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Comment by im3w1l | Hacker News Reader

Here's a scenario I'm curious about. Chickenpox parties for young and healthy people who are then isolated. Use heavy suppression to make sure there are ventilators available for them should they be needed.

My gut feeling is that this could create herd immunity at small cost.

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This was roughly the UK strategy until the message that it would result in about 250k dead finally got through.

Natural spread is already outpacing likely ventilation requirements; we'll find out in a couple of weeks how badly.

Natural spread is way inferior to artificial spread. By doing it artificially you can control exactly who gets it, can monitor them more easily, and can prevent the vulnerable from getting it. And you can very precisely control the rate of spread.

This only works if people do what they're told, and re-infection rates are low & slow - and we suspect they neither is the case.

.. but meanwhile the natural spread is going on?

It's a bit like saying a controlled burn can stop a forest fire - it's true, but it can easily get lost in the scale when you have an Australian or Californian situation and half the state is on fire.

In either case you need to put a quarantine in place. But with artificial spread, it's needed for a much shorter duration.

How do you keep the people who went to the party from infecting the people who didn't go?

I see a possible problem with the idea:

> Chickenpox parties for young and healthy people who are then isolated.

Sign here to be given coronavirus and locked away for a month...

People are already volunteering in other ways, I guess...

If you don't sign you are to practice social distancing for a year meaning you will be excluded from most of society. How's that for an incentive? You see that is what the article proposes everyone should do.

Stick to software.

1/500 dead for all 20-40yo even with medical intervention is not a small cost...

Exclude the vunerable in that age range and it would be much lower.

"If you ignore some of the deaths then the number is lower" is an odd response. Why would you exclude vulnerable people?

Assuming they know they’re vulnerable they presumably wouldn’t go to these parties. However that’s quite an assumption, particularly among young people.

You could have screenings beforehand.

Because shutting down the economy will kill people, too. It will also decrease quality of life for everyone, and disrupt families, communities, cities and countries.

I don't even know what the best course of action is, but there are trade-offs that a lot of people here seem to be ignoring.

Exclude the [non-people] in that age range and it would be much lower.

We are all humans. All life is sacred.

I'm pretty sure OP meant, exclude them from going to the party.

Not exclude the statistic

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