A colleague made the point that we need more pictures of overflowing morgues and ICUs and (like is happening in LA) people waiting in an ambulance for 7-8 hours (and some of those people dying because of it).

Just like the US government banned (discouraged?) pictures of caskets coming back from war.

These images need to be on the news and on news websites 24/7.

At the beginning of this pandemic, I watched a 2-3 min video of a Turin hospital (back when Italy was the epicenter in the west) of people silently choking to death in their ventilators. It was absolutely fucking eerie and insane and every time I think of doing something risky, I think about the sound in that video.

Unfortunately in this context, it is illegal to film people in a hospital. I think that's a fair rule but I really would like to have a few videos floating around with no voiceover and no commentary just to scare the shit out of people. I think it would work.

I saw the same video and it still haunts me.

Yet there are some people who still say that it's no worse than flu, and that it only kills old people.

If the person gives their consent to be filmed I don't think it's morally wrong. If I ended up in intensive care due to the covid I'd agree to be filmed for prevention

Or you can blur faces etc.

Obvious panic doesn't help much, but I was sort of advocating a "Do you want to execute grandma?"-style advert for people who think it's a bit of a laugh.

Reminds me of this seatbelt advert (warning: graphic) https://youtu.be/mKHY69AFstE

Qualify that the people in those videos, for example Italy, were very very obese.

Those images have been intentionally suppressed in the US.

https://theintercept.com/2020/12/27/covid-photography-hospit...

Thanks, I had forgotten about that.

And I think there's a direct line between this suppression and the behavior of many people.

> I think there's a direct line between this suppression and the behavior of many people

Me, too. And, obviously, so did Severino and his boss.

I agree that this would be effective against most people.

But when this happened in Italy, a large number of the conspiracy crowd just said the photos were faked.

Life was easier when it wasn’t so easy to fake a photo...

Modern conspiracy has nothing to do with facts, but entirely to do with the shape, rate and self forming nature of modern human communication networks.

I'll argue, strongly, that right now - everything regarding Social Media misinformation is an epiphenomena of those factors.

To illustrate -

Misinformation based communication travels differently than "Fact" based information https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full.

People assign truth value based on heuristics, one of which is how many times information is repeated. If you self select a network of people who believe the same things and repeat it, with slight modifications - you can ensure people will believe conspriacies.

With the ability to self select nodes/people who tend to be conspiracy inclined you will easily cross the number of people needed to make an idea seem socially valid.

The pace and size of our information networks naturally supports the evolution of highly viral content - not truthful content.

When was that, 1880? You can do some pretty funky stuff in the darkroom when you are making your prints.

There is a comment not far away above from HN user who doesn't feel safe on a street without mask with other people closer than 25 feet. Imagine what those TV pictures of yours gonna make with people like that.

"Fear is Safety"

Those images were on the news constantly when New York was having trouble 8 months ago. That doesn't seem to have changed much behavior.

Isn't the images idea similar to what is done with cigarette packs and that certainly doesn't stop the smokers.

There should be more awareness about what is going on in hospitals all year round. Media hype can make everything extreme.

And there are many theories to explain, for example NY morgues may have been overflowing because morgue owners were afraid to accept people who died from Covid.

Is there actual evidence that people died because they couldn't receive care? Even in Italy I have not seen the evidence, just YouTube videos of some alleged doctors making such claims.

Serious question. I would love to see evidence of people dying because they couldn't receive care (in the Western world).

So you won't accept video evidence given by named doctors at specific hospitals, thus easily checked by the media or anyone who has anything to do with the hospital.

What evidence would you accept?

Named doctors would be a start. Media doing some checking would also be a start. Some person looking like a doctor making claims on YouTube is not sufficient.

None of those reports citing the alleged doctor actually checked with the hospitals.

Maybe that should be the minimum: actually checking the situation, rather than repeating some random claims.

Maybe they died because aliens coincidentally Tele-killed them. Lots of theories!

> the government should just let this run its course

Isn't it just an opinion? I personally think that way. Why wouldn't I be allowed to think that?

You're allowed to think any way you want. And you're even allowed to explain that you do think that and why. But most people will probably think that's plainly a bad plan and point out that lots of people will die because of it, so be prepared to feel embarrassed often.

Kind of like letting people drive cars, right?

I guess it seems like a surprising view to have (to think that the government should let it run its course)?

I mean, the evidence is pretty clear by now isn't it?

Countries that responded to the pandemic with swift strong action, especially restrictions on movement, have had the best outcomes for both health and the economy.

Countries that tried to protect the economy / their nation's finances by enacting watered down measures have fared very much worse.

It's interesting to me how far views in different places have diverged on where the balance point is for this. Australia's recently been having a debate about whether or not 20 cases a day is enough to justify a full lockdown of a city (the NSW premier decided no) and border closures (most states decided yes). Meanwhile, in the UK...

> I mean, the evidence is pretty clear by now isn't it?

I think the evidence is clear that it's endemic to the world (like Tuberculosis still is, with most ppl carrying a latent infection). Things are deadly in the world. As far as pandemics go, this one is about as bad as the modern world can handle...ok, some govts can handle. If economies/governments fall apart, it will run it's course as well. The bet that the entire world will lock down their borders and get vaccines every 6 mo for the rest of our lifetimes, is silly. Will corona basically be gone this year? Next year? The year after that?

It's all hand wringing theater at this point. I think there's plenty of evidence that govts are taking advantage of the situation, but that's not the same as it being a grand conspiracy to release a virus for transhumanistic purposes (to get ppl used to getting govt injection). That's also nonsense.

Isn't is plausible, if not expected, that countries with different industries and economic structures would do differently with the exact same kind of lockdown plan?

That is, a country that has a large WFH-capable population would feel less economic pain than another otherwise similar country?

And thus, maybe a swift and harsh lockdown is the best move for one country, but the cons for another would outweigh the pros? That is another country would enter an economic decline that overall costs more lives than would have been saved?

We don't know the answers to these questions, but I think we shouldn't dismiss these considerations.

I don't think the evidence is clear. There are countries that were unsuccessful with their lockdowns, and countries were numbers were decreasing (because of lockdown or other reasons is unclear).

Then there is China, whose numbers can't be trusted. And some remote island states seem to have done well. Most interesting case perhaps Taiwan (which incidentally also belongs to China).

The taiwanese people might have something to say about that.

You’re totally allowed to have that opinion and other people are totally allowed to think it’s idiotic, unless I’m missing you’re point?

The other points you made are near or actually conspiracy theory level. His is just an opinion on how it should be handled.

Not the OP - just chiming in

one feels like a personal attack and the other seems like an opinion.

Because it's a value judgement and one at least worth considering so it's not idiotic. I mean maybe the decision to lockdown for many many months is better but we are least need to try to estimate how many lives it saves in comparison to just letting it run and hope big the economic cost is.

Good news, we did.

Yeah and it's still a value call with significant part of the population on both sides. It's easy to be for lockdowns when you're in privileged position in the society but if you talk to people not so fortunate when it comes to income, education and perspectives in life you will see why they are so often for letting the pandemic run it course. It's because lockdowns take the very little they had in their life be it work or ways to escape loneliness for just a while.

I am sick of this tone of superiority so often used here. It's so elitist and so out of touch.

You complained that people need to "at least look at the cost", and now you're mad that people have looked at it and found the answers to be wildly in favor of lockdowns. It is an unbelievable "tone of superiority" to keep ranting about everyone else not having thought as deeply as you, and imagining yourself as the only person who knows any low income people.

Well then why do some people think it is idiotic?

Speaking only for myself, I think your opinion is idiotic based on some simple back of the envelope math I did many months ago (when the UK announced its herd immunity plan), relating to hospital capacity, likely peak case numbers, proportion of cases that would need hospital treatment or die and some simple minded guesses about knock-on effects for the rest of the health system. I have not bothered to redo these calculations in the light of current evidence (some things have gotten better, others have gotten worse), but I remain sceptical that anyone numerate who spent one or two hours trying to work out the likely results of your advocated policy would arrive at similar conclusion as to the best course of action as you did.

So let me ask: on what basis did you arrive at your opinion?

[Edit: HN comment from 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22578742]

I think the conclusion of a death toll estimation exercise may shift if you adjust for expected remaining lifetime.

In Scotland, the mean COVID death age was higher than the average lifetime expectancy[1], which indicates that on average those people would probably live <10 years had they not contracted the disease. The expected remaining lifetime of the average individual in Scotland (if it remains unchanged) is ~37 years, which would reduce the lifetime adjusted death toll by at least 3.7.

There have been a significant amount of excess deaths that are not attributable to COVID [2]. I suspect that such deaths have a lower average age (e.g. due to suicides), than COVID deaths, further reducing the average life years saved due to the lockdowns.

I'm not proposing that we should optimise for life years saved, but I do think that the death of a 86 year old is less tragic than that of a 38 year old, and that we perhaps shouldn't evaluate lockdown vs no lockdown purely based on the percentage of the population which died.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54433305 [2] https://www.newswise.com/factcheck/are-a-third-of-the-excess...

> I'm not proposing that we should optimise for life years saved, but I do think that the death of a 86 year old is less tragic than that of a 38 year old, and that we perhaps shouldn't evaluate lockdown vs no lockdown purely based on the percentage of the population which died.

I of course agree with that. Just stating lives lost in isolation is misleading. It simply much easier to use for back-of-envelope math, and generally back of the envelope math indicating a course of action would lead to millions of excess deaths is enough to conclude that probably it won't be a great idea.

> which indicates that on average those people would probably live <10 years

This is plausible, but it may not be much less than 10 years either. The life expectancy of someone who reaches average UK life expectancy is close to another 10 years. And we'd probably both prefer neither ourselves nor any elderly relatives or friends to suffocate 10 years before their or our time.

> There have been a significant amount of excess deaths that are not attributable to COVID [2].

So this sounds initially plausible (lockdown stress/economic hardship leading to an increase in suicides) but I believe it's bullshit and that these deaths are in fact due to covid. Since we were talking about the UK, let's go back to look at that: the baseline figure of suicides is pretty low (~6k in the UK for 2019, which is 1e-4 per individual per year). The number of excess deaths in 2020 is at least 12 times higher than that. So the suicide rate would have had to at least double to account for a significant part of that. And nationwide suicide rates are quite stable, year-on-year, including, crucially, during times of severe economic hardship.

> So let me ask: on what basis did you arrive at your opinion?

I will answer this, although more than likely my comment will get killed soon:

I believe that the high-risk people (elderly, immuno-compromised, people with diseases that put them at risk) should go into voluntary quarantine if they wish, together with a government package to support them. Anyone who wishes to undergo lockdown can also do so, although with no package beyond what they would normally get. The rest can do as they please.

This will not stop the ICU beds from filling up obviously, which is why they should be triaged to high-risk patients, frontline staff, and people who underwent quarantine and lockdown. When capacity allows, other people too. The people who chose not to lockdown deal with it, or die.

This is probably unimplementable in the real world. That said, it would mean the lowest amount of economic stress (which kills silently) for the following years. On some level, it also appeals to the human need for cause: those people that died of corona and didn't get treatment "did it to themselves". The high-risk people do not get sacrificed.

What do you do about folks who don’t have the luxury to choose to isolate? The majority of US citizens don’t have the funds to stop working for more than a week or so.

What about all the nurses who die in the line of duty treating all these new infections? Should they be allowed to opt-out of infection risk?

I understand the desire to keep things going, but so long as there is community spread the lockdown can never end, and the virus would never go away.

> What do you do about folks who don’t have the luxury to choose to isolate?

What's being done about them now? How is this better? They're losing everything they own, their house, and getting $600 from the government? Many would take a chance of corona over that.

> What about all the nurses who die in the line of duty treating all these new infections? Should they be allowed to opt-out of infection risk?

Nurses (along with all healthcare personnel) should always receive priviledged treatment. One nurse dying is not a person dying, it is many people dying.

> but so long as there is community spread the lockdown can never end, and the virus would never go away.

Vaccines will hopefully change that.

.. all good points though, and I thought of them too as I was writing out my thoughts. I'm not fully satisfied with these answers, but I do not believe the direction we're headed in right now is much better.

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

I agree the economic issues are problematic and painful. Sadly, I don’t see a way around a lot of financial pain for everyone over coming months regardless of the status of a lockdown. Depending on your job and industry, there simply isn’t any work to be done while there’s a real risk of death (tourism comes to mind).

I think one big sticking point for me around arguments to reopen boil down to our medical care workers—doctors, nurses, and everyone who supports them. I’m not comfortable telling _anyone_ that they need to die to keep the economy going, especially when our medical workers don’t have a say in the matter.

> That said, it would mean the lowest amount of economic stress (which kills silently) for the following years

What makes you think so? Did you look at the life-expectancy impact of severe economic downturns and compare them to likely excess fatality figures due to your proposed policy? I suspect not, because last I looked for it I didn't seem to find much evidence for silently killing economic stress.

> This will not stop the ICU beds from filling up obviously,

That's a bit of a problem, because those ICU beds are also known to be useful for people suffering from urgent non-covid related problems. Even if you managed to turn away all the non-lockdowners (how would you even check? Police patrols tattooing people spotted on the street during voluntary lockdown?), you might still find that just the "legitimate" cases are enough to really mess up urgent health care for a lot of other people.

> What makes you think so? Did you look at the life-expectancy impact of severe economic downturns and compare them to likely excess fatality figures due to your proposed policy? I suspect not, because last I looked it didn't seem to find much evidence for silently killing economic stress.

Not the point I was making. I do not know which option will lead to less death, neither do you, neither do really the scientists (although they have a better idea). However, a full lockdown will lead to more economic loss at least in the short term than a voluntary lockdown. Long-term, as I said, I don't think any of us can say.

> you might still find that just the "legitimate" cases are enough to really mess up urgent health care for a lot of other people.

Like is currently happening? Yes, my solution wouldn't stop all bad effects. There will be much death regardless, the hope is that the people who are left to die as they chose no protection will "help out" with the number of ICU beds needed in general.

> how would you even check ?

You are in lockdown until you fill in some sort of form with the government, waiving your rights to hospital care in the case of catching Corona. This list is used to make decisions. This part at least is implementable.

> Not the point I was making. I do not know which option will lead to less death, neither do you,

What point were you making then? And yes, I think I do know which option will lead to less death, because I actually took the time to do some minimal research and the relevant information wasn't hard to find or terribly ambiguous. It's fine to have a contrarian opinion, based on some effort to ascertain facts and reason about them and we could then have a productive discussion on why our conclusions differ but from everything you said so far my current impression is that you made no such effort whatsoever.

> However, a full lockdown will lead to more economic loss at least in the short term than a voluntary lockdown. Long-term, as I said, I don't think any of us can say.

For some farcial definition of "short term" and "can't say" maybe, but for anything a sane person would care about (quarters or longer) we can just try to compare economic stats.

I mean to me it seems like the herd-immunity/corona-is-a-hoax/hands-off-response countries weren't doing that hot economically either:

https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/brazil/gdp

vs

https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/south-korea/gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/taiwan/gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp

> You are in lockdown until you fill in some sort of form with the government, waiving your rights to hospital care in the case of catching Corona. This list is used to make decisions. This part at least is implementable.

Why would anyone in their right mind sign such a form, no matter whether they intend to flout lockdown or not? Not without massive penalities. How would you enforce them?

So you think we should pursue a strategy that is unimplementable in the real world? Doesn't sound very clever to me.

if we let the virus lives its life, maximum 2% of pop will die, 90 more % will live normally and a few percent will have covid related health issues. so we sacrifice a few percent of population for the future of the others

Care to cite any stats supporting your assertion that a maximum of 2% of the population would die? During periods where the healthcare system has been overloaded the mortality rates have been many multiples of that during times when healthcare is provided at an appropriate level.

What’s more, do you have any reasonable figures to suggest why letting a percentage or more of the population die unnecessarily, consigning even larger numbers to long-term health problems and so forth is somehow a good choice?

> During periods where the healthcare system has been overloaded the mortality rates have been many multiples of that during times when healthcare is provided at an appropriate level.

If you ask people to cite statistics for their claims, you should also do so for your claims such as this one.

I think it’s appropriate to ask for stats for suggestions that run counter to accepted wisdom. That doesn’t put the onus on me to provide evidence of generally accepted facts. Suggesting that we should let the virus run wild through the population is contrary to guidance from the WHO, any number of national health organisations, etc. So no, I don’t feel the need to cite statistics for my position, as it’s not the novel one.

It is an axiom of healthcare that outcomes suffer in an overburdened healthcare system, and readily apparent why that is the case. That said, for those too lazy to look, here’s literally the top result for me when googling terms related to this: https://www.kabc.com/news/covid-19-mortality-rates-rise-as-h...

> What’s more, do you have any reasonable figures to suggest why letting a percentage or more of the population die unnecessarily, consigning even larger numbers to long-term health problems and so forth is somehow a good choice?

If I squint my eyes a bit. Reduce the burden on the pension system?

If I squint my eyes, I don't think it would even reduce the burden on the state pension system when you take into account the benefit system it is part of.

Long-term disabled or ill people who are unable to work will effectively take early retirement (in some cases they can draw on their actual pension early too), and depend on state support from then on whether it's called pension or something else. The duration of payouts will be longer than for ordinary retirement age.

It's not just miserable for those survivors, it's expensive for the state.

Long-term health problems are also likely to cost more in healthcare later.

True, but do more people end up in long term care than dead?

I’d guess so, based on what I read so far, but not sure.

... or you can lock down, eradicate it and go back to normal (except for international travel). It passed that point in many places now unfortunately. I’m in Auckland, NZ and it’s a normal summer. We have also learned that NZs terrible road toll is unrelated to tourists, who we previously blamed.

Have you considered that of 100 friends, family and acquaintances you’d see two die and 10 would have a painful and difficult future?

Let's see how things are once winter rolls over

This is obviously not true, since allowing the virus to spread freely massively increases the rate of fatalities and long-term illness once healthcare becomes overwhelmed.

So by that calculation 1.32 million people (2% of 66 million) would die and we're supposed to NOT react strongly to people who hold that opinion?

As supposed of advocating lockdown ? How many million of people would suffer from lockdown?

Really not sure how to perform that comparison. How do we equate one death vs one "suffer", and how do we count the "suffers" of people who take ill of covid in the free-for-all scenario? I think the ball is in your court on this one but, frankly, good luck

So not sure then do lockdown anyway?

Well we actually have a very good idea of how many people would die of Covid if the entire population of the UK got Covid.

We don't know how many people have ... whatever you are proposing we compare that against.

So faced with the options of "prevent the deaths of over a million people" and "matz1 doesn't like lockdown but doesn't want to talk about or quantify it" I think the choice is pretty clear. Unless you want to elaborate further?

whats the evidence that lockdown can 'prevent the deaths of over a million people' ? Keep in mind Lockdown can cause death as well.

This is coming from the figures the other anti-lockdown guy gave for the number of deaths they expect - 2% deaths of the UK population is ~1.32 million people. If you don’t get covid, you don’t die of covid. If you lockdown, you don’t get covid. It’s a simplification but it’s a start.

What you have said is that people will suffer under lockdown - but you haven’t really tried to quantify that. You’ve decided that’s a lost cause and have moved onto “lockdown causes death” ! Amazing.

>If you don’t get covid, you don’t die of covid

Likewise If you get covid, doesn't mean you will die from covid. vast majority of people will be fine.

>If you lockdown, you don’t get covid. It’s a simplification but it’s a start

Maybe you don't get covid but if you lockdown, you may suffer/die from starving/mental health issue instead.

>What you have said is that people will suffer under lockdown - but you haven’t really tried to quantify that

Is it really hard to think that lockdown would cause at least some unemployment, some bankruptcy, some mental health issue ?

>“lockdown causes death”

Unemployment has long been associated with a significantly increased risk of death.

I don't have the precise number but how are you sure that the damage from virus is greater than damage from lockdown ?

To add to that, there would also be a large number of people suffering from long-term complications who may not be able to work and will need ongoing medical care.

Indeed there would. The naive estimate of deaths is bad enough, the knock on impact is a bit harder to wrap our heads around in terms of magnitude, but would still be severe.

Basically - this is not nothing, it’s being treated like a Big Deal because it legitimately is. There’s a lot of talk from the “treatment is worse than the disease” crowd, scant few of whom are experts. And like climate change and evolution deniers many of the arguments seem to boil down to conspiracy theories or the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia argument - “science is a liar ... sometimes”: https://youtu.be/Zgk8UdV7GQ0

And what happens when you get more mutant strains that do God knows what. You want to bet it’ll be 2%? What about 1895 and 1918?

> so we sacrifice a few percent of population for the future of the others

No, you sacrifice an uncertain percentage of the population (but probably larger than you suggest because healthcare systems would be quickly overwhelmed by a massive spike in cases) to both death and long-term sickness and disability, but for what? Lockdown causes people to lose their jobs, children to miss school, and others to suffer problems with mental health (although to use your phrasing, this would just be "a few percent" of the population) but it saves people's lives and health.

I'm also really disappointed that people don't get the idea that people dying and having long-term health issues doesn't screw the economy too.

I suppose you are free to decide that 1.32 million people in the UK should die an avoidable death, so that others have an easier life for a few months. Yes it's a value judgement. But it's a particularly awful value to hold:

- Advocating for the death of a million people when it's avoidable is abhorrent

- It would be more than that, due to the collapse of health services, causing people who would currently survive to die instead

- It would be more again due to the increased likelihood of viral mutations when left to run rampant

- Also due to the collapse of health services, most deaths would be outside hospitals, i.e. at home, slowly suffocating to death

- Some would survive with brain damage due to lack of oxygen at home

- While dying, people at home would know if they could get a hospital place they'd probably survive, and avoid brain damage, but they can't get one

- It wouldn't even boost the economy, because a million deaths is actually quite a drag on the economy, especially when most of them are dying at home with their families staying at home to look after them due to collapse of the health services

- It would be horrendously traumatic; a lot of people would struggle to work afterwards after watching their family members, friends, neighbours and people they know die at home slowly from an avoidable cause

- It would cause tremendous social division, as many of the traumatised people having watched their family members (& friends, etc) die, avoidably, would know it was caused by the actions of their own neighbours & local community, along with national decision-making to "sacrifice" those million

- That's just deaths; survivors with long Covid would also be a large drag on the economy, struggling or unable to work, requiring support, and potentially expensive for the healthcare services and their familiies in later life if it's long-term organ damage as some fear. The numbers with long Covid would exceed the current number of official unemployed

- Advocating for serious life-long disability for another several million people when it's avoidable is abhorrent too

There are already multiple working vaccines. Why on earth would you even contemplate killing or permanently damaging over a million people, just in the UK alone? Do you really think that 90% of the remaining population will be cool with that and continue to lead a normal life amidst all of this? Even a good fraction of other people in the bottom decile for empathy might waver in their commitment to lead a normal and maximally economically productive life if they are (understandably) worried about the risks this brings to their own well-being.

Just casually let ~150 million people die. Cool.

Congratulations on totally missing the point.

[ EDIT: the number I originally used for "requiring hospitalization" were way off. I've edited to reflect data from September provided by the CDC. The 20% -> ICU figure comes from the NYC experience in May, but seems roughly correct from other global hotspots ]

Roughly 0.4% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.

In the end, the entire human race will be exposed to SARS-COV-2. If that happens all on the same day, or week, or month or probably even year, no health care system in the world can possibly deal with the case load.

Some of those who might have survived COVID19 with hospital care will die.

But (and this is the important part) those with other medical conditions that timely and effective health care could have treated will also die. Trauma (e.g. car or tool accidents). Infectious disease. Cancer. Chronic health conditions.

And in killing all these people, you've made nothing better for those who survive, because if you think the economy has gone to hell under current attempts to deal with it, you clearly cannot imagine it as the entire health care system melts down.

COVID19 is not a personal health crisis. Most people will not die of it (even though hundreds of thousands will, which is not going to be much comfort to their families, friends, colleagues and neighbors. It is a public health crisis that threatens to overwhelm our health care systems and thus have far worse effects than just the disease itself.

> Roughly 20% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.

Where do you get these numbers from? California has about 50k new cases per day, with probably another 50k cases that were not tested. According to your stats 20k people will require hospitalization and 5k will require an ICU bed per day.

How is this comment getting down voted, the 20% and 20% they used might be a bit off but the overall message is solid

I've updated the first 20% with a more accurate number. Not sure why I got that so wrong.

> Roughly 20% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization.

Where do you get this from? I do think, of those requiring hospitalization, there is somewhere around a <20% mortality rate (it seems to vary by region).

The number was very, very, very wrong. I've corrected it. My point remains intact, I think.

> In the end, the entire human race will be exposed to SARS-COV-2.

This statement is false.

(With regard to any reasonable definition of exposure to the current virulent strains and assuming the vaccines do their job.)

One major purpose of the vaccines is to cause R < 1 and the virus to fade out, so that most humans will not be exposed to the virus ever in their lives. The other major purpose is for those humans who are exposed to it, to significantly reduce the chance of the virus causing harm.

Like putting out a fire before it spreads everywhere. Some things are burned but not everything is even touched by the flame, if it's put out.

The epidemiology I saw near the beginning of the pandemic was fairly clear that even when R0 drops substantially below 1, the virus will be endemic to human existence.

Sure, it's certainly up for debate (and the future) whether or not the rate will drop low enough that most humans escape exposure. That will depend on more than just R0 - we still don't know if the vaccines (any of them) prevent transference, and the emergence of new variants with higher R0 values but identical infection mechanisms (which most people would agree is the same virus) may also complicate this quite a bit.

So sure, maybe I should have dialed it back to "it's entirely possible that the entire human race will be exposed to SARS-COV-2, though if we are lucky that probably won't happen".

I don't think that changes my fundamental point that the crisis for a pandemic like this is not in personal health - "Am I going to die?" - but in the public health - "can my society's health care systems still function?"

I read that too, when the epidemiologists were saying it could become endemic, but if it does, it's unlikely to be the current virulence, which is what counts when discussing deaths etc.

The evolution of viruses like this is they tend to mutate into milder strains as they become endemic. At that point the milder version may still cause excess deaths (like flu does, and unfortunately it would be in addition to flu deaths), but not at the same virulence.

But an endemic virus does not necessarily mean every human will be exposed to it. There are diseases which are almost but not quite eradicated by widespread vaccination, and keep going in clusters, surviving in pockets here and there.

Because it would result in hundreds of thousands dying, complete overcapacity of hospitals increasing the death rate of covid and all other injuries and illnesses, and cause even more damage to the economy as a result than lockdown

You’re allowed to think it, it’s just patently idiotic.

Our hospitals would be overwhelmed, the morality rate would skyrocket amongst COVID and non-COVID patients alike.

So now the number of free icu beds in hospital and number of death are the only kpi we look at to make decisions?

It is crazy how people opinion like mine is fully ignored in Europe. today we tolerate flu deaths so that people can live freely, why shouldn't we tolerate covid deaths to live freely?

One reason of many: flu deaths don't overwhelm hospital capacity. If someone dies from flu, it's generally not because of lack of available care. When hospital capacity is overwhelmed, people die that wouldn't otherwise die. If covid overwhelms hospital capacity, then people will die because of lack of available care. And so therefore, people dying from lack of available care is valued as "worse" than people dying with sufficient medical care.

And so if you equate the two, a lot of people think that is crazy.

We don't tolerate flu deaths. We actually work hard every single year to prevent them - providing inoculations for the sick and vulnerable for one thing. People die in spite of all the efforts we put into preventing them from doing so.

Because the standard of care that people receive in a regular flu season is with a health service that can say that it gave someone the intensive care they needed, but unfortunately it didn't work out.

With covid left unchecked, the intensive care isn't intensive at all because the health care resources are spread more thinly.

Over a large enough population, this will lead to many more deaths that would not have happened had those people not been in a healthcare system that was overwhelmed.

So as a society we'd be saying that "these people died because our health service was overwhelmed, we knew that this would happen if we didn't lock down, and we chose to not lock down anyway".

>It is crazy how people opinion like mine is fully ignored in Europe.

I don't believe it's crazy that your opinion is ignored. I think it's rational and moral to do the opposite of your opinion.

I just happen to think your opinion is selfish and deliberately and unproductively obtuse.

Because it's not possible to 'tolerate' them - left unchecked it would overwhelm our health service, destroy the economy, and cripple society.

Your proposal is a fantasy; it sounds as if you're wishing this was similar in effect and scope to the flu (and I'm sure we all wish that) but clearly that seems not to be the case

For every 1,000 diagnosed covid case, roughly 14-18 of them will eventually die. Rich or poor countries alike, that range has been consistent.

Wouldn't you say that's rather staggeringly high number to simply let things run course?

in which universe is 0.018% a "staggeringly high number"

You will tolerate deaths until it becomes a loved one or yourself. At that point you'll realise that all you need to do is stop being an idiot and understand that with some restrictions we can significantly reduce deaths and at some point in the near future resume "free life".

"It's crazy" how much people are willing to risk just because they can't be patient.

> You will tolerate deaths until it becomes a loved one or yourself.

Couldn't you argue that a loved one may die because of the consequences of the lockdown? Undiagnosed cancer, depression, suicide, aftermath of the ruined economy? Is anyone keeping this tally?

Hard to get a diagnosis when the hospital is overrun with people dying in line, friend.

To the other points: yes, things will be hard. We can quantify how hard each approach will be.

In the case of a lockdown, there will be orders of magnitude fewer deaths.

A tally is being kept—all the numbers were run before a lockdown was even considered. The only reason this debate continues is because so many ignore the hard work medical administrations, public health departments, virologists, economists, and policy makers have already done.

because tolerating flu deaths doesn't completely overwhelm healthcare systems?

The people that have serious cases of the flu don't overwhelm the hospitals because a good part of the vulnerable population get vaccinated. The herd immunity also plays a role because this kind of virus has been around for a long time.

We could decide that lockdowns / restrictions are not good but then we also have to be okay with letting lot of people die gasping for air and drowning in their own lungs at home / in the hospital corridors. As much as I hate not being able to socialize how I like I still prefer that and it seem to also be the case for most of the population.

I have no idea if we'll ever be able to eradicate the Covid but if we don't it might become just an other flu when enough people are vaccinated or had it.

You can think what you like as long as you wear a mask, work from home if able etc. Seriously, you have an absolute right to your opinion. But too many people think that stretches to taking their mask off in public places or having parties.

No one suggested that you aren't allowed to think that, but let's all hope you're not allowed to make policy decisions!

That isn’t the full statement though, you omitted the part about it being just like the flu. I think if you believe that it should be allowed to run its course understanding what it entails then you’re either woefully ignorant or something of a sociopath (but that’s addressed in other comments below). However, believing it should run its course because it’s no worse than the rule is not just an opinion, it clearly ignores all evidence to the contrary and is roughly equivalent to the others in terms of bring completely detached from fact or empirical evidence.

I’d love to know why this is being downvoted. As other people have observed, there exist right now multiple, highly effective vaccines. To advocate for letting it run through the population, knowing it will likely kill at least 1% of the population, cause long term health care problems for countless more, and likely devastate the economy... the best option here is that you are ignorant of these facts.

> the government locking down is a deliberate ploy to kill small businesses

I’m not sure I see what kind of upside they see for anyone if this happens, much less the government.

The supposed goal of a malicious government is to make everyone entirely dependent on it, for everything, even the basics. Small business represents independence to a large degree. Destroying small business means everyone turns to the government to survive. Having everyone dependent on you means you can enact any law with little resistence.

It's not a wake-up call until protestors storm the government buildings. Apparently.

Brains, amirite?

With the masses sedate at their screens, the bureaucracy has no cognitive experience or expectations for anything different.

Decades of headlines being fed to Main Street going on about growing inequality did not really motivate Main Street to do much but shuffle back into the office.

Relativity pervades all experience. Reading about history in books is not exactly experiencing history.

Or maybe these people will keep believing the lie, even after they die from COVID, like the Calormen at the end of CS Lewis’ The Last Battle. Everyone else will be in Heaven, and they’ll be all like, “Let me out of the hospital, corona is a lie!”

Unfortounately it is more complicated than that, Odds are 1000:1 that when when they get it the symtoms will be "just a flu" and they will tell their famly and friemds their experience

Sorry to be pedantic, but you may be thinking of a group of Dwarves, not Calormenes. There was a Calormene at the end, but he did "see the light".

Nah, pedantry is fine, good sir. I need to reread those books, it’s been like a decade for me.

What do you gain by insulting them and calling them idiots? What if it just makes them even worse?

Not saying they don't fit the definition... but maybe the reaction doesn't actually help.

In every society since the dawn of man, certain things carried a social cost. In our society, advocating idiotic conspiracies should carry, IMHO, a social cost of feeling embarrassed and stupid. Frankly.

At this point I'm not sure they're capable of feeling embarrassed or stupid. They get all riled up and start acting out, but it doesn't look like insulting and embarrassing them is working...

Surprise surprise, amplifying division just further amplifies division.

We're hearing this:

A: "I'm dying inside because of lockdown. I can't work and I'm this close to the end of my rope."

Should the response be this?

B: "People are dying outside because of COVID. I don't care about your pain. You are an idiot."

A: [storms capitol]

Or this?

B: "This sucks all around for sure. Your pain is real, and I feel it too. The tradeoffs made by society as a whole based on available data are X Y and Z, but here's a list of things you can do for now to help make ends meet and keep it together...."

A: "Thanks, I'm glad we're able to help one another out."

While valid, this argument can only apply in a different information reality than our current world.

The pace of interaction and information has simply overwhelmed the ability of human one on one interaction. Most of our actions are with a mobile phone near us, meaning that the social sphere is directly with us and only a twitter/FB/Reddit/HN glance away.

Doesn't even help that the sites are designed to be competitively addictive on top of it.

IF that is the case - no matter how much you listen to someone, a few seconds after they return to their phone they are part of the new outrage cycle.

Do note that the whole thing above is doable with cable television as well. IF your uncle goes back home to listen to X TV channel day in and day out, your one on one interaction is going to only have a tiny impact.

The saddest part of what tech has created is a faster pace of communication that is orienting itself inimically to slower one on one human interaction.

Even this para above is built with the idea that parts of it will be broken off by people who read it and then reused later on. It's not a conversation with just the person I am responding to, but to everyone else reading it.

Of course, some people can't be reasoned with and others will just go off the handle because they're crazy. There's no point in being nice to those, but people forget about all the others that are not far gone and we could help them to understand. That's never going to happen if we start every sentence by calling them idiots right off the bat.

Even the unreasonable and the crazy are likely to have better outcomes if treated with some dignity rather than open rudeness. I'm not saying I'm great at it, but "I think you're wrong, here's why, maybe we can find the root of our disagreement in either differing values or differing/incomplete data" probably works better than "you are an idiot" or "your views are idiotic".

This misses an important fact: not everyone is acting in good faith and what should have been a discussion on public health policy has been turned into a political football.

Good on you if you can help people who are struggling, but recognize that when people push back against the lockdown there are often ideological factors in play.

The thing about conspiracy theorists is they feel smug and intelligent when you call them out.

No doubt the NHS in London is close to capacity, perhaps even more so than it usually is this time of year. It's hard to know for sure.

It doesn't help, however, when activist NHS nurses lie on (and abetted by) national media; imagining bed occupancy and oxygen supply levels out of thin air, implying the mutant strain is more virulent among children etc. causing panic, confusion, and supplying fuel to the very people you're trying to lampoon.

I know I shouldn’t think this but I’m relieved to know that all the crazies aren’t exclusively in the US right now.

NHS is overwhelmed every winter if the hyperbolic headlines are to be believed

Just to flesh this out, the NHS could use more money, but it's worth saying that it's the only European healthcare system I'm aware of so fragile. If you ask a lot of British people they seem to think that the only alternative is the wild west found in the US, rather than the other healthcare systems in Europe.

There was a good piece in the private eye a few years ago listing headlines saying the NHS is doomed tomorrow going back to before Blair.

I think it's not just Britain. Having hospitals with lots of empty beds, i.e. capacity, is just too costly. So when the capacity is needed as it is now, then you can't really do much.

But every year we have excess mortality caused by cuts to service. That's literally people dying because of poor funding choices. What do you expect to see? Ambos on fire?

>There was a good piece in the private eye a few years ago listing headlines saying the NHS is doomed tomorrow going back to before Blair.

https://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee/status/833654730849136641

>Just to flesh this out, the NHS could use more money, but it's worth saying that it's the only European healthcare system I'm aware of so fragile.

You've fallen for the very "NHS is more fragile than systems in other countries" mantra that the Private Eye piece mocks. COVID19 has overwhelmed the French, Belgian, and Italian systems too.

>If you ask a lot of British people they seem to think that the only alternative is the wild west found in the US, rather than the other healthcare systems in Europe.

The NHS is unique in being so unified. I'm not sure there's another European country in which one government entity runs insurance, billing, and delivery. Because the UK is the foreign country Americans are most exposed to (Canada doesn't count), this results in both Americans and Britons thinking that all healthcare plans outside the US are like the NHS, when actually the norm is something closer to that of France, Germany, or the Netherlands.

Government running every aspect of healthcare means that every aspect of healthcare is a political issue. The consequent level of weaponization of the NHS in British political rhetoric is flabbergasting. It's said that Social Security (the US version of UK National Insurance) is the "third rail" of American politics—any politician that touches it gets electrocuted—but there is no comparison. I, for one, have no desire whatsoever to ever experience the US equivalent of how in the UK the NHS is always, Always, ALWAYS the #1 or #2 topic of every single election, with every candidate competing to outdo the others in promising that the NHS will "always be free" and that he is the only candidate who can make sure that the local GP's surgery hours will widen and that the A&E will no longer be "the worst in England" or "the second-worst in Yorkshire". The Private Eye piece is the result of the above.

(Canada, also with a single-payer system, sensibly divorces billing from providers. As in the US private entities deliver most healthcare, and in both countries if one's doctor has inconvenient hours or if the local hospital has substandard care, one simply goes to another as opposed to having this being something politicians are expected to fix.)

I said fragile but I would've mentioned efficacy - it's past midnight. The NHS isn't even that good, but it's hard to bring it up because it's the sacred cow.

I think Denmark apparently has the most comparable system in Europe, but I've not read much about it (just heard it in passing).

>I said fragile but I would've mentioned efficacy - it's past midnight. The NHS isn't even that good, but it's hard to bring it up because it's the sacred cow.

NHS does well in the Commonfund healthcare comparisons (https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/other-publicat...), especially given how small a share of UK GDP healthcare spending is. That's certain an argument for its unitary, top-down structure. That same integration, however, makes it vulnerable to the sort of political grandstanding that Private Eye satirized.

Have you seen how much money the NHS gets? And how it sets aside for negligence?

It has money.

German hospitals are also overwhelmed in some places during flu season. And the German system is not "stable", either, it has its own problems.

The fact the overworked staff still somehow make it run doesn't mean it isn't and hasn't been overwhelmed for years

The NHS delays operations every year. This year, you'll go to A&E, need a ventilator and be told they're out and to ring a relative to give you cpr or die quietly in a corner please.

Here's a useful thread that comprehensively debunks this point: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200811303055364

Winter pressure this year, no matter how you count it, is considerably worse than it has been in the past.

They are

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...

I believe we should have let covid run its course whatever the cost. Not because I think it's a hoax but because the alternative violates the non aggression principle. Is freedom more important to me than 1% of the population dead? Sure.

I don't necessarily think the government is doing it on purpose and colluding with big businesses that are profiting from the situation, I think it's more likely that politicians are just incompetent (they need to save face with people who are pro and against a lockdown) and that big companies are better positioned and can push the government a bit to get what they want. As usual.

If you fear for you life isolate yourself. If you can't afford to isolate ask for charitable donations (even if the more preferred approach has been to just give taxpayers money, taken with force from everyone).

I isolated myself and my family 2 weeks before the government forced a lockdown on us, because there was no data and I was scared of the mortality rate. After seeing the mortality rate and the age range, I stopped caring but I started keeping a distance from old people. I still led a pretty isolated life for personal reasons - and wore my mask to avoid fines and to respect my social contract with society, which took this decision against my will.

I'm genuinely curious to see if the doomsday is going to arrive or not in 2-4 weeks time.

If it does, I hope it will crash the economy and that I'll make a profit or that house prices will go down (assuming I don't die, given my kids go to nursery and are probably spreading all kind of viruses).

If it doesn't, your argument won't look very good and you'll regret calling idiots those with a different opinion. And I guess there is still a chance of an economy crash, given the lockdown.

Maybe this will be a bit of a wakeup call.