Hacker News Reader

>> No one's saying it's not bad. At least I'm not. It's just a lot less bad than what we were told 3 months ago.

It's a lot less bad than it was estimated 3 months ago because most states understood the severity of the situation and hunkered down as much as they could.

>> that we've been so successful in flattening the curve (and scaring people from going out, including to the hospital for critical treatment), that we've overshot our goal to the point of doing more damage than good

Our "deaths per day" number averages 2000. I don't know how this can be remotely perceived as some sort of massive success other than relative to the original estimates that were based on doing nothing.

Stopping people from getting the virus was, unfortunately, not the goal. American epidemiologists don't and didn't believe that's something we can achieve in the short term.

Yes- I was speaking specifically to the goal of not overwhelming the healthcare system.

Unfortunately, right now we're saving it from gluttony only to have it starve.

3) We were wrong about the kinds of people who were going to catch this (e.g. poor folks, people of color, people in nursing homes, prisoners, people who work jobs they can't freely leave in meatpacking plants), who while they'll fill up a coffin just the same as anybody...

...are also all groups less likely to go to a hospital / ER even in GOOD times, and even when they do, tend to be treated like crap (e.g. assumed to be "drug-seeking", have their pain dismissed, often end up overlooked in triage, etc.)

This is the same old haves vs. have-nots story we've been telling, taken to a while new level -- if you're wealthy enough to be able to work from home, you've likely just been hunkering down and wondering what all the fuss is about.

It's not about fear-based leverage, it's about one group of people refusing to admit they're too insulated from the rest of society to see that the lower rungs that keep everything running are getting massacred.

Of course it's less bad, we did something about it.

It's like the Y2k bug. There were forecasts of doom, so we did something about it, so then there was no doom. That doesn't mean the original alarm bells weren't justified.

Framing the situation as we were right or wrong is weird though. No one has a time machine to go and come back with the truth, as if someone knew exactly how this would play out but was keeping it a secret.

It was a total mystery 3 months ago. We're only barely starting to tease it apart now. Given that, the conservative option, the choice that kills the fewest people, is what we did.

We could have avoided overshooting if we'd known 3 months ago what we know now. The problem is we didn't have knowledge from the future. 3 months ago it was clear this would have an extreme impact, economically.

What would you have done differently, given what we didn't know back then? (Also keeping in mind we still don't know all that much about this disease.)

> There were forecasts of doom, so we did something about it, so then there was no doom. That doesn't mean the original alarm bells weren't justified.

The field hospitals were built at roughly the same time the lockdowns started. You seem to be saying the decision to build them should be made independently of doing anything else.

But I generally agree with your sentiment about hindsight and acting conservatively. Though that includes knowing what the conservative option even is. Do we also burn money and spray disinfectant on the streets? Are we manufacturing a recession for nothing?

> No one's saying it's not bad. At least I'm not. It's just a lot less bad than what we were told 3 months ago. Yet very few seem willing to admit that, because (I'm guessing) they think it might mean losing some amount of fear based leverage or control. Or don't want to give people false confidence to disregard rules. Or whatever the motivation.

“3 months ago” was February 8 so not sure what you think was being said at that point.

1.75-2 months ago, when social distancing measures actually began and the whole #FlattenTheCurve started, the White House announced that they had a model that with all the #FlattenTheCurve measures in place, they expected between 100,000 and 200,000 to die of the virus by August 1st. https://apnews.com/6ed70e9db88b80439a087fdad8238009

So far 75,000 have died, with two and a half months to go and over a 1,000 dying every day still. It seems like the original prediction of over 100K by august 1st with full preventative measures is well on the way to being hit.

What are you talking about when you say it’s less bad than what we were told 3 months ago? What do you think you were told?

Not deaths. Healthcare system & infrastructure capacity vs demand. The whole point of "flattening the curve."

Predictions were being made before the first confirmed cases in the US, but we were still in containment mode vs suppression.

The China travel ban, for example, was implemented by Feb 1st, from quick glance. (Edit: made Jan 31 & took effect Feb 2)

We were worried about overwhelming the healthcare system. But it's dying from lack of patients.