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I think what you mention is completely stopping infections, which is certainly a great goal - albeit a very costly one for many countries which started the righ
by maigret 7y ago
I think what you mention is completely stopping infections, which is certainly a great goal - albeit a very costly one for many countries which started the right actions too late, too little.
Flattening the curve is only about spreading the same number of infections over time, so that at a given time, the health system is not overwhelmed. It will not reduce the number of infections, and will likely augment the number of survivors, who might have to deal with hard long term consequences.
- DagAgren 7y agoIt will most definitely reduce the number of infections. It allows us to reach the point of where measures like test-and-trace become possible after a smaller number of infections, and those measures can further suppress and even eradicate the disease before it manages to infect everyone.
- nradov 7y agoTesting and tracing would have been a great idea in February when the outbreak could still be contained. Now it's gone too far for that to be practical. So we're likely to end up with ~70% infected eventually (approximate herd immunity limit), it's just a question of when.
- DagAgren 7y agoThat is the whole point of lockdowns, to bring the outbreak down enough that these methods are reasonable again.
- nradov 7y agoYou missed the point. Now that infections have spread so far, the level of lockdowns that would be necessary to bring the outbreak down to that level aren't even possible in an open society. But it will be a good approach to try during the early stage of the next pandemic.
- zimpenfish 7y agoI admire your optimism that the people in charge might learn from this when they clearly haven't[1] from the last few. [1] Excepting places like Taiwan, etc., who clearly did learn.