To go one step further, it's to reduce the mortality rate. Mortality when everyone has access to a respirator is one thing. Mortality when hospitals must deny care to thousands is another.
Distancing slows down the rate so we spend more time in the first scenario. (It's too late, now, to entirely avoid it.)
But lot more have been brought to hospitals for no real reason, once they were there they couldn't be sent home anymore
In fact home confinement has increased a lot once they understood not everyone was in need of medical attention
Hell, we even tested people with no symptoms at the beginning because they said they weren't feeling fine or one of their acquittance had flu in the previous week's
That of course became immediately problematic for the healthcare system
Part of the reason mortality rates are so high among the elderly, though, is the fact that they are de-prioritized in cases when there is a scarcity of beds, ventilators, or other stuff. Doctors are forced to concentrate efforts on people with better survival chances, which are typically the youngest.
> home confinement has increased a lot once they understood not everyone was in need of medical attention
This is a double-edged sword though. My father has some contacts in the health service near Bergamo (he was a nurse himself etc etc), and he was told some cases don't even make it to the hospital - they go from cough to full-on pneumonia in less than two hours, and die on the ambulance. They now refer to late afternoon as the critical shift, when the stream of intakes spikes and ensuring they are all treated becomes extremely hard. A lot of these cases might have been saved had they been monitored full-time in a hospital.
From cough to full pneumonia in few ours sounds made up
But people with severe pneumonia that die in the ambulance is not rare
Pneumonia still kills 13 thousands people every year in Italy
Pneumonia has a very high mortality rate, the average for EU is 25/100 thousands while covid-19 is at 2/100 thousands
The flu kills between 9 and 10 thousands people every year in Italy
Most die home because nobody goes to the doctor for a flu usually
If they did, even with light symptoms, we would have the same situation we are having now
In bad epidemic years it kills way more in Italy. 24k in 2017 epidemic
You are absolutely right
This is absolutely NOT TRUE
They died because prior conditions made them weaker and a pneumonia at 84 is as deadly as a bullet in the head
Nobody is left to die in Italy
My parents have worked in the healthcare for 40 years before retiring, here we try to save everybody at the best of our abilities
- Over time, we will come up with more effective treatments and perhaps a vaccine. We will likely also have more equipment like ventilators and protective gear at our disposal.
- More people will have had it and built up some level of immunity, and "herd immunity" means it will not spread as quickly.
And what does it mean to quarantine people? How are they fed? Can they go outside?
You can't get the virus walking down the street past an infected person.
sources: 1. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3551823-just-seniors-not-clear
2. [original] https://www.ad.nl/dossier-coronavirus/40-a-50-nederlandse-co...
Vulnerable or not, the rest of the nation is a transmission vector. Also, not all deaths happen among the identified vulnerable groups: "they are very very unlikely to have anything bad happen" is completely false.
Even assuming a 4% death rate (too high for the less vulnerable), that's a 96% chance of not having the worst possible consequences. So I'd say that's "very unlikely" for them.
This isn't the flu, and it's possible for even people in their teens to die (true of the flu as well), but let's not act like it's the likely outcome.
I've seen numbers in the 0.2% range for younger (< 39) age cohorts. That's twice as deadly as the flu (0.1%) but IMO not "shut society down" levels of bad for people in that age group.