Originally Posted by
gugie
Get back to us next week with with new numbers. Perhaps go online and find out about exponential growth.
Already know of it, of course. Like most people.
No matter how easily it transmits, that doesn't alter its fundamental impact on a person. The basic death rate is what it is. Standard precautions for at-risk people still makes sense with this thing, perhaps even more so. I know of an 80yr old lady who's got various conditions that impact her respiratory system, who has been mixing it up with groups of people (including hugs of friends, etc) until the past two weeks. Bad, for her, to disregard basic precautions. I know of another man on dialysis who hasn't been taking many precautions at all. Well, if those individuals with such conditions take things seriously and keep themselves well-protected, then they'll be at vastly reduced risk. None of which alters the essential probability of severe symptoms or death in otherwise healthy persons.
Originally Posted by
gugie
The point is which is worse, doing nothing and letting several hundred thousand people in the US alone die and quickly get through the economic recovery, or stretch out the economic dread and limit the number of people dead? It may be that the number of people dying prematurely from economic collapse is as many or greater than the first option.
Tough situation, no doubt about it.
But it's a bit of a "
tossing the baby out with the bath water" thing, to shut down the world's economy. Indeed, in such a "small" (interconnected) world, it's hard to halt transmission except for halting travel from place to place that allows for easy transmission. But with enough of that sort of thing, putting a sufficient dent in transmissibility via terminating all socioeconomic activity, societies can collapse. It's
not smallpox or bubonic plague, here. IMO the steps taken should be much more targeted; indeed, more-at-risk persons need to take early and great precautions; and everyone needs to practice "basic" hygiene and "distancing" protocols in their everyday activities. But so long as people disregard, stay in close proximity (like the dang party-hounds on Spring Break, for example), touch everything around them, sneeze/cough into the air ahead of them (without covering up), failing to wash hands frequently, etc., it's going to continue to transmit easily.
No easy steps ... other than
those personal steps, which (so far as I can tell in my area) are steps people
still aren't reliably and consistently taking.
Big question will soon become: for businesses that have missed the bulk of a quarter's income (or more, if this thing gets worse and "solutions" drag even harder on them), how many won't be there after tanking ... vastly-reduced income, plant+equipment costs remaining, impacted workforce.