4 ms·

”Joining some political death cult to sacrifice the weak and elderly portion of our population...isn't going to make the virus end any sooner” Barring the deve

by irq11 7y ago

”Joining some political death cult to sacrifice the weak and elderly portion of our population...isn't going to make the virus end any sooner” Barring the development of a vaccine (which is far from guaranteed, and a year or more away, in the best case), letting the virus sweep through the population is pretty much the only thing that would bring this to an end quickly. We could achieve herd immunity in a few months and have it behind us. This situation is a direct tradeoff of time (and money) for lives.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Letting it sweep through uncontrollably quickly by pretending it's business-as-normal out there will lead to many times more deaths due to hospital overutilization. Our current actions are focused on the goal of leveling the curve, not putting up a wall. There aren't armed guards outside our homes preventing us from leaving. The grocery stores are open. We can come into contact with others to order just about all goods we've always been able to order. We can go to parks and trails and beaches. This will cause more infections, and we all know it; but thanks to these measures, ER visits in our city are down over 20%, allowing healthcare some capacity to deal with the influx infected people, and our daily growth of infections doesn't look exponential anymore. This thing hospitalizes many young (under 40 years of age) people as well, and in our state that has been on lockdown for longer than many others, medical fellows and residents from unrelated specialties are being asked to help with COVID-19 cases. In a week or two at most it's expected they'll be required to help. If our government wasn't taking these defensive measures, we'd already need more space to store the bodies.
- irq11 7y ago
  Yeah, I get it. It was implicit in the point I was making: we’re explicitly trading time for lives. Literally the fastest way to get this over with is to let it sweep through the population. More people might die if we did that, but it would get it over with quickly.

by irq11 7y ago

ilikehurdles 7y ago

Letting it sweep through uncontrollably quickly by pretending it's business-as-normal out there will lead to many times more deaths due to hospital overutilization. Our current actions are focused on the goal of leveling the curve, not putting up a wall. There aren't armed guards outside our homes preventing us from leaving. The grocery stores are open. We can come into contact with others to order just about all goods we've always been able to order. We can go to parks and trails and beaches. This will cause more infections, and we all know it; but thanks to these measures, ER visits in our city are down over 20%, allowing healthcare some capacity to deal with the influx infected people, and our daily growth of infections doesn't look exponential anymore. This thing hospitalizes many young (under 40 years of age) people as well, and in our state that has been on lockdown for longer than many others, medical fellows and residents from unrelated specialties are being asked to help with COVID-19 cases. In a week or two at most it's expected they'll be required to help. If our government wasn't taking these defensive measures, we'd already need more space to store the bodies.

irq11 7y ago
Yeah, I get it. It was implicit in the point I was making: we’re explicitly trading time for lives. Literally the fastest way to get this over with is to let it sweep through the population. More people might die if we did that, but it would get it over with quickly.