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Comment by freewilly1040 | Hacker News Reader

I think the more substantial critique of this position is that the option to reopen the economy is a fantasy. The notion that we're all going to go out and start going to restaurants again amidst stories of people dying in hospital hallways for lack of medical equipment is ridiculous.

We have already seen the outcomes for countries skeptical of the lockdown strategy, they have paid dearly for it, and the worse is yet to come.

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Exactly. I sure as hell am not going out to eat or sending my kids back to school or... anything I can possibly avoid until I feel safe doing so.

This is a public health crisis. You have to fix that to start fixing the economy.

To put this in perspective, NYC is projected to run out of ventilators early next week[1]. That means if you catch it now and need ICU, there's no medical equipment to save you.

Whether government mandated or not, people are gonna stay the fuck home because they don't want themselves or their parents to die in a hallway.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/coronavirus-new-...

> The notion that we're all going to go out and start going to restaurants again amidst stories of people dying in hospital hallways for lack of medical equipment is ridiculous.

It's not as ridiculous as you think. Most people would just go about their lives and risk the disease because most people will be okay. If people weren't forced/threatened to quarantine, they wouldn't. If the nba season wasn't canceled, people would still attend the games. Same with baseball games, comedy clubs, concerts, etc.

The question is the cost-benefit analysis. What is lost and what is gained via the lockdown/shutdown and whether it is worth it.

Some would go, but I think it’d be a worst case middle ground where activity is slowed enough to keep us in a depression but not enough to slow the growth of the virus

You gotta come to a compromise, a middle ground. Especially since a vaccine is at least 13 months out. We cannot continue this. And the problem with this disease is it's got this asynchronous transmission. It's shutting down entire nations, but not all regions are equally affected. And so, we may get this situation where NYC hits its peak in 2-4 weeks but then Dallas gets their peak in 2 months but then San Diego gets their peak in 4 months but then Phoenix gets their's in October and so on. This is how it's playing out across the globe. You can require masks in public. You can strongly encourage the elderly to stay home. You can shut down public transportation. You can go to 50% occupancy in restaurants and theaters. But you can't commit economic suicide. It will kill more people in the long run than the disease does.

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