I think I’m failing to understand something basic. What exactly is the endgame with this social distancing strategy? Doesn’t flattening the curve just mean moving the spike to later when you try to ease the mitigation measures?
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The responses make me think far few people have looked at the y-axis of the flattening graphs. We’re not talking turning 2x into 0.95x capacity. We’re talking something like 10x to 3x or so. The overwhelming of hospitals cannot be avoided. At best fewer people die waiting.
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If the time is not used for cranking out both ventilators and people trained to use them, and developing treatments (not vaccines), we’re just moving spikes around. Ventilators alone is closer to WW1 attrition/trench warfare. We’re pinned down. WW2 maneuver warfare needs drugs.
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I don’t think the 6-10 weeks people are thinking about is enough time. But distancing past that will cripple the economy to the point that the ventilator manufactuting and and drug dev fronts will collapse too. Need smart distancing of some sort.
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I don’t think any of the best-case endgames people are hoping for is actually likely under current global leadership. I think we’re looking at 10-20m dead globally in the next 2 years.
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I’m not sure I get why people are pinning their hopes on test-and-trace. Not only does it take the kind of authoritarian lockdown that is unlikely to be politically enforceable in the west, it doesn’t do much unless you’re making rapid progress towards a drug or vaccine.
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Replying to @vgr
Two very different questions: 1. what to do *right now* in the face of huge uncertainty & immediate risk of healthcare's collapse? 2. how do we get out of this & what's the best long-term course of action? not having a good answer for 2 doesn't justify inaction on 1.
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Sure. I’m saying our answer to 1 isn’t enough because it can’t be sustained long enough to do the job.
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