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Comment by 0xbadf00d | Hacker News Reader

I’m trying to understand the alternative - let contagion continue unchecked and overwhelm medical services?

The alternative is a mandatory quarantine. No leaving your house, the national guard will drop off government meal packs and government toilet paper, and we'll figure out the economy later.

A society that has the willingness to abide by voluntary distancing measures wouldn't need it, but the US may not be such a society.

The alternative is recognizing social distancing isn't working. If browbeating people into it doesn't work, then we, as a free society, are stuck. People are, apparently, not responsible enough, as a whole, to follow best-practices. Those best-practices only seem to work if people are nearly fully complying with them. Half-measures are, seemingly, useless, and impose a significant cost. Maybe establishing a government delivery service and tax credits for vulnerable people to go into long-term quarantine is better? I don't know. Initially I was strongly in favor of social distancing, but it was based on an incorrect assumption of how socially conscious my fellow Americans are.

Americans are free spirits, unlike people from more structured or rigidly governed countries. They're not used to giving up their personal freedom when someone tells them its for the good of all.

So unlike the Chinese, who shutter themselves obediently and trustingly at the whim of their government.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I remember videos of Chinese people, very unhappily, being forced to stay in their homes by armed guards, as opposed to them obediently trusting their government.

Maybe I'm misremembering?

That gunpoint trust has to be earned.

Don't forget when members of the local government in China were welding doors shut on apartment buildings.

People could still get out if they really needed to, but they had to go through the main entrance where they were screening people for symptoms.

The alternative is letting 7% of the population die, like Italy's peak.

But, hey, more dollars, right?

7% of Italy did not die.

If everyone in Italy gets Coronavirus, what do you expect the death rate to be?

And remember, 7% of confirmed cases there have already died, and that’s over 1 in 3 of all deaths reported so far.

According to the WaPo, it's likely that far more people are infected in Italy than we know about, and therefore the true mortality rate is much lower. Apparently the government is only testing people with "severe symptoms":

> The actual Italian death rate, they say, is probably far lower than what the government numbers suggest. The unofficial estimates assume the actual number of people infected with the virus — people who have not yet been tested — is massive. In other words, several hundred thousand people in Italy may be carrying the virus.

> “It’s a huge iceberg,” said Fabrizio Pregliasco, a virologist at the University of Milan. “We are only looking at those who are sick.”

> Though Italian leaders touted widespread testing at the beginning of the outbreak, the government has applied tight guidelines for who can be given swabs. Health officials have been testing those who have severe symptoms and are in need of obvious medical care.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-is-coronavir...

I’m definitely hoping it’s a statistical artifact. It would be very interesting if some country or ethnic group was genetically resistant to the virus, but that sort of invites the opposite to be true too, which I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Still, if it’s 3% like everywhere else, that’s horrible enough that the point of the person who said 7% still stands, IMO.

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