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Comment by jeofken | Hacker News Reader

Since this pandemic began, I’ve never understood this line of reasoning. I invite you to enlighten me.

Let’s say we use the governments force to close business down, in order to hinder the virus from spreading there.

When the government later stops applying this force and business can reopen with persecution, will the virus not just continue from where it left off?

In March they said “flatten the curve to not temporarily overload hospitals”, which I get, but the reasoning for keeping the forced lockdown only seems logical if you never reopen.

For this reason I’m glad my country is one of very few that never locked down. More have died here than in the neighbour countries, but I fail to see why they won’t catch up when they reopen.

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The virus can't "continue from where it left off" if there's nobody left in the country infected by it.

If it turns out there were a few infections left, or one slipped through quarantine for arriving travellers, the health system has enough capacity to perform testing for anyone with even mild symptoms, and comprehensively contact trace.

This has worked for several countries.

> The virus can't "continue from where it left off" if there's nobody left in the country infected by it.

If every member of our species is convinced to quarantine for a month, the disease could maybe be eradicated, but this is clearly not realistic. Herding cats is easier.

Even quarantining everyone for a whole month probably wouldn't do it. Did you see that article about the immunosupressed woman who was spraying out viable Covid-19 virus for like 70 days without any visible symptoms of Covid?

> When the government later stops applying this force and business can reopen with persecution, will the virus not just continue from where it left off?

This is the strategy New Zealand followed, and now their lives are back to normal. Here's a pic of one of their sports stadiums[1]. Notice how nobody needs to distance or wear masks because they got control over COVID spread.

[1] https://images.indianexpress.com/2020/06/New-Zealand-rugby-1...

Would it be possible to totally close the border to for example Germany, France, or Czechia, like NZ can do? I highly doubt it but am open to ideas. It would certainly be immoral to use force to hinder native citizens from travelling out of the country.

Two reasons:

Treatments get better. As we learn how the disease works, we know how to treat it better. This means that if you get sick now rather than at the beginning, you are much less likely to die.

Secondly: people are working on vaccines. If you can hold it until one is available, you might not have to get sick at all.

>Secondly: people are working on vaccines. If you can hold it until one is available, you might not have to get sick at all.

I work in vaccines and I don't believe any vaccine is even close to coming out. The products our company is working take about 10 years from start to final sale.

Its quite likely that the FDA will have to lower their standards to fast-track coronavirus vaccines. I am going to be very skeptical of their safety given that we don't have long-term data, especially with the newer unproven vaccine tech.

In my neighbour countries no one is asking them to “please hold” - the government is using its (violent) force to make them stop living and doing business. In my home Sweden we are spared. I say there is an important moral difference between enforcing such a thing and not.

The vaccine is also still vapourware

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