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Many Americans are underestimating how disruptive a mass uncontrolled pandemic is going to be to their lives. If hospitals are completely overflowing and most

• umanwizard 7y ago
  I already have friends and family members who have died of various causes. We haven't destroyed civilization over it.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    How many of those friends and family members died of causes that could be prevented through temporary social distancing? And how many years was that spread over, vs the single month we'd be looking at here with an uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic? You're underestimating how bad things can get.
    • umanwizard 7y ago
      Everyone I know who has died could have been at least temporarily saved by extreme, civilization-destroying efforts. “Temporary social distancing” is much less benign than you make it sound. More like “intentionally creating an economic depression of unknown severity”. Life went on mostly as normal after the Spanish flu, by the way, which is the closest thing we can compare this to.
      • CydeWeys 7y ago
        Are you not aware that, during the Spanish flu, entire cities were shut down for months, exactly like what's happening now? And that without these actions the effects of it would have been much worse? You bringing this up is exactly proving the opposite of the point you're trying to make. Enforced social distancing is nothing NEW. It's as old as pandemics themselves.
        • standardUser 7y ago
          Medical science barely existed at that time.
          • CydeWeys 7y ago
            They weren't idiots. They understood that the flu spread from person to person, and that shutting gatherings of people would curtail the spread. This happened. It's part of history. You can't argue against it. There are thousands of contemporaneous newspaper articles about all the measures that were taken to curtail the spread of the Spanish influenza.
            • standardUser 7y ago
              My point being that we have significantly better data to inform us on exactly how to reduce the transmission rate, we have constantly-improving testing methods, we have the ability to research medicines than can help, we have the ability to research a vaccine. Not only is the not the Spanish flu, it is happening in a profoundly different context. The comparison is superficial.
      • yladiz 7y ago
        Define normal in this context. The effects of the 1918 flu pandemic really were region dependent, because some regions were more strict than others (in terms of social distancing, curfews, etc.) and those regions that were more relaxed were affected more heavily (the classic American example is Philadelphia vs St. Louis). We see some evidence of this happening now in places taking stricter measures globally, although the data is too early to say anything conclusive. > intentionally creating an economic depression of unknown severity Okay, assuming it's a strict trade-off between 1) no social distancing, economic disruption happening at some point in time in the future, and significantly higher death rates; or, 2) social distancing, economic disruption now, and lower death rates, which is better? This is the reality of the situation -- there will be economic disruption no matter what, and so if we don't attempt to quantity the disruption, the two differences here are social distancing and number of deaths.
    • alexandercrohde 7y ago
      Social distancing will save at most 1million lives (mostly 60-is 70 year olds, who had 10 years left anyways) in America. 6 months of quarantine in the US would cost 2 millions lifetimes of going outside. Full lifetimes, that is, not 10-year-lifetimes. This is aside from all the economic damage. The cure is worse than the disease.
      • CydeWeys 7y ago
        It's not remotely equivalent to compare a year spent dead to a year spent indoors. You need to put a large multiplier on that.
• ok1234567890 7y ago
  Hospitals are not overflowing. We have 6,100 hospitals,989,000 hospital beds available. And my best friend is a Registered Nurse (California) and says they are not even close to capacity. She also stated what is presented on the news is 100% a lie.
  • ihaveafriend 7y ago
    Okay. I also have a friend. He is 35yo and has COVID and his blood oxygen saturation is at 80%. The UCLA hospitals refuse to admit him. They’re already over capacity.
    • linuxftw 7y ago
      This person should be driven to somewhere that's not a craphole like LA.
      • dang 7y ago
        "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • nradov 7y ago
      No hospital in the US is currently turning away patients who have acute hypoxemia. If your friend's blood oxygen is actually 80% then he is at immediate risk of death. Call an ambulance right now.
  • sharadov 7y ago
    That is because CA went "stay at home" first and was able to avert the disaster that is NYC. Open everything and we are fucked.
  • LorenPechtel 7y ago
    I presume she worships the ground His Flatulence walks upon?
• ls612 7y ago
  That is likely true but if this runs it’s course naturally we will see an enormous peak and then just as rapid a drop as we reach herd immunity in a couple months The true choice here is between a lot of deaths and a couple months of staying at home and fewer deaths but years of staying at home.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    > That is likely true but if this runs it’s course naturally we will see an enormous peak and then just as rapid a drop And millions of preventable deaths, just in the US alone. You're underestimating the psychological and economic impacts that would have. In reality we wouldn't experience such a sharp peak because people aren't stupid; many will start self-quarantining anyway as the pandemic rips through the nation. The economic disruption isn't a choice we're making; it's going to happen one way or the other with this pandemic. Don't think people are going to continue merrily going out in society when it's a guaranteed ticket to a terrible disease.
    • guerrilla 7y ago
      I would like to hear an estimate of how badly this would effect demand. If a million people who spend a thousand dollars a month die then isnt that 12 billion shaved off spending over that next year? Im sure its more complicated due to ecnomic rent relations and other things I don't even know about but isnt this by itself a disaster?
      • CydeWeys 7y ago
        The actuarial value of the typical human life is roughly in the neighborhood of 5-10 million dollars. It wouldn't just be spending shaved off in one year, it'd be every year after that too, and then there'd be all the knock-on effects of more government required assistance for dependents that can no longer be supported properly, lots of foreclosures, a reduction in childbirth and size of the next generation ... And by the way, your math is off by a factor of one thousand.
    • lend000 7y ago
• threatofrain 7y ago
  Saying Americans is possibly too broad because from the looks of it, there really are some attempts to walk a different route. The same is with some nations. Let’s see, for example, if the Texas more relaxed approach performs better than California. The nuances between approaches may blossom into a wider difference. It’s not obvious that Americans are all sailing in the same boat.
• twblalock 7y ago
  > The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run. I don't share your high level of certainty about that. I don't believe an uncontrolled pandemic would have caused the amount of business closures and layoffs and mass unemployment the lockdowns have already caused. It would certainly be bad for business, and there would be some layoffs, and we would almost definitely have a recession, but many businesses that are now closed would have remained open, motivated purely by self-preservation. Even now we see people out and about, even though the government tells them to stay home, and I don't believe that would change very much if the disease was uncontrolled. The rich can afford to stay at home, but the poor need to go to work. Self-preservation includes the desire to earn an income. Hopefully we don't find out later on that the total amount of human suffering caused by the lockdowns outweighs the suffering caused by the disease. I think it probably won't, but we need to consider the possibility.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    You aren't accounting for the massive economic costs of all these extra unnecessary deaths.
    • twblalock 7y ago
      As I wrote, I believe there would be a recession either way. The question is whether the recession caused by the lockdowns will be worse than one caused by an uncontrolled pandemic. Why do you think those unnecessary deaths would cause more economic damage than a government-mandated shutdown of almost all work that cannot be done from home?
      • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        A recession where people live is better than the exact same recession where people die. (Yes, I know, people do in fact die from purely economic reasons in a recession. That's still different from people dying being the cause of the recession, because in the second case, there's more dying. The people die from the disease, which causes the recession, and then people die from the economic consequences of the recession.) But even in strictly economic terms: Here's a person who's 30. If they die, we lose 35 or 40 years of their work. If they have to stay home for two months, we lose two months of their work. (Yes, far more people have to stay home than would die if we all just went about our lives. But even assuming a 1% death ratio, N people x 2 months is less than N/100 x 40 years. There's also the health care costs of all the ones who are hospitalized. It's better economically to do it this way.)
• alexandercrohde 7y ago
  Hate to break it to you, but hospitals are going to be overrun either way. 70-year-olds outnumber ICU beds 1,000 to one in many counties, some counties have no ICUs, some counties have no hospitals! [1] Because hospitals will be overwhelmed by a factor of 10 or so, social-distancing to slow things down by 50% is not going to change that. The numbers paint a pretty clear picture, for those who bother to look at them. 1. https://khn.org/news/as-coronavirus-spreads-widely-millions-of-older-americans-live-in-counties-with-no-icu-beds/ https://khn.org/news/as-coronavirus-spreads-widely-millions-...
  • dingaling 7y ago
    > but hospitals are going to be overrun either way Only if COVID patients are prioritised. What's the point of assigning an ICU bed to a 79yo with two potential comorbidities who will be dead within the week regardless of how much treatment is given? Compared to a 30yo who has been in a car crash and has a chance of survival.
• tynpeddler 7y ago
  The societal cost of covid19 vs social distancing depends on the time scale. Three to six months? Covid19 is almost certainly worse. Nine to twelve months? Fifteen months? Two years? Strict social distancing will be much much worse at those time scales. People will starve and segments of the logistical network necessary to sustain the medical industry will be in danger of collapsing. Not to mention the enormous strain on governments and services caring for tens if not hundreds of millions of people. Lucky for us, South Korea has shown that this thing is beatable, even without a vaccine. Exhaustive testing, contact tracing, and enhanced hygiene measure are a great follow up for social distancing (though I have no idea what's going to happen in southeast Asia or Africa). But larger countries will require more supplies and time to manage the virus. The question I haven't heard the answer to yet is how long can the shutdown last before it effects our ability to treat covid19 and provide for basic necessities? I'd rather not we not figure that one out the hard way. We need to be looking for active solutions and this article provides some good ideas.
• sershe 7y ago
  Disruption from Spanish Flu was short-lived, and yes the damage caused is from the lockdown, not the pandemic. In the worst-affected areas (except maybe on small city level), the deaths are still a blip. If there was no media circus around it, everybody would still be mostly unaware; any kind of reaction would just be starting now with some areas having issues in hospitals, and even then judging by how people ignored the lockdown in Seattle when it was partial, it wouldn't be as bad as now. Then, by CA govt's own admission in the worst case they'd be near herd immunity (iirc they listed 56% infected) in 8 weeks. That includes the times where the deaths are still a blip compared to flu, and hospitals are not overwhelmed. So let's say 5 weeks of panic. And then that's it.