Germtheory3Z
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TLDR so you dont have to wonder.
1. Viral Load is not relevant to teh decision making process since it's the mutation rate that is more of a concern. In 99.999999% of all virus and bacteria that infects humans, their charecteristics is such that mutations will make it more benign and less lethal since it spreads the virus out faster if the patient was alive. Corvid 19 is the 0.001% where since the symptors occur after the infection period, there's less pressure for mutations to be benign and an unquantifiable risk of more lethal mutations. So even if the true deathrate is 1/1000 right now, the no lockdown strat incurs a real possibility of more lethal mutations or more immunity dodging variants.
1.1 This is why predicting herd immunity through doing nothing is a near full proof strat for the other "pandemics" of our time (Sars, Mers, Swine flu) as they were heavily pressured to benign mutations.
In this case the argument would be cutting the number of deaths from immediate infection by a significant margin through controlled exposure, maybe by 2/3rds or 13/14th from the examples he offered. It wouldn't prevent mutation risks but if you think those people are going to get infected organically anyway it could help if it works, and presumably you'd pick one of the benign strains to use.
Overall I'm too pessimistic on actually containing Corona to seriously consider it an outcome. China, a nation that has the advantages of authoritarian government and a developed economy, couldn't contain it so how can we assume a democratic west or underdeveloped third world can? We're now going to be rolling ~200 times for all the countries of the world at worse odds than China and they all need to come up double sixes.
Not really. That's also still ten million fewer deaths than you claim your preferred method will cause.
I guess now we're getting somewhere. If 40 million and 1 people starve to death because of the lockdowns would you end it then? Could you end it before they died if you knew it was going to happen, or would you have to wait until after they had died?
Would it matter if 39,999,999 people were going to starve, but they were all children under ten?
And you're also not considering the non-virus benefits of the lockdown.
Murder and general violent crime rates are down by double digit rates across a great majority of the western world... a trend which might actually save more lives than are being lost to Wuhan Flu.
That's before we see what happens after the recession and society reopening. Poorer people in deprived communities generally means more violent crime, and I can absolutely see gangs needing to reassert territories and test each other as soon as they're back on the streets.
That one's also kind enough to point out, for those environmentalists out there, that this is amazing for the planet. Human-generated pollution hasn't been this low since the 1800s. It's also showing how quickly the planet can bounce back, which is great news and a massive scientific boon.
And the reduction in car accidents... in California alone it has already saved about a billion taxpayer dollars, plus all the life and suffering.
Certainly China's had some impressive improvements in air quality. Nothing I've noticed locally but this does seem to have done a lot of good environmentally. A week off pollution a year might be a good idea if people can somehow agree on it.
Then there's the as-yet impossible to calculate impact upon other diseases that cause serious harm or death. Here's a fun statistic: daylight savings time, and its impact on sleep patterns costs about half a billion dollars per year in America.
As one of the people with a shitty body clock yes it can die in a fire.
Hell, as a spitball number, I'd say we have about six months before the harm to human life caused by the economic damage outweighs the harm to human life caused by modern lifestyles, even if the outbreak never happened in the first place.
Now, after a year or so the damage would no doubt reach unacceptable levels, but we're nowhere near that point as of yet.
And that's *before* factoring in the risks of the virus, one way or another.
TL;DR? We should do this more often.
Now that's where you lost me. There's nothing natural about not being able to see friends or family, or get out into society to do anything. The stress of the isolation is a pretty big factor to ignore here.
South Korea actually elected their Green New Deal party, which would be nice if everyone started turning from 100% exploitation and the "infinite growth!" economic model to trying to build the future we can actually survive with.
I'm afraid you need to worry more about who the other Korea elects and whether you can survive them before you start celebrating...