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When did “flatten the curve” become “eliminate transmission”? We have abundant hospital capacity remaining nearly everywhere up in the US. It seems likely we c

When did “flatten the curve” become “eliminate transmission”? We have abundant hospital capacity remaining nearly everywhere up in the US. It seems likely we can begin moving toward herd immunity significantly more quickly by relaxing social distancing standards and quarantining sensitive populations, all while remaining below the horizontal line. It’s not worth surrendering civil liberties, something we’ve sacrificed many lives to preserve.

chrisco255 7y ago
Agreed. Also, due to the indiscriminate cancellation of "elective" surgeries (which include things like bone marrow transplants), my mother's hospital is slower than normal! They're facing a funding crunch as a result and may need to cut staff. This is the insanity of centralized policy making when the distribution of impact is not even in all districts.
maxerickson 7y ago
Define "sensitive populations". Also, define how you (effectively!) quarantine sensitive populations with less impact on civil liberties than testing and contact tracing of the general population (which has modest privacy implications that can be reasonably managed).
- mrfusion 7y ago
  Sweden isn’t doing a half bad job of it (1). Sure they have more cases than Norway but they certainly don’t have exponential growth. (1) https://www.aier.org/article/what-sweden-has-done-right-on-coronavirus/ https://www.aier.org/article/what-sweden-has-done-right-on-c...
- leetcrew 7y ago
  by definition, sensitive populations face the greatest personal risk from violating the quarantine. most of them would probably comply if the government merely asked them. it's hard to see how contact tracing of the general population can be done with "modest" privacy implications, unless it's opt-in.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    What about the thousands of people that work in nursing homes? Protecting the people they care for means imposing restrictions on them. And so on for all sorts of other people that would be involved in (effectively!) isolating sensitive populations. The reason contact tracing has modest privacy implications is that the location history of most people isn't sensitive information (or exists already, with little additional harm incurred by giving it to public health workers). It's fine if you disagree with me on that point, but that's my argument, it isn't super serious if Bill over at the county health department sees that you encountered a sick individual at Wendy's, which is going to be the majority of the data.
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      > What about the thousands of people that work in nursing homes? I wouldn't necessarily oppose stricter measures for people who do this sort of work. easy for me to say when I don't work in a nursing home, of course. in principle, it would be comparable to the privacy you give up when you have to get a security clearance for your job. > The reason contact tracing has modest privacy implications is that the location history of most people isn't sensitive information (or exists already, with little additional harm incurred by giving it to public health workers). It's fine if you disagree with me on that point, but that's my argument, it isn't super serious if Bill over at the county health department sees that you encountered a sick individual at Wendy's, which is going to be the majority of the data. I can certainly understand that my position looks a lot like closing the barn doors after the horses have already run five miles down the road. google has the gall to actually send me an email each month showing all the places it has tracked me going. even if I delete my facebook account, it can still recognize my face in pictures other people take. I'm not happy about any of this, but at least now, the government has to put on some charade of formality to access this information. giving it the power to directly collect this data in plain view is another step in the wrong direction. it adds more stuff to the pile of things we need to undo to get where I personally want to be. I don't think your argument is unreasonable, just that we're approaching this from different perspectives. you're thinking about "how many people can we bring with us to the other side?", while I'm thinking more about "what do we want the other side to look like?".
slothtrop 7y ago
Shutting down business and being forced to isolate is already surrendering a liberty. We understand it's temporary, no reason the same can't be true of contact tracing or why at the very least volunteering the information through apps isn't facilitated.
jfoster 7y ago
Do you realise that thus far about 0.1% of the population has been infected, but herd immunity requires somewhere between 60% - 80% of the population to be immune? A vaccine will be available much quicker than herd immunity obtained through infection unless you do want to go through the overwhelmed hospital system (or just no hospital system) for many months. Do you realise that immunity for this virus may not be lasting? Your plan requires millions more lives be sacrificed just so that the ID of one of your many electronic devices isn't recorded by some other devices. It's already public anyway, by the way. That said, this plan wouldn't happen anyway. People will not willingly be infected. Herd immunity through infection is not possible.
- rstupek 7y ago
  I'm not sure you can definitively state .1% of the population has been infected with any certainty.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Not with certainty. I'm stating the population that has been tested positive in the US. I apologise, as it's actually more like 0.16% (per https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/), so call it 0.2%. Let's even go so far as to assume that there are 10x as many people infected who haven't been recorded. That would make it 2%. Herd immunity through infection is still 30x - 40x away from where the US population is. Vaccine will still be sooner unless allowing for the hospital system to become overwhelmed.
mrfusion 7y ago
Thanks for writing this. I gives me hope that some people still think this way.
yongjik 7y ago
...We have abundant hospital capacity remaining? If it looks so, that's only thanks to lockdown. There were days where the US saw daily 40% increase: with that kind of curve, it takes five days from "hospitals 80% idle" to "full", and another five days from that to "five times more patients than we can handle". And since it takes about a week for infected people to show symptoms, when you put the brake again and re-implement lockdown, you will be looking for another five-fold increase before it slows down.

chrisco255 7y ago

Agreed. Also, due to the indiscriminate cancellation of "elective" surgeries (which include things like bone marrow transplants), my mother's hospital is slower than normal! They're facing a funding crunch as a result and may need to cut staff. This is the insanity of centralized policy making when the distribution of impact is not even in all districts.

maxerickson 7y ago

Define "sensitive populations". Also, define how you (effectively!) quarantine sensitive populations with less impact on civil liberties than testing and contact tracing of the general population (which has modest privacy implications that can be reasonably managed).

mrfusion 7y ago
Sweden isn’t doing a half bad job of it (1). Sure they have more cases than Norway but they certainly don’t have exponential growth. (1) https://www.aier.org/article/what-sweden-has-done-right-on-coronavirus/ https://www.aier.org/article/what-sweden-has-done-right-on-c...
leetcrew 7y ago
by definition, sensitive populations face the greatest personal risk from violating the quarantine. most of them would probably comply if the government merely asked them. it's hard to see how contact tracing of the general population can be done with "modest" privacy implications, unless it's opt-in.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  What about the thousands of people that work in nursing homes? Protecting the people they care for means imposing restrictions on them. And so on for all sorts of other people that would be involved in (effectively!) isolating sensitive populations. The reason contact tracing has modest privacy implications is that the location history of most people isn't sensitive information (or exists already, with little additional harm incurred by giving it to public health workers). It's fine if you disagree with me on that point, but that's my argument, it isn't super serious if Bill over at the county health department sees that you encountered a sick individual at Wendy's, which is going to be the majority of the data.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    > What about the thousands of people that work in nursing homes? I wouldn't necessarily oppose stricter measures for people who do this sort of work. easy for me to say when I don't work in a nursing home, of course. in principle, it would be comparable to the privacy you give up when you have to get a security clearance for your job. > The reason contact tracing has modest privacy implications is that the location history of most people isn't sensitive information (or exists already, with little additional harm incurred by giving it to public health workers). It's fine if you disagree with me on that point, but that's my argument, it isn't super serious if Bill over at the county health department sees that you encountered a sick individual at Wendy's, which is going to be the majority of the data. I can certainly understand that my position looks a lot like closing the barn doors after the horses have already run five miles down the road. google has the gall to actually send me an email each month showing all the places it has tracked me going. even if I delete my facebook account, it can still recognize my face in pictures other people take. I'm not happy about any of this, but at least now, the government has to put on some charade of formality to access this information. giving it the power to directly collect this data in plain view is another step in the wrong direction. it adds more stuff to the pile of things we need to undo to get where I personally want to be. I don't think your argument is unreasonable, just that we're approaching this from different perspectives. you're thinking about "how many people can we bring with us to the other side?", while I'm thinking more about "what do we want the other side to look like?".

slothtrop 7y ago

Shutting down business and being forced to isolate is already surrendering a liberty. We understand it's temporary, no reason the same can't be true of contact tracing or why at the very least volunteering the information through apps isn't facilitated.

jfoster 7y ago

Do you realise that thus far about 0.1% of the population has been infected, but herd immunity requires somewhere between 60% - 80% of the population to be immune? A vaccine will be available much quicker than herd immunity obtained through infection unless you do want to go through the overwhelmed hospital system (or just no hospital system) for many months. Do you realise that immunity for this virus may not be lasting? Your plan requires millions more lives be sacrificed just so that the ID of one of your many electronic devices isn't recorded by some other devices. It's already public anyway, by the way. That said, this plan wouldn't happen anyway. People will not willingly be infected. Herd immunity through infection is not possible.

rstupek 7y ago
I'm not sure you can definitively state .1% of the population has been infected with any certainty.
- jfoster 7y ago
  Not with certainty. I'm stating the population that has been tested positive in the US. I apologise, as it's actually more like 0.16% (per https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/), so call it 0.2%. Let's even go so far as to assume that there are 10x as many people infected who haven't been recorded. That would make it 2%. Herd immunity through infection is still 30x - 40x away from where the US population is. Vaccine will still be sooner unless allowing for the hospital system to become overwhelmed.

mrfusion 7y ago

Thanks for writing this. I gives me hope that some people still think this way.

yongjik 7y ago

...We have abundant hospital capacity remaining? If it looks so, that's only thanks to lockdown. There were days where the US saw daily 40% increase: with that kind of curve, it takes five days from "hospitals 80% idle" to "full", and another five days from that to "five times more patients than we can handle". And since it takes about a week for infected people to show symptoms, when you put the brake again and re-implement lockdown, you will be looking for another five-fold increase before it slows down.