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This is all fine and good. And I should state that I am on board with the actions (in San Francisco/California) taken so far. However, I'm not unconditionally

This is all fine and good. And I should state that I am on board with the actions (in San Francisco/California) taken so far. However, I'm not unconditionally so. I get that right now we're buying time. My current understanding is that we're trying to slow the spread of the disease because the existing health care system was going to quickly collapse under the weight; whether or not that should have been the case or not is a discussion for another day. I also understand that we are -not- trying to contain the disease, just "serialize" its progression (so to speak) through the population. Assuming that understanding is sufficiently correct, what I'm not hearing enough of is what is being done with the time we're buying. Many in the Hacker News audience likes to talk about "externalities" and how the wise appreciates those externalities in their actions. Shutting down the economy has externalities; those externatlities can be life or death as well. If the strategy of those implementing the "shelter in place" is one of just waiting it out: then I'm going to be off the wagon fairly quickly. I want to start hearing strategies that start to address the issues of how we minimize impacts of this problem. I want to know what we're buying for the pain that we're being sold on. I want to know when people estimate that the societal damages of the illness start to be outweighed by the damages of our response. I see the admin of the site suggesting we're buying time for these things. I want to start hearing this from the officials making policy.

threeseed 7y ago
Buying time: a) Saves millions of lives. b) Allows researchers to develop, produce and distribute a safe vaccine.
- deleted 7y ago
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- pfranz 7y ago
  There's even more, though. It gives us an opportunity to replenish masks, hand sanitizers, tests, and other supplies we have an immediate need for. Once this plateaus and stockpiles replenish, we can take some small steps to normalcy. Medium term, we can more properly organize and distribute medical resources, assemble temporary hospitals, learn more about current anti-virals to better manage it, etc. Allowing even more steps towards normalcy. The vaccine is immensely important, but there are major steps before then that we don't have to be completely locked down waiting for.
henryfjordan 7y ago
Garcetti, the Mayor of Los Angeles, covered this in his address last night. We are buying time to get more tests, more hospital beds set up, more ventilators, more medicine. The Navy is talking about turning Aircraft Carriers into hospitals. China is getting things under control and switching factories to produce medical supplies. It takes time to build these logistics chains, and we are buying that time by slowing our economy down and implementing social distancing. I agree that this information is not well-circulated right now. EDIT: another commenter posted this great link which I will also share: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
- tunesmith 7y ago
  Those are linear increases for an exponential disease. The time-buying has to be for something new that battles the exponential: rushing a vaccine, finding an anti-viral, or figuring out how we can actually practice containment. (Testing availability is part of that, but we'd also need a tracking system.)
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Replenishing the supply of masks, handing them out, and making them mandatory to wear in public places would go a long way to reducing the rate of spread, simply by changing people's behavior. I went out Tuesday for some errands (wearing a respirator of course), and it seemed to be business as usual for most people - very little distancing or concern about crowding.
    - hiram112 7y ago
      Are you saying the masks are helpful to prevent contraction of the virus, or to stop the spreading of it from those who are contagious, but don't know about it yet?
      - umanwizard 7y ago
        They’re helpful for both, but even if they were only helpful for one, it’d still be worth doing.
nemo44x 7y ago
Agreed. Politicians just shutting things down without a plan for what we do in this time is unacceptable. A vaccine won’t be safely available for a year. Shutting down that long will destroy everything. I liken it to the immune system. Shutting things down can work for a short period but if the system goes into a full panic it begins attacking good cells and shutting down organs and the host dies a slow, painful death. We need to be using this bought time to building medical equipment, beds and places to put them, manufacturing existing therapies to help, training people to use specific equipment, creating a system for the most vulnerable to quarantine but get food, medicine, safely as they wait for acceptable safety to them. We can’t lock down for months and months. People will eventually be fed up, see their risk is low, and throw the dice. The economy can’t grind to halt for a long time. We need to prepare to minimize death and we need to do it now. Lockdown is not much of a strategy or something that will work beyond a few weeks before people ignore it massively.
threatofrain 7y ago
The UK chief scientist, Patrick Vallance, has stated that they suspect a winter resurgence is possible, thus I also question the value of waiting and flattening curves. World governments should clarify this matter by saying that a bad winter resurgence, months after nations are fatigued with lockdown, is definitely not going to happen. But right now no government dares suggest any vision past a few months.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >The UK chief scientist, Patrick Vallance, has stated that they suspect a winter resurgence is possible, thus I also question the value of waiting and flattening curves. By winter we'd have more equipment, masks, drugs tested, doctors taking a break, etc. The big spread also stops in warmer climate. >World governments should clarify this matter by saying that a bad winter resurgence, months after nations are fatigued with lockdown, is definitely not going to happen. Of course it's possible and very likely to happen. The answer is not no lockdown, it's a second lockdown then as the need arises.
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snewman 7y ago
Certainly: locking down the populace and the economy, without any plans to take advantage of the resulting respite, is unacceptable. Giving up and attempting to resume normal activity is also unacceptable, full stop. The best/latest explanation I've seen is https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th.... Please read it (everyone, not just parent) if you haven't already. Then if you're frustrated that your political leaders aren't moving to make best use of your sacrifice... let them know!
- djaychela 7y ago
  Thanks for the link. Most involved read I've seen on strategy, but unfortunately for me I'm in the UK, so now I'm significantly more concerned than I was previously. I will see what my MP has to say about it. Couldn't find a UK petition about it.
- lutorm 7y ago
  That's a great article, thanks for posting that.
- rushabh 7y ago
  That article has been written by a growth hacker not an epidemiologist, and it does not start with that disclaimer. Please consider not spreading it.
golover721 7y ago
I wonder the same thing. A lockdown cannot be done in perpetuity and I think even 90 days would be too long. So the best bet is a lockdown while we ramp up the healthcare system to deal with the outbreak as best as possible. At some point we will have to go back to some semblance of normal life as the economy and people’s personal finances can’t continue to lockdown. Unfortunately we don’t seem to ramping up the healthcare system enough during this lockdown period. And no the vaccine is still too far in the future so the idea that the lockdown is biding time until the vaccine is ready is ridiculous.
40four 7y ago
Well said. Nobody seems to know what is being done with the time we're 'buying'. I get the feeling everyone just thinks if we sit at home for a month (or two? or three!?!), it will just magically go away. This site even admits "A second spike in disease may occur after social distancing is stopped". It's very possible that sitting at home will just delay the acceleration phase, and it will rear it's ugly head after we come out of out caves. Why have we all (I'm speaking for people in the USA) immediately bought into the idea that shutting down out lives and the economy is the only way to combat this thing? South Korea didn't shut everything down in an authoritarian fashion, and they already have this thing beat. I know, not a fair comparison, USA is way bigger, less experienced in handling disease outbreaks, different governments, etc, etc. But aren't there smarter ways we can handle this than just blanket isolation & lock downs? From the CDC: "Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic." So we know from South Korea's example it is possible to hit acceleration phase, execute a smart plan of attack, and have it carry you into deceleration, without blanket lock downs. Lock downs can still be an effective tool, and should be used in areas seeing steep acceleration to take pressure off the medical system. Our plan doesn't have to be exactly the same, but we can learn from theirs. Seems like nobody is even trying to think out of the box. We just accepted that we have to turn our country into an authoritarian state and that's the only way to beat this. Focusing on making testing widely and easily accessible is key for sure. If people could easily get a test, it would eliminate a lot of the fear/ uncertainly that is gripping everyone. Healthy people who are at low risk to get severe reactions could go about there lives normally, while still practicing 'social distancing' in public, not locked away in their homes in fear
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  > Health people who are at low risk to get severe reactions could go about there lives normally, while still practicing 'social distancing' in public, not locked away in their homes in fear You don't need tests for that, just common sense. If you have low risk, by all means keep working while keeping high sanitary precautions. It's unrealistic to expect all people to stay at home, hence those of us who are likely to get a mild COVID-19 case should make sure the people at risk or already sick have services while they stay at home. If you're healthy, take precautions and still get COVID-19, after recovering you become another line of defense with your new immunity. That being said, tests are very important, but don't wait for free and widely available tests to decide if you can keep working, your circumstances decide that.
ilyagr 7y ago
Apart from developing drugs, vaccines, and expanding hospitals, the time could allow us to produce enough tests to detect infected people before they are contagious. Perhaps even earlier, we could test all the contacts of people who were detected after they were already contagious. With enough testing and sufficient frequency of testing, isolating just the people who test positive (and perhaps their contacts) should be enough to stop exponential growth, which means we could mostly return to normal life.
Buttons840 7y ago
The argument that we should find a balance between saving lives and maintaining a strong economy is reasonable, but seems to have a catch-22 to me. If our economy is truly "strong" it seems it should survive a few months of "social distancing", right? Perhaps the argument would be better stated: We need to balance saving lives and maintaining the thin veneer that is our economy. That isn't quite as inspiring, but perhaps that is reality? Even if our economy is a "veneer" we still need it. I find it less compelling though. I'm far more willing to trade lives for a "strong economy" than I am to trade lives for "the illusion of a strong economy". "Grandma and Grandpa died at home without medical support, but at least our economy is 'strong', so strong it could probably survive weeks of social distancing!" If our "prize" for sacrificing hundreds of thousands of elderly to an exceptionally uncomfortable death is an economy we all know can't handle even a minor pandemic and is incapable of doing what China and other countries have done, that will be a sad trade.
- techntoke 7y ago
  People not having jobs means they could end up homeless and vulnerable. Hard to practice social distancing in a homeless shelter and get access to adequate nutrition, especially if they become overpopulated, and there could be a huge amount of deaths as a result as well. Is the government going to suddenly pay everyone's rent that loses a job? $1000 checks won't pay rent in many part of the country.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    They can ban eviction, however.
    - blackrock 7y ago
      Socialized housing for everyone?
      - Buttons840 7y ago
        Maybe. It seems likely that the optimal economic and societal systems are going to be different during these unusual and temporary circumstances. Thus, to not make temporary changes would be sub-optimal.
fspeech 7y ago
Universal mask wearing combined with unlimited testing is the quickest way to get the economy restarted. We need to ramp up both. And of course more ppe for medical workers. We don't need a ton of ventilators. Without skilled medics ventilators by themselves are not useful.
lubujackson 7y ago
The thing about exponential growth is that it is slow growing (relatively) in the beginning. This means if we cycled between lockdown and business as usual we can keep things contained quite easily. Not sure what would be most efficient, but something like 1 week lockdown every 2 or 3 weeks would keep the spread minimal until a long-term solution is found. Obviously travel etc. gum up this plan but instead of containment or mitigation we can move to "time gap" reset policy that predicts continous growth/halt of the virus instead of pointlessly trying to eradicate it.
- int_19h 7y ago
  The Imperial report suggested this exact thing, but by their estimations, we'd still need to have lockdown in effect about 2/3 of the total time to prevent healthcare systems from getting overwhelmed in US and UK.
lubujackson 7y ago
The thing about exponential growth is that it is slow growing (relatively) in the beginning. This means if we cycled between lockdown and business as usual we can keep things contained quite easily. Not sure what would be most efficient, but something like 1 week lockdown every 2 or 3 weeks would keep the spread minimal until a long-term solution is found. Obviously travel etc. gum up this plan but instead of containment or mitigation we can move to a "time gapped reset" policy that predicts a continuous growth/halt cycle for the virus instead of pointlessly trying to eradicate it completely.
fspeech 7y ago
Here is what I wrote to my governor and local newspaper. Feel free to adapt and forward if anyone agrees: Universal Mask Wearing Is the Quickest Way to Restart the California Economy We urgently need universal mask wearing to slow down the spread of COVID-19 and restore our economy. This is CDC's advice on how healthcare providers can protect themselves if they suspect that a patient has COVID-19: " Assess and triage these patients with acute respiratory symptoms and risk factors for COVID-19 to minimize chances of exposure, including placing a facemask on the patient and placing them in an examination room with the door closed." (What Healthcare Personnel Should Know about Caring for Patients with Confirmed or Possible COVID-19 Infection https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/caring-for-patients.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/caring-for-pat...) If a facemask on a patient can protect the doctor in close proximity, it surely can also protect the general public. Yet the message from our nation's leadership is that mask wearing is ineffective for the general public (Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...). Yes, it is not 100% effective in protecting an individual from others, but it is absolutely effective in protecting the general public from a potential patient. This is the herd immunity we can quickly achieve without waiting for a vaccine: "An 80% compliance rate essentially eliminated the influenza outbreak. " (Modeling the Effectiveness of Respiratory Protective Devices in Reducing Influenza Outbreak https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968) California is in a unique place to lead the nation and restore its own economy. We have a large Asian population that are receptive to mask wearing but are wary of being singled out. We have technology companies that can come up with solutions for mask making. We have idled workers that can be quickly retrained to jumpstart mask manufacturing. China was able to ramp up production 12 times in February alone. We can do it too. What we need to do is to legally require people to wear masks in public and in the workplace to protect each other. We don't need to wear N95 respirators that are hard to use and that should rightly be reserved for medical workers; we can wear masks that are much more breathable to protect others from our own droplets. By making it a legal requirement, companies like Tesla will be motivated to either quickly secure masks from suppliers or, better yet, start making and supplying masks for their own employees and for the public. Asian countries have shown that universal mask wearing can prevent large outbreaks and slow down the spread of the disease without shutting down their economy. Let's learn from their experience. Governor Newsom should immediately work on this with the state legislature in order to lead us to a speedy recovery.
greysphere 7y ago
We are trading economic output in exchange for lowering the transmission rate of the disease. By lowering the transmission rate, we are lowering the peak use of medical resources, lowering the loss of life. Your second paragraph acknowledges this, and I think pretty much everyone is on the same page here at this point. But the question in your third paragraph "what is being done with the time we're buying" could be restated as "what are we getting for our loss in economic output _in terms of economic output_?' That's not what we are doing, we are giving up economic output, not getting it. Of course any schemes/inventions/techniques that increase the coefficient of return of this trade off would be welcome, but doesn't change the fundamental direction of the tradeoff. And that's not to say we are doing nothing at all with that time. Maybe we have "more time to develop a vaccine", or "time to make ventillators."? But those _are_ economic outputs. Those actions trade back lives (via increased transmission rates) for production of utilities that we believe will save lives in an equation that nets a positive. And it's not to say that people won't do some productive things during this (like the memes of inventing calculus in isolation or whatever), but for sure society is reducing it's overall economic output. So from this point on the questions (and threats of defection) you raise kinda presuppose that trading economic production for saving lives is not worth it (at whatever ratio you're expecting). Potentially this is because you expect higher economic costs/lower life savings than the generally accepted projections, or because you value life less, or you believe the economic loss will lead to greater loss of life long term. I think the burden then is on you to either produce better projections, or promote candidates into government/leadership positions that share your moral outlook, or formulate and promulgate a model that shows the dramatic effects you expect due to the economic loss. To put it another way, a simplified answer to 'what are we doing with the time' could be 'approximately nothing', and our society at large seems to be on board with that trade. If you're not, change my/our mind.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
The damage of not minimising the spread starts with an overwhelmed medical system, and ends with too many people ill at the same time to keep the lights on and the stores stocked with essentials. The details of managing the economics are more than a footnote, but if the worst possible peak isn't avoided everything else becomes irrelevant, because there's no surviving economy to speak of - except maybe one of local barter. The economics are not externalities. The virus is. The economics are a social and political choice. They don't actually require money or other symbols, although they'll probably be mediated through for reasons of comfort and familiarity. They require enough basic provision of food and services to keep people alive, and enough provision of shelter to keep people from rioting, especially once winter comes. The worst possible economic outcome - after a Killer Peak - is a critical mass of angry and hopeless people with nothing to lose. Realistically, avoiding that will probably mean helicopter money and aggressive price controls to prevent gouging and profiteering. The usual rules about inflation won't apply because the alternative will be a cratering depression and mass deflation which will do far more harm to the economy than hand-outs will. It may also mean something worse, like some form of civil conscription to get essential work done. I really hope that doesn't happen, not just because it's better to call for volunteers first, but because it's so easy to abuse politically. But it's also true this has the potential to become the equivalent of a war time situation, and in extremis the rules may need to change to keep food+lights happening. Shit choices. But it's a shit situation, and IMO there's no chance of business as usual returning for quite some time.
- Zaak 7y ago
  Thank you for this. You make the essential point that others are missing: flattening the curve isn't to buy time; it's to prevent massive loss of life and societal collapse. Buying time to improve prevention and treatment is of secondary concern.
- deleted 7y ago
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- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Excellently put.
usrusr 7y ago
> I want to know when people estimate that the societal damages of the illness start to be outweighed by the damages of our response. Loss of life to the inner vs loss of life caused by economic consequences, I've seen that argument before and it's not entirely unappealing. But wherever I saw it there was the unspoken assumption that the economy would just continue completely unaffected by an uncontrolled epidemic. But much of the economic damage will be there no matter which path you take. There are likely same areas where a short, hard wave would even be worse, economically, than a controlled lockdown. The delta is even harder to estimate than the cost of slowdown strategies, but an argument that only looks at the economic cost of one option is flawed. Personally, given the choice, I'd take option C, "show me a rerun of 2019". Unfortunately this isn't in the cards that we are dealt.
kbenson 7y ago
> Assuming that understanding is sufficiently correct, what I'm not hearing enough of is what is being done with the time we're buying. This was along the lines of my first thoughts as well. Theoretically, we want to maximize the usage of our medical resources (personnel, reusable supplies such as bed space, non-reusable supplies such as medication that become available at a variable rate), to keep just enough below the capacity to handle the needs and allow for some spikes (if we can even get it that low). To my eyes, that calls for the ability to reassess and shift directives for the public (that is, maybe ease up on shelter-in-place next week, but put it back the week after), track and optimize resource flow, and coordination between locales. As a national level emergency, it makes sense there would be national level coordination on how to deal with it. Instead it appears we have governors and mayors making their own calls on what to do based on what advice they are personally getting, and the health care system is just struggling to figure out what to do. What we don't have is any leadership putting forth an actual plan, or any real indication that they are even attempting to do so, or that if they are that they're putting any real teeth behind making sure officials are on board.
phkahler 7y ago
Notice that the CA style shelter in place has an uptick at the end. Once you let people out it starts right where it left off. My assumption is that this thing is not going to be eradicated and is highly contagious, so the only way it will stop is once there are enough people vaccinated or previously infected so the exponential decays. Under those assumptions, slowing it serves two purposes. One is to prevent deaths due to overwhelmed treatment facilities. The other is to prevent it from just hitting everyone. Maybe only 20-60 percent of the population needs immunity to stop it, but if it runs rampant we could overshoot that. I'm sure there are other reasons to slow it, and other models, other assumptions, etc...
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  The time can be used to do a lot of things: * Rapidly expand healthcare capacity * Develop a vaccine * Build out a testing infrastructure that allows for targeted containment, rapid response, and chain-of-infection tracing without needing a full lockdown
calf 7y ago
> Shutting down the economy has externalities; those externatlities can be life or death as well. If the strategy of those implementing the "shelter in place" is one of just waiting it out: then I'm going to be off the wagon fairly quickly. I think the problem with this very common attitude is the demand for immediate answers, or else. It's an ultimatum. We don't expect programmers and engineers to come up with complete, ready-to-commit solutions to a complex problem immediately. Thinking like a consumer doesn't help. An alternative is to demand transparency and to be engaged in the process of decision making. But that requires an attitude/intellectual realignment.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I don't think a complete solution is expected. An incomplete but scaffolded solution would be very well received. A clear statement that we expect infections to level off by date X and we can relax restrictions after condition Y would be very nice - especially since people could start making Y happen as fast as possible. What's concerning about the current messaging is that it's not clear whether it's incorporated the underlying limits to how long people will tolerate a lockdown. An ultimatum is the right framing; decisionmakers need to know, and we need to know they know, that "then we'll lock down for 6 months" is not part of the solution space.
  - calf 7y ago
    Ultimatums are bad faith and basically anti-liberal so I don't care for that sort of rhetoric, and I think more people should try that as a baseline. When the ultimatums themselves do not account for the well-being of the elderly and vulnerable, we should not be giving that rhetoric credit. There's an ideological and intellectual distinction to be made between people's behaviors; those who want to discuss the "COVID tradeoff problem", and those who simplistically repeat talking points "but the economy will cause deaths too" (in reactance to the other narrative, the prediction of collapse of healthcare systems).
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Sure, I’m happy to discuss taboo tradeoffs with people who are willing. Even a 3 month lockdown is clearly not worth the lives it would save. If you could rescue some Kansas man you don’t know from cancer, by cutting off friends and family and career for 3 months, you wouldn’t do it. And there’s orders of magnitude less than 1 life per person at stake here. Most people aren’t willing to explicitly discuss how many lives it’s worth to be allowed to hug your mother, so for general consumption it must be framed in absolutes. There’s a number of weeks past which the cost is unacceptable and I’m joining the mob at City Hall, and that number is not in the double digits.
mattnewton 7y ago
My understanding is that it is necessary to slow the progression to “flatten the curve” below hospital capacity, and that extra time for building increased hospital capacity is a nice side effect but not the primary goal. Basically, when more people get sick than the hospitals can take in, the mortality rate skyrockets, which is why Italy has more reported deaths than China right now. Edit: Here’s the old paper from 2007 the CDC is using to inform some of the policy around “flattening the curve” below hospital capacity. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425 https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425
- nomel 7y ago
  But after the three month delay, you’ll have the same exponential growth, if life goes back to usual. It’s even present in these plots, at the right hand side (see California). It’s unfortunate the plots aren’t extended more to show longer term trends.
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    If the flat curve is extended for long enough, you get enough immunity to not have exponential growth when you lift restrictions.
Gatsky 7y ago
If you do nothing, and an antiviral comes along in a month (which can stop severe disease), then you have effectively killed a lot of people unnecessarily. An affective antiviral is looking more and more likely, and unlike other approaches, can be scaled rapidly.
ummonk 7y ago
>I also understand that we are -not- trying to contain the disease, just "serialize" its progression (so to speak) through the population. That's not true. Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick. And realistically, if you can keep the disease progression spread out over a long period of time, it means you've stopped the exponential growth (i.e. R0 <= 1), and it isn't that much harder to actually contain it. What we want to do is to contain it using blanket measures until we can get our act together with large scale testing, contact tracing, and basic sanitation measures (e.g. general mask wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing by the public without needing to lock everything down). This was where China got to after an early lockdown, and it's where South Korea has always been (without the need for a massive lockdown in the first place). Then in a year hopefully the disease can be stopped altogether with mass vaccination.
- GordonS 7y ago
  > Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick Keeping in mind that something like 80% of people will only experience mild symptoms, does this assertion still hold?
eric_b 7y ago
It is terrifying how fast reasonable people have jumped on board with China-level lockdown policies that will decimate life-as-we-know-it after they end. I've been reading every whitepaper and journal publication I can find on this disease. The picture that I'm seeing is that this disease is both more infectious (higher R0) and less deadly than previously thought. In light of those facts I am fairly convinced the lockdowns and resulting economic impacts will be worse than just isolating the most vulnerable and letting the rest of the population go about their business. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v... (Suggests the R0 is much higher and IFR much lower than reported) https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C... (shows that the people dying are very old and very sick already. Also given the fact that part of the population is so impacted strongly suggests the disease is much more widespread) Also, all of the celebrities, politicians and athletes that are testing positive are proof, in my opinion, of how wide this has gone.
- 76543210 7y ago
  I'm with you. We will all catch this unless we stay locked up until the vaccine comes. So, expect everyone to catch it.
  - lutorm 7y ago
    Whether we catch it is not the issue, the vast majority of us will. It's whether when you do and have complications, you can go to the hospital or die waiting for an ambulance that never comes because the system is overwhelmed.
- chki 7y ago
  I mostly agree with your underlying assumptions but I'm still advocating for a different course of action. The problem with this disease is that while many people don't die, they require intensive care. As we can see in Italy currently this will overwhelm hospitals at some point (and Italy has already put drastic measures into place). At that point it becomes a huge problem for society: a lot of people are dying and the health system doesn't work anymore. People die because of appendicitis etc.
rasengan0 7y ago
https://youtu.be/jUnVxjaWIBM https://youtu.be/jUnVxjaWIBM Would this work for ya?

threeseed 7y ago

Buying time: a) Saves millions of lives. b) Allows researchers to develop, produce and distribute a safe vaccine.

deleted 7y ago
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pfranz 7y ago
There's even more, though. It gives us an opportunity to replenish masks, hand sanitizers, tests, and other supplies we have an immediate need for. Once this plateaus and stockpiles replenish, we can take some small steps to normalcy. Medium term, we can more properly organize and distribute medical resources, assemble temporary hospitals, learn more about current anti-virals to better manage it, etc. Allowing even more steps towards normalcy. The vaccine is immensely important, but there are major steps before then that we don't have to be completely locked down waiting for.

henryfjordan 7y ago

Garcetti, the Mayor of Los Angeles, covered this in his address last night. We are buying time to get more tests, more hospital beds set up, more ventilators, more medicine. The Navy is talking about turning Aircraft Carriers into hospitals. China is getting things under control and switching factories to produce medical supplies. It takes time to build these logistics chains, and we are buying that time by slowing our economy down and implementing social distancing. I agree that this information is not well-circulated right now. EDIT: another commenter posted this great link which I will also share: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...

tunesmith 7y ago
Those are linear increases for an exponential disease. The time-buying has to be for something new that battles the exponential: rushing a vaccine, finding an anti-viral, or figuring out how we can actually practice containment. (Testing availability is part of that, but we'd also need a tracking system.)
- mindslight 7y ago
  Replenishing the supply of masks, handing them out, and making them mandatory to wear in public places would go a long way to reducing the rate of spread, simply by changing people's behavior. I went out Tuesday for some errands (wearing a respirator of course), and it seemed to be business as usual for most people - very little distancing or concern about crowding.
  - hiram112 7y ago
    Are you saying the masks are helpful to prevent contraction of the virus, or to stop the spreading of it from those who are contagious, but don't know about it yet?
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      They’re helpful for both, but even if they were only helpful for one, it’d still be worth doing.

nemo44x 7y ago

Agreed. Politicians just shutting things down without a plan for what we do in this time is unacceptable. A vaccine won’t be safely available for a year. Shutting down that long will destroy everything. I liken it to the immune system. Shutting things down can work for a short period but if the system goes into a full panic it begins attacking good cells and shutting down organs and the host dies a slow, painful death. We need to be using this bought time to building medical equipment, beds and places to put them, manufacturing existing therapies to help, training people to use specific equipment, creating a system for the most vulnerable to quarantine but get food, medicine, safely as they wait for acceptable safety to them. We can’t lock down for months and months. People will eventually be fed up, see their risk is low, and throw the dice. The economy can’t grind to halt for a long time. We need to prepare to minimize death and we need to do it now. Lockdown is not much of a strategy or something that will work beyond a few weeks before people ignore it massively.

threatofrain 7y ago

The UK chief scientist, Patrick Vallance, has stated that they suspect a winter resurgence is possible, thus I also question the value of waiting and flattening curves. World governments should clarify this matter by saying that a bad winter resurgence, months after nations are fatigued with lockdown, is definitely not going to happen. But right now no government dares suggest any vision past a few months.

coldtea 7y ago
>The UK chief scientist, Patrick Vallance, has stated that they suspect a winter resurgence is possible, thus I also question the value of waiting and flattening curves. By winter we'd have more equipment, masks, drugs tested, doctors taking a break, etc. The big spread also stops in warmer climate. >World governments should clarify this matter by saying that a bad winter resurgence, months after nations are fatigued with lockdown, is definitely not going to happen. Of course it's possible and very likely to happen. The answer is not no lockdown, it's a second lockdown then as the need arises.
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snewman 7y ago

Certainly: locking down the populace and the economy, without any plans to take advantage of the resulting respite, is unacceptable. Giving up and attempting to resume normal activity is also unacceptable, full stop. The best/latest explanation I've seen is https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th.... Please read it (everyone, not just parent) if you haven't already. Then if you're frustrated that your political leaders aren't moving to make best use of your sacrifice... let them know!

djaychela 7y ago
Thanks for the link. Most involved read I've seen on strategy, but unfortunately for me I'm in the UK, so now I'm significantly more concerned than I was previously. I will see what my MP has to say about it. Couldn't find a UK petition about it.
lutorm 7y ago
That's a great article, thanks for posting that.
rushabh 7y ago
That article has been written by a growth hacker not an epidemiologist, and it does not start with that disclaimer. Please consider not spreading it.

golover721 7y ago

I wonder the same thing. A lockdown cannot be done in perpetuity and I think even 90 days would be too long. So the best bet is a lockdown while we ramp up the healthcare system to deal with the outbreak as best as possible. At some point we will have to go back to some semblance of normal life as the economy and people’s personal finances can’t continue to lockdown. Unfortunately we don’t seem to ramping up the healthcare system enough during this lockdown period. And no the vaccine is still too far in the future so the idea that the lockdown is biding time until the vaccine is ready is ridiculous.

40four 7y ago

Well said. Nobody seems to know what is being done with the time we're 'buying'. I get the feeling everyone just thinks if we sit at home for a month (or two? or three!?!), it will just magically go away. This site even admits "A second spike in disease may occur after social distancing is stopped". It's very possible that sitting at home will just delay the acceleration phase, and it will rear it's ugly head after we come out of out caves. Why have we all (I'm speaking for people in the USA) immediately bought into the idea that shutting down out lives and the economy is the only way to combat this thing? South Korea didn't shut everything down in an authoritarian fashion, and they already have this thing beat. I know, not a fair comparison, USA is way bigger, less experienced in handling disease outbreaks, different governments, etc, etc. But aren't there smarter ways we can handle this than just blanket isolation & lock downs? From the CDC: "Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic." So we know from South Korea's example it is possible to hit acceleration phase, execute a smart plan of attack, and have it carry you into deceleration, without blanket lock downs. Lock downs can still be an effective tool, and should be used in areas seeing steep acceleration to take pressure off the medical system. Our plan doesn't have to be exactly the same, but we can learn from theirs. Seems like nobody is even trying to think out of the box. We just accepted that we have to turn our country into an authoritarian state and that's the only way to beat this. Focusing on making testing widely and easily accessible is key for sure. If people could easily get a test, it would eliminate a lot of the fear/ uncertainly that is gripping everyone. Healthy people who are at low risk to get severe reactions could go about there lives normally, while still practicing 'social distancing' in public, not locked away in their homes in fear

ASalazarMX 7y ago
> Health people who are at low risk to get severe reactions could go about there lives normally, while still practicing 'social distancing' in public, not locked away in their homes in fear You don't need tests for that, just common sense. If you have low risk, by all means keep working while keeping high sanitary precautions. It's unrealistic to expect all people to stay at home, hence those of us who are likely to get a mild COVID-19 case should make sure the people at risk or already sick have services while they stay at home. If you're healthy, take precautions and still get COVID-19, after recovering you become another line of defense with your new immunity. That being said, tests are very important, but don't wait for free and widely available tests to decide if you can keep working, your circumstances decide that.

ilyagr 7y ago

Apart from developing drugs, vaccines, and expanding hospitals, the time could allow us to produce enough tests to detect infected people before they are contagious. Perhaps even earlier, we could test all the contacts of people who were detected after they were already contagious. With enough testing and sufficient frequency of testing, isolating just the people who test positive (and perhaps their contacts) should be enough to stop exponential growth, which means we could mostly return to normal life.

Buttons840 7y ago

The argument that we should find a balance between saving lives and maintaining a strong economy is reasonable, but seems to have a catch-22 to me. If our economy is truly "strong" it seems it should survive a few months of "social distancing", right? Perhaps the argument would be better stated: We need to balance saving lives and maintaining the thin veneer that is our economy. That isn't quite as inspiring, but perhaps that is reality? Even if our economy is a "veneer" we still need it. I find it less compelling though. I'm far more willing to trade lives for a "strong economy" than I am to trade lives for "the illusion of a strong economy". "Grandma and Grandpa died at home without medical support, but at least our economy is 'strong', so strong it could probably survive weeks of social distancing!" If our "prize" for sacrificing hundreds of thousands of elderly to an exceptionally uncomfortable death is an economy we all know can't handle even a minor pandemic and is incapable of doing what China and other countries have done, that will be a sad trade.

techntoke 7y ago
People not having jobs means they could end up homeless and vulnerable. Hard to practice social distancing in a homeless shelter and get access to adequate nutrition, especially if they become overpopulated, and there could be a huge amount of deaths as a result as well. Is the government going to suddenly pay everyone's rent that loses a job? $1000 checks won't pay rent in many part of the country.
- mirimir 7y ago
  They can ban eviction, however.
  - blackrock 7y ago
    Socialized housing for everyone?
    - Buttons840 7y ago
      Maybe. It seems likely that the optimal economic and societal systems are going to be different during these unusual and temporary circumstances. Thus, to not make temporary changes would be sub-optimal.

fspeech 7y ago

Universal mask wearing combined with unlimited testing is the quickest way to get the economy restarted. We need to ramp up both. And of course more ppe for medical workers. We don't need a ton of ventilators. Without skilled medics ventilators by themselves are not useful.

lubujackson 7y ago

The thing about exponential growth is that it is slow growing (relatively) in the beginning. This means if we cycled between lockdown and business as usual we can keep things contained quite easily. Not sure what would be most efficient, but something like 1 week lockdown every 2 or 3 weeks would keep the spread minimal until a long-term solution is found. Obviously travel etc. gum up this plan but instead of containment or mitigation we can move to "time gap" reset policy that predicts continous growth/halt of the virus instead of pointlessly trying to eradicate it.

int_19h 7y ago
The Imperial report suggested this exact thing, but by their estimations, we'd still need to have lockdown in effect about 2/3 of the total time to prevent healthcare systems from getting overwhelmed in US and UK.

lubujackson 7y ago

The thing about exponential growth is that it is slow growing (relatively) in the beginning. This means if we cycled between lockdown and business as usual we can keep things contained quite easily. Not sure what would be most efficient, but something like 1 week lockdown every 2 or 3 weeks would keep the spread minimal until a long-term solution is found. Obviously travel etc. gum up this plan but instead of containment or mitigation we can move to a "time gapped reset" policy that predicts a continuous growth/halt cycle for the virus instead of pointlessly trying to eradicate it completely.

fspeech 7y ago

Here is what I wrote to my governor and local newspaper. Feel free to adapt and forward if anyone agrees: Universal Mask Wearing Is the Quickest Way to Restart the California Economy We urgently need universal mask wearing to slow down the spread of COVID-19 and restore our economy. This is CDC's advice on how healthcare providers can protect themselves if they suspect that a patient has COVID-19: " Assess and triage these patients with acute respiratory symptoms and risk factors for COVID-19 to minimize chances of exposure, including placing a facemask on the patient and placing them in an examination room with the door closed." (What Healthcare Personnel Should Know about Caring for Patients with Confirmed or Possible COVID-19 Infection https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/caring-for-patients.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/caring-for-pat...) If a facemask on a patient can protect the doctor in close proximity, it surely can also protect the general public. Yet the message from our nation's leadership is that mask wearing is ineffective for the general public (Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...). Yes, it is not 100% effective in protecting an individual from others, but it is absolutely effective in protecting the general public from a potential patient. This is the herd immunity we can quickly achieve without waiting for a vaccine: "An 80% compliance rate essentially eliminated the influenza outbreak. " (Modeling the Effectiveness of Respiratory Protective Devices in Reducing Influenza Outbreak https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968) California is in a unique place to lead the nation and restore its own economy. We have a large Asian population that are receptive to mask wearing but are wary of being singled out. We have technology companies that can come up with solutions for mask making. We have idled workers that can be quickly retrained to jumpstart mask manufacturing. China was able to ramp up production 12 times in February alone. We can do it too. What we need to do is to legally require people to wear masks in public and in the workplace to protect each other. We don't need to wear N95 respirators that are hard to use and that should rightly be reserved for medical workers; we can wear masks that are much more breathable to protect others from our own droplets. By making it a legal requirement, companies like Tesla will be motivated to either quickly secure masks from suppliers or, better yet, start making and supplying masks for their own employees and for the public. Asian countries have shown that universal mask wearing can prevent large outbreaks and slow down the spread of the disease without shutting down their economy. Let's learn from their experience. Governor Newsom should immediately work on this with the state legislature in order to lead us to a speedy recovery.

greysphere 7y ago

We are trading economic output in exchange for lowering the transmission rate of the disease. By lowering the transmission rate, we are lowering the peak use of medical resources, lowering the loss of life. Your second paragraph acknowledges this, and I think pretty much everyone is on the same page here at this point. But the question in your third paragraph "what is being done with the time we're buying" could be restated as "what are we getting for our loss in economic output _in terms of economic output_?' That's not what we are doing, we are giving up economic output, not getting it. Of course any schemes/inventions/techniques that increase the coefficient of return of this trade off would be welcome, but doesn't change the fundamental direction of the tradeoff. And that's not to say we are doing nothing at all with that time. Maybe we have "more time to develop a vaccine", or "time to make ventillators."? But those _are_ economic outputs. Those actions trade back lives (via increased transmission rates) for production of utilities that we believe will save lives in an equation that nets a positive. And it's not to say that people won't do some productive things during this (like the memes of inventing calculus in isolation or whatever), but for sure society is reducing it's overall economic output. So from this point on the questions (and threats of defection) you raise kinda presuppose that trading economic production for saving lives is not worth it (at whatever ratio you're expecting). Potentially this is because you expect higher economic costs/lower life savings than the generally accepted projections, or because you value life less, or you believe the economic loss will lead to greater loss of life long term. I think the burden then is on you to either produce better projections, or promote candidates into government/leadership positions that share your moral outlook, or formulate and promulgate a model that shows the dramatic effects you expect due to the economic loss. To put it another way, a simplified answer to 'what are we doing with the time' could be 'approximately nothing', and our society at large seems to be on board with that trade. If you're not, change my/our mind.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

The damage of not minimising the spread starts with an overwhelmed medical system, and ends with too many people ill at the same time to keep the lights on and the stores stocked with essentials. The details of managing the economics are more than a footnote, but if the worst possible peak isn't avoided everything else becomes irrelevant, because there's no surviving economy to speak of - except maybe one of local barter. The economics are not externalities. The virus is. The economics are a social and political choice. They don't actually require money or other symbols, although they'll probably be mediated through for reasons of comfort and familiarity. They require enough basic provision of food and services to keep people alive, and enough provision of shelter to keep people from rioting, especially once winter comes. The worst possible economic outcome - after a Killer Peak - is a critical mass of angry and hopeless people with nothing to lose. Realistically, avoiding that will probably mean helicopter money and aggressive price controls to prevent gouging and profiteering. The usual rules about inflation won't apply because the alternative will be a cratering depression and mass deflation which will do far more harm to the economy than hand-outs will. It may also mean something worse, like some form of civil conscription to get essential work done. I really hope that doesn't happen, not just because it's better to call for volunteers first, but because it's so easy to abuse politically. But it's also true this has the potential to become the equivalent of a war time situation, and in extremis the rules may need to change to keep food+lights happening. Shit choices. But it's a shit situation, and IMO there's no chance of business as usual returning for quite some time.

Zaak 7y ago
Thank you for this. You make the essential point that others are missing: flattening the curve isn't to buy time; it's to prevent massive loss of life and societal collapse. Buying time to improve prevention and treatment is of secondary concern.
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dredmorbius 7y ago
Excellently put.

usrusr 7y ago

> I want to know when people estimate that the societal damages of the illness start to be outweighed by the damages of our response. Loss of life to the inner vs loss of life caused by economic consequences, I've seen that argument before and it's not entirely unappealing. But wherever I saw it there was the unspoken assumption that the economy would just continue completely unaffected by an uncontrolled epidemic. But much of the economic damage will be there no matter which path you take. There are likely same areas where a short, hard wave would even be worse, economically, than a controlled lockdown. The delta is even harder to estimate than the cost of slowdown strategies, but an argument that only looks at the economic cost of one option is flawed. Personally, given the choice, I'd take option C, "show me a rerun of 2019". Unfortunately this isn't in the cards that we are dealt.

kbenson 7y ago

> Assuming that understanding is sufficiently correct, what I'm not hearing enough of is what is being done with the time we're buying. This was along the lines of my first thoughts as well. Theoretically, we want to maximize the usage of our medical resources (personnel, reusable supplies such as bed space, non-reusable supplies such as medication that become available at a variable rate), to keep just enough below the capacity to handle the needs and allow for some spikes (if we can even get it that low). To my eyes, that calls for the ability to reassess and shift directives for the public (that is, maybe ease up on shelter-in-place next week, but put it back the week after), track and optimize resource flow, and coordination between locales. As a national level emergency, it makes sense there would be national level coordination on how to deal with it. Instead it appears we have governors and mayors making their own calls on what to do based on what advice they are personally getting, and the health care system is just struggling to figure out what to do. What we don't have is any leadership putting forth an actual plan, or any real indication that they are even attempting to do so, or that if they are that they're putting any real teeth behind making sure officials are on board.

phkahler 7y ago

Notice that the CA style shelter in place has an uptick at the end. Once you let people out it starts right where it left off. My assumption is that this thing is not going to be eradicated and is highly contagious, so the only way it will stop is once there are enough people vaccinated or previously infected so the exponential decays. Under those assumptions, slowing it serves two purposes. One is to prevent deaths due to overwhelmed treatment facilities. The other is to prevent it from just hitting everyone. Maybe only 20-60 percent of the population needs immunity to stop it, but if it runs rampant we could overshoot that. I'm sure there are other reasons to slow it, and other models, other assumptions, etc...

dwaltrip 7y ago
The time can be used to do a lot of things: * Rapidly expand healthcare capacity * Develop a vaccine * Build out a testing infrastructure that allows for targeted containment, rapid response, and chain-of-infection tracing without needing a full lockdown

calf 7y ago

> Shutting down the economy has externalities; those externatlities can be life or death as well. If the strategy of those implementing the "shelter in place" is one of just waiting it out: then I'm going to be off the wagon fairly quickly. I think the problem with this very common attitude is the demand for immediate answers, or else. It's an ultimatum. We don't expect programmers and engineers to come up with complete, ready-to-commit solutions to a complex problem immediately. Thinking like a consumer doesn't help. An alternative is to demand transparency and to be engaged in the process of decision making. But that requires an attitude/intellectual realignment.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I don't think a complete solution is expected. An incomplete but scaffolded solution would be very well received. A clear statement that we expect infections to level off by date X and we can relax restrictions after condition Y would be very nice - especially since people could start making Y happen as fast as possible. What's concerning about the current messaging is that it's not clear whether it's incorporated the underlying limits to how long people will tolerate a lockdown. An ultimatum is the right framing; decisionmakers need to know, and we need to know they know, that "then we'll lock down for 6 months" is not part of the solution space.
- calf 7y ago
  Ultimatums are bad faith and basically anti-liberal so I don't care for that sort of rhetoric, and I think more people should try that as a baseline. When the ultimatums themselves do not account for the well-being of the elderly and vulnerable, we should not be giving that rhetoric credit. There's an ideological and intellectual distinction to be made between people's behaviors; those who want to discuss the "COVID tradeoff problem", and those who simplistically repeat talking points "but the economy will cause deaths too" (in reactance to the other narrative, the prediction of collapse of healthcare systems).
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Sure, I’m happy to discuss taboo tradeoffs with people who are willing. Even a 3 month lockdown is clearly not worth the lives it would save. If you could rescue some Kansas man you don’t know from cancer, by cutting off friends and family and career for 3 months, you wouldn’t do it. And there’s orders of magnitude less than 1 life per person at stake here. Most people aren’t willing to explicitly discuss how many lives it’s worth to be allowed to hug your mother, so for general consumption it must be framed in absolutes. There’s a number of weeks past which the cost is unacceptable and I’m joining the mob at City Hall, and that number is not in the double digits.

mattnewton 7y ago

My understanding is that it is necessary to slow the progression to “flatten the curve” below hospital capacity, and that extra time for building increased hospital capacity is a nice side effect but not the primary goal. Basically, when more people get sick than the hospitals can take in, the mortality rate skyrockets, which is why Italy has more reported deaths than China right now. Edit: Here’s the old paper from 2007 the CDC is using to inform some of the policy around “flattening the curve” below hospital capacity. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425 https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425

nomel 7y ago
But after the three month delay, you’ll have the same exponential growth, if life goes back to usual. It’s even present in these plots, at the right hand side (see California). It’s unfortunate the plots aren’t extended more to show longer term trends.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  If the flat curve is extended for long enough, you get enough immunity to not have exponential growth when you lift restrictions.

Gatsky 7y ago

If you do nothing, and an antiviral comes along in a month (which can stop severe disease), then you have effectively killed a lot of people unnecessarily. An affective antiviral is looking more and more likely, and unlike other approaches, can be scaled rapidly.

ummonk 7y ago

>I also understand that we are -not- trying to contain the disease, just "serialize" its progression (so to speak) through the population. That's not true. Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick. And realistically, if you can keep the disease progression spread out over a long period of time, it means you've stopped the exponential growth (i.e. R0 <= 1), and it isn't that much harder to actually contain it. What we want to do is to contain it using blanket measures until we can get our act together with large scale testing, contact tracing, and basic sanitation measures (e.g. general mask wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing by the public without needing to lock everything down). This was where China got to after an early lockdown, and it's where South Korea has always been (without the need for a massive lockdown in the first place). Then in a year hopefully the disease can be stopped altogether with mass vaccination.

GordonS 7y ago
> Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick Keeping in mind that something like 80% of people will only experience mild symptoms, does this assertion still hold?

eric_b 7y ago

It is terrifying how fast reasonable people have jumped on board with China-level lockdown policies that will decimate life-as-we-know-it after they end. I've been reading every whitepaper and journal publication I can find on this disease. The picture that I'm seeing is that this disease is both more infectious (higher R0) and less deadly than previously thought. In light of those facts I am fairly convinced the lockdowns and resulting economic impacts will be worse than just isolating the most vulnerable and letting the rest of the population go about their business. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v... (Suggests the R0 is much higher and IFR much lower than reported) https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C... (shows that the people dying are very old and very sick already. Also given the fact that part of the population is so impacted strongly suggests the disease is much more widespread) Also, all of the celebrities, politicians and athletes that are testing positive are proof, in my opinion, of how wide this has gone.

76543210 7y ago
I'm with you. We will all catch this unless we stay locked up until the vaccine comes. So, expect everyone to catch it.
- lutorm 7y ago
  Whether we catch it is not the issue, the vast majority of us will. It's whether when you do and have complications, you can go to the hospital or die waiting for an ambulance that never comes because the system is overwhelmed.
chki 7y ago
I mostly agree with your underlying assumptions but I'm still advocating for a different course of action. The problem with this disease is that while many people don't die, they require intensive care. As we can see in Italy currently this will overwhelm hospitals at some point (and Italy has already put drastic measures into place). At that point it becomes a huge problem for society: a lot of people are dying and the health system doesn't work anymore. People die because of appendicitis etc.

rasengan0 7y ago

https://youtu.be/jUnVxjaWIBM https://youtu.be/jUnVxjaWIBM Would this work for ya?