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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

I live in Boston, I'm in my 30's, and I've decided I won't cancel anything. If I get the virus, so what? I firmly believe it's unwarranted panic. I'll enjoy the empty metropolis and remember this event for the rest of my life, like I remember 9/11, the financial crash, and how my parents remember the JFK assassination and the Blizzard of '78. Strange times

EDIT - Let me clarify. If I get the virus, I will quarantine (of course), but I'm not going to prematurely ruin my life in fear of this event, which is in itself not a death sentence - only 0.2% of those under 40 die at worst case https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

Everyone needs to RELAX

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If you get the virus, you will likely survive, and I hope you do. The point of the cancelling is to slow the spread, to reduce the risk that your parents will get it, or that if they do, the health care system will have enough capacity to care for them. You hope for an empty city? Be patient, Boston might get another big blizzard in your lifetime.

Everything seems normal to me, it's the hyper-connected Twitter / HN / social media that's losing its mind. Everything is mostly the same and I'll keep the economy humming.

> Everything seems normal to me,...

Sounds a lot like "this is fine" when considering the less optimistic death and injury rates are surpassing the flu by multiples of ten.

Everything is normal now, that's the power of exponentials, things go from normal to crazy very quickly and the more people like you the quicker it gets there.

Everything in China was normal 2 months ago, everything in Italy was normal 2 weeks ago.

Revisit this in a week or two

> If I get the virus, so what?

You end up passing it along to someone who’s not as fortunate as you, that’s what.

“Cancel everything” isn’t about saving you. It’s about saving all the people around you.

>I'm not going to prematurely ruin my life

>Everyone needs to RELAX

You need to understand how hypocritical this sentiment comes off as. Some people are panicking - however, most people and sources (that I am exposed to) are advocating for responses within the range of reason (and there is room for a range of opinions within the range of reason). If you want to spread reason, support the fight against price gouging and against people who buy far too much bulk supplies. But please don't tell random threads full of people to just generally "relax" in all capital, italic letters, while at the same time throwing out wild hyperbole like "I'm not going to ruin my life". It's a very mixed message.

I can go about my day like normal, or I can live in 24/7 fear of getting a virus that has 1/500 chance of killing me (at worst)? Has everyone gone insane? I still believe it's a bad flu, and if I get it I'll follow guidelines, but I'm not going to panic. Just giving a different perspective to the hyperventilating internet culture.

You're incredibly selfishly increasing the risk to everyone else around you, but I get it. I was in the same camp just a few days ago.

One can imagine certain futures where it's actually a good thing for low-risk populations quickly develop an immunity, styming the spread later on.

The low risk populations are actively spreading it and are passing it on to high risk populations bin that case. We'd rather have the disease spread slowly and move some of those infections from now to later so our health system doesn't get overwhelmed, and we'd rather delay as long as possible to get a vaccine developed

Well, lock yourself inside for the next 12 months then.

Hygiene, social distancing, targeted quarantine, etc. There is a spectrum. It's not binary: normies vs hermit prepped.

Having had a compromised immune system I don't wish it on anyone. But hey maybe if more people were casual about these things then they too can learn the hard way.

We might have to if Italy and China are any indication.

Nope - I wash my hands. You want me to self-quarantine already? I'm not going to be afraid of 0.00001% of my state being infected.

Ah, yes, washing your hands. The completely infallible way to prevent the spread of a disease.

I don't want you to be afraid - I want you to minimize the risk that you get coronavirus and become another infection vector, endangering the at-risk populations around you.

I want you to do that because it is the socially responsible thing to do, and it will decrease the chance of someone who is far more at risk of serious complications from the disease catching it.

Every disease has its super spreaders, this poster is just a good example of why we should cancel everything and be careful, since there is at least one person out there with no understanding of risk and disease epidemiology. There are likely to be more, and the less chances we give them to put us and vulnerable populations in harm's way, the better. If we knew everyone would react appropriately we wouldn't need drastic action, but this is a perfect example of why we need to act fast.

I took the subway today, and it was about 1/4 full for the time. But everyone there wasn't pulling their hair out in abject terror. Last night my wife and I ate dinner at a Thai restaurant, and it was pretty full. I'm just going with the huge portion of society that doesn't choose to be afraid.

That's good that you're patronizing Asian businesses, a lot of them have been hit hard by people avoiding them due to virus fears.

You do realize that every confirmed case (and fatality) is a lagging indicator, right? Further delayed by the fact that testing is still basically nonexistent.

No other option but to lock yourself in your house with all these carriers everywhere!

Can you please stop feeding this flamewar? It's fine that you've stated your view, but to keep provoking others like this amounts to trolling. Ironic in a thread about contagion.

...and lo' you're going to be one of those dudes who wanders around pregnant women while incubating the measles.

I can't say anything good about this decision of yours.

The individual risk is low, but the systemic risk is high. Please try to understand that. Health services could be overwhelmed if more than 5% of the population gets infected in a short period of time (at a 5% hospitalization rate).

You will quarantine yourself but will have probably started spreading the virus before you knew you had it.

So everyone on earth should quarantine? That's not the recommendation. You quarantine if you have it, not out of fear.

There are a two options: first is to do social distancing properly and the virus will naturally die out, the other is to "go on as normal" and eventually most people will be infected.

The current low infection rates are because people are changing their behaviour, not because the virus isn't a serious problem. This effort is slightly thwarted by selfish randos who ignore the risks.

> There are a two options: first is to do social distancing properly and the virus will naturally die out, the other is to "go on as normal" and eventually most people will be infected.

Will social distancing really work over the long term though? We can't live in caves forever, eventually we have to come out.

Do you get vaccines? After all, vaccines can have adverse outcomes. The overall mortality rate for mumps is .01%, so why bother inconveniencing yourself if the impact is going to be so negligible?

A German report that came out today indicated that there is significant pre-symptomatic viral shedding. So you could be not showing any symptoms yet unknowingly pass the disease on to the people around you that you care about. This is, of course, not an issue if there are not people around you that you care about...

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