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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

> they need to send younger segments of the population back to work

This is the only sensible approach moving forward.

We need to quarantine the very old and very ill and provide them with financial assistance. Quarantining everyone is an overreaction and unsustainable.

When the not-very-old and healthy have built up antibodies and resistance, we'll have heard immunity and the very old or ill can return to normalcy.

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This a highly dangerous view. Everyone is at risk of serious illness from this virus. The old are less likely to survive a serious illness but many young people get very ill. When many young people get very ill and overwhelm the health care system, those young people die also.

People believing this approach is sustainable and acting on it are killing people and will not solve the problem.

Mortality rates for young people are not negligible, and we don’t know either the long term health impacts of a severe episode of the virus or even whether catching the virus gives immunity.

Its very likely and we kinda know that catching the virus gives short term immunity. Longer term is unknown.

for young people, it's less deadly than the flu.

Citation needed. Everything I've read says that it's significantly more deadly than the flu for all ages and that more importantly the error bars on any mortality number are absolutely huge.

This is close to the UK approach I heard about

The UK "just do nothing, we want herd immunity" is not their approach and is actually a bit fake. However protecting the most at risk groups is part of their plan. The plan is to flatten the curve so that hospitals can cope.

For example today, all schools have shut.

The latest news from Italy and France is that more young people are impacted then expected and get critically ill.

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