24 ms·

Considering that the virus is here to stay for a few years at least, how can we blame them for thinking this way? Lifting the lockdown is not gonna make the vir

Considering that the virus is here to stay for a few years at least, how can we blame them for thinking this way? Lifting the lockdown is not gonna make the virus disappear.

650REDHAIR 6y ago
Out of sight out of mind. I returned a bike yesterday in North Beach (SF) and people were crowded together. Maybe half of the people were wearing masks. There was a 4 piece street band walking around playing brass instruments like it was a carnival.
- tjr225 6y ago
  And yet every single one of those people is going to be just fine.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    In my state you aren’t shamed for not wearing a mask, thankfully.
    - jshaqaw 6y ago
      My family has already had Covid-19. We wear masks to not be jerks and make others fearful or uncomfortable because we can’t be bothered to put a simple article of clothing on.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Come on, just wear a mask. Why would you resist it as though it's something to be proud of? Even if the only thing that it does is make other people feel safe, that's a good enough reason.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - vorpalhex 6y ago
        Well the same reason you don't share your email with the FBI and agree to be monitored at all times. I wear a mask, and I choose to wear a mask. I also wore a mask before it was "supported" by the CDC. If tomorrow it was legally required, I would stop wearing a mask.
        kilroy_jones 6y ago
        If they had made it a temporary law and fined people heavily at the very beginning it would have saved thousands of lives and jobs. Look at the countries that acted swiftly back in January and February.
        vorpalhex 6y ago
        In the US, legal requirements would have been met with more resistance and people not wearing masks intentionally and probably civil unrest. Sometimes asking is better than demanding. Texas asked and had excellent compliance. Michigan demanded and had angry protestors.
        kilroy_jones 6y ago
        That people consider civil unrest because they're told to wear masks for a few months in order to prevent countless deaths is more a sign of a broken culture than anything else.
        vorpalhex 6y ago
        This is a US specific phenomenon, and it's not a new one. I will further argue it is a critical principle for Democracy. The issue is not being asked to wear a mask, the issue is legally mandating them. I can ask you to donate money to a political party - you may say no, but me asking is perfectly fine. If I force you under duress to donate - well, that's something else, isn't it? Freedom is the ability to say no, even if that isn't an optimal choice. Taking that freedom away leads to bad outcomes like arresting people for unpopular views and sending Muslims to "re-education" camps.
  - fcurts 6y ago
    Except for the ones that will end up fighting the worst illness in their lifetime. It may not be them but their parents or grandparents.
    - tjr225 6y ago
      Maybe, maybe not.
      - fcurts 6y ago
        "Maybe" at individual level becomes "certainly" at city, state, or nation level.
    - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
      You ever had/lived with multiple relatives going with cancer or Alzheimer's. I'm sure it's un-PC to say it, but Covid is a relative cakewalk in comparison...
      - esotericimpl 6y ago
        What if your Alzheimer’s parent died of Covid. Should we assume this is a cakewalk for me? Stop acting callous.
      - Aeolun 6y ago
        Depends, if you’re 70 and diagnosed with cancer, you may still have a few years or recover completely. If you are diagnosed with covid you have a pretty high chance of being dead before a month has passed.
        tinus_hn 6y ago
        If you are 70 and get Covid-19 you have a 90% chance of recovering. You make it sound like you have a 90% chance of dying which is an extreme exaggeration.
        6y ago
  - roelschroeven 6y ago
    Even if that is true, it is missing the point. Avoiding infection is not just for your own good; more importantly, keeping the speed of the virus spreading down is for protecting everybody. And what you say isn't even true. Plenty of healthy young people get very very sick. The percentages are lower than for older and/or less healthy people, but the numbers are still significant. Don't think you're invulnerable, cause you're not. Don't think that if you get no or only mild symptoms, no harm is done. Think about the other people you have unknowingly infected, and how you've contributed to the spread of the virus. (Where 'you' = the generic 'you', not you personally).
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      So what are the numbers if they are significant?
    - krona 6y ago
      Avoiding infection is not just for your own good; more importantly, keeping the speed of the virus spreading down is for protecting everybody. Twas ever thus. Norovirus kills 200,000 people every year, and yet we don't close entire cities every time there's an outbreak.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - ben_w 6y ago
        IIRC, noro is too infectious for a lockdown to work, even though you can only catch it from the… emissions… when the patient goes off at both ends.
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        > Norovirus kills 200,000 people every year That's true, but it kills very few people in the developed world. Deaths from norovirus are mostly a result of inadequate treatment, and/or lack of detection. And, frankly, if covid was only going to kill 200k people, we probably wouldn't be closing anything much. It has already killed almost 350k people, and that's _with_ most countries imposing variously draconian measures.
  - simonh 6y ago
    People were saying that in New York in February and going to street parties. A month later the hospitals were overwhelmed. I think it is reasonable to ease restrictions when case numbers fall. Hopefully enough people will maintain distance and minimise unnecessary contact to slow it spreading and keep the pressure off the hospitals. However free riders recklessly endangering themselves, others and health care staff should be ashamed of themselves.
    - xkapastel 6y ago
      I live in New York and I'm under the impression the hospitals were never overwhelmed. That was the fear, but it didn't actually happen. They also thought they would run out of ventilators, but never came close to using all of them, started giving them away to other states, and then discovered that ventilators were not actually a good treatment anyway.
      - Retric 6y ago
        NYC hospitals increased capacity dramatically, with people treated huge wards and some sent to temporary facilities. That’s what being overwhelmed looks like, it’s not a binary condition just a decrease in the average quality of care. In terms of ventilators many people where kept off of ventilators who would have been given them in normal conditions. That was likely a good thing as ventilators have huge risks associated with their use, but things where a long way from ok. That said, the lockdown likely prevented a much worse situation at local hospitals.
        redis_mlc 6y ago
        > In terms of ventilators many people where kept off of ventilators who would have been given them in normal conditions. Sadly, that wasn't the case in NY. Even though Chinese doctors warned of the risks of ventilators in Jan/Feb, the US ignored that. There were 2 reasons: 1) intubating patients protected staff from aerosolization after the intubation 2) old understanding of oxygen levels led doctors to intubate way too early for corona.
      - 6y ago
- analog31 6y ago
  I play in a jazz band, and one of the first things that came to mind when the lockdown started was standing next to the all of the horn players blowing their spit all over the place. Fortunately, both our rehearsal and performance spaces shut down before we had to decide as a group whether to continue operating.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> standing next to the all of the horn players blowing their spit all over the place. That's an aspect of the universal 6-foot rule that everyone seems to forget. It originally appeared as advice for business (restaurants). You don't want to sit too close to someone else in still air. But if we are spitting, singing, shouting, coughing, panting, playing in a Jazz band, or are simply downwind of someone, that 6-foot distance is probably not enough. Airlines have basically said as much about their cabins. If the air is being circulated artificially in a closed environment, specific measured distances are probably irrelevant.
    - nradov 6y ago
      The "universal 6-foot rule" is anything but universal. Other countries have recommended 1m, 1.5m, 2m, etc. The distance rules are almost entirely arbitrary and not based on sound science.
      - chimprich 6y ago
        Distances can be both arbitrary and based on sound science. You can scientifically determine that your chances of infecting someone at 1.5m and 2m are e.g. 40% and 50%, but you still have to pick one to recommend.
        nradov 6y ago
        No one has scientifically determined the infection risk at various distances. Such an experiment with human subjects would never pass ethical review due to the serious risk. Some scientists have created mathematical models of virion distribution, but those models are basically a joke and don't appear to align with observed reality. I do appreciate that public health authorities have to make clear and simple recommendations to avoid confusing people. But let's not pretend there is anything scientific about it.
- TomK32 6y ago
  Wearing masks outside when you are not close to someone from outside your bubble isn't necessary. The virus needs close human contacts for several minutes to spread successfully. On the outside you have wind and other positive factors.
  - hellofunk 6y ago
    There have been plenty of reports of infection with far less than a few minutes of close contact. Proximity to a single cough can do it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bdamm 6y ago
Eventually we will have herd immunity, a weakened virus, a vaccine, reduced pressure on health care facilities, or all four. At some point we'll be back in the airport bar. There may be a few waves before we get there, but get there we will. This social isolation will not go on, it is not the new normal.
- marcell 6y ago
  FWIW, in most of the US and Europe there is no pressure on healthcare facilities. Most hospitals are seeing lower than normal utilization, primarily from non-Covid cases. Edit: as an example, my county (Santa Clara) is using under 10% of hospital beds for Covid. This is typical, check your county dashboard if they have one and you are likely to see a similar number. Source: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#hospital https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    See reverse Tinkerbell effect
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    My take is that what happened in Northern Italy freaked out the world, but it was actually rather unique. Very high density coupled with lots of intergenerational living. One reason Sweden's approach may work out in the end is they have the highest proportion of single person households of any country on Earth.
    - kgwgk 6y ago
      > what happened in Northern Italy freaked out the world, but it was actually rather unique Was it? NYC has reported more deaths than Lombardy (with less population) and NY/NJ as many deaths as Italy with half the population.
      - xamuel 6y ago
        The high death count in NY/NJ is probably related to the fact that in both states, the governors ordered that nursing homes not be permitted to refuse coronavirus patients.
matz1 6y ago
The virus is not gonna disappear but it doesn't mean you are going to be infected as well. If you do infected, doesn't mean you are going to have the symptom. If you do have the symptom, doesn't mean you are going to have severe symptom. If you do have severe symptom, doesn't mean you are going to require hospitalization.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Then why are we doing any lockdowns at all? If most of the young are near-safe, we should have just isolated the 60+ and kept society running as usual for the rest. Clearly a lot of people are not willing to take the risk of contracting the virus.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    That is an excellent question, and essentially exactly the argument Sweden is making. TBH, I have yet to hear a decent argument against this, given the following thoughts: 1. Development of a vaccine will take a minimum of 12 months, more like 18. 2. It is not feasible, either for democracy or our economy, to stay locked in/sheltered at home for this long. 3. Thus, the main concern should be to "flatten the curve": keep the infection rate low enough so that, even though people still get infected, hospital systems don't get overwhelmed. I think it's important to note that the only places yet that have had overwhelmed (or close to it) hospital systems had extreme density (Wuhan, NYC), often coupled with lots of mixing of young and old (Northern Italy). 4. A corollary to number 3 is that as long as hospital systems aren't overwhelmed, or close to it, that you shouldn't lock down further. The belief is that the majority of society becoming infected within 12/18 months is inevitable, so extreme lockdowns will do little beyond push deaths out a bit. 5. Do everything you can to protect the highly vulnerable (old, immuno-compromised) as they appear to be at exponential greater risk. I mean, as the US starts to open up, it is quite clear the virus has not been contained, so for better or for worse the above is the approach we are taking as well.
    - cma 6y ago
      Sweden is 6th worst in deaths per capita in the world among non-microstates, and still isn't very close to herd immunity.
metreo 6y ago
I guess we've lost sight of how important early containment is and the reality that once the virus is in the wild it's essentially a force of nature.
jinushaun 6y ago
Not years, but decades. However, I think the virus will hit an equilibrium state sooner than we expect because there will be less of an appetite for lockdowns when the fall/winter wave hits. Covid deaths will be seasonal but not headline news.
- bhouston 6y ago
  Virus also evolve to be less deadly I understand. Thus Covid19 becomes more like the common cold over time. How much time required? I don't know that.
  - gberger 6y ago
    Interesting, I hadn't heard about this. Do you mind sharing the reasoning around this?
    - notadog 6y ago
      This article from The Scientist provides an overview of why it happened in a rabbit population: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/do-pathogens-gain-virulence-as-hosts-become-more-resistant-30219 https://www.the-scientist.com/features/do-pathogens-gain-vir... > The question Fenner asked was: What happens when such a virulent virus spreads through a very susceptible host species on a continental scale? He focused on two possibilities. First, the highly lethal virus might evolve to become less lethal. Second, the highly susceptible rabbits might evolve resistance. Thanks to Fenner, we now know both happened. > The work showed that the almost invariably lethal progenitor virus strain was replaced within a few years by strains with case fatality rates of 70 percent to 95 percent. Some field isolates killed fewer than half the lab rabbits. Over the next few decades, things settled down, and strains at both ends of the lethality spectrum become increasingly difficult to find. Fenner showed why. The highly lethal progenitor virus killed rabbits so fast that its infectious period was shorter than that of the less lethal viral mutants. That meant that the less lethal strains were able to infect more new victims and spread throughout the population.
      - 6y ago
guscost 6y ago
For healthy people it’s about as dangerous as any other cold, the data are in. Most people will simply refuse to put their lives on indefinite suspension once they discover this fact. The mass psychosis will end soon. By the way “healthy” also means mental health, to a degree. If you’re irrationally terrified of this thing you’re not going to do as well. My prescription: Try growing the fuck up and learning to handle fear.
- Griffinsauce 6y ago
  Please go talk to a doctor who works on the ICU.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Please get out of my business, and stay there.
amelius 6y ago
If we can get the virus contained then there is no need to stay in lockdown. Compare with Ebola. They don't have Ebola in Europe. But if it pops up somewhere, we will contain it as soon as possible. It doesn't mean that they need to live in isolation for the rest of time.
- WoahNoun 6y ago
  People who are spreading ebola tend to be bleeding from their eyeballs. Covid can be spread widely by someone with no symptoms. The transmission of the two viruses are so different that comparing them is extremely misleading.
- sod 6y ago
  As of https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-asked-questions https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-as... ebola is not very infectious until you show symptoms. And when you show symtoms (feever, headache, vomitting) you probably won't run into the cinema or restaurant the next day to spread the virus.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Ebola couldn't be more different from Corona. Millions of people with Corona are asymptomatic or have mild flu-like symptoms and are therefore easy carriers. OTOH once you have Ebola symptoms (and that's when you are infectious), you have only a coin's flip chance of surviving it. You can be pretty sure no random guy on the street is giving you Ebola. You can't say the same for Corona.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    To be honest, the debate is still open on whether the asymptomatic people spread it as much as the people who show symptoms. I haven't been able to find a paper that does not offer more than just circumstantial evidence.
drstewart 6y ago
> Lifting the lockdown is not gonna make the virus disappear. Lifting prohibition wasn't going to make alcoholism disappear. Lifting the war on drugs won't make overdoses disappear. There are many things we could do in society to make negative externalities that cause hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths disappear. Yet we don't do those.
- AQuantized 6y ago
  Do you think that the lockdown actually makes the virus more prevalent? Seems like a strange analogy
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
snowwolf 6y ago
The virus may be around for a few years but surely it is likely we will have an effective vaccine in the next 18 months if not the next 6 at which point the risks will become similar to the flu?
- redisman 6y ago
  A vaccine has never been developed that quickly so I’m not sure you can say “surely”.
  - snowwolf 6y ago
    A vaccine has never had the resources put behind its development as much as this one before either. Human trials have already started in the US, UK and China which has never happened so quickly either.
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
      9 women can't make a baby in one month. I for one don't want to inject myself with something rushed through trials and whose testing was hand-waived away. If anything it only gives the anti-vaxxers more ammunition and brings down the overall credibility of vaccination as a concept, and heaven knows we don't want to deal with that right now.
      - riffraff 6y ago
        We develop flu vaccines every year, and we do have knowledge of other coronavirus. I tend to agree that there is some potential for fuckups, but 12-18 months seem reasonable to have most (if not all) of the vaccines as reliable.
        redisman 6y ago
        One thing that's funny is everyone keeps saying 12-18 months. But it's already been 3 months so shouldn't that estimate at the very least be (12 to 18 minus 3) if the confidence was going up.
IAmEveryone 6y ago
I‘m in a city of 3.5 Million that saw 15 to 20 new infections per day over the last week (Berlin, Germany). At that level, it’s perfectly possible to mostly open up again and still reduce infections further by extensively tracking every single case and their contacts.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Does anyone have a good idea on what the probability is if you get COVID-19 this year that you will be immune to it next year?
- 2019-nCoV 6y ago
  Would you like next week's lottery numbers too?
- nradov 6y ago
  Based on recent animal experiments and past experience with other coronaviruses, the probability of immunity lasting at least 12 months is high. However no one can give you a precise number. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/19/science.abc4776.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/19/scie...
newacct583 6y ago
> Considering that the virus is here to stay for a few years at least, how can we blame them for thinking this way? It has been widely reported since the very beginning of the pandemic that the likely time to develop and deploy a vaccine is on the order of 18 months. Yes, it might be more, it might also be less (quite a few are already in testing!). But the idea that this is permanent has never been a feature of any expert advice nor mainstream reporting. The idea that the people who support lockdowns (which is, let's be clear, almost everyone) want to be shut down forever is, itself, a fever swamp hallucination. Stay home until it's beaten, and then open up slowly so we don't lose control again. Much of the world outside the US and the UK, in fact, is already opening up.
rurban 6y ago
Who tells you that? Of course it does disappear, at least until the next winter. Without lockdown much earlier. The problem with London are the aristocratic measures of social distancing. The danger of being caughed at at low distance is exponential. The recommendation is 1-2 meter. The UK did 2m, likely because the ones who came with that idea never use public transport, and want to be safe from the plebs. Face masks don't help at all against direct caughing. only against droplets. 2m distancing doesn't work in public places at all. 1 - 1.5m do work, if in the subway, bus, restaurant, pub somehow. I don't know who else did 2m. And the death mortality is directly proportional to the severity of the measures. Maybe not causal, but those are the numbers. 2m don't help at all. When you are being caughed at, it goes far over 5m, even up to 20m. So social distancing in public places does not help much. indirect caughing via droplets is not that dangerous, transmission via surfaces at very low percentages. there's no known case so far. but hard to prove.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  Germany did (and is still doing) 2m. I'm actually unaware of anywhere doing 1-1.5m - perhaps the US?
  - travolter 6y ago
    Here in Belgium it's 1.5m
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Ah, cool. Good luck to you all. :)
  - majewsky 6y ago
    I'm in Germany. Most signs/posters say 1.5 meters.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Weird! Where I am in Germany they all say 2 metres.
random32840 6y ago
Cambridge recently released a study estimating that 9% or so of the UK population already have antibodies. You only need to get to ~60% and (assuming it doesn't become endemic) you have herd immunity, it doesn't matter that the virus is here to stay.
- oxfordmale 6y ago
  There is a paper (not peer reviewed) that suggests that herd immunity starts occurring around 20% as long as mass gatherings remain are banned. If true life could go back to normal a lot quicker.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  We don't even know still if immunity would last for more than a couple of months, it seems that would be a short duration issue in any case, so the herd immunity plan has some loopholes on it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

Considering that the virus is here to stay for a few years at least, how can we blame them for thinking this way? Lifting the lockdown is not gonna make the virus disappear.

650REDHAIR 6y ago

Out of sight out of mind. I returned a bike yesterday in North Beach (SF) and people were crowded together. Maybe half of the people were wearing masks. There was a 4 piece street band walking around playing brass instruments like it was a carnival.

tjr225 6y ago
And yet every single one of those people is going to be just fine.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  In my state you aren’t shamed for not wearing a mask, thankfully.
  - jshaqaw 6y ago
    My family has already had Covid-19. We wear masks to not be jerks and make others fearful or uncomfortable because we can’t be bothered to put a simple article of clothing on.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Come on, just wear a mask. Why would you resist it as though it's something to be proud of? Even if the only thing that it does is make other people feel safe, that's a good enough reason.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      Well the same reason you don't share your email with the FBI and agree to be monitored at all times. I wear a mask, and I choose to wear a mask. I also wore a mask before it was "supported" by the CDC. If tomorrow it was legally required, I would stop wearing a mask.
      - kilroy_jones 6y ago
        If they had made it a temporary law and fined people heavily at the very beginning it would have saved thousands of lives and jobs. Look at the countries that acted swiftly back in January and February.
        vorpalhex 6y ago
        In the US, legal requirements would have been met with more resistance and people not wearing masks intentionally and probably civil unrest. Sometimes asking is better than demanding. Texas asked and had excellent compliance. Michigan demanded and had angry protestors.
        kilroy_jones 6y ago
        That people consider civil unrest because they're told to wear masks for a few months in order to prevent countless deaths is more a sign of a broken culture than anything else.
        vorpalhex 6y ago
        This is a US specific phenomenon, and it's not a new one. I will further argue it is a critical principle for Democracy. The issue is not being asked to wear a mask, the issue is legally mandating them. I can ask you to donate money to a political party - you may say no, but me asking is perfectly fine. If I force you under duress to donate - well, that's something else, isn't it? Freedom is the ability to say no, even if that isn't an optimal choice. Taking that freedom away leads to bad outcomes like arresting people for unpopular views and sending Muslims to "re-education" camps.
- fcurts 6y ago
  Except for the ones that will end up fighting the worst illness in their lifetime. It may not be them but their parents or grandparents.
  - tjr225 6y ago
    Maybe, maybe not.
    - fcurts 6y ago
      "Maybe" at individual level becomes "certainly" at city, state, or nation level.
  - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    You ever had/lived with multiple relatives going with cancer or Alzheimer's. I'm sure it's un-PC to say it, but Covid is a relative cakewalk in comparison...
    - esotericimpl 6y ago
      What if your Alzheimer’s parent died of Covid. Should we assume this is a cakewalk for me? Stop acting callous.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      Depends, if you’re 70 and diagnosed with cancer, you may still have a few years or recover completely. If you are diagnosed with covid you have a pretty high chance of being dead before a month has passed.
      - tinus_hn 6y ago
        If you are 70 and get Covid-19 you have a 90% chance of recovering. You make it sound like you have a 90% chance of dying which is an extreme exaggeration.
        6y ago
- roelschroeven 6y ago
  Even if that is true, it is missing the point. Avoiding infection is not just for your own good; more importantly, keeping the speed of the virus spreading down is for protecting everybody. And what you say isn't even true. Plenty of healthy young people get very very sick. The percentages are lower than for older and/or less healthy people, but the numbers are still significant. Don't think you're invulnerable, cause you're not. Don't think that if you get no or only mild symptoms, no harm is done. Think about the other people you have unknowingly infected, and how you've contributed to the spread of the virus. (Where 'you' = the generic 'you', not you personally).
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    So what are the numbers if they are significant?
  - krona 6y ago
    Avoiding infection is not just for your own good; more importantly, keeping the speed of the virus spreading down is for protecting everybody. Twas ever thus. Norovirus kills 200,000 people every year, and yet we don't close entire cities every time there's an outbreak.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ben_w 6y ago
      IIRC, noro is too infectious for a lockdown to work, even though you can only catch it from the… emissions… when the patient goes off at both ends.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > Norovirus kills 200,000 people every year That's true, but it kills very few people in the developed world. Deaths from norovirus are mostly a result of inadequate treatment, and/or lack of detection. And, frankly, if covid was only going to kill 200k people, we probably wouldn't be closing anything much. It has already killed almost 350k people, and that's _with_ most countries imposing variously draconian measures.
- simonh 6y ago
  People were saying that in New York in February and going to street parties. A month later the hospitals were overwhelmed. I think it is reasonable to ease restrictions when case numbers fall. Hopefully enough people will maintain distance and minimise unnecessary contact to slow it spreading and keep the pressure off the hospitals. However free riders recklessly endangering themselves, others and health care staff should be ashamed of themselves.
  - xkapastel 6y ago
    I live in New York and I'm under the impression the hospitals were never overwhelmed. That was the fear, but it didn't actually happen. They also thought they would run out of ventilators, but never came close to using all of them, started giving them away to other states, and then discovered that ventilators were not actually a good treatment anyway.
    - Retric 6y ago
      NYC hospitals increased capacity dramatically, with people treated huge wards and some sent to temporary facilities. That’s what being overwhelmed looks like, it’s not a binary condition just a decrease in the average quality of care. In terms of ventilators many people where kept off of ventilators who would have been given them in normal conditions. That was likely a good thing as ventilators have huge risks associated with their use, but things where a long way from ok. That said, the lockdown likely prevented a much worse situation at local hospitals.
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        > In terms of ventilators many people where kept off of ventilators who would have been given them in normal conditions. Sadly, that wasn't the case in NY. Even though Chinese doctors warned of the risks of ventilators in Jan/Feb, the US ignored that. There were 2 reasons: 1) intubating patients protected staff from aerosolization after the intubation 2) old understanding of oxygen levels led doctors to intubate way too early for corona.
    - 6y ago
analog31 6y ago
I play in a jazz band, and one of the first things that came to mind when the lockdown started was standing next to the all of the horn players blowing their spit all over the place. Fortunately, both our rehearsal and performance spaces shut down before we had to decide as a group whether to continue operating.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> standing next to the all of the horn players blowing their spit all over the place. That's an aspect of the universal 6-foot rule that everyone seems to forget. It originally appeared as advice for business (restaurants). You don't want to sit too close to someone else in still air. But if we are spitting, singing, shouting, coughing, panting, playing in a Jazz band, or are simply downwind of someone, that 6-foot distance is probably not enough. Airlines have basically said as much about their cabins. If the air is being circulated artificially in a closed environment, specific measured distances are probably irrelevant.
  - nradov 6y ago
    The "universal 6-foot rule" is anything but universal. Other countries have recommended 1m, 1.5m, 2m, etc. The distance rules are almost entirely arbitrary and not based on sound science.
    - chimprich 6y ago
      Distances can be both arbitrary and based on sound science. You can scientifically determine that your chances of infecting someone at 1.5m and 2m are e.g. 40% and 50%, but you still have to pick one to recommend.
      - nradov 6y ago
        No one has scientifically determined the infection risk at various distances. Such an experiment with human subjects would never pass ethical review due to the serious risk. Some scientists have created mathematical models of virion distribution, but those models are basically a joke and don't appear to align with observed reality. I do appreciate that public health authorities have to make clear and simple recommendations to avoid confusing people. But let's not pretend there is anything scientific about it.
TomK32 6y ago
Wearing masks outside when you are not close to someone from outside your bubble isn't necessary. The virus needs close human contacts for several minutes to spread successfully. On the outside you have wind and other positive factors.
- hellofunk 6y ago
  There have been plenty of reports of infection with far less than a few minutes of close contact. Proximity to a single cough can do it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bdamm 6y ago

Eventually we will have herd immunity, a weakened virus, a vaccine, reduced pressure on health care facilities, or all four. At some point we'll be back in the airport bar. There may be a few waves before we get there, but get there we will. This social isolation will not go on, it is not the new normal.

marcell 6y ago
FWIW, in most of the US and Europe there is no pressure on healthcare facilities. Most hospitals are seeing lower than normal utilization, primarily from non-Covid cases. Edit: as an example, my county (Santa Clara) is using under 10% of hospital beds for Covid. This is typical, check your county dashboard if they have one and you are likely to see a similar number. Source: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#hospital https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...
- ithkuil 6y ago
  See reverse Tinkerbell effect
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  My take is that what happened in Northern Italy freaked out the world, but it was actually rather unique. Very high density coupled with lots of intergenerational living. One reason Sweden's approach may work out in the end is they have the highest proportion of single person households of any country on Earth.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    > what happened in Northern Italy freaked out the world, but it was actually rather unique Was it? NYC has reported more deaths than Lombardy (with less population) and NY/NJ as many deaths as Italy with half the population.
    - xamuel 6y ago
      The high death count in NY/NJ is probably related to the fact that in both states, the governors ordered that nursing homes not be permitted to refuse coronavirus patients.

matz1 6y ago

The virus is not gonna disappear but it doesn't mean you are going to be infected as well. If you do infected, doesn't mean you are going to have the symptom. If you do have the symptom, doesn't mean you are going to have severe symptom. If you do have severe symptom, doesn't mean you are going to require hospitalization.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
Then why are we doing any lockdowns at all? If most of the young are near-safe, we should have just isolated the 60+ and kept society running as usual for the rest. Clearly a lot of people are not willing to take the risk of contracting the virus.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  That is an excellent question, and essentially exactly the argument Sweden is making. TBH, I have yet to hear a decent argument against this, given the following thoughts: 1. Development of a vaccine will take a minimum of 12 months, more like 18. 2. It is not feasible, either for democracy or our economy, to stay locked in/sheltered at home for this long. 3. Thus, the main concern should be to "flatten the curve": keep the infection rate low enough so that, even though people still get infected, hospital systems don't get overwhelmed. I think it's important to note that the only places yet that have had overwhelmed (or close to it) hospital systems had extreme density (Wuhan, NYC), often coupled with lots of mixing of young and old (Northern Italy). 4. A corollary to number 3 is that as long as hospital systems aren't overwhelmed, or close to it, that you shouldn't lock down further. The belief is that the majority of society becoming infected within 12/18 months is inevitable, so extreme lockdowns will do little beyond push deaths out a bit. 5. Do everything you can to protect the highly vulnerable (old, immuno-compromised) as they appear to be at exponential greater risk. I mean, as the US starts to open up, it is quite clear the virus has not been contained, so for better or for worse the above is the approach we are taking as well.
  - cma 6y ago
    Sweden is 6th worst in deaths per capita in the world among non-microstates, and still isn't very close to herd immunity.

metreo 6y ago

I guess we've lost sight of how important early containment is and the reality that once the virus is in the wild it's essentially a force of nature.

jinushaun 6y ago

Not years, but decades. However, I think the virus will hit an equilibrium state sooner than we expect because there will be less of an appetite for lockdowns when the fall/winter wave hits. Covid deaths will be seasonal but not headline news.

bhouston 6y ago
Virus also evolve to be less deadly I understand. Thus Covid19 becomes more like the common cold over time. How much time required? I don't know that.
- gberger 6y ago
  Interesting, I hadn't heard about this. Do you mind sharing the reasoning around this?
  - notadog 6y ago
    This article from The Scientist provides an overview of why it happened in a rabbit population: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/do-pathogens-gain-virulence-as-hosts-become-more-resistant-30219 https://www.the-scientist.com/features/do-pathogens-gain-vir... > The question Fenner asked was: What happens when such a virulent virus spreads through a very susceptible host species on a continental scale? He focused on two possibilities. First, the highly lethal virus might evolve to become less lethal. Second, the highly susceptible rabbits might evolve resistance. Thanks to Fenner, we now know both happened. > The work showed that the almost invariably lethal progenitor virus strain was replaced within a few years by strains with case fatality rates of 70 percent to 95 percent. Some field isolates killed fewer than half the lab rabbits. Over the next few decades, things settled down, and strains at both ends of the lethality spectrum become increasingly difficult to find. Fenner showed why. The highly lethal progenitor virus killed rabbits so fast that its infectious period was shorter than that of the less lethal viral mutants. That meant that the less lethal strains were able to infect more new victims and spread throughout the population.
    - 6y ago

guscost 6y ago

For healthy people it’s about as dangerous as any other cold, the data are in. Most people will simply refuse to put their lives on indefinite suspension once they discover this fact. The mass psychosis will end soon. By the way “healthy” also means mental health, to a degree. If you’re irrationally terrified of this thing you’re not going to do as well. My prescription: Try growing the fuck up and learning to handle fear.

Griffinsauce 6y ago
Please go talk to a doctor who works on the ICU.
- guscost 6y ago
  Please get out of my business, and stay there.

amelius 6y ago

If we can get the virus contained then there is no need to stay in lockdown. Compare with Ebola. They don't have Ebola in Europe. But if it pops up somewhere, we will contain it as soon as possible. It doesn't mean that they need to live in isolation for the rest of time.

WoahNoun 6y ago
People who are spreading ebola tend to be bleeding from their eyeballs. Covid can be spread widely by someone with no symptoms. The transmission of the two viruses are so different that comparing them is extremely misleading.
sod 6y ago
As of https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-asked-questions https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-as... ebola is not very infectious until you show symptoms. And when you show symtoms (feever, headache, vomitting) you probably won't run into the cinema or restaurant the next day to spread the virus.
kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
Ebola couldn't be more different from Corona. Millions of people with Corona are asymptomatic or have mild flu-like symptoms and are therefore easy carriers. OTOH once you have Ebola symptoms (and that's when you are infectious), you have only a coin's flip chance of surviving it. You can be pretty sure no random guy on the street is giving you Ebola. You can't say the same for Corona.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  To be honest, the debate is still open on whether the asymptomatic people spread it as much as the people who show symptoms. I haven't been able to find a paper that does not offer more than just circumstantial evidence.

drstewart 6y ago

> Lifting the lockdown is not gonna make the virus disappear. Lifting prohibition wasn't going to make alcoholism disappear. Lifting the war on drugs won't make overdoses disappear. There are many things we could do in society to make negative externalities that cause hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths disappear. Yet we don't do those.

AQuantized 6y ago
Do you think that the lockdown actually makes the virus more prevalent? Seems like a strange analogy
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

snowwolf 6y ago

The virus may be around for a few years but surely it is likely we will have an effective vaccine in the next 18 months if not the next 6 at which point the risks will become similar to the flu?

redisman 6y ago
A vaccine has never been developed that quickly so I’m not sure you can say “surely”.
- snowwolf 6y ago
  A vaccine has never had the resources put behind its development as much as this one before either. Human trials have already started in the US, UK and China which has never happened so quickly either.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    9 women can't make a baby in one month. I for one don't want to inject myself with something rushed through trials and whose testing was hand-waived away. If anything it only gives the anti-vaxxers more ammunition and brings down the overall credibility of vaccination as a concept, and heaven knows we don't want to deal with that right now.
    - riffraff 6y ago
      We develop flu vaccines every year, and we do have knowledge of other coronavirus. I tend to agree that there is some potential for fuckups, but 12-18 months seem reasonable to have most (if not all) of the vaccines as reliable.
      - redisman 6y ago
        One thing that's funny is everyone keeps saying 12-18 months. But it's already been 3 months so shouldn't that estimate at the very least be (12 to 18 minus 3) if the confidence was going up.

IAmEveryone 6y ago

I‘m in a city of 3.5 Million that saw 15 to 20 new infections per day over the last week (Berlin, Germany). At that level, it’s perfectly possible to mostly open up again and still reduce infections further by extensively tracking every single case and their contacts.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Does anyone have a good idea on what the probability is if you get COVID-19 this year that you will be immune to it next year?

2019-nCoV 6y ago
Would you like next week's lottery numbers too?
nradov 6y ago
Based on recent animal experiments and past experience with other coronaviruses, the probability of immunity lasting at least 12 months is high. However no one can give you a precise number. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/19/science.abc4776.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/19/scie...

newacct583 6y ago

> Considering that the virus is here to stay for a few years at least, how can we blame them for thinking this way? It has been widely reported since the very beginning of the pandemic that the likely time to develop and deploy a vaccine is on the order of 18 months. Yes, it might be more, it might also be less (quite a few are already in testing!). But the idea that this is permanent has never been a feature of any expert advice nor mainstream reporting. The idea that the people who support lockdowns (which is, let's be clear, almost everyone) want to be shut down forever is, itself, a fever swamp hallucination. Stay home until it's beaten, and then open up slowly so we don't lose control again. Much of the world outside the US and the UK, in fact, is already opening up.

rurban 6y ago

Who tells you that? Of course it does disappear, at least until the next winter. Without lockdown much earlier. The problem with London are the aristocratic measures of social distancing. The danger of being caughed at at low distance is exponential. The recommendation is 1-2 meter. The UK did 2m, likely because the ones who came with that idea never use public transport, and want to be safe from the plebs. Face masks don't help at all against direct caughing. only against droplets. 2m distancing doesn't work in public places at all. 1 - 1.5m do work, if in the subway, bus, restaurant, pub somehow. I don't know who else did 2m. And the death mortality is directly proportional to the severity of the measures. Maybe not causal, but those are the numbers. 2m don't help at all. When you are being caughed at, it goes far over 5m, even up to 20m. So social distancing in public places does not help much. indirect caughing via droplets is not that dangerous, transmission via surfaces at very low percentages. there's no known case so far. but hard to prove.

vertex-four 6y ago
Germany did (and is still doing) 2m. I'm actually unaware of anywhere doing 1-1.5m - perhaps the US?
- travolter 6y ago
  Here in Belgium it's 1.5m
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    Ah, cool. Good luck to you all. :)
- majewsky 6y ago
  I'm in Germany. Most signs/posters say 1.5 meters.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    Weird! Where I am in Germany they all say 2 metres.

random32840 6y ago

Cambridge recently released a study estimating that 9% or so of the UK population already have antibodies. You only need to get to ~60% and (assuming it doesn't become endemic) you have herd immunity, it doesn't matter that the virus is here to stay.

oxfordmale 6y ago
There is a paper (not peer reviewed) that suggests that herd immunity starts occurring around 20% as long as mass gatherings remain are banned. If true life could go back to normal a lot quicker.
pvaldes 6y ago
We don't even know still if immunity would last for more than a couple of months, it seems that would be a short duration issue in any case, so the herd immunity plan has some loopholes on it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]