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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

MA just announced a ban on all gatherings over 25 people. Restaurants are all now take-out only. Health clubs closed. All shows and schools canceled. Etc.. Currently this is through April 7th.

I hope the government is also planning to pay people’s rent, mortgage, electric, water, groceries, credit card interest, etc.

A friend of mine runs a small local restaurant. Not sure how he will pay rent. All of his servers are now temporarily unemployed and have no way to buy food or pay rent.

Another friend of mine is a personal trainer. Not sure how he will buy groceries next week.

The vast majority of the people most directly impacted by all this are essentially at zero risk of dying from COVID. And on April 7th it’s not like COVID will cease to exist...

“Locking everything down” is an incredibly damaging and nonsensical action for the vast majority of the population.

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> at zero risk of dying from COVID

You're conflating the recorded fatality rate with the actual possibility for fatality, which is much higher.

The fatality rate is low among people 60 and under because the ones who suffer severe cases can reliably survive it with the aid of ventilators and round-the-clock medical care.

However, if the virus spreads enough to have a huge number of infections all at once, many of those severe cases that would have otherwise survived will die, because there's just not enough medical equipment or doctors for them.

See Italy, where the fatality rate is at a whopping 7.3% percent (much higher than even the 4.9% at the heart of the outbreak in Wuhan), because no measures were taken to control the spread until too late and so parts of the country have completely run out of ICU beds.

From what I've understood the mortality rate in Italy is artificially high because they are not prioritizing testing mild/asymptomatic cases. Until there are serological tests available we can only make guesses about the proportion of mild cases, but looking at the data from South Korea and Diamond Princess it looks like they make up the overwhelming majority of cases.

In Both SK and DP sick people got the best treatment. Without having access to enough respirators, CFRs would have been way higher there, which is exactly his point.

Definitely, lack of proper intensive care will pull the CFR in the opposite direction. But I don't think that is the main reason we see such high CFR's in Italy.

I hear you absolutely that there needs to be economic assistance for the people affected here. They are going to be impacted well beyond the actual sicknesses. What I hope to convince you of though is that simply doing nothing and pretending people should continue to go out and about, could very well be like asking for good swimmers to stay back and keep shops open when there is flooding.

> The vast majority of the people most directly impacted by all this are essentially at zero risk of dying from COVID. And on April 7th it’s not like COVID will cease to exist... “Locking everything down” is an incredibly damaging and nonsensical action for the vast majority of the population.

Maybe, they are young and healthy. But unless they don't ever meet anyone with any comorbidities or advanced age, they will spread the virus to someone who isn't. Even if they are young and healthy and aren't aware of any risk factors, their immune system could overreact to the virus and kill them - its happened in china[0]. People who are afraid about the virus will not visit their establishment, or take classes from them, etc. This economic hit is not entirely artificial, it's coming for these people whether or not we close down service industry.

I think we have to take these drastic measures and also ensure the government treats this like the natural disaster it is, ready to restart the economy after the downturn by injecting cash and forgiving debt.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/world/asia/co...

I've got a friend who's been profitably running a small business for a couple years who's pretty concerned. If they can't open, without relief for rent and loan payments, the place probably goes under in short order. (And it's a bummer to me because the business is unique for the area and has built up a nice community of regular patrons who won't have any real alternatives.)

Couldn't these people take out a low-interest loan for this time period? At least in Canada, major banks are reaching out to people asking to contact them if you experience financial hardship because of the outbreak.

>And on April 7th it’s not like COVID will cease to exist...

This is the most important part.

Its not clear whats being done to prep for the end of lockdowns. Once everything resumes so will the spread (all) viruses

We've seen in examples like South Korea that it is possible to keep the virus in check by doing extensive testing, contact tracing, and temperature checks.

We don't have those available right now and are looking at disaster if we don't lock down. Our testing capacity will grow significantly and by later we can take those measures and get back closer to normal life.

Unless the lockdowns are extremely effective, a large part of those who will get sick will already have been and thus immune. They can also be extended beyond April 7th.

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