Fieldy409 said:
Yeah but like, I might be vulnerable(I was a premature baby and could have had chronic bronchitis), and my parents certainly are. I'm not going out when they give the all clear I'ma isolate for a couple more weeks at least as much as I can and I wager millions or even billions will do the same. Sure there will be people dancing in the streets probably but many of us will see what's happening and refuse to risk us and our loved ones for the economy.
So how much will this even save the economy? It's taking a huge hit no matter what.
a) I disagree with Agema about waiting for a vaccine. I think cases are being undercounted by a lot, and within a couple months there won't be enough vulnerable people left to have a spike again. Consider the swine flu, there were like 10k deaths in the US, tens to hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases, but with hindsight and antibody testing, the CDC estimates 60 million people contracted swine flu that year. I'm not saying that and this are comparable in severity, but it's an illustration that a deadly disease can work its way through a population while being measured in less than 1% of those who ultimately develop an immunity. They've only recently started doing the statistically appropriate testing to estimate how much cov-sars-2 has penetrated the world population, we could easily already be through half of everyone alive and just not know it yet. Conventional wisdom suggests its wise to plan ahead, but in this circumstance, I recommend only worrying about 1 day at a time as the information might change dramatically at any moment. I've heard people planning on not sending their kids back to school
in the fall due to fears of covid-19, and even if that ends up being appropriate, there's absolutely no reason to think about that now.
b) It's not about the economic hit. It really isn't. Unemployment can lead to depression and suicide regardless of whether people's basic needs are met. Productivity is a real psychological human need, and people without specific talents can't even volunteer in lockdown. Chronic anxiety is a serious problem, people living for months in fear of the virus are going to develop issues, and weaken their immune system if they were to get sick. Children are missing out on formative socialization. Infrastructure in some places is being disregarded. Letting open the gates on returning to normalcy is a risk to your loved ones, that is true. Locking them inside is also a risk to your loved ones. The more time that passes, the lower the first risk becomes, and the higher the second risk becomes, and wherever the first risk is less than the second, we'll open things back up. It's not just an economic issue to do otherwise.
Fieldy409 said:
https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+19+deaths&oq=covid+19+deaths&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.7109j0j4&client=ms-android-telstra-au-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#wptab=s:H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLVT9c3NMwySk6OL8zJecTozS3w8sc9YSmnSWtOXmO04eIKzsgvd80rySypFNLjYoOyVLgEpVB1ajBI8XOhCvHsYuL2SE3MKckILkksKV7EKpicX5Sfl1iWWVRarFAMEgMAoubRkIEAAAA
So what the hell is going on with those recovery to death ratios? It looks like in some countries your odds of recovery are lower than 50% and in other countries you have well over 90% odds of surving.....
Those numbers are basically meaningless. If one country does a lot of testing in non-hospitalized cases, and follows up to mark off when they recover, they'll have a high recovery rate. If another country tests only the people in critical condition, they'll have a terrible recovery rate. We're just not able to know in this moment what the real danger to any individual is.