This isn't going to end until we reach herd immunity. Herd immunity doesn't imply all of us get infected. And the fatalities of this are not among a random 1%, it's primarily known groups that can be quarantined or protected separately.

Healthy 30 year olds are ending up in the ICU. Many of them will have organ damage that will take years or may never heal. We can eradicate like New Zealand did. We choose not to. Is bugchasing really such a common kink?

Healthy 30 year olds die from traffic accidents. Do you yearn for life in which all risk is avoided at all costs, and do you think it’s proper to force that on everyone else?

If 0.5٪ of the population was dying in a car accident every year you can be sure there would be a massive safety effort.

0.5% of 30 year olds is not going to the hospital for Covid-19 by a long shot.

In the Netherlands there are approximately 1.100.000 people between 30 and 34 years old (inclusive). Of those people 150 entered the hospital. That’s 0.01%. Most of these people are not dying (in fact only 3 of them did, which is 0.0003%) and while there isn’t a number of people with the chronic problems it definitely isn’t all of them.

By the way slightly more than 0.1% of the population dies every year due to smoking. I have yet to see the massive safety efforts.

Only a fraction of those 1 100 000 individuals were infected until now.Estimates based on antibody tests hover around 3% infected.

In the Netherlands the estimates are actually about 10% so if you really stretch it you end up with 0.1% hospitalized, which still is not near your 0.5%

As far as I've read, the number of healthy 30 year olds who went to the ICU and had organ damage is vanishingly small. Is there somewhere this is happening in any statistically significant way? There's a lot of ways a healthy 30 year can die yet only one particular way is getting any attention.

>We can eradicate like New Zealand did.

Respectfully, I do not agree. New Zealand went on lockdown March 23 when they jumped overnight from 66 to 102 confirmed cases. They have 1144 as of yesterday.

There are now 1.3 million cases in the U.S., almost that many in Western Europe. There are not even enough tests to know the real number. Antibody tests are indicating that a couple tens of millions of people may have already been exposed.

I know of no precedent for using quarantines to eradicating a disease that is already so widespread. There is no evidence that such a thing is possible. It would have been at some point in the past, when there were some hundreds of known cases, but not any more.

What to do from this moment forward? Did you mean to imply that you thought we could stay locked down until this is eradicated?

I wonder if there are models that can give us covid predictions based on continuing the existing lockdowns versus easing of lockdowns, with a vaccine in 12 months versus a vaccine in 4 years, and estimated economic and social costs of lockdowns. I don't think it's responsible to make these big decisions without objectively weighing all the data, and the data is fuzzy, refined over time. (Although I am pleased at how much data is publicly available.)

It was possible. We didn't do it. Now we can mount a massive effort to stamp it out but were aren't. This isn't inrvitable.

It ends way before herd immunity with other viruses.

Not all viruses have symptom-less 14-day periods where someone can be infected and spreading it to others without knowing.

But yes, it could end before herd immunity. Or it could be like the flu, and mutate / continue indefinitely.

>Or it could be like the flu, and mutate / continue indefinitely.

I gather that is unlikely, coronaviruses don't mutate like the flu.

In fact, according to experts, it is most likely that this coronavirus will decrease in severity over time and become endemic like the other several coronaviruses that are responsible for 15% of common colds. Or, alternatively, occasionally returning like a bad flu year. https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

I remember reading in other places this may have happened before, something about a really bad flu year in the 1870's that may have been another coronavirus introducing itself to humanity.

Just to be precise: 14 days is not the median. The median is far lower (4-6 days), and I think we need studies on how early during the asymptomatic period one can actually spread the virus, because last I heard (but I lack reliable evidence), it was 2 or 3 days before symptoms showed up.

>we would happily let this wash over the whole population and kill 1% of us

Thats exactly what will happen. Based on sampling its much much less like .1% to .5% but there not much of an option. It would be like saying no one should smoke or drive cause people will die.