Reprise wrote:UK heading for a full lockdown. A big announcement is happening tonight.
Hopefully at some point some sane person will realize the economic and societal impact of these extreme measures, not to mention the effect on family relationships, mental health and the isolation of vulnerable people, far outweighs the impact of the virus.
I don't know about that, it's a difficult balancing act.
Compare the approaches of Italy vs. South Korea. South Korea took strong measures early and have managed to keep their healthcare need under capacity. Italy did not and is now forced to face quarantines anyway on top of having its medical capacity overwhelmed. It's not really a trade off between the disease and the economy, if we do nothing we may eventually face the worst of both anyway.
Your ultimate goal is you want to be 1918 St. Louis (700 deaths), not 1918 Philadelphia (11,000 deaths). People are going to get sick regardless, but the slower they get sick the better it will be. It's not just COVID-19 victims' lives at stake. An overwhelmed healthcare system will cause many unrelated deaths due to lack of emergency care doctors and hospital beds. As someone with chronic and severe health issues myself I face the very real risk of not getting the care I need should something happen, but so does everyone else from anything ranging from a sudden heart attack to a car accident, etc. Right now we're way under capacity in most areas, and that's great and needs to stay that way, though if you live in places like New York City the system is already stretched.
Yeah, the costs suck, the impact sucks, but we've learned from history what we should do in these type of situations as to not repeat the disastrous mistakes of past epidemics. There's no room to get complacent about it yet especially with the current exponential curves we're seeing, but hopefully things will look more optimistic soon and we can start scaling back some of the more extreme measures. If we do it too soon though, we just move the curve's time table and the worst will still happen.