3 ms·

> So, big waste, nothing gained, Are you asserting that case count in the US would be the exact same without Shelter in place?

• StillBored 6y ago
  We are "flattening the curve", which AFAIK isn't actually yet changing the area under the curve. About the only thing that is changing WRT medical treatment (AFAIK) seems to be putting fewer people on ventilators. Because it turns out its not a good idea to be putting people who are surviving on O2 on a ventilator just because their O2 saturation is a bit low. A change that would have happened naturally if we ran out of ventilators. There might also be some drug studies coming along that provide some better treatment guidelines as well, but those don't seem to be particularly positive either. So maybe in a year we will be able to decrease the mortality rate by 50%, but again, you have to slow it sufficiently to save those 50%. So, yes we might be saving lives, but that is a small fraction of the total rates. Aka, we might be changing the death rate from 2% to 1.8%.. But, since we are mostly talking about the aged and infirm, its a herd culling. So you might be giving .2% another year or two to live until they die from other causes. Which is why, there is a persistent bit of pessimism being heard from certain parts of the research community warning that this might be more like the flu than we are willing to admit. AKA, its possibly going to be with us for a long time. We have spent the last 100 years working on flu vaccines and treatments and lowered the fatality rate by maybe 90%. That 60k deaths a year in the US are with large parts of the population being vaccinated, and piles of treatment options.