Hacker News Reader

Comment by kf | Hacker News Reader

The curve has been flattened and I’m past ready for lockdown to end.

I understand the sentiment, but what exactly do you expect will happen when the lockdown is lifted?

People aren't going to just say "yay, it's over!" and have a grand day out on the town, going to their favorite now-open-and-bustling-once-again restaurants, cafes, and crowded weekend destinations for shopping and people watching.

The majority of people are going to continue to be so nervous and cautious that even if these businesses were allowed to open tomorrow, they are going to remain practically empty for a good long time.

There was never an endgame to these lockdowns. You flatten the curve... and then what? If people go mingle again in anything resembling normal capacity, it'll pick right back up where we left off.

Why is it always a question of lockdown versus no lockdown? There are shades of lockdowns. The most realistic way to fight this is to regulate the number of people who get it without triaging care. Full lockdown is not going to fulfill that and neither is no lockdown.

SF is increasing their number of public health nurses doing contract tracing from 10 to 150. People are starting to wear masks and distance themselves properly. The percentage of people testing positive continues to fall.

Containment was lost. SIP was declared to clamp down on the spread. Resources are being marshalled to increase containment to the level needed. As that comes on line SIP rules will be relaxed and modified.

Frankly do not get why this hard for a lot of people here to comprehend.

The plan needs to make sense though. Texas is opening restaurants tomorrow but limiting capacity to something like 25% of normal. No business can make that profitable but the supports, however meager, from the state will cease because "hey you're open for business now".

Given that we seem to know (1) a vaccine will almost certainly not be finished within a year (2) the US government doesn't have the competence or trust to successfully implement contacting tracing (3) years of lockdowns are infeasible ... I find it hard to arrive at any other conclusion except that the band-aid will need to be ripped off, Swedish style.

Unfortunate you’re getting downvoted. Flattening the curve was about limiting cases so hospitals don’t get overrun. Now they’re trying to eradicate the virus which isn’t going to happen unless you lock everyone down for over a a year.

Yup, no evidence we need flattening in the SF Bay Area:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...

It's all about Governor Newsom running for President now.

Based on the data I've seen, all we need to end the lockdown now is provide and wear a mask, and ground pax airlines until we confirm herd immunity.

Yup, it’s ok, I have karma to burn, just checking sentiment and zeitgeist as my house begins to mindfully break lockdown. There was a mediocre acoustic act performing on the waterfront at Jack London square an hour ago; we might do some shows there or throw a rave at Brooklyn Basin.

You can’t lock down the healthy in America for a year to protect the weak. Those in fear think this is going to end soon but it isn’t. Instead, people need to decide how to live their lives in our new, fundamentally unsafe pandemic society.

I’m glad that you are sure that you are immune and that everyone that one you care about is also immune. Enjoy that rave

Money wise, everyone I know who wasn’t doing too well before the pandemic, is now totally broke.

One of my acquaintances, hasn’t paid rent last month, and frequents food banks now. The promised relief checks have yet to arrive too.

The job market post pandemic looks like it will be pretty rough, so the longer this goes on without relief the more debt people will incur.

I am personally not against continuing the lockdown, even though it’s deeply emotionally draining, but the government needs to consistently provide money for people to live, or else simple desperation is going to become a wide spread problem.

>Flattening the curve was about limiting cases so hospitals don’t get overrun

I agree that was one of the more widely repeated intentions, but ascribing it to every national and state official is inaccurate. The White House's recommendation for lockdowns was primarily motivated by Imperial College's worst-case death projections[1], not the hospitalization numbers.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/29/inside-the-white-ho...

The curve is beyond flat. It's trending down. The refrain was "flatten", and we've decimated the workforce in order to overshoot the mark.

Flattening the curve isn't about the direction of the slope, it's about the height of the peak.

Logically, if isolation is keeping the curve flat and you still have patients to "burn" through then won't ending isolation make the curve pop back up potentially back over capacity?

It always seemed to me you needed to continue isolating to keep the curve flat as time went on until you reached a critical number where letting it go couldn't overwhelm health services.

No, the idea is to let the curve approach capacity before flattening. That did not happen, so we've decimated America worse than any war it has ever participated in, yet made next to no progress against this invisible enemy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com