We are buying time to get more tests, more hospital beds set up, more ventilators, more medicine. The Navy is talking about turning Aircraft Carriers into hospitals. China is getting things under control and switching factories to produce medical supplies. It takes time to build these logistics chains, and we are buying that time by slowing our economy down and implementing social distancing.
I agree that this information is not well-circulated right now.
EDIT: another commenter posted this great link which I will also share: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
When I went out for groceries this week (weekday late evening to avoid crowding) I was the only one in the store wearing a mask. Rationally I knew it was reducing risk for others but I still felt deeply uncomfortable being the odd one out.
Contrast this with places like Taiwan where a mask isn’t considered abnormal, and becomes a matter of course during times like this.
Catching a Corina virus with less than 15 minutes personal contact is very unlikely and it's extraordinary unlikely to be able to acquire a virion and get it to a host cell just walking past an infected perso on the street.
It's not even clear how infectious the surface to face vector is.
Italians and Spaniards running around kissing each other and rubbing cheeks as is their ancient custom likely has more to do with the issues there than anything
Masks are very hard to come by... that might be why it looks like business as usual? I'd love to get some myself, tips appreciated.
It's literally not okay to be wearing gloves in a chemistry/biochemistry building when you push an elevator button.
But I always tossed the gloves before leaving the work area. And usually I'd put on fresh gloves before removing the lead apron.
That wouldn't be workable day to day. You'd probably go through 50-100 gloves per day, doing it right.
My daughter is also sewing cloth mask using a pattern from https://www.craftpassion.com/face-mask-sewing-pattern/
I know these aren't as good, but they probably improve my chances of avoiding SARS-CoV-2 by at least 10% when I have to go outside. I plan on using them once, then leaving them in a bucket in the garage. Once I've used them all up, I'll wash them and by that time (and hopefully the detergent + bleach action), the virus will be dead.
It's no better than avoiding personal contact generally.
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-...
The main risk when getting groceries, unless people are coughing or sneezing in your face, is transfers from your hands, which a surgical or n95/r95/p95 mask does roughly zero to help with. (Now, getting everyone else to wear such a mask would reduce the odds of them contaminating something that would get on your hands, but that's not a benefit of you wearing mask.)
Several states fairly recently passed laws requiring food preparers to wear gloves. Then they backtracked when they realized that they actually decreased safety.
For the average person, a mask likely is an individual benefit. But in a world with insufficient masks and asymmetric risks, social benefit, literally the health of the public, benefits most by limited and targeted use.
Distinguishing between personal and communal risk is critical here. That message has been poorly conveyed, even by ordinarily excellent communicators -- Zynep Tufekci comes to mind.
My comment was in the context of "what can time fix", which would mean supplying healthcare workers and everybody else with masks before letting up. Retail workers wearing masks would go a long way to creating some peer pressure to act differently.
From what I understand the best prevention is to reduce face-to-face contact with other people where possible, but an N95 mask would definitely help prevent contraction in public spaces.
Of course, these measures seem extreme since ~80% of people will barely notice they are infected / have mild symptoms, but it's all about peak-load reduction.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1xBiBVH7U4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw&t=7s
It gives you very limited protection. There's no replacement for just avoiding people, 15 feet away from everyone.
They're mainly good for people who are infected to not transmit pathogens.
When doctors operate on infectious people, they wear hazmat suits. Full face mask, air filter and body condom. You can get a virus through your ears, eyes, mouth, nose, or microabrasions on your skin.
You can wear a mask, but I fear that people will start thinking it's anywhere near full protection. False sense of security is probably not worth even encouraging in a situation this dire.
- Gilead Sciences; remdesivir for treatment; currently in phase 3 clinical trials
- Ascletis Pharma; danoprevir/ritonavir for treatment; currently in phase 1 clinical trials
- Moderna Therapeutics; mRNA vaccine; currently in phase 1 clinical trials
- CanSino Biologics; attenuated vaccine; currently in phase 1 clinical trials
- Arcturus Therapeutics; hybrid RNA vaccine; currently preclinical
- BioNTech; mRNA vaccine; currently preclinical
- CureVac; mRNA vaccine; currently preclinical
- Eli Lilly; isolated antibody treatment; currently preclinical
- GlaxoSmithKline; vaccine adjuvants; currently preclinical
- Inovio Pharmaceuticals; DNA-based vaccine; currently preclinical
- Johnson & Johnson; attenuated vaccine; currently preclinical
- Pfizer; assistance with both vaccines and treatments
- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals; engineered antibody treatment; currently preclinical
- Sanofi; hybrid DNA-based attentuated virus vaccine; currently preclinical
- Takeda; isolated antibody treatment; currently preclinical
- Vir Biotechnology; isolated antibody treatment; currently preclinical
Most of these are in very early stages, but I'm optimistic that that speed of development of both treatments and vaccines will exceed the consensus expectations.
This, along with recent advancements in bioengineering will, I believe, lead to surprisingly rapid progress.
(The best current mouse models for human coronavirus are not very good; the mice are generally resistant to the virus, so it's difficult to determine whether a vaccine or treatment is working.)
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/05/coronavirus-labs-scrambl...
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-star...
Worse yet is that if we let the measures off, we just get the same curve later. A bit lower at peak, but still exceeding healthcare capacity several times (say, 6x rather than 8x, if we do a 5-month lockdown).
But this still saves lives - just not anywhere as many as we could have saved if we contained it. It also gives us a chance to build more hospitals, manufacture more ventilators etc - although it still won't catch up with demand.
The best endgame is that we either get a vaccine, or enough tests to test everybody, and then do targeted quarantine from there.
Also locking down everything DOES stop the exponential spread. That's the whole point. If you don't see other people, you aren't spreading the disease, reducing the rate of new infections. If each infected person infects less than 1 other person on average, we'll have stopped the spread. China and SK have already succeeded in this.
This isn't exactly correct. It means that, eventually, the spread would die out even if there were an infinite number of potential hosts. But it's still spreading. If that number is exactly 1, ~everyone will still end up getting infected. If it's just a bit below 1, it will behave as a decaying exponential but will still take a long time to die out.
And I wasn't trying to dispute your claim that the "best endgame" is the goal, merely clarify it - and also point out that even then, we will still see our healthcare overwhelmed, and a lot of people will still die because they will be rationed out of the system. People who wouldn't have died if we locked things down when containment was still realistic - so I consider them all preventable deaths that we have failed to prevent as a society.
To be absolutely clear: a lockdown is still our best bet, and the lives it'll save are worth it.
Giving up and attempting to resume normal activity is also unacceptable, full stop.
The best/latest explanation I've seen is https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th.... Please read it (everyone, not just parent) if you haven't already.
Then if you're frustrated that your political leaders aren't moving to make best use of your sacrifice... let them know!
I will see what my MP has to say about it. Couldn't find a UK petition about it.
The details of managing the economics are more than a footnote, but if the worst possible peak isn't avoided everything else becomes irrelevant, because there's no surviving economy to speak of - except maybe one of local barter.
The economics are not externalities. The virus is.
The economics are a social and political choice. They don't actually require money or other symbols, although they'll probably be mediated through for reasons of comfort and familiarity.
They require enough basic provision of food and services to keep people alive, and enough provision of shelter to keep people from rioting, especially once winter comes.
The worst possible economic outcome - after a Killer Peak - is a critical mass of angry and hopeless people with nothing to lose.
Realistically, avoiding that will probably mean helicopter money and aggressive price controls to prevent gouging and profiteering. The usual rules about inflation won't apply because the alternative will be a cratering depression and mass deflation which will do far more harm to the economy than hand-outs will.
It may also mean something worse, like some form of civil conscription to get essential work done. I really hope that doesn't happen, not just because it's better to call for volunteers first, but because it's so easy to abuse politically.
But it's also true this has the potential to become the equivalent of a war time situation, and in extremis the rules may need to change to keep food+lights happening.
Shit choices. But it's a shit situation, and IMO there's no chance of business as usual returning for quite some time.
Perhaps the argument would be better stated: We need to balance saving lives and maintaining the thin veneer that is our economy.
That isn't quite as inspiring, but perhaps that is reality? Even if our economy is a "veneer" we still need it. I find it less compelling though. I'm far more willing to trade lives for a "strong economy" than I am to trade lives for "the illusion of a strong economy".
"Grandma and Grandpa died at home without medical support, but at least our economy is 'strong', so strong it could probably survive weeks of social distancing!"
If our "prize" for sacrificing hundreds of thousands of elderly to an exceptionally uncomfortable death is an economy we all know can't handle even a minor pandemic and is incapable of doing what China and other countries have done, that will be a sad trade.
The more interesting question is how much of our economy is literally waste. I suspect we'll find out.
What we’re learning globally to a greater or lesser extent is that our economies are not resilient. That capitalism of various kinds has failed us. And that when it comes down to it we need one another to give a shit about each other.
Unfortunately, even the best economic system can't disguise the fact that fewer people working means fewer products and services are available.
There are going to be trillions of dollars spent attempting to bail out the economies of the world.
Airlines, Bars, Restaurants, Hotels, Cruises, Conferences, Taxies, Hair Salons, Chiropractors, dozens more...
That's 10s of millions of jobs. Livelihoods ruined.
Maybe your job is safe. Mine too. But you have to put yourself in the shoes of someone who is being financially ruined, and whose life expectancy will likely be greatly diminished as a result.
There are major tradeoffs here.
Bars and restaurants will re-open, those are always in high demand, and easy to start.
Hotels have facilities and real estate that are valuable, and should bounce back once people feel comfortable traveling again.
Cruises can die in a fire. They've always been hotbeds of disease, and are now pretty much tainted.
Conferences might switch permanently to a virtual methodology as Apple is doing with WWDC. This could increase the reach of the conference since it's insanely expensive, as well as hard to get tickets.
Taxis (including Uber/Lyft), hair salons, all easy to restart, and demand will bounce back. Chiropractors are frauds, so I don't care if they fail.
A conference means people travelling, hotel rooms, meals in restaurants, good dresses, presents for the family... It may be better for society to make them on-line (it would be better for the environment, for example), but the economic impact would be huge.
It's interesting that paying people's rent for them is on the table, but denying rent to the literal rent-seekers isn't. As though ensuring those who collect rent get their rent is more important than keeping people in homes.
do you imagine every tenant's landlord is a literal scrooge mcduck?
my elderly neighbors rent their basement out. should they just be told they don't get paid for a few months?
my retired parents own REITs, and pay their bills with those dividends. if the real estate companies don't get paid, there's no dividends, and then my parents are buying cat food.
pensions and retirement funds across the country rely on rents coming in.
this "just suspend rents" line would be less insane if you'd acknowledge there are trade-offs to it.
Eviction/foreclosure bans have in many places been adopted along with shelter-in-place orders.
> Hard to practice social distancing in a homeless shelter and get access to adequate nutrition, especially if they become overpopulated
Why California’s emergency approach includes the power to seize hotels to rapidly expand shelter capacity (and why SF is in negotiations to buy hotel space for an extended time for that purpose.)
They are simply pausing evictions. So, you lose your job due to the pandemic and as soon as it has improved then you still get kicked out. I don't think that is much relief, especially if there is another wave.
Here is the order:
https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-52...
> Why California’s emergency approach includes the power to seize hotels to rapidly expand shelter capacity (and why SF is in negotiations to buy hotel space for an extended time for that purpose.)
All I've seen is for quarantine sites, not for shelters.
He ignores the "economy", he says that layoffs are necessary, which is to basically suggest that the economy will adapt.
And everywhere you have internet commenters "But what about the economy?" and citing serious consequences of recession/depression in order to criticize isolation/quarantine/lockdown.
Edit: Here’s the old paper from 2007 the CDC is using to inform some of the policy around “flattening the curve” below hospital capacity. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425
I've been reading every whitepaper and journal publication I can find on this disease.
The picture that I'm seeing is that this disease is both more infectious (higher R0) and less deadly than previously thought.
In light of those facts I am fairly convinced the lockdowns and resulting economic impacts will be worse than just isolating the most vulnerable and letting the rest of the population go about their business.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v... (Suggests the R0 is much higher and IFR much lower than reported)
https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C... (shows that the people dying are very old and very sick already. Also given the fact that part of the population is so impacted strongly suggests the disease is much more widespread)
Also, all of the celebrities, politicians and athletes that are testing positive are proof, in my opinion, of how wide this has gone.
I'm astonished how many people think that they know better how to respond than the professional epidemiologists. If anything the response actually enacted is tempered from what they recommend by the politicians.
If I should find some positive in this over-response, that would be the benefit for the environment due to less pollution. If we could reduce emissions to the current level, the climate would be so much better for it.
The problem with this disease is that while many people don't die, they require intensive care. As we can see in Italy currently this will overwhelm hospitals at some point (and Italy has already put drastic measures into place). At that point it becomes a huge problem for society: a lot of people are dying and the health system doesn't work anymore. People die because of appendicitis etc.
We will all catch this unless we stay locked up until the vaccine comes.
So, expect everyone to catch it.
Obviously travel etc. gum up this plan but instead of containment or mitigation we can move to a "time gapped reset" policy that predicts a continuous growth/halt cycle for the virus instead of pointlessly trying to eradicate it completely.
Loss of life to the inner vs loss of life caused by economic consequences, I've seen that argument before and it's not entirely unappealing. But wherever I saw it there was the unspoken assumption that the economy would just continue completely unaffected by an uncontrolled epidemic. But much of the economic damage will be there no matter which path you take. There are likely same areas where a short, hard wave would even be worse, economically, than a controlled lockdown. The delta is even harder to estimate than the cost of slowdown strategies, but an argument that only looks at the economic cost of one option is flawed.
Personally, given the choice, I'd take option C, "show me a rerun of 2019". Unfortunately this isn't in the cards that we are dealt.
I think the problem with this very common attitude is the demand for immediate answers, or else. It's an ultimatum.
We don't expect programmers and engineers to come up with complete, ready-to-commit solutions to a complex problem immediately. Thinking like a consumer doesn't help. An alternative is to demand transparency and to be engaged in the process of decision making. But that requires an attitude/intellectual realignment.
What's concerning about the current messaging is that it's not clear whether it's incorporated the underlying limits to how long people will tolerate a lockdown. An ultimatum is the right framing; decisionmakers need to know, and we need to know they know, that "then we'll lock down for 6 months" is not part of the solution space.
Most people aren’t willing to explicitly discuss how many lives it’s worth to be allowed to hug your mother, so for general consumption it must be framed in absolutes. There’s a number of weeks past which the cost is unacceptable and I’m joining the mob at City Hall, and that number is not in the double digits.
This was along the lines of my first thoughts as well. Theoretically, we want to maximize the usage of our medical resources (personnel, reusable supplies such as bed space, non-reusable supplies such as medication that become available at a variable rate), to keep just enough below the capacity to handle the needs and allow for some spikes (if we can even get it that low).
To my eyes, that calls for the ability to reassess and shift directives for the public (that is, maybe ease up on shelter-in-place next week, but put it back the week after), track and optimize resource flow, and coordination between locales. As a national level emergency, it makes sense there would be national level coordination on how to deal with it. Instead it appears we have governors and mayors making their own calls on what to do based on what advice they are personally getting, and the health care system is just struggling to figure out what to do.
What we don't have is any leadership putting forth an actual plan, or any real indication that they are even attempting to do so, or that if they are that they're putting any real teeth behind making sure officials are on board.
And no the vaccine is still too far in the future so the idea that the lockdown is biding time until the vaccine is ready is ridiculous.
Why have we all (I'm speaking for people in the USA) immediately bought into the idea that shutting down out lives and the economy is the only way to combat this thing? South Korea didn't shut everything down in an authoritarian fashion, and they already have this thing beat. I know, not a fair comparison, USA is way bigger, less experienced in handling disease outbreaks, different governments, etc, etc. But aren't there smarter ways we can handle this than just blanket isolation & lock downs?
From the CDC:
"Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic."
So we know from South Korea's example it is possible to hit acceleration phase, execute a smart plan of attack, and have it carry you into deceleration, without blanket lock downs. Lock downs can still be an effective tool, and should be used in areas seeing steep acceleration to take pressure off the medical system.
Our plan doesn't have to be exactly the same, but we can learn from theirs. Seems like nobody is even trying to think out of the box. We just accepted that we have to turn our country into an authoritarian state and that's the only way to beat this.
Focusing on making testing widely and easily accessible is key for sure. If people could easily get a test, it would eliminate a lot of the fear/ uncertainly that is gripping everyone. Healthy people who are at low risk to get severe reactions could go about there lives normally, while still practicing 'social distancing' in public, not locked away in their homes in fear
Not if you don't have as advanced infrastructure, quick government, and decisive politicians like Korea, and 1/4th of the country is in third world conditions regarding access to healthcare, or even shelter, etc.
You don't need tests for that, just common sense. If you have low risk, by all means keep working while keeping high sanitary precautions. It's unrealistic to expect all people to stay at home, hence those of us who are likely to get a mild COVID-19 case should make sure the people at risk or already sick have services while they stay at home.
If you're healthy, take precautions and still get COVID-19, after recovering you become another line of defense with your new immunity.
That being said, tests are very important, but don't wait for free and widely available tests to decide if you can keep working, your circumstances decide that.
You're allowing people to get infected, but reducing the rate at which they get infected, thus allowing your healthcare system to cope with the demand while the rest of society slowly builds immunity.
My girlfriend’s brother in-law owns a large, successful restaurant in the city next door. They city has only 1 confirmed case, and that guy got it from traveling to Italy. Still the governor threw a blanket ban on restaurant dining rooms, and they are forced to lay off most of their workforce.
I doubt his business will fail, but he told me he already knew of two other restaurants in the city that already went out of business because of such low traffic even before the lockdown. Seems like we should implement these bans in a more targeted way.
Sorry you are inconvenienced.
* Rapidly expand healthcare capacity
* Develop a vaccine
* Build out a testing infrastructure that allows for targeted containment, rapid response, and chain-of-infection tracing without needing a full lockdown
With enough testing and sufficient frequency of testing, isolating just the people who test positive (and perhaps their contacts) should be enough to stop exponential growth, which means we could mostly return to normal life.
I liken it to the immune system. Shutting things down can work for a short period but if the system goes into a full panic it begins attacking good cells and shutting down organs and the host dies a slow, painful death.
We need to be using this bought time to building medical equipment, beds and places to put them, manufacturing existing therapies to help, training people to use specific equipment, creating a system for the most vulnerable to quarantine but get food, medicine, safely as they wait for acceptable safety to them.
We can’t lock down for months and months. People will eventually be fed up, see their risk is low, and throw the dice. The economy can’t grind to halt for a long time.
We need to prepare to minimize death and we need to do it now. Lockdown is not much of a strategy or something that will work beyond a few weeks before people ignore it massively.
Would this work for ya?
But the question in your third paragraph "what is being done with the time we're buying" could be restated as "what are we getting for our loss in economic output _in terms of economic output_?' That's not what we are doing, we are giving up economic output, not getting it. Of course any schemes/inventions/techniques that increase the coefficient of return of this trade off would be welcome, but doesn't change the fundamental direction of the tradeoff.
And that's not to say we are doing nothing at all with that time. Maybe we have "more time to develop a vaccine", or "time to make ventillators."? But those _are_ economic outputs. Those actions trade back lives (via increased transmission rates) for production of utilities that we believe will save lives in an equation that nets a positive. And it's not to say that people won't do some productive things during this (like the memes of inventing calculus in isolation or whatever), but for sure society is reducing it's overall economic output.
So from this point on the questions (and threats of defection) you raise kinda presuppose that trading economic production for saving lives is not worth it (at whatever ratio you're expecting). Potentially this is because you expect higher economic costs/lower life savings than the generally accepted projections, or because you value life less, or you believe the economic loss will lead to greater loss of life long term. I think the burden then is on you to either produce better projections, or promote candidates into government/leadership positions that share your moral outlook, or formulate and promulgate a model that shows the dramatic effects you expect due to the economic loss.
To put it another way, a simplified answer to 'what are we doing with the time' could be 'approximately nothing', and our society at large seems to be on board with that trade. If you're not, change my/our mind.
That's not true. Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick. And realistically, if you can keep the disease progression spread out over a long period of time, it means you've stopped the exponential growth (i.e. R0 <= 1), and it isn't that much harder to actually contain it.
What we want to do is to contain it using blanket measures until we can get our act together with large scale testing, contact tracing, and basic sanitation measures (e.g. general mask wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing by the public without needing to lock everything down). This was where China got to after an early lockdown, and it's where South Korea has always been (without the need for a massive lockdown in the first place). Then in a year hopefully the disease can be stopped altogether with mass vaccination.
Keeping in mind that something like 80% of people will only experience mild symptoms, does this assertion still hold?
a) Saves millions of lives.
b) Allows researchers to develop, produce and distribute a safe vaccine.
Medium term, we can more properly organize and distribute medical resources, assemble temporary hospitals, learn more about current anti-virals to better manage it, etc. Allowing even more steps towards normalcy.
The vaccine is immensely important, but there are major steps before then that we don't have to be completely locked down waiting for.
Universal Mask Wearing Is the Quickest Way to Restart the California Economy
We urgently need universal mask wearing to slow down the spread of COVID-19 and restore our economy.
This is CDC's advice on how healthcare providers can protect themselves if they suspect that a patient has COVID-19:
" Assess and triage these patients with acute respiratory symptoms and risk factors for COVID-19 to minimize chances of exposure, including placing a facemask on the patient and placing them in an examination room with the door closed." (What Healthcare Personnel Should Know about Caring for Patients with Confirmed or Possible COVID-19 Infection https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/caring-for-pat...)
If a facemask on a patient can protect the doctor in close proximity, it surely can also protect the general public. Yet the message from our nation's leadership is that mask wearing is ineffective for the general public (Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...). Yes, it is not 100% effective in protecting an individual from others, but it is absolutely effective in protecting the general public from a potential patient. This is the herd immunity we can quickly achieve without waiting for a vaccine:
"An 80% compliance rate essentially eliminated the influenza outbreak. " (Modeling the Effectiveness of Respiratory Protective Devices in Reducing Influenza Outbreak https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968)
California is in a unique place to lead the nation and restore its own economy. We have a large Asian population that are receptive to mask wearing but are wary of being singled out. We have technology companies that can come up with solutions for mask making. We have idled workers that can be quickly retrained to jumpstart mask manufacturing. China was able to ramp up production 12 times in February alone. We can do it too.
What we need to do is to legally require people to wear masks in public and in the workplace to protect each other. We don't need to wear N95 respirators that are hard to use and that should rightly be reserved for medical workers; we can wear masks that are much more breathable to protect others from our own droplets. By making it a legal requirement, companies like Tesla will be motivated to either quickly secure masks from suppliers or, better yet, start making and supplying masks for their own employees and for the public. Asian countries have shown that universal mask wearing can prevent large outbreaks and slow down the spread of the disease without shutting down their economy. Let's learn from their experience. Governor Newsom should immediately work on this with the state legislature in order to lead us to a speedy recovery.
Right now there's a huge shortage and we still have a very small number of cases--it's all people stockpiling and using them where it's not as critical.
Like you say, after we can replenish the supply I'm sure it will be more commonplace.
[0] https://medium.com/@matthiassamwald/promoting-simple-do-it-y...
But right now no government dares suggest any vision past a few months.
By winter we'd have more equipment, masks, drugs tested, doctors taking a break, etc. The big spread also stops in warmer climate.
>World governments should clarify this matter by saying that a bad winter resurgence, months after nations are fatigued with lockdown, is definitely not going to happen.
Of course it's possible and very likely to happen. The answer is not no lockdown, it's a second lockdown then as the need arises.
I get that right now we're buying time. My current understanding is that we're trying to slow the spread of the disease because the existing health care system was going to quickly collapse under the weight; whether or not that should have been the case or not is a discussion for another day. I also understand that we are -not- trying to contain the disease, just "serialize" its progression (so to speak) through the population.
Assuming that understanding is sufficiently correct, what I'm not hearing enough of is what is being done with the time we're buying. Many in the Hacker News audience likes to talk about "externalities" and how the wise appreciates those externalities in their actions. Shutting down the economy has externalities; those externatlities can be life or death as well. If the strategy of those implementing the "shelter in place" is one of just waiting it out: then I'm going to be off the wagon fairly quickly. I want to start hearing strategies that start to address the issues of how we minimize impacts of this problem. I want to know what we're buying for the pain that we're being sold on. I want to know when people estimate that the societal damages of the illness start to be outweighed by the damages of our response.
I see the admin of the site suggesting we're buying time for these things. I want to start hearing this from the officials making policy.