> We should probably look for mitigations that are not economically harmful and keep them in place. Mask wearing seems to be one of them. Then we can use the ti

> We should probably look for mitigations that are not economically harmful and keep them in place. Mask wearing seems to be one of them. Then we can use the time that gives us to look for treatments and maybe even a vaccine. Absolutely. > I wonder if you are giving any consideration of the economic consequences of the virus? Those are going to happen regardless of imposed lockdowns. There's a tweet about reservations at restaurants in Seattle declining 60% prior to the lockdown. That's plenty. Yes, I have given consideration to that, and I think your point is an important one. Basically, I draw a distinction between unavoidable economic impact due to covid itself (your example with restaurant reservations) versus self-inflicted economic damage (forcing closures rather than letting businesses decide for themselves, discouraging elective surgery in areas without a huge outbreak which has led to incredible job loss/furloughs in the medical sector) > BTW, New York is nowhere near herd immunity. If you assume 1000 cases per death, they would have ~1 million people that have been infected. For a virus this contagious, you want 50-60% for herd immunity, not ~12%. Right, hitting the "herd immunity" threshold is great, but the important point is that any marginal increase in recovered cases leads to reduced transmission, even if it does not lead to containment the way "full" herd immunity does. Per your point, if we stick with that 1000:1 estimate (which honestly I think is within an order of magnitude of the true number), that implies we're only 2, maybe 3 "doublings" away from herd immunity in New York. (Let me know if you see an issue with that logic). By comparison, in my home state of California, we currently have 1000 deaths which we would expand to 1 million cases using that same 1000:1 ratio, whereas our population is about 40 million, so we have an implied 2.5% herd immunity