Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by nradov on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @03:11PM (#24214812)

What specific long-term gain will we achieve with that short-term sacrifice? Sure we can keep most gyms closed for several more months, and that might marginally reduce the spread of the virus for a while. But the virus is now endemic and will be with us essentially forever. We have to reopen gyms eventually, and then we'll be right back where we started. As long as the curve has been flattened sufficiently and the healthcare system isn't overwhelmed then what are we really accomplishing by waiting?

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Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by Raidion on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @04:56PM (#24216327)

I think you answered your own question: "As long as the curve has been flattened sufficiently and the healthcare system isn't overwhelmed"

The difference between "overwhelmed" and "not overwhelmed" is pretty subtle. You can measure this in ICU beds and hospital capacity, but that's not sustainable. You have to start asking "How many hours are health care workers working?". You also have to ask, if we did have any setbacks/outbreaks, what buffer do we have in terms of people and PPE availability?

You can't run the system at the red line, it's not sustainable. And any distance between our current capactity and that red line is somewhat open to interpretation, but I bet that distance feels a lot smaller for our EMTs and Doctors than it does for the average person on HN.

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Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by nradov on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @05:24PM (#24216751)

The healthcare system isn't running at the red line. Almost all hospitals have adequate capacity. Most healthcare providers are still working shorter than normal hours. So your concerns are unfounded.

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Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by arkh on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @05:57PM (#24217192)

And let's not forget all the people who decided to postpone care during COVID: most of them will have worsened conditions once they get to some hospital. The fearmongering may add a lot of avoidable deaths: cardiac problems not taking seriously, cancer found too late etc.

In April doctors were pondering why there was 40% to 60% heart attack patients. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doc...

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Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by MagnumOpus on Thursday August 20, 2020 @07:12AM (#24222021)

> What specific long-term gain will we achieve with that short-term sacrifice

It's a collective action problem. If everyone keeps to mask mandate and social distancing for a month, there is no need to close gyms and schools after. Germany and Italy are fine now with maybe ten deaths a day.

If 20% of the population keeps ignoring the recommendations because they don't give a flying fuck about the society they live in, R0 will stay above 1 forever and half of your neighbourhood will see their grandparents die in the next year.

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Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition by nradov on Thursday August 20, 2020 @09:09AM (#24222811)

It seems that not everyone in Germany is wearing masks and social distancing.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-protests-coronavirus/a-5445665...

Pandemic control measures can temporarily suppress R0, but as soon as those measures are lifted the contagion picks up again.

The average age of grandparents in the US is about 65. The actual infection fatality rate for that age group is 1.3%. That's bad, but nowhere near half the neighborhood.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...

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