Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

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Why isn't it prevalent in Australia and NZ? Because it is possible to avoid the coronavirus whilst interacting with other people. It's not like they put every single person in the country in complete isolation for months. Even the newly sick people coming in "interact" with other people.

I'm not barricaded anywhere like most other people where I live (BC, Canada) and about 1% of the population has had the virus. And this number is high (yes, high) because people feel like cramming hundreds of people in a small place and partying during a pandemic (or in this case 100 people together) is the right thing to do and in general people not willing to be put to the slightest inconvenience like reducing their social circle, doing stuff outdoors instead of indoors, wearing a mask, staying home when sick etc. Where did you get the 1 in 4 for the UK number from? No way it's so high and the UK is the second worst in the world in cases per capita. Vietnam? Taiwan? China? Japan? Finland? Norway? Greece?

<rant> The problem is that in order to get each person on average to infect less than one person everyone has to do their bit. If 95% of the population is infecting 0.98 people at average but the remaining 5% are each infecting 20 people it's not going to work. Those 5% push the total reservoir for the virus up (more mutations, fun) and they keep increasing the odds of getting sick for each of the individuals in the 95%. And I'm being generous when I say 95% actually do their part. If there's a single sick person in BC and they transmit to 0.98 people then my odds of getting sick are essentially zero, but if there are 6000 that transmit to 1.02 people each that's a different story. </rant>

7% of the UK population has been tested positive via PCR so far via the official dashboard.

Models indicate around 25% infected in the country, 37% in London.

The rest of your post, well, I'm glad that you find it easy and have lots of compassion for people who don't find social isolation as trivial as you do.

Models ain't the truth.

The point is you don't have to be isolated, you just need to infect less than one other person if you're sick. You can hang out with your friends on the lawn, sitting a little further apart, you can be closer with a smaller number of people, you can go for walks outdoors, you can take out at the restaurant instead of eating in. You might choose to buy something online instead of going to the store.

Some of the people who are flaunting the rules aren't doing that because this is unworkable, they're doing it because they don't give a damn (well, some of them). I do realize some people are put in situations where they have no options (e.g. poor and works in a meet packing factory, that's not what I'm talking about here though that has solutions too).

I don't know why you're waffling on about this.

The topic in question is an attempt to stage an event with zero coronavirus. I am simply saying that you cannot test your way into a 100% safe event in a country that has high prevalence.

You seem to be talking about how to reduce prevalence in the country and shoe horning in your own opinions about people for the sake of feeling good about yourself.

Two different topics.

That's not what you said though:

"There is no way to completely avoid the coronavirus whilst interacting with other humans unless it's simply not prevalent in your area (e.g. Australia, NZ)."

<snip - here you did say something about events but your generalization on top seems overriding>

"I don't understand how an intelligent person couldn't simply derive this from first principles, it's been eleven months or so now.

Do they exist in a different world to the rest of us or what? Most people I know, unless they're barricaded inside, have pretty much accepted that they're going to get it, the last study I read indicated that 1 in 4 individuals in the UK have already been infected."

If you simply said what you're saying in your reply I'd simply upvote that and not argue, since yeah, that's a pretty good observation, you can't test your way into a 100% safe event, sure.

Probably just a miscommunication.

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