Best case the West has also wiped out a generation of healthcare and pensions to pay.
The West is also more nationalised than ever with a somewhat unified anti-China stance.
The West has become more powerful relative to the East.
? really? Are you actually proposing that killing off people when they retire is a good thing for society?
They’re no longer paying tax, they’ll free up housing when they go, and probably leave inheritances.
We just can’t talk about it, but there are benefits to cleaning house.
Even on the very narrow definition of some GDP-per-capita-like metric. Assume that one country decides to implement the 65y-killswitch. Everyone who possibly can will move to some other country. You just lost the vast majority of your skilled workers.
The death rate of people over 65 is still quite low. To say the West has wiped out a generation of healthcare and pensions is just incredible. Most of these retired people are still around.
Wishful thinking.
Exponential growth. Suppose the doubling time is 10 days (it's probably less) and there is one person loose who has it (there are probably more). One year would be 35 doublings (actually, slightly more) which would be enough time for 2^35 = 34 billion people to get it. Since this is well over four times the present world population, it's not unreasonable to suppose 60-80% of the people will have had it by then.
It's best guessed at being several years.
But 6-24 months is very possible but it's not really relevant to an article claiming the East has beaten the West, 6 months would redefine everything.
> Is there any reason to believe we get can it through 60-80% of our society within 12 months?
It's a good question, let me check the "flatten the curve" graphs that are everywhere that people are using to shift policy.
Jokes aside the Imperial College report put it at ~4 months untouched for instance.
So fully reopen with social distancing measures like masks, then 12 months seems possible.