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Comment by merpnderp | Hacker News Reader

No one paid attention. After the H1N1 crisis, the US burned through its reserves of N95 masks and other pandemic supplies, and never refilled them.

We aren't even learning now, even after it was obvious Italy needed to lock down more, the US still wasn't taking it seriously. I listened last night to my city council argue that it was still no big deal. Two members, a doctor and scientist said we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses and it wasn't that big a deal to anyone but the elderly.

We just don't learn.

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> we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses

The problem is that they are right with this. Shutting down the city will probably destroy small businesses. Those same people also can't do much to help small businesses. It is understandable that they don't want to sentence these businesses to death when they are powerless to save them. This is why the relative inaction by the federal government is such a problem here. They are the only entity that has the power to stop the wide spread of the virus and absorb the economic repercussions of the shutdown.

What happened in Italy is that they delayed... and then ended up shutting down everything anyway - just with a lot more infected people and deaths, and the exact same economic hardships.

Probably worse economic hardship with the added strain on the labor force.

Staying open is not a panacea for small businesses. Nobody is travelling, nobody is spending. My parents have a small shop (in Spain) and they had to close before the lockdown started because they were not selling anything. And, by that time, things were much better that they are now around here.

You are certainly right, but it is a question of blame. If the government shuts down your business and it never recovers you will likely blame the government. If the government lets you stay open and your business still fails you will likely blame the virus.

EDIT: This is being downvoted, so let me make a clarification that I am explaining the government's potential reasoning but I am not excusing or agreeing with it.

If the government doesn't shut down businesses, we get hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in addition to the economic crisis, which is here anyway.

Spain's hospitals are collapsing, sick people are now laid on the ground, they are improvising by making new beds in expo halls, etc. It's not just Italy now, we're seeing how bad it gets and it only takes another week or two for the rest of the world.

It seems to me that the root cause in all these things is a lack of appreciation for the manner in which people think. And further, that we (both our leaders as well as people in general) assign practically zero importance to this aspect of the problem. It seems to me that we almost don't even recognize that it's there (and here one must be careful: yes, if someone points this phenomenon out, we can all see it then - but change the topic of discussion to something else, and watch that knowledge seemingly vanish).

In this case, I propose that a better definition of the problem is: people disagree on which variable to optimize.

But neurotypicals don't think in terms of "optimizing a variable" (precise, logical thinking), for a given set of variables. Rather, they think in terms of what is "the right thing to do" (fuzzy, heuristic-based thinking), in a given situation.

System 1 vs System 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy...

Everyone "thinks" (see: recursion) they think in System 2 (conscious, logical), because this is what we perceive, in infinitely high resolution - it seems like what we think and believe is purely the result of disciplined, rational thought, but it is not. Not even close. And it's not just those who are less intellectually capable than us....it's all of us.

Now, it is obvious of course that the degree to which each individual person suffers from this will vary significantly. If we had a means of measuring this, this would give us a metric of the variance of this phenomenon between people at the personal population level. I would call this the relative variance of X.

But there's another metric that is far less obvious: the ~absolute variance - this metric compares variance not between the peoples of Earth, but between them and a purely rational, emotion-free actor.

It seems to me that the second metric would be an extremely interesting thing to know, and perhaps extremely useful. But alas, we have no data source. I wonder though: might there be a way to come up with an estimate that is plausibly accurate?

Maybe this is a naive question, but... why can't we temporarily just stop the whole chain of debt instead of forcing individuals and small businesses to bear the brunt of losses? Right now the issue is that if we're not working, we're not making money, and we can't pay for rent and debts. But is the only solution to find a way for the government to give the people money and let the businesses collapse? Why can't we put the burden further up the chain? Doesn't it all end up at the banks? I pay my landlord rent, my landlord pays mortgage on the property to the bank. Can we pause rent and mortgages and debts for a few months? Sure, there would be big damage done to the economy still, but why do we have to let the damage happen at the individual level? I'm sure there's some simple explanation, but I don't understand why.

The bank sells the mortgage to Fannie Mae. Fannie puts it into a mortgage-backed security. Your life insurance company or pension plan buys that mortgage-backed security. So it comes right back to you. There’s just no good way to compensate for weeks or months of economic activity that just doesn’t happen.

Basically our whole economy is based off of BS IOU's and the moment there is any problem in the world the whole system comes crashing down around us. Decades of economists and investors building layers and layers of obfuscated financial abstractions so they can get rich finally has its consequences.

I guess it's been a while since we've eaten the rich. It was a long time coming.

You're exactly right. But our leaders are afraid of everyone realizing just how easy it would be to end our debt slavery.

The United States is run by a landlord and all his power comes from workers servicing his debts.

Very naively here (and prob wrong in many aspects) but I expect those you are talking about to have leverage on these decisions unlike us (the lowly pleb); I don't expect a bank ceo choosing to take that giantic hit of a burden when it can just be pushed globally on the society. You could even argue that if a bank is able to do thay, they could do it anyday and not require a pandemic event.

Still, a stronger argument is that a bank is a business overall. They live out of debt. That kind of hit could also kill the bank I believe.

By default or by design, debt forgiveness will occur.

David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years details the cyclic history of such things.

Some of the more savvy Haves, like Mitt Romney, recognize the current threat to the status quo and have made their opening bids on negotiating an armistice with the Have-Nots.

Others, on both sides, are less willing to haggle.

> Maybe this is a naive question, but... why can't we temporarily just stop the whole chain of debt instead of forcing individuals and small businesses to bear the brunt of losses?

It's not a naive question. Unfortunately I don't think the answer is going to be palatable.

Great point, but it would probably send us into the dark ages when people refuse to re-start the chain of debt. People are def afraid of this possibility, hence the gun shop lines wrapped around the block. Debt: The first 5000 years is a great book that explains details of what would likely happen.

In my county, during the 1918 flu, they just banned public meetings and enacted a mandatory mask law that said you had to wear a cotton mask if you went out in public. It worked really well. The town that enacted the mask law the earliest and pushed it the hardest did the best through the first 2 waves of infection. It worked so well, that they decided it was an over reaction and repealed the mask laws and then they got absolutely hammered in the third wave.

I don't see why we couldn't do a mandatory social distancing & mask law (even an improvised one) and let people otherwise go about their business. It would help lessen the impact to businesses, and arguably could result in significant reduction in the transmission rate.

In the Czech Republic there is such a mask law. One must wear something over the nose and mouth. As to why other countries don't enact the same, I don't know.

it's hard to do social distancing when we are social people or we might bump into someone despite trying. Also only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission. Regular masks don't really work and provide false sense of safety.

This comment is deeply flawed, if not blatantly false, please read the following before you consider spreading this information again:

First off, social distancing is a risk mitigation strategy for droplet transmission. The idea is to provide sufficient distance between people and a cough or sneeze that a large fraction of the droplets settle before they could end up in someone's eyes/mouth/nose/next inhaled breath. Briefly invading someone's 2-3m bubble while accidentally bumping into them or walking past them really carries very little risk of exposure. It's more relevant to having a conversation with someone, particularly when indoors.

Whether or not aerosols play a major role in transmission remains to be seen, but we know that the virus can survive in aerosols for hours, and aerosols can remain suspended in the air for a very long time. (That's where N95's may become more relevant, but pathogens that have a dominant aerosol transmission are rare. Things like TB and measles behave that way. SARS-CoV-2 would probably have a high R0 if it were dominantly transmitted this way.)

Now, the statement "only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission" is just false in several different ways:

First, when worn by healthcare workers, there is no significant difference between surgical masks and N95 respirators in preventing respiratory infections.[1][2] To quote the meta-analysis study[1]:

>"We identified 6 clinical studies (3 RCTs, 1 cohort study and 2 case–control studies) and 23 surrogate exposure studies. In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection (RCTs: odds ratio [OR] 0.89, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.64–1.24; cohort study: OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.03–6.41; case–control studies: OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.25–3.36); (b) influenza-like illness (RCTs: OR 0.51, 95% CI 0.19–1.41); or (c) reported workplace absenteeism (RCT: OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.57–1.50). In the surrogate exposure studies, N95 respirators were associated with less filter penetration, less face-seal leakage and less total inward leakage under laboratory experimental conditions, compared with surgical masks."

Next, let's look specifically at surgical masks when worn by the public in the case of SARS-CoV-1 in the following study[3]:

>We also used this investigation to quantify the impact of behaviors (i.e., mask wearing, handwashing) that were promoted to reduce the risk for SARS. Wearing masks outside the home in a reference period corresponding to the 2 weeks before symptom onset for cases was significantly protective against clinical SARS. Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting.

And finally, the above doesn't even address the fact that mask protections work BOTH WAYS. It has also been shown[4] that masks when worn by infected individuals help prevent the dissemination of infectious droplets and aerosols, and reduces the rate of viral shedding. To quote that study, specifically on placing surgical masks on the infected: >"Overall, masks produced a 3.4 fold (95% CI 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral aerosol shedding."

Finally, there's evidence that even homemade improvised masks work surprisingly well! They perform only marginally worse than surgical masks in particle filtration tests.[5][6] (Remember how surgical masks, which perform worse than N95's in those same type of tests, showed no significant difference in their ability to prevent illness?) To quote the conclusion of study[6]:

>"Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence, personal respirators providing most protection. Masks worn by patients may not offer as great a degree of protection against aerosol transmission."

TL;DR In short, if everyone in public wore masks, it would not only be definitively protective for the wearer, but for those around them as well.

[1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/)

[2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/)

[3](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article)

[4](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/)

[5](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...)

[6](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/)

We aren't doing it because they didn't order enough masks back in December when they could have.

They didn't know about germs and hand washing back then so not in your recommendations? Also, how many ended up dying in your county?

The problem is that they are not right. When there is an ongoing epidemic, it is not about "oh, lets reopen quickly."

Reopening quickly NOW would mean: - The collapse of the hospital systems of ANY country currently on earth (save a few that are actually working for the people, not to make profit) - The endangering of many, if not all medical professionals - A huge reduction of workforce realistically, because there will be many people sick for multiple weaks, prepare to lose 5-10 percent of your FULL workforce if the hospitals are overloaded.

So if the shutdown is not implemented, and not followed through, the economy will STILL collapse, and the consequences will be 3-4 times more deadly to the whole population.

The only upside to the global epidemic is that finally the neoliberal haegemony is ending, and libertarian dreamers who were not facing tough situations before can actually see where their favorite policies lead in the actual real world.

And we all will see it, because the inertia in the system will keep forcing politicians all over the world to ignore basic rules of society in favor of chasing a dream (some GDP growth preservation).

We can all see it clearly if we take the time to think it through. You have a bellyache. You want to eat cake. You can either not eat it, or you can eat it, vomit it out, go to the hospital, and still not feel well. Oh, and the hospitals are overloaded with COVID-patients.

What if what we learned is simply that there’s nothing we can do?

You can lock down, you can isolate... destiny still arrives.

Then fine, we just keep moving on and accept deaths from the virus in the same way as we do for deaths from the flu or road traffic accidents. However that is absolutely NOT the situation we are in. If we do nothing, significant numbers of people will die from the virus. If we completely shutdown the economy, significant numbers of people will die from lack of access to essential services. What we decide to do matters a great deal. There is no reason to be fatalistic.

Avoiding infection was never the goal. "Flattening the curve" so as to not overwhelm the fragile health infra is, and it's already been shown to be working.

You are making assumptions here.

I'm working on a joke and only have the punchline: "Western Democracy with Chinese Communist Party Characteristics".

20-50 year olds with no pre-existing conditions are at low risk. The policy of shutting down the economy indefinitely is frightening on its own and we'll be dealing with the steep repercussions of that for many years. This is not sustainable.

Japan shows that wide use of masks, good hygiene and a decent HC system should actually allow to keep the country running. After what's happened so far, I wonder whether Western countries will be able to learn from this - it's going to need lots of politicians to walk back on previous statements.

Some European countries weren't as deep into bad HC as the US so there are going to be a wide range of reactions and adaptation. Weird thing: in my country, the political entities responsible for budget cuts in HC are applauded at the moment for their handling of the situation they made worse because of those previous cuts.

We have an expensive healthcare system in the U.S. but it's not a bad healthcare system.

Depends on whether or not you have a job.

Sorry, I abused the language. I'd say you have good healthcare but a bad healthcare system.

Japan shows nothing besides doing a better job of the appearance games that US tried and failed to play. Everyone I know in Japan is saying the response is a disaster and bracing for the worst. There was a huge uptick in cases just reported and the media is starting to break their government-imposed silence and warn people.

Now that Olympic Games are cancelled they don’t have much reason to cook numbers anymore. I expect a gradual change in tune of official communication starting immediately.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Japanese people can accuse their government of not responding effectively even though the Japanese government is doing a better job than the US.

From all the news I’ve seen (I watch Japanese news broadcasts most days), people there aren’t comparing the Japanese response to the US, but Taiwan, South Korea, and China. And the comparative failings are obvious and stark.

I'd say Japan is pulling through despite failings of the government. I don't think their #deaths is cooked much.

They’re literally not.

I watched the news this morning and the broadcasters were panicked at a level I haven’t seen since 3/11. No meaningful measure have been put in place to curb the spread of the disease or strengthen healthcare infrastructure in Japan.

But Aso Taro, a leading politician of the ruling LDP, did announce his major response initiative: giving out certificates for Wagyu beef.

Ok, could be. I hope not for them, but let's see how it goes down.

Its pretty simple. We didn't scale testing at all which turns a national isolation into just isolating people that are potentially infected. Then you keep isolating those people until it dies on the vine. This current solutions SUCKS, but it silver medal sucks to just letting the disease roam free and infect everyone.

Also, the whole "young people and what not are at low risk" is anecdotal. We have no clue what the longterm, and passive ramifications of this virus are.

"nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were age 20 to 54"

So yes, they are low risk because they get priority in the hospitals. But when the hospital is full, what will happen to them?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-...

Hospitalization does not imply high risk. That article also has an unnecessarily wide range to make the data meaningless. Why are 20 year olds and 54 year olds bucketed in the same category?

For more accurate data, 0 deaths have occurred in Italy for those under 30. Under 40, the few (9) are due to severe pre-existing conditions. Median age for fatality is 80 years old.

The exponential curve not only applies for rate of infection but seems to be holding true for age as well.

Edit: Source for Italy data here - https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infograf...

could you please share a source? I dont think your comment deserves to be downvoted like it is, but a source on the data you mention would be very helpful.

This article from yesterday has a decent summary of case fatality rates by age in various countries: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-...

He is right on 0 deaths in Italy, Spain has one but 15% hospitalized rate.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3...

https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infograf...

Not sure why you are being downvoted rather than argued with.

Here is part of the problem: hospitalization and ICU don't necessarily mean the patient will die as long as we have the resources to hospitalize, intubate and medicate the patient.

Once we are out of respirators and the like, then the death rate with these patients will spike.

In Italy, we are seeing younger patients face graver conditions over time as the medical system gets overrun. [citation needed if someone help me dig one up? I can't remember where I read this]

this could be for a number of reasons though:

1. younger people feel invulnerable and go out more

2. underlying conditions in these people x a large population

3. overwhelmed hospitals

Likely, some combination of the above.

These are all unsubstantiated claims that I am pushing back on against the mainstream narrative. Can you cite data for:

1. "Seeing younger patients facing graver conditions" - are we seeing excess mortality rates amongst the younger population in Italy as we speak (compared to say this time last year)?

I don't know man, seems like you could do a simple google search and find a ton of references:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/not-just-older-pe...

The virus grows fast so the question is what % of people of a particular category who have it will need an ICU/hospital to prevent their death.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted on this, the range they choose is super weird.

The actual report says that people under 19 comprise 2% of hospitalizations -- I doubt it suddenly jumps to 38% for the next 5 years. It also says there are no known fatalities of people under 19.

They may be at low risk of death, but not of transmitting the disease. When the economy reopens, we need real measures to reduce transmission.

For example, all businesses with more than one person or with customer contact (including not-quite-employment situations like UPS or ride sharing) should take everyone’s temperature every day. Feverish or otherwise sick employees should be sent some, with pay, and there should be very strong disincentives for managers to encourage their employees to pretend to be healthy.

For another example, everyone on public transit or otherwise in a crowded place should wear a mask. If a real surgical mask is not available, a couple of layers of fabric should still help.

This comment applies to any viral disease that spreads amongst humans. What warrants a complete shutdown this time around when we didn't do the same for H1N1, SARS etc?

I’m not personally convinced that a complete shutdown is the right choice. But SARS wasn’t very contagious and only had a few total cases in the US. Arguably H1N1 should have had a somewhat stronger response. Also, people are used to the flu and it’s not as scary.

(Also, there wasn’t really any research needed to vaccinate against H1N1. It was just a matter of production. On the flip side, the flu mutates very quickly to evade immunity, whereas coronaviruses seem to mutate very very slowly. A COVID-19 vaccine that works* seems likely to provide protection essentially forever.)

* Early indications were that the obvious vaccine design for SARS made the disease worse, not better. That’s why we haven’t seen much excitement about inactivated COVID-19 vaccines.

SARS was much more contained, and only infected ~8K people. It infected ~3K people outside of China, most whom were in east Asia. The case counts outside east Asia were in descending order:

- Canada: 250

- US: 27

- Germany: 9

Areas affected by SARS instituted targeted quarantines after detection and were able to contain the virus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea...

H1N1 was much less deadly than Covid-19 and spread less quickly. There were only ~18K confirmed deaths worldwide. (The estimated number of deaths was much higher at 150-600K. Basically, we confirmed it was less deadly than the seasonal flu so we didn't test everyone for it.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

People are freaking out about Covid-19 because it spreads faster and is already stressing hospitals. Deaths and cases double every 2-3 days absent control measures. It can take 2 weeks to cause symptoms, so even if everything gets shut down now, we could have 25x as many hospitalizations/deaths than today. If smaller control measures aren't as effective, it'd take time to confirm and the peak would be multiples higher. H1N1 spread much slower so we could have responded much more leisurely if things started to go out of control.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

So do we treat anyone outside the group of 20-50 year old with no preexisting conditions as acceptable collateral damage to keeping the economy afloat?

It's almost as if some people think human's purpose is to sustain an economy, rather than the other way around.

Economies and markets are a tool used by human's to achieve goals(ideally better quality of life), they are not the goal itself.

It seems like you are making their point for them.

If an economy's purpose is to sustain humans, then letting it crash and burn puts those humans at risk.

It's a balancing act. We just can't forget that too much economic destruction will cost lives as well.

It is a balancing act, but we need to watch out that we're not letting the economy run the show based on things like overinflated valuations and speculation, which at the first sign of trouble, implode on themselves at almost a 50% loss.

How much actual value(quality of life) is really being generated here? How much of it is hype, bandwagons, and charades? How sustainable is it and what safety nets are available when the bottom falls out? During this time you also think about how many people are telecommuting effectively right now, and how much downtown economies and real estate relies on everyone getting in their car, or on a bus/train going downtown each morning, and then the knock on effects this has on the environment.

A lot of people don't want to hear pessimism or realism, they want to see growth, growth and growth. Growth at all other costs can still result in the side effect of quality of life improvements, but unlimited economic growth has not been sustainable, and we've had quite a few boom and bust cycles the last 2 decades now. If you're designing the economy to continually boom & bust, it's hard not to expect eventual economic destruction. It's not a matter of "not letting it happen", it's a matter of that's how it's been designed. It's what it does.

Collateral damage? There's no vaccine for this disease and we may not get one for years. We have to develop immunity for it at some point. We can't live in a bubble. A body in quarantine is safe but that is not what bodies are for.

We quite literally do do what you're saying with general influenza that also takes folks outside the 20-50 range as collateral damage to keep the economy float. Hence your comment is meaningless without understanding how much more severe and infectious covid-19 is.

Well, you can kick things off by sacrificing any member of your family over the age of 50 then.

It's almost as if people don't realise economies are reliant on people to contribute to them. You infect half the population you're going to have the same effect regardless. Only this way, we might not end up killing millions unnecessarily.

The alternative is a wildly increased death rate, which you cannot reverse. There are so many ways to fix economies, only a few ways to address a pandemic.

If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say.

There's only so many trillions of dollars the Fed can print before the whole structure of the economy buckles. And when economies buckle, death and despair ensue. The economy is about more than just making money. The Great Depression caused a lot of secondary effects including World War II. We definitely want to avoid situations like that.

EDIT: All complex decisions involve trade-offs. Right now, there's at least a few dozen more likely ways that people will die other than COVID-19. Heart disease, cancer, car accidents, even seasonal flu currently has a higher death count. You cannot lock down the economy for months on end, ratchet up unemployment to 30%+, and continue to feed people and keep their housing and shelter paid for. People's lives and livelihoods depend on the economy staying functional and healthy. It's not trivial. You have to find some way of moving forward without locking down all 320 million people. Maybe you look at areas of outbreak and you quarantine those areas on a piecewise basis. You ramp up testing, you use masks in public, you do something pro-active to keep the economy going. You provide assistance to those that are at high risk, but you let low risk individuals get back to work and keep the economy moving. The food you eat. The healthcare services you depend on. The military. The semi-truck drivers delivering products and services. The aircraft to transport products and people. All of that depends on the economy working.

Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.

This argument is not worth responding to. You are arguing that our economy should be protected before people are protected. It is disgusting, and I'm tired of rehashing the same disgusting crap over and over.

If you really think that the economic effects outweigh the loss of life this virus can and will cause, all I can do is be glad that all you have is your ability to express your opinion, not the ability to do anything about it. Thank god for that.

Finally, and yes I'm quoting myself here "If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say."

> Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.

This is absurd; you're responding to me. And this isn't a discussion, these are opinions, with no facts to back them up. I simply find these opinions disgusting, as they do not prioritize keeping people healthy and alive.

You also have to take into account what might happen if millions of people loose their shit. People that have nothing to loose are dangerous. Never underestimate stupid people in large groups.

We lose 30K+ people a year to car accidents, but we keep the roads and cars moving, because we accept that the collapse of those systems would cause more hardship and suffering and death than the systems themselves. We know lung cancer kills a lot of people, as well as liver disease, but we continue to allow for alcohol and cigarettes to be sold, because we know that the pain and suffering of enforcing the laws against those things is more expensive than the diseases themselves. We make all kinds of trade-offs in society. I'm arguing for: protecting the vulnerable and supporting them financially through the crisis but enabling the large bulk of our 20-50 year old workforce to keep the lights on by going back to work and engaging in commerce. That can involve all sorts of compromises with regards to hygiene, but it has to happen. We have tons of debt as a country, there are real systemic risks to continuing like this indefinitely.

Forgetting the overload of medical infrastructure for a bit, here are some of the myriad of issues that this leads to:

1. There are 20-50 year olds with pre-existing conditions such as asthma who are at higher risk. For example, a colleague on my team has asthma. Another colleague on my team has a husband who has asthma. As a Manager, I can't ask either of them to come into work.

2. What about 20-50 year olds who come in contact with 50+ year old or live together with them? They may be at low risk, but they will definitely spread the virus around more

It becomes quite complicated dealing with these things on a case by case basis.

At low risk of dying.

Not low risk of getting hospitalized and having permanent or long-lasting lung damaged. Do you want compromised breathing for the next 5 years?

No idea why you're getting downvoted, this comment is spot on.

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