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Comment by ksk | Hacker News Reader

>we already have direct evidence that when it spreads without any containment it causes unacceptably extreme amounts of sickness and death

That hasn't happened in Sweden.

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Sweden didn't take no measures. Sweden took flexible measures[1]. Social distancing, allowing anyone who felt sick to stay home, encouraging people to work from home (and 50% Swedes apparently can do that[2]).

The problem is that when American employers grant to no sick leave to employees and are brutally against ever doing so, applying the flexible Swedish model to the US would be extremely hard. The model involves mutual trust and responsibility between the state, employers and employees and there's very little trust there in most other countries.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-no-lockdo...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/545241/sweden-enterprise...

All I know is that the streets are just as crowded, people are still going out and businesses are still open. There are plenty of news reports showing that.

There is no known method of stopping the spread of this disease. Even if you flatten the curve, without a vaccine, the area under the curve remains the same.

The area under the infection curve does, but not the area under the death curve. The entire point of flattening the curve is to avoid doctors having to ration care due to overwhelming demand.

Fwiw, I'm also in the camp that cases are an order of magnitude off and there is significantly more immunity in the population than we think. However that's a hunch and with out widespread antibody testing it would be irresponsible for anyone to act on such a hunch.

There's never ever going to be enough antibody kits for everyone in the world. Same with the PCR test, its impossible to make so many. The only discussion is going to be about the definition of "wide-spread". Whats yours?

Why wouldn't there literally be enough antibody tests for everyone in the world?

The world is full of factories producing a wide variety of things, including biological material. These factories can certainly gear up given time.

Because there isn't enough raw material (e.g. reagents), and even if we did have them and the planets supply chain is messed up.

What makes you certain that it is possible to manufacture billions of tests?

However that's a hunch and with out widespread antibody testing it would be irresponsible for anyone to act on such a hunch.

Wow, it is gratifying to see someone able to say this. Absolutely, with some luck there are a bunch of limiting factors (both that there's are harmless infections, that ) that are going to keep the epidemic from reaching the potential it seems to have "on paper". But these are unknown, these are the major unknowns and acting like we can just guestimate them and be safe is supremely irresponsible since if get it wrong, an order of magnitude more people die. A flu season? Ten flu season? A hundred flu season? Do you really want to roll those dice? To a fair extent, we already are but it's not comforting.

> Even if you flatten the curve, without a vaccine, the area under the curve remains the same.

Not necessarily. The higher the social distancing at the peak, the lower the percentage of infection needed for herd immunity to kick in. Ergo, in effect, lower number of cases. If you drop your R0 by half, your her immunity percentage necessary halves as well!

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

Look under the Mechanics section.

No, even in your hypothetical case, the disease still continues to infect when you lift the social distancing and the economy re-opens. That is not herd immunity.

Sweden has a population of 10.2 million and has had over 1000 deaths, very roughly 100 deaths per million population.

Compare to Denmark (52 deaths per 1m) or Norway (25 deaths per 1M) and Sweden's tactics don't seem to be working that well.

It's really too early to say one way or the other because spread of the virus started a different times in different countries. Plus we have to factor in the long term excess deaths that will be caused by lockdown measures. Poverty kills (even in Scandinavia).

Sad as it may seem, you cannot avoid those deaths. Stopping the spread of this disease is impossible. Even if you flatten the curve, the virus will continue to infect just as many, just slowly.

>and Sweden's tactics don't seem to be working that well.

Their healthcare isn't being overwhelmed and that is the only thing that matters in any country at this moment.

Yet.

I'm hoping they succeed in getting herd immunity.

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