Quote (GarryGarry @ 22 Nov 2020 18:30)
thank goodness covid is not 1/10 deaths ... or we be seeing millions of not billions deaths ... around the world how bad some places dealing with this...
If covid's IFR was 10 or 30% or so, instead of its actual 0.6% - and with little age stratification - then we would be under martial law and there wouldnt be much discussion or dissent about how to deal with the virus: quash it at any cost. The key crux with covid is that it poses a big threat for society, but not for most individuals. The personal risk from the virus is negligible for the majority of the population, and the major threat for them comes from a potentially overwhelmed healthcare system, not the virus itself.
I'm probably not gonna make a lot of friends by saying the following, but to put it very bluntly: if we could let the virus burn through the population without risking a collapse of all of healthcare, then doing just that would very well be on the table as one of several feasible options. (In this scenario, we would still be wearing masks and try to protect the vulnerable, but there would be no lockdowns and probably also no mandatory quarantines - life would go on almost as normal for the 0-50 year olds.) Since not everyone from the risk groups would catch the virus even in such a scenario, it would essentially amount to a death toll in the range of 0.3 - 0.4% of the popaltion, with the big majority of the diseased already very old, and the majority of them saddled with comorbidities and not that many expected life years left anyway. Compared to trillions upon trillions in economic damage and tens of millions of destroyed livelihoods, making this kind of sacrifice would be considered.
Covid is so divisive because it hits the "sweet spot" such that its health impact and the economic and social impact of the countermeasures fall in a range where the optimal tradeoff is unclear and up for debate. If the fatality rate was a bit lower, it would be on the level of "just" a bad seasonal flu, and we know that society doesnt shut down for those. If it was a bit higher, the tradeoff would unequivocally lean toward the health side of things.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 22 2020 12:03pm