For example in Norway, you don't have to isolate. The numbers are relatively low, the clusters are well tracked, the few travelers from dangerous countries like USA have quarantines. You still have to be careful of course.
I've seen this line of thinking a few times, usually in reference to self-quarantine and/or wearing a mask, and it doesn't really make any sense to me. This particular virus being novel and so contagious means there's really no hope of stopping its spread, right? It seems the best we can hope for is to slow it down enough that our healthcare system is able to care for the acute cases properly while also concurrently tending the needs of other illnesses/injuries.
I think the messaging around why we are quarantining and wearing masks has been very confusing and its leading people to hope for things that are literally not possible at this point and encouraging unsustainable behavior.
You might be able to write off a year of staying in your home if you believe the following years will allow a return to normal, but is every high risk person prepared to spend the rest of their lives in their current housing? I'm finding way too many people who seem to think this is going to "be over soon" if the general public does a better job following the guidelines but that doesn't seem realistic. It seems much more likely we're going to see this thing continue for years (3+) to come.
How do you explain the infection rates in Japan, Korea, or Germany, which were never high and remain very low. Or France, Italy or Spain, which were VERY high and have since been well contained?
Yes, we can keep this under control. It takes discipline and care, and some amount of sacrifice. But it can be done. We're just doing it badly.
But no, not "everyone" needs to literally stay home forever. Wear a mask. Stay 2m from other human beings. Stay outside. In particular avoid "static" indoor environments like restaurants (or bars, cruise ships, theaters, etc...) which have been the source of the bulk of local outbreaks. Work from home as much as possible.
Don't write it off as impossible to contain when it's not. We can do much better, and there are tens (or maybe hundreds) of thousands of lives that can be preserved still.
That being said, there's a non-trivial amount of people, particularly vocal celebrities, who have posted things like "If you idiots wore masks this would be over already" (Seth MacFarlane). Then we've got the other commenters on this post who note they have only left their house twice in the past 6 months. Many of these people believe we are only a few "stubborn people being compliant" away from eliminating the threat, which is just patently untrue. It's here to stay.
Who's bossing around anyone? I responded to someone saying "you don't have to stay home" with "you should stay home". I'm just a random guy on the internet.
So, to clarify: will you please stay home?
> you are able to avoid the virus entirely by just taking your own advice.
I'm trying. But no, I can't avoid all interaction like this guy did. Some people can't avoid interaction at all (i.e. they have "essential" jobs they need to be at in person). All of us need to help.
Your attitude, frankly, is precisely why the US is, well, shitting the bed with this virus when almost literally everyone else in the developed world has it contained.
I did help - by nearly dying. I had to receive emergency care for appendicitis and could not get anywhere in my region to perform the appendectomy because my city decided to shut down all elective surgeries. Why? So that 32,000 morbidly obese octogenarians could die with the best-possible PR spin, which spared the state and their hospital administration staff of any wrongdoing.
I developed sepsis and nearly died as a result. I am a healthy 30 year old who went through a common medical emergency with a more than apparent, streamlined medical solution. I was denied basic care and decency, like many people were, because of all this garbage about there being a pandemic.
I don't care what you say - any 30 year old's life is more valuable than your grandparent bound to a nursing home. So, no, fuck that - I will not stay home. I will fight for my ability to stay alive, thank you very much. If a pandemic can bring down a country simply by forcing people to stay home, we deserve to lose everything we've built towards. I posit instead, however, that things would be just fine - and just the way they are right now - if we completely ignored your ridiculously generalized request.
If everybody just said "fuck it" and went outside, hospitals would be far more clogged. It's unlikely you'd be telling us about your experience with appendicitis. That's why people are saying we should avoid unnecessarily going outside--so the next person with appendicitis can get immediate care. Ignoring the request is going to result in more deaths, which we can already see in the absolute, unparalleled disaster that is America where people are saying "who cares go outside." The deaths are still rising fast, while other developed countries are doing far better now than they have been in months.
Either you didn't read what I wrote, or you are being extremely disingenuous. The medical systems of NYC are ALWAYS overwhelmed. Why on earth would you suggest otherwise? What you describe here is exactly what we did in NYC, and none of those outcomes are what happened.
> The deaths are still rising fast, while other developed countries are doing far better now than they have been in months.
Oh go on, tell me about all those tiny little European countries and how it's their regulatory systems - not their puny surface areas - that make this the case.
And I still don't see your point. YES, you should be leaving your house to get emergency medical care. Why does that mean you shouldn't stay home for routine stuff where practical?
All of them. We got the same results everywhere we tried. And of course, it doesn't make any sense. What about shutting down the hospitals to everything except for one sort of ICU procedure, then under-staffing those ICUs makes any sense?
> you should be leaving your house to get emergency medical care. Why does that mean you shouldn't stay home for routine stuff where practical?
I stayed home after I was denied emergency medical care. I had to stay barely alive through an at-home visiting nurses service where I had terrible antibiotics fed into my veins multiple times per day. It was a traumatic experience for everyone involved and it was totally, completely unnecessary. I was denied this treatment, why? Because I might catch COVID-19, or give it to somebody else. But oh, don't worry about the fact that you have sepsis! Just sleep it off, we have old folks we need to kill with more intubations.
The authorities have no idea what is practical, what is routine, or what is appropriate. If they did, I would have had my surgery and not be dealing with the ongoing consequences of waiting as long as they made me wait.
I'm sure it makes sense to you somehow, but it's not remotely rational.
"Staying home" is not what caused the situation you describe, anyway. You're just drawing an irrelevant association which you're responding to emotionally.
> So that 32,000 morbidly obese octogenarians could die with the best-possible PR spin
You have to know that that characterization isn't accurate. You chose a group who you think deserve to die more than you do, which says a lot about your degree of selfishness. But many other people that aren't in that group have also died. What about them? Sounds like you're trying to fool yourself to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Yes, it is. I had to stay home instead of receiving emergency surgery for a routine medical issue because the hospital did not want to pull the surgeon away from the ICU. They pawned me off onto "essential worker" nurses who visited my home as part of a visiting nurse service, exposing me to far more COVID-19 than had I just received the damn surgery in the first place. And that's what caused me to develop sepsis - having heavy IV medications thrown at me instead of just doing the proper thing. Lawsuit is forthcoming.
> You have to know that that characterization isn't accurate.
That's the only characterization that we KNOW is accurate. That's what happened in NYC. Cuomo's response was hailed as the gold standard of COVID-19 responses. And those results were the celebrated ones, the ones to recreate across the country.
You know what Manhattan looks like today because of how seriously we took this dumb pandemic? [0] Yeah, real civilized.
Some people don't realize just how uncivilized NYC is without all the people walking around outside, making the grime, dysfunction, inefficiency, and disorder look acceptable and reasonable.
Why? There's no magic number for risk. The more you isolate the fewer transmission events you see. The more people willing to do that, the faster the spread will stop.
I mean... just look at the virus curves in the rest of the US. We're CLEARLY not staying home enough. We need more people "going overboard", not less.
Stay home.