6 ms·

For how much I understand the need to lower the curve and reduce the R0 of the infection, I start to see also another argument. We are basically pausing the li

• wbl 7y ago
  Young people die also when the health system is overloaded.
  • siscia 7y ago
    Still much less than the elders and I am not sure what your comment means. Again, what I am saying is that the lockdown punish purple differently, the most punished are the least affected by the virus itself
    • sosborn 7y ago
      Young people will die not just from the virus, but from inadequate medical care caused by overloaded hospitals. It’s a shit situation for young adults, but sometimes life isn’t fair.
      • siscia 7y ago
        Sure, but younger have less need of medical care in general. Moreover, lock down all the elders and the ICU won't be so busy...
        • gnulinux 7y ago
          How do you lock down elders? Do you expect cops to look at people's IDs and check if they're 65+? This is ridiculous, the only practical way is to close places where people are inclined to gather such as bars/restaurants etc.
          • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
            If we can ban people under 21 from bars we can ban people over 65. I'm not sure we should, but it's not a logistical impossibility.
        • sosborn 7y ago
          > Sure, but younger have less need of medical care in general. True, but that doesn't mean a whole lot of young people wouldn't needlessly die. You seem really committed to turning this into a generational thing.
    • ska 7y ago
      Do you not consider it a "punishment" to lose your family members an avoidable way? How about avoidably dying when you have a car accident because the ICU is overloaded? Do you think people over 60 (or wherever the fatality rate spikes) existed in a self-isolated bubble staying home alone before now? Have you talked to any of them recently? The ones I know are having a rough time of it, at least as much as the younger people I know. If locking down "just the elders" was a workable solution, what do you think it would really look like?
  • nsm 7y ago
    Yes! I think many people don't realize that COVID by itself is not the problem so much as the additional burden it places on the healthcare system, which could be used to help people with other problems. We are already seeing cases of people with cancers having surgeries delayed because hospitals are trying to conserve PPE. I was unlucky enough to fracture my ankle right before California instituted shelter-in-place and to fracture it in a way that needed corrective surgery. I was lucky that CA managed to avoid the worst of it, so that my surgery was able to proceed on schedule. Otherwise I was looking at potential long term complications in addition to being off my feet for 5-6 months instead of the 2 months they expect now.
• whatshisface 7y ago
  This issue was addressed by the original UK policy that they about-faced on. Why? Because although it does not tend to kill young people, it does tend to put them in the hospital, and we cannot handle that many people in the hospital at once.
  • siscia 7y ago
    Still at much lower rate than the elders. And what I am saying is that the lockdown punish different class of people very differently. And the most punished are the least affected by the virus itself.
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      That may be true, but if it is it would lead to "slightly less lockdown for some people," not "no lockdown for some people." But to your broader point, that nobody in government is considering the finer aspects of modeling and optimization: yes, I know, I don't expect anything more from them, and I think they're a bunch of nincompoops who only know how to write legal documents and strike deals. However if I saw any push for more technical and effectiveness-oriented adjustments to the procedure I would jump on board.
      • siscia 7y ago
        Thanks for seeing my point! :) And yes, less lockdown for someone is already something...
  • catalogia 7y ago
    > it does tend to put them in the hospital, Well no. It does sometimes, but it tends to not.
• superkuh 7y ago
  >We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders. No, we're pausing the life of everyone to protect everyone. If you overload the hospital systems then everyone dies. If you pause and keep things barely managable then mostly only old people die.
  • siscia 7y ago
    I believe we both agree that locking down 20/30 years old people who still have to study, to meet people, to make experience, to find lovers and to find themselves is very different that lock down 70/80 years old people right? Then there is no doubts that the virus hit hardest the elders. Again, what I am saying is that younger people are hit by the lockdown much more than the elders while being the less concerned about the virus itself. And we should talk also about this.
    • ashildr 7y ago
      On wednesday I was shown the obduction pictures of a ~30yo regular guy from my city, who had holes in his lung, by a friend who‘s working in ICU. This friend basically said that if you are young and need to be ventilated you enter ICU with a better lung than older people. So when you leave ICU you have enough lung left to not die. You would have died with an overwhelmed ICU, though, and you‘ll likely need a long time to get back the health you had before. If ever.
    • gnulinux 7y ago
      I'm 22 y.o. I simply do not understand this logic. Not being able to "find lovers" doesn't seem comparable to others dying. Yes, you will not be able to go to a bar and pick up girls/boys until things get better. These are not normal times, young people cannot act as if nothing is happening.
      • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        The argument here is about what should happen when things do get better. Many people are arguing that you shouldn't be allowed to go to a bar even then, because if you're allowed to have fun things might get worse again.
• recursive 7y ago
  The longer this goes on, the more traction this argument will gain.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    People have been making this argument since before the lock down. But on the contrary to your prediction, the argument has seemed sillier and sillier the more we see the effects of the virus. Things are really freakin bad, and that's with a lockdown. I suspect that all but a very small minority will be able to see the sense in spending serious effort on mitigation for the foreseeable future. Even if people somehow manage to forget the horror and deaths of the past couple of weeks, a loosened lockdown and the inevitable spread of disease that will follow would quickly remind them.
    • siscia 7y ago
      I believe we seriously understimate how widespread is the virus. Let not-so-at-risk people go around will also helps in not moving completely blond in this episode. I know people that are sure to have caught it, didn't get tested, it pass away, and now are still locked down for the foreseeable future. In Italy it was asked to several people to donate blood, all of them though to have never got the virus, turns out 60% of them already got it. We need something more than just staying at home.
    • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      The argument against a few weeks of lockdown has seemed sillier and sillier. The situation's very bad, and it's worth spending serious effort to mitigate for the foreseeable future. A ban on all social activity for years is far beyond "serious effort to mitigate". Millions of lives isn't worth a global dystopia.
      • mcnamaratw 7y ago
        Years of lockdown really would be draconian and I think we could start to compare it to the value of human lives. I think we need much more focus on how and when the isolation ends.
• davidw 7y ago
  30 year old guy died where I live, recently. He leaves behind a young family. Do not pretend this can't hurt young people, badly.
  • squarefoot 7y ago
    There's also a 12 years old girl dead in Belgium. https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/12-year-old-belgian-girl-becomes-europes-youngest-known-coronavirus-death/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/12-year-old-belgian-girl-becom... The article also contains accounts of two more youngsters dead, at 14 and 16. This thing can kill anyone.
    • elephantscan 7y ago
      Sure, it can. But its very unlikely. 0.2% chance of death for 30 year olds is roughly the same as a 30 year old's chance of dying in any given year.
      • kian 7y ago
        Which means doubling your chance of death in a year. Can you think of any activity you would willingly engage in that doubles your risk of death in a year? Most people won't even stand outside unprotected in a lightning storm - and this is much worse.
        • perl4ever 7y ago
          A quick Google suggests that if your risk is representative, a 0.2% additional risk of death equates to going skydiving around 3-400 times in a year. Or, based on overall fatalities from motorcycles per mile, it would equate to about 8,000 miles per year. Or, based on light aircraft fatalities per hour, it would be around 200 flight hours in a year. Of course, you could argue that the casualties from both activities are skewed upwards by people who do stupid things early and don't live long enough to engage in the activity a lot. Anyway, I'm not particularly agreeing or disagreeing. The risks above are considered reasonable by a lot of people and unreasonable by others.
• icegreentea2 7y ago
  No one is addressing the issue right now because we aren't even in a situation to exploit the alternate arrangement. Suppose at this very moment we switch over to the quarantine the old people strategy, and go to largely unrestricted life for other age groups. Even in the 20-50 year old range, the hospitalization rate looks like 20%. Say we're actually missing 50% of cases cause they're so mild, so it's really 10%. 330 million Americans, says 70% aren't at highest risk, all become infected, at 10% hospitalization -> 23 million hospitalizations required. Spread over 18 months, that's still an additional 1.25 million hospitalizations every month. That's 0.3% of Americans in hospital for COVID, constantly (assuming average 1 month time in hospital required - yes I made that up). For context, roughly 0.7% of Americans are incarcerated at any given time. Still a logistical nightmare. You can tweak those numbers however you wish, but they generally all giving mind boggling logistical nightmares.
• sveng 7y ago
  It’s going to take a while to unpack your comment. Until then, while you mention Ro, you might not know that some recent reports show it approaching 6 in some areas, not 2.x as thought by some over a month ago. With an Ro of 2.5 and a mean infection duration of 5 days, each person can cause infection of up to 244 cases in a month. Also, since testing is not widely and reliably available in most countries, there is no way to loosen stay-at-home as a practical matter. Pervasive testing, quick contact tracing, isolation and quarantine are the only way forward. And I’m not sure you are factoring in that Covid-19 positive people can be contagious before they show ANY symptoms. So if you’re not concerned about older people or people with comorbidities generally, you might look around at the people you know and care about. The other part of this is the impact on health care providers and first responders. They are getting infected and dying. The have more pressing issues than those you mention. I find thinking about my community and taking certain matters of personal responsibility seriously helps me dwell less on myself. Good luck...
  • siscia 7y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear. Personally I am myself in the stricter form of quarantine I can do. However, the argument I brought forward will start to raise stronger and stronger. And if we don't discuss about it, and if we don't do it fast, it will be problematic for everybody. I personally don't even mind that much the lockdown, but I am not the only youngest around...
• lisper 7y ago
  > But should I really throw away on year of my life? You don't have to throw it away. There are plenty of productive ways to spend your time. Yes, social isolation is burdensome. But it's damn sight better than being dead.
  • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I just don't agree with the analysis. If I had a choice between a 2% chance of dying and isolation for the rest of my life, I'd roll the dice.
    • lisper 7y ago
      But it's not the rest of your life. It's just until we come up with a treatment or a vaccine, most likely a year or two. Yes, that's an annoyingly long time, but still better than being dead.
      • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        There's no way we should trust a dystopian regime to just quietly abolish itself once its rationale for existence disappears.
  • mcnamaratw 7y ago
    Certainly nobody is making the following fictional argument: "I'm not going to die anyway, and it's better for you to be dead than for me to be socially isolated." Nobody is saying that.
• alkonaut 7y ago
  Sweden uses much lighter restrictions with industry still running, most shops still open, and schools for younger children open. One of the keys in this lighter strategy was to protect the elderly, with bans on visits to homes for the elderly and so on. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough, the spread has hit many such facilities with a high number of deaths as a result. It’s hard to isolate the elderly if they are so old that they need care by the young. Isolating the not-quite-so-old that can self-isolate is easy.
  • jfnixon 7y ago
    Test the young caregivers for antibodies. Only permit those with antibodies and no viral load to get anywhere near the elderly. Pay extra if necessary, it would be much better than breaking society.
    • alkonaut 7y ago
      The problem is that the problem of finding staff is difficult in normal circumstances, and almost impossible right now when lots of people are sick. Add to that the fact that unlike healthcare professionals these caregivers have much less hygiene trained and currently littlr PPE available, and you have the recipe for trouble. Antibody tests are also almost useless on an individual level: If they have 4% false positive rate and 10% have antibodies then there are 36000 false positives (4% of 900k) when a million people are tested! Antibody tests are good at a group level to measure the progress of the epidemic, but unless the incidence is high or better test methods are found, they are near useless for what you are describing, sadly.
• mcnamaratw 7y ago
  Are you saying that the people with least risk of dying are suffering most? If not, can you explain again what you are saying?
• blihp 7y ago
  You misunderstand the current exercise. The only thing these stay at home policies are designed to do is keep the healthcare system from collapsing by slowing the spread of the virus. That's it since we are way past the point of having any hope of containing it. Sure, the immediate beneficiaries are those at highest risk from the virus. But younger people who fall on the extreme end of the symptoms would also be dying at relatively higher rates too. Have no fear, once the powers that be are confident that society won't collapse, the stay at home orders will start lifting and life will go on... including allowing people young and old to die at 'acceptable' rates from the virus.
  • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but it's not a misunderstanding - the original article really is saying that the stay at home policies are designed to contain the virus and won't end until a containment plan is in place.
• asdff 7y ago
  To protect the elders, yes, but also the young, the frail, the immunocompromised, the asthmatics, the poor, the homeless; human life in general. Also, we are attempting to ensure people going to the hospital for anything else are still actually able to receive care, as healthcare labor is limited and resources are strained. Screw the market.