From the last time this was posted, this comment[0] sums it up nicely:
Quote:
This is written by a doctor at the conservative hoover institute. Good to keep in mind, doesn't mean he's wrong. In this case, he's wrong.
He has 5 'facts', I paraphrase them. I will just prejudice this by saying we need widespread testing and PPE, then we can consider opening up. Why don't we have these? Because we are acting like idiots here in the us and we can't organize ourselves.
1. "The vast majority of people do not have a significant risk of dying from covid19". It's true but there will be young people dying who have no other risk factors. The problem is overloading the hospitals with those who are sick. It's the actual problem.
2. "We can protect older at risk people and eliminate hospital overcrowding". Perhaps. But the entire world is failing to do this! Even Sweden, the place without shelter in place and allows open bars is expected to have over 10,000 deaths; similar sized Switzerland will have around 1,800 deaths according to IHME [1] (8.5 mil pop Switz., vs 10 mil in Sweden). In a sense, because they are similar countries with similar medical systems, There are about 8000 people dying in Sweden who probably wouldn't die if they had shut down society like Switzerland. How many extra deaths are worth opening the economy?
3. Herd immunity is prevented by isolation - it's potentially right that more herd immunity could help later on. But we won't know how much immunity without being able to test for antibodies. Every western country trying this strategy seems to not be doing great (see Sweden).
4. "people dying because hospitals stopped doing nonessential procedures". I'm in seattle. We got to the edge of hospital overload. All the docs were filling out their wills, they made plans if they died, there were medical workers married to another medical worker, they were afraid to go home. At least 3 med workers here in Seattle died. I think people died from being afraid to go to hospitals, but there were people with all the prep available (docs!) and they died.
5. We know who the risk population is and we can protect this. This just seems so irritatingly wrong. We know we reduced covid-19 cases by staying home. We are failing to protect people at risk. If we stopped sheltering in place, we'd get more cases. We already can't protect people with the cases we have. Adding more cases does what - it kills more people.
2 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadQuote:
This is written by a doctor at the conservative hoover institute. Good to keep in mind, doesn't mean he's wrong. In this case, he's wrong.
He has 5 'facts', I paraphrase them. I will just prejudice this by saying we need widespread testing and PPE, then we can consider opening up. Why don't we have these? Because we are acting like idiots here in the us and we can't organize ourselves.
1. "The vast majority of people do not have a significant risk of dying from covid19". It's true but there will be young people dying who have no other risk factors. The problem is overloading the hospitals with those who are sick. It's the actual problem.
2. "We can protect older at risk people and eliminate hospital overcrowding". Perhaps. But the entire world is failing to do this! Even Sweden, the place without shelter in place and allows open bars is expected to have over 10,000 deaths; similar sized Switzerland will have around 1,800 deaths according to IHME [1] (8.5 mil pop Switz., vs 10 mil in Sweden). In a sense, because they are similar countries with similar medical systems, There are about 8000 people dying in Sweden who probably wouldn't die if they had shut down society like Switzerland. How many extra deaths are worth opening the economy?
3. Herd immunity is prevented by isolation - it's potentially right that more herd immunity could help later on. But we won't know how much immunity without being able to test for antibodies. Every western country trying this strategy seems to not be doing great (see Sweden).
4. "people dying because hospitals stopped doing nonessential procedures". I'm in seattle. We got to the edge of hospital overload. All the docs were filling out their wills, they made plans if they died, there were medical workers married to another medical worker, they were afraid to go home. At least 3 med workers here in Seattle died. I think people died from being afraid to go to hospitals, but there were people with all the prep available (docs!) and they died.
5. We know who the risk population is and we can protect this. This just seems so irritatingly wrong. We know we reduced covid-19 cases by staying home. We are failing to protect people at risk. If we stopped sheltering in place, we'd get more cases. We already can't protect people with the cases we have. Adding more cases does what - it kills more people.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22976156