Re:Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf]
by umanwizard on Thursday October 22, 2020 @10:31AM
(#24858413)
Your parent comment was talking about how mild the virus is for most people who get it, not about how many cases there are. So I don’t think the growth rate is relevant.
Re:Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf]
by nobody9999 on Thursday October 22, 2020 @11:02AM
(#24858744)
>Your parent comment was talking about how mild the virus is for most people who get it, not about how many cases there are. So I don’t think the growth rate is relevant.
An interesting point. However, I'd posit that the growth rate is of paramount importance -- not because many will have mild symptoms, but because a small portion of those who contract COVID-19 will die or have serious long-term effects.
As the number of cases grow, the number of folks who die/suffer serious long-term effects will grow along with them.
Re:Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf]
by umanwizard on Thursday October 22, 2020 @11:17AM
(#24858928)
Yes, but the same is true of literally every common disease.
Re:Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf]
by PeterisP on Thursday October 22, 2020 @12:50PM
(#24860122)
Literally every other common disease is either saturated to a somewhat stable level, or eliminated or on the way there because of some vaccine. Sadly, there are some countries where HIV is still rapidly expanding, but in aggregate even that is shrinking.
Currently covid-19 is the only epidemic that's large but still actively growing worldwide, it's the only one where we actually would see exponential growth if we do nothing.
when in doubt, "humans don't intuitively understand exponential growth" is often a good guess. to the average person, "barely under control" and "everything is fine" look very similar and the precautions taken in the former seem pretty silly. by the time an outbreak is directly observable in your day-to-day life, things have already gone sideways.