People have been saying that about Sweden for a long time.
My money is on all other countries doing something closer to the swedish model when the next wave hits in winter.
One issue that I would like to have seen mentioned here is whether Sweden's resources for treating the very sick have the capacity to handle an increasing rate of infection, if claims that it is over the hump turn out to be premature.
A lot of people are going to die. More people will die if the lockdown is lifted, and many of those who would have died anyway will die sooner. But famine, crime, war, and authoritarianism will cost more. On a global scale I have no doubt that disease is less harmful than poverty in terms of happiness or lives lost. The same for any given country as a whole. For wealthy communities perhaps not.
It is frustrating to me that saying such things comes off as right wing or anti-science. I feel the calls to keep the lockdown going are a thing of entitlement from those who can afford to do so. There's a middleground where you lockdown those at risk, reduce travel, and encourage sanitation practices but open things up.
This isn't in the local news, nor regional news. It's almost like it's a dirty secret.
You may not consider this "overrun" but I do. I sure hope I don't have appendicitis or a stroke because it'll be an issue...
It's true, a prolonged lockdown could potentially keep hospital usage low enough that things like this aren't happening, but only temporarily, and not in a way that meaningfully diminishes the threat of the virus and similar hospital burdens occurring later. You can't slowly let everyone acquire immunity. The disease either exponentially spreads to a sufficient scale or it spreads too slowly to build up a community resistance that permits a lockdown to end without consequence.
I really do empathize with people who are suffering, but what do you do if 6 months from now the disease is still here, we don't have a vaccine, and the economic situation is worse? You either release it, and put us back at the beginning with these same woes we're encountering now, or we keep holding the lockdown for short term loss of life avoidance at significant economic cost.
I get that this is tragic. I get that people are dying. I get that this is an enormous mental and emotional toll on doctors. I get that we should be cautious and avoid needless exposure, especially to vulnerable populations or with unnecessary large social gatherings. But the lockdown is not saving lives. It's delaying inevitable deaths, at an economic cost which could kill even more people!
Also, you're idea of how herd immunity functions is not accurate.
We'll have the virus here in 6 months; no doubt in my mind. We'll have it combined with the annual flu. We won't have a vaccine either, though perhaps some therapeutic treatment if we're lucky.
No, we won't reach herd immunity for at least a year at this rate. And the political pressure to "open up" the economy will become too great since we don't have a real welfare net in America.
So my estimate at the end of the year is that we'll have about 40% of the population infected or recovered. We'll have roughly 19M hospitalized during the next 8 months, and 1.4M deaths. This will cripple our country, our economy, and our people. Yeah, I'm a pessimist. Everything I've seen about how this country is reacting confirms my priors.
How can we avoid this? Keep things shut down to a bare minimum of true essential services. Protect the employees doing essential services to the max. Implement a social safety net so workers don't lose everything. Do the same for businesses, since demand is drying up fast. Listen to scientists instead of firing them for disagreeing with the POTUS about hydrochloroquine. Develop reliable serological tests so that immune people can safely work.
Most importantly, be lucky. The US has been lucky for a long long time; for most of its history. Hopefully that will continue, and rub off on the rest of the world that is in far dire straits.
You cannot "just" provide a social safety net. That's not how the economy works. Somewhere between 10 and 20% of households with kids did not have enough to eat. Now more people, especially the poor, are out of work, and food prices have gone up because we're producing less food. Giving a handout to keep people afloat makes sense as a short term fix but it's not a viable long term solution.
You're saying we're going to see 1.4M deaths on the current track. Well what's the deaths on your track? There's NO WAY to open up the economy without the virus resuming its spread. You haven't lowered the deaths, you've just delayed it at great economic cost.
1) there won't be a vaccine - even if there will be, you won't be able to vaccinate everybody
2) the virus spreads fast but due to lockdowns not fast enough for herd immunity to prevent spread
3) lockdowns will be relaxed when new cases stop being found
4) all of it assuming immunity lasts for a few years, which it should, but it isn't a certainty
5) 3) will lead directly to asymptomatic cases causing flare-ups a few weeks after lockdowns are relaxed (see Singapore, Japan)
6) if 4) isn't true, we're toast
https://www.immunology.org/news/bsi-open-letter-government-s...
Why not hoping for some drug development to bring the disease to clinically manageable levels? There are far more drugs in trials than vaccines (even though I expect the majority to miss the mark, as is the case with drug development).
Waiting for a vaccine is not a good long term strategy. If a country can lock down long enough to kill its own spread it can re-open its economy safely so long as international borders remain closed.
I really feel you're understating how impossibly difficult this would be for a large country
Like, they've injected people with them.