Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by daenz on Sunday May 17, 2020 @01:59PM
(#23213777)
Bingo. It seemed like most people were on board with the idea of flattening the curve because it was a compromise: don't overwhelm the healthcare system, but continue life as much as possible. No unnecessary extra deaths, but no unnecessary shutdowns. Now we seem to have thrown that message out the window completely and it feels super deceptive.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by asdf123wtf on Sunday May 17, 2020 @02:31PM
(#23214089)
I think flattening the curve was always more generally about creating a time delay so that progress could be made on multiple fronts.
It was about health care capacity. It was also about testing capacity. It was also about producing/procuring PPE and logistical planning for all the things to come. It was also to learn more about this thing, since there are so many unknowns.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by Buttons840 on Sunday May 17, 2020 @04:49PM
(#23215339)
Perhaps "flatten the curve" was given as a supporting argument for what we needed to do first, not as the only thing we needed to do.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by davidw on Sunday May 17, 2020 @02:27PM
(#23214041)
> whose effectiveness in general is TBD
Only if you don't look at countries where it seems to be working pretty well, mostly in Asia.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by SpicyLemonZest on Sunday May 17, 2020 @03:59PM
(#23214881)
But those countries don't actually believe contact tracing is effective. When China sees a cluster of cases, they don't say "it's cool because contact tracing will protect us", they lock down the city until the cluster goes away.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by davidw on Sunday May 17, 2020 @05:57PM
(#23215870)
You are lumping in a lot of quite diverse places. China and South Korea took quite different approaches. China's is, as you state, very blunt. South Korea has used contact tracing to good effect.
My comment wasn't "all countries in Asia", it was about countries in Asia using contact tracing well.
>My understanding at the start of lockdowns was that these were intended to "bend the curve" so we could get control of the situation and then allow the virus to spread at a rate that would not overwhelm healthcare capacity.
Yes. The standard argument went along the lines of we have to limit movement and interactions for a while so that we can "flatten the curve" and not overwhelm the hospital system. Now that that has happened in most cases, though, the goalpost has moved towards the availability of a hopefully effective vaccine in the next year or two [ADDED: and/or maybe effective testing/tracing whose effectiveness in general is TBD]. Which, even if we assume some behaviors change, doesn't seem like a practical long-term strategy.