Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

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A few key things you're leaving out.

1. The mortality rate for children is lower than even the flu, and this is likely to do with age-related ACE2 expression. This is fact, and hopefully it leads to something that can help us lower the mortality rate in older folks, too. [1] They can of course spread it to older folks, though.

2. Mortality rate among the young is in line with the flu.

3. Mortality rate in older folks is terrible, and needs to be managed, but it can be managed. Those folks, and those with immune issues can and must be protected at all costs.

These three things together mean the death rate of such a strategy is nowhere near 1%.

> 330,000,000 ÷ 100 x 65 = 214,500,000

Serology studies pin the number closer to 0.6%, but of course that doesn't make the decision any less difficult -- although that is heavily, heavily age dependent.

What you're neglecting otherwise is the thrust of the article: lockdowns are temporary and the disease won't be stopped by lockdowns. Even under the most optimistic projection for vaccination, we may be hurtling towards the 65% number in the US one way or the other.

This article basically documents Sweden's approach. There hasn't been a COVID death in Sweden since August 24th, and at the moment, they continue to see ~150 new cases per day.

[1] https://www.uth.edu/news/story.htm?id=b40ccaec-50c5-465c-b2d...

Mortality rate in older folks is terrible, and needs to be managed, but it can be managed.

Yeah...I keep seeing this handwave from the "I should be able to do whatever I want" crowd. How exactly can it be managed? Basically it's "if you have any possible risk factor, you should lock yourself away so me and my friends aren't inconvenienced by your existence". Ignoring the fact (and the associated abdication of responsibility) that there's no established risk assessment beyond "if you're an oldster, stay home", and it's not clear why the many otherwise low risk are getting sick and dying. They are apparently the cost of partying on weekends.

"If you have any possible risk factor, you should lock yourself away so me and my friends aren't inconvenienced by your existence" is how quarantines have worked for hundreds of years.

As opposed to 100% of people locking themselves away? The reality is people won’t do what you’re asking. The evidence is in the infection curve. We have to manage the society/neighbors we have not the people we wish we had. Further, a few months later everyone can come out and play.

> a few months later everyone can come out and play.

I'm not so sure. Governments can't admit that fighting such a contagious virus with non-pharmaceutical interventions is extremely difficult on the long run. You're just buying time for a cure (not necessarily a vaccine: drugs work, too).

The problem is people aren’t doing it so it doesn’t matter what the intention is. You need to tailor the public policy towards what people will actually do not what you wish they would do. Otherwise you’re left with the half measures that achieve absolutely nothing you see today.

If there's literally nothing suitable that would be automatically done, what would you do? Allow people to do whatever at the cost of lives or force them to do what is right?

Usually in law, number 1 is called negligence.

> Allow people to do whatever at the cost of lives or force them to do what is right?

You're invoking police power to massively disrupt people's lives indefinitely. That's unacceptable.

Let people exercise their inalienable freedoms and assume whatever risk they want.

We saw people preempt the government in avoiding risky behavior as the pandemic started, and we'll see people preempt the government in resuming normal life avoiding risk as they deem fit.

In case of this virus, probably not a vaccine. Or not alone. And any vaccine would need some period of widespread testing, comparable to how long it took to devise flu vaccines.

This one can jump species, reinfection cases have been described already, and coronaviruses in general are known to cause seasonal infections.

> And any vaccine would need some period of widespread testing

That's what the current Phase III trials are doing (30K people for Pfizer, 30K people for Moderna, ~12K people for Oxford/AstraZeneca). This should be enough to check for efficacy, while probably not enough for potential long-term effects.

Reinfections are, so far, a minuscule number compared to the total cases (2 properly documented cases), so I expect immunity to last at least a year, basing on the current data. Time will tell if I'm wrong, of course.

There have not been any re-infections. Any people who tested positive a second time saw either false positives or residual viral fragments.

You don't seem to think very highly of other people. You could also phrase it as "if you have any possible risk factor, you should lock yourself away so me and my friends can build up herd immunity so you don't have to", just as the article said.

This response actually had me LOL.

We're packed in this bar pounding beers with my dudebros...so we can build up immunity!

I got on my bike and road to Sturgis with 50k other bikers...so we can herd up some immunity!

I'm out here maskless and not social distancing, threatening people for not opening schools and complaining about not getting a haircut...how else can we get immune!

I think my read on other people is pretty spot on.

Again, you're playing to the audience you wish you had instead of the one you actually have. As we have been unable to get people to stay inside, there's no good that will come of continuing to tell people to stay inside while we know they won't. We need to figure out how to minimize harm given what we now know. You're basically arguing for the war on drugs.

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