Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

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Nah, my calculus is basically as follows. The disease is not bad for people who aren't old, and who do not have pre-existing conditions. The data is pretty unequivocal there. The number of deaths under 20 worldwide rounds to zero. It's incredibly contagious (and contagious while no symptoms are shown), and a vaccine is 12-18 months away at a minimum. There's no way we're going to be able to contain everyone indoors, with no jobs, for 18 months while we await a vaccine that may not arrive. And that's just here in the US -- the weakest link dominates.

If we don't develop herd immunity ASAP, and instead pursue a course of lockdowns, as soon as we lift the lockdowns (either voluntarily or because people just walk out -- see the midwest), we'll immediately start playing rolling lockdown whack-a-mole as China is. The first contagious person who flies in from a foreign country (or domestically) without perfect lockdowns will re-ignite the wildfire.

We should do exactly what Sweden is doing and what the UK proposed: isolate and provide support services to those who are at risk, and let out those who aren't. I think it speaks volumes that Sweden's new infection rate stabilized at the same time as the rest of the world but without lockdowns.

It's really the only path forward. Is it perfect? Of course not. People will die. However, there's no world in which about 70% of the population won't get the disease before the vaccine arrives, so we need to control who gets it, when, and in what order, to minimize harm.

> but without lockdowns.

While I agree mostly with your assessment, it's worth mentioning that the lack of official lockdown in Sweden doesn't mean there isn't a lockdown. According to Google's mobility data for Sweden, their lockdown activity looks pretty similar to what we see in the US. People are voluntarily staying home.

> their lockdown activity

Since Sweden doesn't have a lockdown, this statement is meaningless. A major objection to lockdowns is their involuntary nature. In general, there is a big difference between choosing to stay home, and being coerced (with the threat of force) to do so. One is "choosing to do what you believe is best", the other is "prison".

And there are big differences in social cohesion between countries. Voluntary efforts appear to be sufficient in Sweden precisely because there is a high level of compliance.

In the meantime, the coastal town that I live in is getting swarmed with out of town visitors every weekend. This is in violation of the shelter-in-place orders. Other towns have stepped up enforcement to combat this type of behavior, but our police department is small and does not have the resources. We shut down the parking lots, but now they just park in the neighborhoods. And to add insult to injury, we have a large senior housing complex at the entrance point to my neighborhood.

I have little faith that the US could achieve the type of distancing and isolation necessary on a voluntary basis. There is a sharp vein of individualism that runs through our society that works strongly against us in these types of situations.

For what it's worth, Sweden's goal is to get 70% of the country infected to achieve herd immunity. They likely quite rightly believe that's the only way to stop the disease once and for all. While it's absolutely not okay to be anywhere near a seniors residence, the rest is likely tolerated because it's kind of the unstated goal to the extent healthcare facilities remain un-saturated.

It's by no means a "hope and pray it goes away" or a "lets wait it out until a vaccine" -- it's a "let's get everyone not in a risk category infected as fast as possible so long as the healthcare system retains some excess capacity."

I think almost everyone you are debating in this thread would support opening things up provided a few conditions were met. The primary condition for most of us is we need adequate testing and contract tracing capacity. And the reason that this is necessary:

> healthcare facilities remain un-saturated

You can't simply look at the current burden on the health care system to guide the process. The virus has a 2-3 week lag time between when an infection cluster breaks out, and when the health care system starts to feel the impact. Without wide scale testing, we are just going to end up back in a lock down once the infection numbers start climbing again. And I can't think of a worse scenario for our economy than having to shut things down every other month because our government is to incompetent to implement a tracing program that multiple countries already have up and running.

Your calculus has no numbers in it.

Different kind of calculus.

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