2 ms·

I'm pretty sure the hardcore red states in the US would have simply soaked up the 0.7% IFR and moved on. That might not have helped with semiconductors, but the

I'm pretty sure the hardcore red states in the US would have simply soaked up the 0.7% IFR and moved on. That might not have helped with semiconductors, but there would probably still be meat and potatoes.

r00fus 5y ago
Sure they'd have soaked up the loss but I strongly doubt a collapsing healthcare system would have resulted in not much "moved on". Delta isn't 0.7 IFR. But even a high IFR doesn't calculate how many hospital/ICU beds are used by infected but not (yet) dead.
elzbardico 5y ago
The IFR for covid is also heavily stratified by age. The latest best estimate from the CDC put it at 0.6% IFR for the general population, but at 0.05% for the 18-49 years group. I am still not completely convinced that the choice of blanket lockdowns instead of focused protection of risky groups didn't make things worse by prolonging the pandemic, a.k.a. "flattening the curve". Old people are not very mobile by nature, and had we kept the economy working, but with government assistance, we would probably be able to improve the social distancing of the elder and the obese for as much as we needed. The rest of the population could live their life as usual, with minimal consequence, and the virus would peter out when it find it difficult to find new host without immunity. Instead we lockdown indiscriminately, and opened up indiscriminately and probably sooner then the ideal, because you simply can't keep thing lockdown for the whole society for long: Your resources are going to exhaust some day.