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Comment by andrewnicolalde | Hacker News Reader

> We are way beyond the point where hospitals are horribly overwhelmed

I ask as someone who genuinely doesn't know either way, but is there a realistic risk of this happening again?

Yes. If the numbers creep up past a certain point, you roll back. Or you do like Sweden and just let free citizens make their own decisions.

87% of the deaths in Sweden were over 70, and they are a net drain on the economy anyway.

-- Jonathan Swift

Yes, because in the US, even recently, in covid hotspots hospitals have become overwhelmed. Shutdowns in those areas have managed to get the rates back down.

I haven't heard of this, does anyone have any articles that go into detail about the magnitude of the overwhelment?

Wisconsin is already heading in that direction.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/09/30/wisconsin-hos...

North Dakota has 22 ICU beds left in the state.

Yes, but less than the first time around since a lot of people already had it, we had time to prepare, and social distancing measures (avoiding dense areas, masks, etc) make a fast break out more unlikely.

Generally, yes. What happened in New York could happen everywhere (Berlin, Paris, London, Tokyo, Beijing). But in practice the virus seems to have somewhat slowed down. With the notable exceptions of France and Spain the second wave so far seems to grow much slower. That might be due to more tests, but I think the effect is caused by a general change in behavior. We are also better prepared, both in the effectiveness of treatment and the diagnosis of severe cases. Also, if shift comes to shove, there are several experimental vaccines already. They might not be very efficient, but they should be comparatively safe by now. So all in all, I would say the worst could be behind us.

Winter is coming. The second wave in Europe was initially driven by the young. Now it's beginning to spread to older people.

"2 more weeks.", "We don't know the long term effects", "Winter is coming". We are ~3 months from 2021, COVID-"2019" most likely will be endemic.

The “spiteful” people wanting to watch rich people fail are preventing this from happening by being responsible

How might one go about knowing such a thing?

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