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>well, EVENTUALLY, there were hundreds of thousands of infections. at one point there were, famously, 15... Maybe there were 15 case last October! :-) I'm thin

>well, EVENTUALLY, there were hundreds of thousands of infections. at one point there were, famously, 15... Maybe there were 15 case last October! :-) I'm thinking we could have had thousands of cases in the U.S. before we started testing. But that's water under the bridge at this point. I wasn't arguing that lockdowns were useless, or that they weren't justified a month ago. But given the additional data I wonder about them now. >I think that two things are true, first the young and healthy are at risk from this disease themselves - the stats prove that I end up looking at NYC stats a lot... Last week they were seeing 20-25% of sample population with antibodies. I found found April 14 NYC numbers showing 4.5% of covid deaths there were people under 45, and a bit over 14k deaths in NYC as of yesterday. Extrapolating from these numbers I calculate 2500 people under 45 will die before reaching 80% herd immunity. That's 2500 in a city of 8 million. 2016 numbers showed 4.9 million people under age 45. Which works out to just under 1 in 2000 young people dying. It's interesting for me to think about that number. Is it significant? I looked at some actuarial tables and see that a 45 year old has a 1 in 300 chance of dying in any given year. 1 in 1000 for 20 year old. I'm betting a lot of unemployed young people want to get on with their lives and wouldn't be worries about taking their chance with a 1 in 2000 risk. >and second its almost certainly true that the young and healthy have loved ones who are young and unhealthy, or old and healthy, or old and unhealthy, and....maybe....the young and healthy dont want to catch covid and then infect the people they love. I'm not saying that everyone has to go out and mingle. Everyone is free to self-isolate. I grant that some people could be put in a difficult position, feeling like they have to go to work when they don't want to, living with someone who won't self-isolate, etc. Maybe there's away to ease the lockdown and provide assistance to those left in a bind. These would be good problems to talk about, and will probably come up no matter when we ease the lockdown.

bandushrew 6y ago
Everyone wants to get on with their lives, but at what cost? thats what it comes down to. We will either pay in economic damage, lost lives or (looking likely) both. Again, I dont understand the rush to throw so many lives under the bus with so little care, its bewildering. Those people, our vulnerable, can be sacrificed at anytime, but they can only be sacrificed once. Lets try something else for a few months first, and see how it works. If nothing else works out, we can always fall back to the "let everyone in society who has an underlying condition of some kind die" plan afterwards.

bandushrew 6y ago

Everyone wants to get on with their lives, but at what cost? thats what it comes down to. We will either pay in economic damage, lost lives or (looking likely) both. Again, I dont understand the rush to throw so many lives under the bus with so little care, its bewildering. Those people, our vulnerable, can be sacrificed at anytime, but they can only be sacrificed once. Lets try something else for a few months first, and see how it works. If nothing else works out, we can always fall back to the "let everyone in society who has an underlying condition of some kind die" plan afterwards.