing that has given me hope since this set in.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    Got the idea from here: https://medium.com/@yishan/free-widespread-testing-is-the-only-way-america-goes-back-to-normal-952ee9201dd https://medium.com/@yishan/free-widespread-testing-is-the-on...
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  This simple and brilliant. I hope plans like this are being worked in by those in power.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  >This wouldn't need to take more than a month or two. Two months of this is going to be the beginning of the next depression.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    It's going to be a recession, certainly. In the Great Depression there weren't significant stimulus measures taken though, until the stimulus provided by the war. Governments have already made it clear they're going to throw a lot of resources at the economic side of this, so I expect a couple months would be really bad, and some businesses will definitely fail (some already have), but not Depression level bad.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  I'm fine with locking down if the government will man up and pause mortgage/rent/larger bills because I can't afford 3 months+ of this because I'll be out on the street.
  - jpindar 7y ago
    Some states are not allowing evictions, foreclosures, or utility disconnections at least for the time being. How long this will last, and what happens afterward is yet to be determined.
smattiso 7y ago
What lives are being ruined exactly? Some accountant for GrubHub who misses his paycheck? People still have food lodging etc, it just sucks that our "economy" is dependent on 100% of the working age people working 100% of the time otherwise ... collapse? Let's save the lives we can and keep the lights on. Society will be fine.
- dixie_land 7y ago
  If you don’t think lives are ruined you need to get off your high horse. Not everyone is a software engineer that can WFH. Service industries are being hit hard, restaurants, hotels, airlines, etc. Even manufacturers like auto makers are shutting down. How do you suppose these affected people pay their rent. And when we get kicked into the man made depression two weeks from now, anyone that doesn’t already have savings and wealths, their lives are ruined. And that’s gonna be much more than 1 or even 5 percent of the population
  - whatarethembits 7y ago
    It's highly unlikely those losing paychecks now will be starving on the streets since measures are being considered about missing paychecks already and society is not at all in a complete breakdown mode. Supply chains are still running at 100% capacity. Everybody will get fed. However, if hospitals are completely overrun with uncontrolled spread, along with virus related deaths (1% to whatever), normal hospital cases of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, accidents etc will result in straight death too. Health services were already struggling to cope with those cases alone before the virus hit. Total death toll would be an almost guaranteed disaster. Any economic downturn of lockdown will seem a barely perceptible blip atop that body count. Lockdown naysayers need to get a grip on reality.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      The only thing we've seen so far on the federal level is a measly one-time payment that won't even cover rent for most people who are out of a job. If that's setting expectations of how "everybody will get fed", mine are very low already.
pcwalton 7y ago
"Letting the virus infect everyone" at a 1% death rate means 3 million deaths in the US, right up there with the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. You can change the death rate and projections of number infected needed to get herd immunity and move that number around, of course, but not enough to change the overall moral calculus.
- edgefield0 7y ago
  1% death rate assumes reasonable medical care. If you let everyone get infected, you'll have people dying on the streets. I bet this % jumps to 5% or more. We'd easily see 15m+ deaths.
  - twblalock 7y ago
    That seems far worse than any statistics reported so far. What is the basis for that number?
    - kingbirdy 7y ago
      Italy's current mortality rate is 8% (3,405 deaths, 41,035 confirmed cases). Of course their lack of testing is probably influencing the numbers somewhat, but still. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-virus-death-toll-on-the-cusp-of-overtaking-chinas-11584626731 https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-virus-death-toll-on-the-...
      - sershe 7y ago
        According to a recent study from Columbia University up to 86% cases are undetected based on pre-lockdown Chinese data. That would bring this number down to ~1.1%. That is in the oldest-skewing population out there, barely any containment (assuming 14 days infection to death), and with overwhelmed healthcare capacity. Frankly I didn't even expect it to be this low, I thought it was supposed to be closer to 2.5-3% after healthcare collapse and 0.5% before.
        7y ago
sumofi 7y ago
Im happy to share wealth for people I love. Nonetheless I also think that they do factor this in. If your health system breaks down around the world it might become very catastrophic. And in Italy there have been enough not only old people dying.
ForrestN 7y ago
I wonder if there is modeling related to global warming that pertains to this kind of conversation. It's possible that a massive global economic slowdown could help solve the collective action problems there a bit, right? Maybe the spirit of cooperation necessary to achieve "war time" resistance to the pandemic can seamlessly transition into building a new economy that's more sustainable?
Zenst 7y ago
>2008 crash to protect older people I had no idea they had audited the age of the bankers who caused that mess. Only one I'm aware of was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson who brought down an entire bank at the age of 25. As for your darwinistic-eugenics as an old person, sure I'm happy with that, but the question is - would you be happy with that when your older and somebody else's kids suggests the same thing. Not that easy to answer. But whatever age people are, the penchant to begrudge the age groups above them to varying degrees and reasons tends to be strong, at least until they reach their 40's. At least that is what I have observed from many years of experience of many age ranges. > In an ideal world we would not need to make choices like this, but the choice is real and we can't fumble it. I suspect the film Logan's Run would be worth a watch if you have not seen it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ Oh I'd also add, we have not seen results of sterility post infection - that data might change your perspective if we end up finding out that the chances of becoming sterile due to infection of this are high. Which is still an unknown and not to be ruled out.
- twblalock 7y ago
  I'd rather you be serious and address the very real trade-offs of shutting down one of the world's largest economies for a long period of time. We cannot pretend there won't be consequences.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    I'm not very good at putting a price upon human life, for that is exactly what the equation is. Still, once you put a price upon a life, you find yourself more open to other equations in which you have that variable and then you start reducing the value of that variable. It's a slippery slope.
    - twblalock 7y ago
      I don't want to put a price on life either, but that doesn't mean there is not a price. The decisions we make now will affect everyone, not just those who die. My point is that we can't avoid the trade-offs. We cannot pretend that saving the lives of sick people does not affect other lives. Our society is not having that discussion, but is focused on saving as many lives as possible. Not enough attention is being paid to the other side of that trade-off.
usaar333 7y ago
> At some point we do have to consider that shutting down the majority of the economy will ruin more lives than letting the virus infect everyone. At $10M/life, 1M deaths in the US is a $10 trillion cost. That's 50% of GDP - I fail to see how it can't be cheaper to "shut down the economy" (a term I find quite hyperbolic anyway) for a month.
jmull 7y ago
The economy is going to shut down a lot harder than this when people start dying in the streets. The health care system will be overwhelmed early. At that point the mortality rate for cv and everything else will shoot up and people will be dying everywhere. You’re thinking, hey, let’s let the old people die, they’re going to die eventually anyway. But it’s going to be a lot more than some soon-to-be-dead anyway people dying. At that point, people will be far too frightened to just go to work like normal, and the normal infrastructure that delivers food, electricity and fuel will break down.
rgbrenner 7y ago
I see a lot of replies treating this as an either/or: we all isolate, or none of us do. But that's not the real choice. People who are elderly or have health conditions that put them at high risk could isolate themselves for the next several months while the virus makes its way through the population. When enough people get it, herd immunity will develop and then those people will be protected. High risk individuals have a personal responsibility to isolate and protect themselves. I don't know if this is just my community, but I went to the store (out of necessity) twice during the past week or so... and both times it was filled with elderly individuals. It very much made me feel like we were all sacrificing so that the elderly didn't have to.
- twblalock 7y ago
  What you described (isolating older people but not younger people) seemed to be the approach of the UK but it looks like political pressure might be changing that and they will close schools and so forth. Herd immunity won't develop if everyone is at home. It seems like their current plan is to do what everyone else is doing, after wasting a lot of time.
- standardUser 7y ago
  I agree this is exactly the right approach. The goal is to flatten the curve, not try to obliterate it. We're not going to eradicate this virus without a vaccine, so we have to aim for transmission rates that don't overwhelm healthcare capacity. Keeping the virus away from vulnerable populations helps that significantly. In the UK and Colombia (and maybe elsewhere) there are mandatory quarantines only for the elderly. I can see this being tried in other Western nations if blanket quarantines go on too long.
  - twblalock 7y ago
    “Flatten the curve” is trendy but the graph everyone is sharing is just made up. It’s a nice visual aid but that’s all it is. What if we all shelter in place but hospitals end up overwhelmed anyway? That seems like a real possibility and it kind of makes the argument irrelevant. If we didn’t “flatten the curve” enough to get the imaginary hump below the imaginary dotted line, then the benefits of “shelter in place” are going to end up being a lot less valuable.
vladus2000 7y ago
Even if you are right, in the US almost all old people vote and a small amount of young people do. Guess what that means for politicians? They do what is best for the old. Not to mention a lot of young people don't really want to watch their parents and other elderly family members die en masse so they would probably be against this too.
yongjik 7y ago
I admire your optimism that the economy will not shut down when people are found dead at homes because hospitals are full. Which is what's going to happen if we let it spread now.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  When only (or mostly) the elder die, then the economy will not shut down, because of old people dying at home. Instead there will be a new big buisness of corpse disposal. Not nice, but necessary, if not government or voluntarily organized. Only when everyone panics and people fight over live saving toilet paper, instead of keeping the power running, then the economy will shut down for good. So I am not really scared of the virus, but rather panicked mobs.
- twblalock 7y ago
  The death rate is not as high as people think, because far more people have the virus than the number of people who have been tested. We are lucky this is not a super deadly virus, because I don’t think we would have handled it any better. Based on last week’s numbers, unemployment claims are up almost 10x compared to the normal level. That is one indicator of the damage to the economy. We need to consider that the human suffering caused by the economic shutdown will outweigh the human suffering caused by deaths, and it will last longer too.
gdubs 7y ago
The newest CDC estimates are that young people require hospitalization at rates between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5. At scale, that’s an enormous number. The “flatten the curve” trope feels a bit tired at this point, but it’s true nonetheless. We have to avoid breaking our medical system at all costs. If we don’t, what happens to the rather large percentage of young people who require hospitalization? It’s no stretch to assume that many would die. Let alone the fact that mortality for young people is already many times higher than the flu. Break the healthcare system and that goes up dramatically. On top of that, break the healthcare system and what happens to all the normal, baseline, hospitalization needs? They’re not going to suddenly disappear. Survivable medical events become fatal. How do you recover as a society from that, without an economic depression like none we’ve seen in our lifetime? We desperately want to prevent an economic depression, and for good reason! But the chessboard is what it is. We don’t have a whole lot of moves.
- twblalock 7y ago
  What if the flatter curve is still above the dotted line that represents hospital capacity? Would shutting down most of the economy still be worth it? That “flatten the curve” graph people are sharing is just a visual aid. It’s not based on real data. How could it be? Hospital capacity varies by region but everyone in the country is passing around the same graph. It’s nice to flatten the curve, but if the flattened curve isn’t low enough then we will overload our health care system anyway, and we will add an economic shutdown on top of that.
  - sxv 7y ago
    Flattening the curve is not all-or-nothing as you imply. If we marginally exceed hospital capacity (in a given area) we will have a small number of people who cannot get the treatment they need. At that point every additional patient is another victim of too steep a curve.
CryptoBanker 7y ago
People need to really stop parroting this claim that young people aren't susceptible to COVID-19...data from Italy and the CDC indicates that young people are at risk as well...

tempestn 7y ago

There is an alternative: locking down until testing can be significantly ramped up. This wouldn't need to take more than a month or two. The cost to test even everyone in the population on a weekly basis is much, much lower than the cost of being locked down, and once that infrastructure was in place, other measures could be dropped, because we would know and could isolate only those who are infected (symptomatic or not). Edit: I should add that ramping up testing may take longer than that. I'm not an expert; just going by what I've read. Even so though, we should definitely aim to scale up testing as much as possible; the better our testing, the less restrictive and long-lasting isolation measures will need to be.

enchiridion 7y ago
This is a great idea. The first thing that has given me hope since this set in.
- tempestn 7y ago
  Got the idea from here: https://medium.com/@yishan/free-widespread-testing-is-the-only-way-america-goes-back-to-normal-952ee9201dd https://medium.com/@yishan/free-widespread-testing-is-the-on...
dwaltrip 7y ago
This simple and brilliant. I hope plans like this are being worked in by those in power.
0xffff2 7y ago
>This wouldn't need to take more than a month or two. Two months of this is going to be the beginning of the next depression.
- tempestn 7y ago
  It's going to be a recession, certainly. In the Great Depression there weren't significant stimulus measures taken though, until the stimulus provided by the war. Governments have already made it clear they're going to throw a lot of resources at the economic side of this, so I expect a couple months would be really bad, and some businesses will definitely fail (some already have), but not Depression level bad.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
I'm fine with locking down if the government will man up and pause mortgage/rent/larger bills because I can't afford 3 months+ of this because I'll be out on the street.
- jpindar 7y ago
  Some states are not allowing evictions, foreclosures, or utility disconnections at least for the time being. How long this will last, and what happens afterward is yet to be determined.

smattiso 7y ago

What lives are being ruined exactly? Some accountant for GrubHub who misses his paycheck? People still have food lodging etc, it just sucks that our "economy" is dependent on 100% of the working age people working 100% of the time otherwise ... collapse? Let's save the lives we can and keep the lights on. Society will be fine.

dixie_land 7y ago
If you don’t think lives are ruined you need to get off your high horse. Not everyone is a software engineer that can WFH. Service industries are being hit hard, restaurants, hotels, airlines, etc. Even manufacturers like auto makers are shutting down. How do you suppose these affected people pay their rent. And when we get kicked into the man made depression two weeks from now, anyone that doesn’t already have savings and wealths, their lives are ruined. And that’s gonna be much more than 1 or even 5 percent of the population
- whatarethembits 7y ago
  It's highly unlikely those losing paychecks now will be starving on the streets since measures are being considered about missing paychecks already and society is not at all in a complete breakdown mode. Supply chains are still running at 100% capacity. Everybody will get fed. However, if hospitals are completely overrun with uncontrolled spread, along with virus related deaths (1% to whatever), normal hospital cases of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, accidents etc will result in straight death too. Health services were already struggling to cope with those cases alone before the virus hit. Total death toll would be an almost guaranteed disaster. Any economic downturn of lockdown will seem a barely perceptible blip atop that body count. Lockdown naysayers need to get a grip on reality.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    The only thing we've seen so far on the federal level is a measly one-time payment that won't even cover rent for most people who are out of a job. If that's setting expectations of how "everybody will get fed", mine are very low already.

pcwalton 7y ago

"Letting the virus infect everyone" at a 1% death rate means 3 million deaths in the US, right up there with the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. You can change the death rate and projections of number infected needed to get herd immunity and move that number around, of course, but not enough to change the overall moral calculus.

edgefield0 7y ago
1% death rate assumes reasonable medical care. If you let everyone get infected, you'll have people dying on the streets. I bet this % jumps to 5% or more. We'd easily see 15m+ deaths.
- twblalock 7y ago
  That seems far worse than any statistics reported so far. What is the basis for that number?
  - kingbirdy 7y ago
    Italy's current mortality rate is 8% (3,405 deaths, 41,035 confirmed cases). Of course their lack of testing is probably influencing the numbers somewhat, but still. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-virus-death-toll-on-the-cusp-of-overtaking-chinas-11584626731 https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-virus-death-toll-on-the-...
    - sershe 7y ago
      According to a recent study from Columbia University up to 86% cases are undetected based on pre-lockdown Chinese data. That would bring this number down to ~1.1%. That is in the oldest-skewing population out there, barely any containment (assuming 14 days infection to death), and with overwhelmed healthcare capacity. Frankly I didn't even expect it to be this low, I thought it was supposed to be closer to 2.5-3% after healthcare collapse and 0.5% before.
      - 7y ago

sumofi 7y ago

Im happy to share wealth for people I love. Nonetheless I also think that they do factor this in. If your health system breaks down around the world it might become very catastrophic. And in Italy there have been enough not only old people dying.

ForrestN 7y ago

I wonder if there is modeling related to global warming that pertains to this kind of conversation. It's possible that a massive global economic slowdown could help solve the collective action problems there a bit, right? Maybe the spirit of cooperation necessary to achieve "war time" resistance to the pandemic can seamlessly transition into building a new economy that's more sustainable?

Zenst 7y ago

>2008 crash to protect older people I had no idea they had audited the age of the bankers who caused that mess. Only one I'm aware of was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson who brought down an entire bank at the age of 25. As for your darwinistic-eugenics as an old person, sure I'm happy with that, but the question is - would you be happy with that when your older and somebody else's kids suggests the same thing. Not that easy to answer. But whatever age people are, the penchant to begrudge the age groups above them to varying degrees and reasons tends to be strong, at least until they reach their 40's. At least that is what I have observed from many years of experience of many age ranges. > In an ideal world we would not need to make choices like this, but the choice is real and we can't fumble it. I suspect the film Logan's Run would be worth a watch if you have not seen it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ Oh I'd also add, we have not seen results of sterility post infection - that data might change your perspective if we end up finding out that the chances of becoming sterile due to infection of this are high. Which is still an unknown and not to be ruled out.

twblalock 7y ago
I'd rather you be serious and address the very real trade-offs of shutting down one of the world's largest economies for a long period of time. We cannot pretend there won't be consequences.
- Zenst 7y ago
  I'm not very good at putting a price upon human life, for that is exactly what the equation is. Still, once you put a price upon a life, you find yourself more open to other equations in which you have that variable and then you start reducing the value of that variable. It's a slippery slope.
  - twblalock 7y ago
    I don't want to put a price on life either, but that doesn't mean there is not a price. The decisions we make now will affect everyone, not just those who die. My point is that we can't avoid the trade-offs. We cannot pretend that saving the lives of sick people does not affect other lives. Our society is not having that discussion, but is focused on saving as many lives as possible. Not enough attention is being paid to the other side of that trade-off.

usaar333 7y ago

> At some point we do have to consider that shutting down the majority of the economy will ruin more lives than letting the virus infect everyone. At $10M/life, 1M deaths in the US is a $10 trillion cost. That's 50% of GDP - I fail to see how it can't be cheaper to "shut down the economy" (a term I find quite hyperbolic anyway) for a month.

jmull 7y ago

The economy is going to shut down a lot harder than this when people start dying in the streets. The health care system will be overwhelmed early. At that point the mortality rate for cv and everything else will shoot up and people will be dying everywhere. You’re thinking, hey, let’s let the old people die, they’re going to die eventually anyway. But it’s going to be a lot more than some soon-to-be-dead anyway people dying. At that point, people will be far too frightened to just go to work like normal, and the normal infrastructure that delivers food, electricity and fuel will break down.

rgbrenner 7y ago

I see a lot of replies treating this as an either/or: we all isolate, or none of us do. But that's not the real choice. People who are elderly or have health conditions that put them at high risk could isolate themselves for the next several months while the virus makes its way through the population. When enough people get it, herd immunity will develop and then those people will be protected. High risk individuals have a personal responsibility to isolate and protect themselves. I don't know if this is just my community, but I went to the store (out of necessity) twice during the past week or so... and both times it was filled with elderly individuals. It very much made me feel like we were all sacrificing so that the elderly didn't have to.

twblalock 7y ago
What you described (isolating older people but not younger people) seemed to be the approach of the UK but it looks like political pressure might be changing that and they will close schools and so forth. Herd immunity won't develop if everyone is at home. It seems like their current plan is to do what everyone else is doing, after wasting a lot of time.
standardUser 7y ago
I agree this is exactly the right approach. The goal is to flatten the curve, not try to obliterate it. We're not going to eradicate this virus without a vaccine, so we have to aim for transmission rates that don't overwhelm healthcare capacity. Keeping the virus away from vulnerable populations helps that significantly. In the UK and Colombia (and maybe elsewhere) there are mandatory quarantines only for the elderly. I can see this being tried in other Western nations if blanket quarantines go on too long.
- twblalock 7y ago
  “Flatten the curve” is trendy but the graph everyone is sharing is just made up. It’s a nice visual aid but that’s all it is. What if we all shelter in place but hospitals end up overwhelmed anyway? That seems like a real possibility and it kind of makes the argument irrelevant. If we didn’t “flatten the curve” enough to get the imaginary hump below the imaginary dotted line, then the benefits of “shelter in place” are going to end up being a lot less valuable.

vladus2000 7y ago

Even if you are right, in the US almost all old people vote and a small amount of young people do. Guess what that means for politicians? They do what is best for the old. Not to mention a lot of young people don't really want to watch their parents and other elderly family members die en masse so they would probably be against this too.

yongjik 7y ago

I admire your optimism that the economy will not shut down when people are found dead at homes because hospitals are full. Which is what's going to happen if we let it spread now.

hutzlibu 7y ago
When only (or mostly) the elder die, then the economy will not shut down, because of old people dying at home. Instead there will be a new big buisness of corpse disposal. Not nice, but necessary, if not government or voluntarily organized. Only when everyone panics and people fight over live saving toilet paper, instead of keeping the power running, then the economy will shut down for good. So I am not really scared of the virus, but rather panicked mobs.
twblalock 7y ago
The death rate is not as high as people think, because far more people have the virus than the number of people who have been tested. We are lucky this is not a super deadly virus, because I don’t think we would have handled it any better. Based on last week’s numbers, unemployment claims are up almost 10x compared to the normal level. That is one indicator of the damage to the economy. We need to consider that the human suffering caused by the economic shutdown will outweigh the human suffering caused by deaths, and it will last longer too.

gdubs 7y ago

The newest CDC estimates are that young people require hospitalization at rates between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5. At scale, that’s an enormous number. The “flatten the curve” trope feels a bit tired at this point, but it’s true nonetheless. We have to avoid breaking our medical system at all costs. If we don’t, what happens to the rather large percentage of young people who require hospitalization? It’s no stretch to assume that many would die. Let alone the fact that mortality for young people is already many times higher than the flu. Break the healthcare system and that goes up dramatically. On top of that, break the healthcare system and what happens to all the normal, baseline, hospitalization needs? They’re not going to suddenly disappear. Survivable medical events become fatal. How do you recover as a society from that, without an economic depression like none we’ve seen in our lifetime? We desperately want to prevent an economic depression, and for good reason! But the chessboard is what it is. We don’t have a whole lot of moves.

twblalock 7y ago
What if the flatter curve is still above the dotted line that represents hospital capacity? Would shutting down most of the economy still be worth it? That “flatten the curve” graph people are sharing is just a visual aid. It’s not based on real data. How could it be? Hospital capacity varies by region but everyone in the country is passing around the same graph. It’s nice to flatten the curve, but if the flattened curve isn’t low enough then we will overload our health care system anyway, and we will add an economic shutdown on top of that.
- sxv 7y ago
  Flattening the curve is not all-or-nothing as you imply. If we marginally exceed hospital capacity (in a given area) we will have a small number of people who cannot get the treatment they need. At that point every additional patient is another victim of too steep a curve.

CryptoBanker 7y ago

People need to really stop parroting this claim that young people aren't susceptible to COVID-19...data from Italy and the CDC indicates that young people are at risk as well...