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Comment by Taek | Hacker News Reader

At first I was happy to see this. But now I am not happy to see this, because it's making me realize that this is the only action that's going to be put in place over the next few days.

Too little, too late. This type of regulation made sense 2 weeks ago, combined with a halting of all international travel and an advisory against interstate travel.

The virus got out of control though. We don't know how many are infected, but we know our ground zero is 10-100x worse than the ground zero of nations that managed to get things under control.

People need to brace for impact. The US medical system is going to be overwhelmed by people in critical condition. The government has been too slow to respond.

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> People need to brace for impact. The US medical system is going to be overwhelmed by people in critical condition.

I'd just like to point out that when you say the "US medical system" you're talking about a large area. It's not like a country like Italy which is smaller than the state of California but 30% more people. The US is far more spread apart and while that doesn't mean it will be better here, it does mean that you can't think about the US just like a single country. Same with China, too.

You’re still only talking about 700,000 beds for a disease that will likely cause 1,000,000 deaths and put huge numbers in the ICU and even more in hospital care.

A bed in Maine does no good if the patient is in LA and the doctor is in North Dakota.

Let's also not forget the trend for years has been to eliminate beds to save $$$. Rural hospitals will be hit the worst by this, most are now just outpatient hospitals with limited number of beds.

Yes, it's late. But it's still better to do than not.

I think as the number of cases explode with more testing availability, governments at all levels will be pressured into taking more action if only to show the population something is being done.

But yes, we now know it's already too late. The US has failed to contain the disease like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc did, and the CDC already expects most of the U.S. population will be exposed to this virus eventually. There's no precedent yet for a COVID-19 epidemic of this size -- China has successfully contained it, and Italy's population is just 1/5 of the US.

But on the other hand, we as average people can still do our part and meaningfully contribute to flattening the curve. Even one unnecessary death avoided is a win.

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