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Comment by dzdt | Hacker News Reader

I do not believe the US nor any of its states have made it a goal to stop the virus. Please give me links if this is wrong. Everything I have seen from government sources talks about "flatten the curve" or "slow the spread" or similar. The end result of any flatten the curve effort is 40-80% of the population is infected until the combination of herd immunity and social distancing stops the spread.

Please can anyone link to a government source saying that stopping the virus is a goal? I would love to be wrong.

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There are two sides of this coin, that are sort of mutually exclusive:

1) On one hand, it's sort of a "competition" to gain "herd immunity". Of course if this is achievable, every country would want this, but not while disrupting civil society. So the measures makes sense for controllable scenarios, if introduction is managable.

2) COVID-19 is a completely new ("Novela") virus. We don't know long-term health impacts or long-term branches of mutation. Introduction to the masses is not without risks and costs. So if possible, stopping the virus would be preferable. There are uncountable potential viruses that are just waiting to be introduced as well, so an "open policy" doesn't necessarily make any sense. This shows how interconnected humans are today, that the "Me Only"-mantra is unsustainable, and that Capitalism crumbles in the face of real existential, uncertain adversity. This crisis is really minor.

UPDATE:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_virus

- https://www.newscientist.com/term/covid-19/

"The cause of the disease was soon confirmed as a new kind of coronavirus, and the infection has spread to a number of countries around the world."

There's no pre-existing immunity. All ages may require ICU and people without pre-existing conditions may get damages to their lungs.

In addition to handling known unknowns, states must also manage unknown unknowns.

COVID-19 is a completely new (Novela) virus.

That's not true. Coronaviruses did exist, and they are not new. //"Me Only"-mantra is unsustainable.// Exactly opposite, we will see in the near future that the government which one destroyed their economy will eat shit in next years.

Coronaviruses did exist, but not this one.

> The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-la...

There's more to the world than the US. Quite a few Asian states are aiming for zero, and so are some subnational entities like Tasmania in Australia.

We may well end up in a world where corona-free islands float in a sea of infection:

https://gyrovague.com/2020/03/20/islands-in-the-sea-a-simple...

Look up the press conference by Cuomo.

“The timeline, nobody can tell you, it depends on how we handle it,” Mr. Cuomo said. “But 40 percent, up to 80 percent of the population will wind up getting this virus. All we’re trying to do is slow the spread, but it will spread.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/nyregion/Coronavirus-new-...

I’ve watched every one of Cuomo’s press conferences. He message is always clear - that we are trying to not overwhelm the health system.

He doesn’t say “flatten the curve” because he believes words matter and tries to communicate to avoid panic (Hence his refusal to call “Stay Indoors” as “Shelter in Place”)

But the medical side of the state government - along with their action - has been consistently flatten the curve.

No one but the highly delusional believes we can roll back community spread.

I've been blown away by Cuomo's steady hand and calm reassurance in this time. While De Blasio has flip-flopped from apathy to utter panic, Cuomo has remained fairly consistent. I appreciate his insistence on preventing panic by using specific language.

> call “Stay Indoors” as “Shelter in Place”

This piece of this story is utterly fascinating to me right now. It's like half the population has a completely different interpretation of the phrase shelter-in-place. I feel like it's entirely too vague and has led to a situation where, in my neck of the woods in Orange county, CA, people are using the ambiguous language to justify going about their daily lives. Where, to me, the order is very clear: stay in or near your home. The beach isn't in or near my home. It isn't in or near the majority of our homes. And neither is the dog park, or the county or state parks, or the national forest near us, etc.. And, yet, on social media, it's very easy to find people complaining about how surprised they were when they went to the beach, or where ever, and it was totally packed with people. It's making me question my sanity that we can have such wildly different interpretations of this situation.

I had to venture out Friday in NYC and parks and streets were filled with people. Lines to get cocktails going down the street. Basketball games. No one wearing masks. For the first time since it started I started to be worried about my family and myself.

I think "Stay In Your Home" or "Stay the Fk Home" are needed as daily SMS messages and voicemails.

Because the American conception of "gently tell people to do the right thing, and their good ole spirit will volunteer to do the right thing" is false.

In France, there are drones flying around blasting speakers at high decibals for people to stay in their homes. There are fines, and repeat offenders can face six months of jail.

In NYC (I live in NYC), we've denigrated the police for the past few years as "fascist" -- ask any average 25 year old you meet in a coffeeshop or Brooklyn bar -- there are protests over arresting people who do illegal things. Police enforcement of simple crimes is considered "a waste of police resources" at best and at worst "systemic racism in action." If you talk about enforcement of subway vagrancy and crimes like smoking on the platform, urinating and so forth, you'll hear a lecture about redlining and some other academic topics from history, you'll be reminded of stop and frisk, quotas and so on. So there you have it, the Left made it hard to sustain order. But the Right doesn't get away scot-free: every Trump supporter I talk to says, "It's my Constitutional Right to do what I want!"

So there you have it. Both Right and Left united in favor of individualism and against common good.

That's what happens when both the left and right is actually right wing.

Just wait until the virus mutates. Then things will really be fun.

I don’t know why you were downvoted. Maybe because of the second sentence?

Mutation is a very real problem. After all flu goes through it all the time. That is the main reason why we get flu regularly. Second reason is that the immunity may be temporary.

Flu is not a Coronavirus.

Influenza is not a coronavirus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomyxoviridae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus

You are right, I edited it out. The mutation remains a potential issue though.

So how do you fight mutation? By avoiding further spread of the virus. So really, this "danger of mutation" talk does not add anything to the discussion. In fact, it could equally well happen that the virus mutates to something less lethal.

I disagree that the danger of mutation does not add anything to the conversation. If it is real, then it just shows how important it is to act now swiftly and to not rely on developing herd immunity.

And you are right, mutations can go both ways.

What we understand under "mutation" consists of 2 basic facts:

* During replication of cells, DNA changes happen by accident and random chance. This yields random new traits. * A random trait might be useful to survival and reproduction, or it might be a hindrance. Maybe a trait that was once beneficial becomes a hindrance when the environment in which an organism lives shifts (i.e. higher Ph values of a pond of water will cause a shift in which bacteria will thrive, and which won't)

Regardless of what you do, you can't stop mutation as long as cells are living and replicating. You don't control the appearance of traits directly as replication is basically a roll of the dice. (Technically, you can through genetic engineering, but we're talking about what happens outside the lab).

Finally, viruses are arguably life. They are envelopes with genetic material. They aren't a hive mind following a conscious strategy. Their emergent behavior is dictated by the traits they happen to have, and a gazillion environmental factors. Nothing else.

So, when we say "The virus is spreading", we are really saying "More people are infected and infecting others as well." a virus doesn't willfully jump between hosts.

Lethality isn't a good trait either. The goal of a virus is to spread genetic material, killing its host is an inadvertent second order effect of replication. Viruses that are inadvertently too lethal will run out of hosts rather quickly.

This SARS-Cov2 is a perfect storm because (a) of the properties of the virus itself - very contagious in 1-1 contact, low lethality, it's entirely new - and (b) because of environmental circumstances: 7.75 billion available hosts and globalisation / massive mobility.

While we don't control mutation, the best case scenario is that quarantines, lockdown and eventual treatments will subdue that people keep spreading this strain. But replication might yield other traits and less harmful cousins of this virus might spread instead.

(edit: lest we forget, homo sapiens sapiens is the net result of many mutations over the course of millions of years. So, beware of inadvertent value attribution!)

As much as I appreciate the lengthy explanation, my concern was strictly related to the possibility that immunity gained by getting over the infection once, may be cancelled if/when the virus mutates (enough).

> The goal of a virus is to spread genetic material, killing its host is an inadvertent second order effect of replication.

As an aside, I find it very amusing that you used this sentence after your paragraphes on emergent behavior and randomness.

Finalism and anthropomorphism are really hard to avoid even when you clearly know virus have no goal.

Ha! Thanks for pointing that out! :-) It's really hard to avoid indeed! And you're totally right!

Looks like there are already 2 strains of it.

Just keep in mind that less lethal (and disabling) strains are inherently better fit and will thus spread faster than more lethal ones. (But yes, it can also contaminate again everybody that has had the virus, most likely with much milder simptoms.) Virus mutation is not cause for despair.

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